The Dream Big America episode on February 4, 2014 which featured InStall Media, Knoda and ScribeSense.

Four years ago, when we all realized that we were deepening into one of the worst economic crisis the USA has ever been through (not that we are out of it yet, or that there is a sign that we will be out of it very soon) I was having a conversation with several friends, all like me, optimist people, thinking that there had to be a better way to get America out of the landslide and find a way to convert all that “energy going down” into something we could use to go back upwards… Yes, we are all lovers of vectorial analysis and we think you have to use the forces you can’t control in your favor.  That day the Government decided to “save” GM from going bankrupt and de-facto became (following the rationale, WE the People ) the owner of the largest Auto Manufacturer in the World.  WE then thought this was the signal to create something so unique, using resources inside the country, and get our technological strength

We are very proud of what we accomplished during WWII when many parts of the Auto Industry were converted in a matter of days, weeks, months to become producers of motorized vehicles, guns, cannons, ammunition,  to be used by our Armed Forces joining into the fight against the Germans.

So my thought was:  What if we could start a very large project, that involved local workers (not able to “outsource it”),  use of US Technology ( think of Silicon Valley, from Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, MIT, CalTech, Boulder Tech Start ups…), our just acquired Auto Manufacturers (GM and Chrysler), extensive experience in how to create large scale transportation systems ( Boeing, Aerospace industry), Renewable Energy that takes us out of OIL dependency and at the same time put ecology in a first plane of our agenda (all forms of Clean Energy using Wind Farms, Sun Panels, etc.) ?

Could we take all this and at the same time create the future mass transportation ?

Let’s define what am I talking about.  Wikipedia defines High-speed rail as a type of passenger rail transport that operates significantly faster than traditional rail traffic. As of 2012 the maximum commercial speed was about 300 km/h (185 mph) for the majority of installed systems (China, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, UK), 310 km/h (195 mph) in Spain and 320 km/h (200 mph) in France. The Shanghai Maglev Train reaches 431 km/h (268 mph).

And all these came back to me as I listen to the news that the world’s longest line opened in China on 25 December 2012. It runs 2,298 kilometers (1,428 miles) from the country’s capital in the north to Guangzhou.  It required less than a year in planning and 3 years to build. It also come clear that they thought that this investment will bring much needed “economic stimulus” outside the largest cities where Public Infrastructure can be deployed faster and then creates migration of large numbers of population to those already overcrowded cities.

Let’s see how I arrived to this.

1./ Build two lines simultaneously, one from Boston, MA to Los Angeles, CA and another from Seattle, WA to Jacksonville, FL.  Create 120 different points where the construction starts simultaneously.

2./ The estimated cost per mile considering construction and all the necessary technology that goes into it es $2.5Million dollars per mile, so the total cost for the construction for 9 thousand miles, a great way to spend $22.5B  instead of just giving tax rebates, help financial institutions, save insurance companies, etc.

3./ This will create direct jobs, just in construction at a very local level, for 190,000 people for 2 full years with average annual salary of $50-$60k (well above National average and double the local average in many of the 120 starting points for construction.

4./ It will create  at least 3 extra jobs per direct position created, that means at least another 600,000 jobs related just to the construction.

5./ It will create also a several billion dollar splash into the software, electromechanical controls, computer and general IT industry.  Plus it will create a totally new industry around transportation, communications, just to keep the trains running and all the security and controls that will be needed. Estimate this will create at least 10 to 15k very well paid jobs, coders, programmers, systems engineers, designers, etc.

6./ Of course, a BIG push was to happen to the Auto makers, one of them, will convert all or most of their facilities into manufacturing the cars, luxury cars, economy cars, Dinner cars, etc. that will be needed to expand the service.  Parts and of course with time new designed vehicles, maybe even freight attachments, etc.  This by itself would have saved more than 200k jobs in the Auto industry and created another similar number in the secondary industries, ie textiles, special parts, plastic injection moulding, etc.

