Thursday, June 28, 2007

The Printing Press


Welcome!

The purpose of this blog is to explore how organizations can leverage internet communications to create value and meet strategic objectives. This is a subject about which I am passionate.

Before the printing press, a relatively small few governed what material was worth the effort of reproducing by hand. After the printing press, the masses gained access to publishing and the effects changed the world. We are clearly in the midst of another epochal transformation as web technology makes it cost effective and comparatively easy to create one’s own content and disseminate it to a wide audience. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the fact that I linked to Wikipedia to source the social impact of the printing press on 15th century Europe rather than the encyclopedias to which I had access growing up. Or maybe the reader will find the $1.65 billion Google spent on YouTube more convincing.

The egalitarian effects of putting broadcast content creation in the hands of the proletariat is a subject worth pondering, but that is not the subject of this blog. I am interested in the practical applications of these powerful tools: how to create more effective corporate communications; how to improve training; how to sustain culture; how webcasting can help pharmaceutical companies conduct clinical trials; how webcasting can make money for both the publisher and the sponsors; etc.

At its best, I hope this blog will become a forum where best practices can be shared. We are in the midst of an extraordinary transformation with implications that will not be fully appreciated for generations. But in the meantime it is up to us to find practical applications that generate real world results for our clients.