Jun
30
Our changing view of connectivity
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A quarter century ago, in 1983, when I was 30 years old, I was “senior news supervisor” at the Mutual Broadcasting System. It meant managing editor except for (a) a lower salary, and (b) lots of second-guessing by higher layers of management. But it was a challenging and exciting job, organizing coverage of great world events on a shoestring budget.
I had to carry a Metrocall pager. All the time.
People who carried pagers in those days referred to them as electronic leashes. And for every 50 people who carried pages there was one whose company assigned him a massive Motorola mobile phone. The nickname for this device was “The Brick.” I’ve seen bowling trophies that are smaller.
But the key point is that this level of connectivity was seen as a nuisance. In 1984 I was laid off from Mutual and went to UPI as one of the morning newscasters, and one of the things I liked best about getting out of management was giving up the pager.
Until recently there were two kinds of people on the subject of connectivity. Group A consisted of people my age who don’t WANT to be reachable everywhere at any time. And Group B consisted of younger adults who grew up with personal cell phones and were used to being in touch with others all the time, for social rather than work-related reasons.
Despite being of the electronic leash generation, I understand the latter view. When I was in high school, it felt distinctly unpleasant to be out of touch with my friends, wondering if others were having fun while I was home watching “The Man From UNCLE.” The more I knew about what was going on in my world, the more content I was.
That feeling came back to me seven years ago when I was at Kahala Mall and saw a group of six teenaged girls. Four of them were talking on cell phones to friends in other places and none of them were talking to each other. Clearly this was a generation that not only did not resent being in touch, but obsessively kept in touch.
As for Group A, we’ve been changing our view of these things. Once we prided ourselves on being out of touch on vacations. But we work harder every year, and part of work, part of almost everyone’s work, is email. We like to find an Internet cafe on vacation if only to delete all the spam. It’s like keeping your desk clean while you’re away. It’s a worthwhile investment of time to enjoy the rest of your vacation, knowing that when you come back you can hit the ground running without much stress.
All this comes to mind as cell phone networks become wireless broadband networks that offer computer connectivity as well as telephone service. Bill Jarvis of Mobi PCS is convinced that we’re just a few years from everyone having his own personal wireless connectivity account and I think he’s right. For different reasons, everyone feels the need to stay in touch.
Jun
27
American Savings Bank has overplayed its hand a little in announcing it will take a $36 million charge against earnings after selling $1.1 billion in investments.
The reality isn’t too bad — it only seems bad after a press release that pretended this was some fluffy good news story.
The announcement of a “performance improvement initiative” and a “balance sheet repositioning,” was filled with weasel words attributed to ASB’s comparatively new CEO Tim Schools. In real life I have heard him speak clearly and amiably, so I suspect a public relations professional wrote the release – even the best of this tribe sometimes find themselves estranged from plain English. If he wrote the quotes himself, he’ll doubtless have the good grace to be properly chastened.
There is no point in glossing over troubles in the press releases of publicly traded companies because they have to write the same content in a completely different tone for the Securities & Exchange Commission.
The SEC insists upon companies giving proper notice of bad news, and not only actual bad news but potential bad news, indeed even potential bad news that is only a remote possibility. Your lawyers always want you to load SEC filings with every conceivable thing that could go wrong, because if that one-chance-in-a-thousand thing happens and you didn’t mention it, the SEC will want to know why. So SEC filings must contain the truth somewhere. And SEC filings are available for online scrutiny by the same people who see the original release.
So you look in the SEC filing for any key phrase that doesn’t appear in the press release that tells you what ASB didn’t want you to notice. And there it is. The press release referred to the sale of “certain securities.” The SEC release refers to the sale of “mortgage-related securities.”
It specifies that $12 million of the charge against earnings stems from “losses on the sales of mortgage-related securities.”
I began by saying it isn’t that big a deal, but seems like it because of the namby-pamby release. To view this in a more realistic context, and feel better about it, don’t compare the $12 million in mortgage-investment losses to the news release. Compare it to the writedowns by mainland investment houses, which have routinely run into billions of dollars.
That, though it wasn’t mentioned in the release at all, is the actual good side to the story.
Jun
27
Classical comes to Kamuela
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The Hawaii Performing Arts Festival happens on the Big Island next month. Classical concerts, lectures and workshops will be held mostly at Hawaii Prepatory Academy in Waimea-Kamuela, but also in other venues.
Iggy Jang, concertmaster with the Honolulu Symphony, pianist Helen Goode, and soprano Jennifer MacGregor will do works by Poulenc, Bartok and Satie in the first concert, July 10. That’s just the first evening of weeks of classical music including some chamber works rarely heard on Oahu.
Here’s a link to the full schedule of other concerts, including the one I will emcee July 18 and a production of the early Gilbert & Sullivan opera “Trial By Jury”:
http://www.hawaiiperformingartsfestival.org/EventsConcerts.aspx
The festival may expand to other islands in the future. For now, if you want to go, you have to spend a day or two on the Big Island. That’s okay — they’ll leave the light on for you.
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