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Over 70 Million People is Definitely a Market Opportunity

April 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The hopeful image of active, fit and healthy seniors is, at best, a myth.

My sisters and I are helping our 86 year old father “age in place” as best he can by staying in his home. With even cursory analysis, it’s pretty clear there won’t be anywhere near enough capital to build assistive living or nursing home facilities to accomodate the huge pending influx of aging baby boomers, over 70 million of whom started retiring in January of 2011 and will do so through 2029.

When you add to that the real possibility that these oldster’s life expectancy is expected to rise as well, and it certainly appears we have an impending crisis on our hands. As you’ll see below, I argue that the enormity of this population of aging boomers represents quite a market opportunity for technological, community, societal and financial support solutions to alleviate that crisis and make money to boot!  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness, Technology

My Valentine

February 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I am officially the “luckiest guy in the world” that this woman agreed to marry me and be my partner in life. She bore our children, has put up with my idiosyncracies, and been incredibly supportive of me no matter what. Her seeking nature has opened up my mind in ways I never expected.

This is my favorite photo from our wedding, standing outside Westminster Presbyterian in downtown Minneapolis moments after we got hitched (is the pressure-release evident? Was to us!).

My pal, Pete Gisselbeck, not only drove our “limo” (his Dad’s Lincoln Town Car) but he was an accomplished amateur photographer and grabbed lots of keeper shots that night…like this one. He also took a bunch of pictures, made a little photo album, and placed hilarious (but sometimes derogatory and nasty) captions underneath them. Therefore I couldn’t show them to my tiny, petite and darlingly straight-laced Grandma afterwards!

Happy Valentine’s Day Michelle Lamb.

Filed Under: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

Elderly Need Super-Simple, Phone-like Skype

October 26, 2011 By 1 Comment

By now many of you have probably seen, and chuckled about, this delightful video that went viral of a senior couple goofin’ around with their webcam. These two are trying to figure out how to use it (and having fun in the process) but the humor obscures the reality: Using a computer, using Skype, and making certain Skype’s audio/video inputs are set correctly is befuddling to most senior citizens!

Let me tell you a story that may mirror many of your own to illustrate why we need a brain-dead-simple Skype phone that is as cheap, super-simple to operate, and as powerful as a landline phone.

It’s a few years ago and I’m in my home office on a Saturday, facing the street and my neighbors house across it. I bear witness to my elderly neighbors — he a fairly tech-savvy retired Fortune 100 executive and she a loving mother and grandmother — saying a very emotional farewell to their son, daughter-in-law, and two toddler grandsons. 

The son is an executive at a different Fortune 100 company and the family was headed to Europe for two years to open a new line of business. My elderly neighbors would have only one visit during that time and I immediately thought, “Oh geez…those two boys will grow up so fast and forget them” so I had to do something.

I sent my neighbor and email clearly laying out all of the power of Skype, that it was free, that if he and his son each had a webcam that they could see one another and talk often. The biggest reason to do it was to maintain (and continue to build) grandpa and grandma’s relationship with those two little boys.

Not hearing anything for two weeks, I feared that I’d stepped WAY out of bounds as a neighbor. But what happened next surprised even me.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Innovation, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

Huh? Pine Cones Point Toward a Brighter Future?

October 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Pine cones near a pond by Red Rock Lake in Eden Prairie, MN

Snagged this photo with my new iPhone 4S (and its 8 megapixel camera) on my morning walk with my dog. The light was nice at that hour and I stopped to snap a photo of these pine cones…but I came away with A LOT more than just a picture!

After I took the photo I closely examined this spruce and the bunches of pine cones all over it. I was suddenly struck with the thought about how fascinating it is that pine cones like this on another form of pine, the Bishop, which require fire to drop and open up…thus spilling their seeds so a new generation can grow. I immediately thought, “What a metaphor for what we all are going through right now in the U.S. and globally.“

The global economy has “burned” and, like so many of you who stay up on current events, know that many people around the world have seen their lives “scorched” with jobs lost, homes foreclosed upon, benefits reduced, and governments toppled. But ALL THE TRENDS point toward new growth and I fundamentally believe that, as the world continues to accelerate toward an internet-connected future, we will see unprecedented innovation and an increase in value created.

How? Where are all of these trends pointing to a future like that one? Like any other innovation or invention, one cannot look backwards (like many conservatives and MBAs do) or look side-to-side to see what other countries or companies are doing and then do what they’re doing only slightly better (e.g., trying to knock-off iPod with Zune; deliver ho-hum tablets to compete with iPad). The key is to strategically anticipate the future and look ahead to make the best, educated and calculated guesses you can and then go make the future happen.

In our core business (The Trend Curve™) we track trends globally for the home furnishings industry. Since so many other factors influence what happens within the home, we analyze industries like fashion, technology, manufacturing and what is happening with color, since color equals emotion and, surprisingly, echoes the mood of consumers. Color is becoming more vibrant, brighter, and dare I say, “optimistic?”

In some general trend areas as well as all of the foundational home-related industries we track, optimism abounds:

  • Small Business Optimism Picks Up: “The National Federation of Independent Business reported that it’s Small Business Optimism Index gained eight-tenths of a point to rise to 88.9. The gain snapped a six-month string of declines.”
  • The Expectation Economy (note #3 that “Copying competitors is a race to the bottom“) expects a brighter future: One site we follow is TrendWatching and their new business types site called Springwise since the latter, especially, delights us often with some of the new, disruptive and radical businesses being created around the world
  • Manufacturing is quickly embracing trends like 3D printing (great blog by Howard Smith, a U.K. technologist). 3D printing promises to accelerate the time from idea-to-prototype-to-manufacturing; at some point relatively soon to buy, as a consumer, plans online that will enable one to simply print-out an object at home; and much more.
  • Technology gadgets, the internet’s impact, ubiquitous wireless and more are transforming the world. To get up to speed quickly on what’s going on globally, look at former Morgan Stanley analyst, and now venture capitalist, Mary Meeker’s State of the Internet at Web 2.0 Summit or read this article & watch the video of her presentation.
Yep…you can argue every one of these points and counter them with a pessimistic and dark analysis that the sky is falling, the world is tumbling toward oblivion, and the only way to compete with the Chinese is to drive the American workforce toward subsistence living and a 3rd world country wage structure. So if you’re inclined to comment and tell me why everything is horrible and bad, don’t bother since I’m not placing my energy on the negative.
Filed Under: Innovation, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

Wow…A Boy with A LOT of Talent

July 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

What a delight to have a friend send this to me today. Watching this kid, Brendan MacFarlane, made me realize the joy music can bring and how talent can be revealed…especially in a day when videos like this one can go viral so easily. 

Only thought? Once he becomes a man, is slapped around a bit by life, the emotion he’ll be able to add to his singing will make us all have chills up-n-down our spines. I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of this young man going forward (here is his YouTube channel if you want to see and hear more).

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TKF_MAypFk

Filed Under: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

Being a Dad

June 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

My Dad and I in 1959 on the back porch of my Grandpa & Grandma's house

On this Father’s Day I’m incredibly pleased to be able to have my Dad around. He’s 85 years old and still going strong, but after my recent road trip—where I spent considerable time thinking about Lewis & Clark, pioneers and the average life expectancy of men, census-measured in 1860 at a mere 41.8 years old (vs. today’s 78.2)—it’s amazing that he’s still doing so well. Miracles of modern medicine, great nutrition and solid genetics all play a role, but I also think it’s him and his ability to stand fast and just keep going.

He’s been a great Dad. As I said in this post about him last year:

“I remember being that little guy looking up to this giant of a man with hairy arms who was always physically and morally strong, someone who taught me the imperative of marital fidelity, telling the truth and always “doing honest work”, and taking my hat off in the elevator when ladies were present (when I was 9 or 10 years old, we were in an elevator and I had on a baseball cap as it stopped on a floor as we headed down to the lobby. Two older women stepped on the elevator and he lightly elbowed me and looked at my head. I instantly got the message and removed my cap!).

Sitting in the back seat of the car on family vacations while my mom and sisters were sleeping found me often staring at the back of his head as we drove for hours and hours, always feeling a sense of safety and security with him in control that he was probably oblivious to at the time. It was a sense that carried over in to every part of our lives and I knew that everything was always going to be “all right” as long as he was around.“

My daughter, son and I on a family trip to New York

My own two kids are amazing people. They are this way in no small part to my bride of nearly 25 years, Michelle. She’s embued them with a rock solid sense of stability that I hope to have matched. I’ve tried to pass on my Dad’s sense of morals, justice, fidelity and commitment, telling the truth and so on, and both of my kids have far surpassed my hopes and dreams for how they’d turn out. I’ve always intended to leave the world a better place than when I arrived, but I didn’t think my legacy would come in the form of fathering two amazing spirits who are already well on their way to moving the human race forward.

None of us are perfect, but if my kids feel as warmly toward me as I do toward my own father as I near the end of my time here, I’ll feel like I’ve done my Dad-job well.

Filed Under: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

Protect Your Digital Photos Now!

March 7, 2011 By 2 Comments

My Mom as a baby in 1931 with Dad, Grandpa, Grandma, auntie and uncle (her Mom was taking the photo)

This weekend I popped a Kodak PhotoCD in to my computer that I had made in December of 1996—a “gold” version Kodak touted at the time as having a “100 year archival life“—and found that I didn’t have ANY software on my system to open that “.pcd” filetype. Alarmed, I finally found an inexpensive utility called Graphic Converter, an open source tool called ImageMagick and another called pcdtojpeg that would all do the job of converting the photos. Poking around I also discovered that Apple’s iPhoto would, in fact, pull all the images in to my system and convert them.

Phew!

This only goes to prove the point that I made in a post I wrote nearly one year ago entitled, “Will Your Digital Photos & Media Survive?” and why YOU MUST PRESERVE YOUR PHOTOS NOW:

Most of us have hundreds (if not thousands or like me, 20,000+) digital photos sitting on hard drives, at Flickr, or on some old and obsolete media? In my home office closet I have Syquest, Jaz, Zip, Mac OS 7 formatted CD’s, DOS CDs, and other media I can’t read NOW…and it’s been less than 15 years. My grandchildren or great-grandchildren will pick up a Jaz cartridge and say, “What the heck is this!?!” Viewing the photos on that cartridge? Not a chance. But it gets worse since most of the digital media we’re creating today may not survive the media it’s on, let alone if it’s in a proprietary format.

THAT is the problem I ran in to this weekend: Kodak PhotoCD was a proprietary format that, due to a lack of consumer acceptance, was abandoned slowly until essentially vanishing in 2004.

I found the photo above in a “baby book” my grandmother began after the birth of her first child, my Mom. I hadn’t seen many of her maternal grandparents, the Steens, and it was an absolute delight to come across this artifact which was so perfectly preserved and in excellent condition for scanning. The kicker? This nearly 80 year old photograph was one I could see, hold, scan and preserve but a 14 year old PhotoCD photo came close to being unreadable or unusable!

Think about that as you gaze through your photos—most of which probably start with “DSC” or some other naming convention—and realize that unless you do something NOW to preserve the readability of these photos, it’s likely they’ll be lost to your children or future generations.

RESOURCES:

Filed Under: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness, Media Shift

Sherlock Redux

October 31, 2010 By 1 Comment

PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery! has a brand new adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries but brought forward in to the 21st century. What would a die-hard Holmes fan think about a Wifi, mobile phone, GPS and DNA using Sherlock?

Since I was 10 years old, I’ve been fascinated by the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Watching the original Basil Rathbone movie adaptations as a kid were interesting, but Dr. Watson was portrayed as a buffoon which always bothered me. Then my sister/brother-in-law turned on our family to the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes and, for classic fans, Brett is arguably the absolute best embodiment of the character yet. The Granada TV adaptation also was so rich in visuals—and made the viewer feel late 1800′s/early 1900′s London—that I’ve hoped for a BluRay version of this series.

My son playing Holmes in the Sherlock Holmes Museum

Our family loved Holmes mysteries so much we went out of our way during a trip to London to stop at the The Sherlock Holmes pub and head over to the Sherlock Holmes Museum at the (used with permission of the City of Westminster in London) faux address of 221b Baker Street, Holmes fictional home/office location.

Being such classic fans, when PBS launched this new series my wife, daughter, son and I were highly skeptical of any sort of re-do, especially one set in the 21st century. To say we are incredibly delighted with the series is an understatement. Within 10 minutes of watching the first episode we were hooked and thinking this ‘new’ Holmes and Watson are nearly perfect.

Having Holmes leverage all of today’s new technology and techniques could’ve been intrusive and a crutch, but its use surprised us that it didn’t take away from the core mystery. In some ways new tech and techniques take a back seat to the drive Sherlock has in solving the mystery and doesn’t seem to be invasive.

In another way, having Holmes and Watson be in the 21st century solving mysteries does something odd to a longtime Holmes lover: it takes away one troubling feeling that a consulting detective, living in a time when fingerprinting, DNA and other forensic techniques hadn’t yet been invented, was at a distinct disadvantage. This adaptation makes it contemporary and the focus now is on the purity of the characters and the mystery itself.

Haven’t been this enthused about a Masterpiece Mystery! program ever. There are only three episodes in Series I and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that there will be many, many more.

Check it out and, if you miss it, you can watch last week’s episode online or with the iPad PBS application.

NOTE: Ironically, the world’s best collection of Sherlock Holmes items resides here in my home State of Minnesota (see more here):

Filed Under: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness, Television

When We Run Out of Oil…

May 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

If you pay attention to any of the relevant facts about oil production (i.e., supply), oil consumption, and why it’s likely we’re in the Middle East fighting a “war” (e.g., to deploy a strategic military position to ensure a steady flow of oil), then you probably do like I do: waver between complacency and sheer terror over the prospect of running out of oil.

I’ve been following oil geeks at The Oil Drum for some time, and while they clearly give solid and deep analysis of all the current data and conjecture in the oil industry, it’s this “Crash Course 17A-Peak Oil” video by Chris Martenson (from his Crash Course on economics) that I’ve embedded below and is one that will give you a very concise snapshot of where we are in the world with respect to peak oil.

Having learned more than I ever wanted to know about the looming fate of us all in a world soon hungry for energy, I gave up a 34mpg Mercedes diesel in favor of a Toyota Prius — one I routinely get 48mpg in as an average — since I can see strategically that the world’s dependence on a finite resource is accelerating while that resource is dwindling and getting more expensive to deliver. Not a pretty combination. It’s also why I’ll be buying a plug-in hybrid in the next year or two when I find one that fits my strategic and tactical needs for transportation. Gas prices in the next two years will only go one way….up.

Bottom line? If you’re not thinking about your business and personal life in a world with shrinking energy reserves, then you’re not paying attention and need to be….now.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwNgNyiXPLk

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Earth, GreenTech, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness Tagged With:

The Man Who Planted Trees (On Video)

March 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

My third podcast in May of 2005 was a reading of the story The Man Who Planted Trees, based on the short story by Jean Giono, which I’d read some years earlier. It tells the tale of a man hiking the Alps who comes across an old man planting trees on a barren landscape. I won’t spoil it for you, but suffice to say that this story really hit me since at the time, I was really struggling with whether or not I was making any type of positive impact in the world. It helped to shift my thinking about how any one of us can change the world (or some spot within it).

Here’s my original May 2005 post with the full text and me reading it as an mp3…but the video below is much better and the visuals are what BoingBoing lauded today on this post. It seems the Canadian Broadcasting company produced a film version (which I never knew existed) using the sketch animation done by Oscar-winning animator Frédéric Back. It really brings the story to life. Christopher Plummer narrates, (Phillippe Noiret does the honors in the original French version).

As you know, YouTube limits a video to 10 minutes and this 28+ minute video is thus broken into three parts. Part 1 is below and 2 & 3 are after the jump. It is definitely worth watching:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MbosrkVYPU

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness
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