7./ Engines design.  The best part of this is that companies like GE, Boeing, could design and create the perfect engine for exceeding the current performance of French, Chinese, Japanese or Russian fast train engines.  This could create a full new industry, with very well paid jobs, and of course the secondary industries.  Estimated more than 20k jobs, all at high level pay.

8./ Energy supply.  This is where a fundamental change will be made with this plan.  The Fast trains have a need for a lot of energy, electricity at high level.  By doing this “Fast Train” prpject, we will give a push into creating the largest grid of “clean energy projects” with their first permanent client.  Then the economic impulse to each location will bring more revenue to those projects.

9./ RealEstate.  Not all land in this plan is owned by Government (local, State or Federal) so it will mean that there will have to buy land in different points, that money will go into those local economies in most cases and it will also create opportunities for local developers to bring more people to won second homes, vacation homes, since it will be easy to get far away just for the weekend. People with resources that live in small apartments in big cities, suddenly could have a way to escape for the weekend (buy monthly passes? when no business people is riding the train it could be a way to keep it going at full capacity).

If we can bring technology even more advanced to the actual fast speed train systems in the world, better design, and we get all the government levels agreeing to make this happen, we could build new tracks for fast trains between Boston and Los Angeles (Route 1) ; between Seattle and Miami.  We could promote the use of renewable energy along the tracks and we could have used General Motors to transform themselves into a large manufacturer of “electric transportation systems” from the engines, to passenger cars. We also have Boeing and other very smart companies designing aerospace, less frictional models for planes, cars, etc.     We have intelligence, resources, at that moment in time, the President had the ability to bring economic development to a large part of the country by starting a totally new way of transportation for Americans : Fast Speed Trains.  And I meant real fast : The current fastest Train in the US, operated by Amtrak goes at an astonishing speed of 95 MPH for about 25 minutes between Boston and New York City, but the total trip takes 4 hours to do the 220 miles between those two cities, distance that in many other countries in the world already takes less than 45 mins to an hour by Fast Speed train.  Plus today’s cost of the Acela Train between NY and Boston or NY and Washington DC is already very high, so keeping that price or even a price near a plane ticket will make this a profitable project in the near future.

As you can see, this was just a thought back then, four years ago. Not all numbers are calculated with a much needed deeper research, but wouldnt it be great to see our Politicians thinking this way ?  We could build this with a “Made in America” focus.

Then I read that China got it figured out.  We are again left behind.  We need to get out of the box, executing the same old policies, expecting different results every time is just a sign of how insane are our Policies (and our politicians).

(from the South China Morning Post http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1113165/high-speed-train-route-beijing-guangzhou-ease-economic-slowdown )

I have been reading so much about all the Mayan and of course so many other cultures that predicted the end of the world or at least a major change in the way we live by the Winter (for Northern hemisphere inhabitants – Summer for Southern hemisphere people) Solstice this year.

The best probably i have seen is this one that my daughter Cecilia posted on her FB  that says  ”I have no fear that the world will end in 2012 … I have panic that remains the same” (in spanish “No tengo miedo que se acabe el mundo en el 2012, tengo pånico de que siga igual”)

What happen when we became one of those countries that we “Free” from their Police states oppressor system ? When a body of our Society believes that they are above the LAW we are in trouble as a whole society, when Citizens are treated in a way that is against what we fought and keep fighting for around the world, something is really wrong. Cases that depict acts of armed kidnapping, assault, battery, menacing and official misconduct by our own POLICE departments we just became another rogue state.

Reading all what happen in NYC during the Occupy Wall Street One year PACIFIC demonstration, it amazed me the number of women that were brutally beaten by the honorable police of that city.  I was going through the TV channels seeing how people demonstrated in the so called 3rd. world countries, the middle East, and how women and young men were there, even throwing stones to the Police, and couldn’t see a SINGLE one where several policemen took a single woman to the floor and beat her like a criminal, just for not agreeing with bank’s greed and exercising the right that we have in this country to speak and show our point of view.  It seems the NYPD thinks otherwise, they even went after the so called “legal observers”… and then we complaint why in other places of the world, a “pacific demonstration is brought down by Police” … Even the US Media, will see this perfectly ok, except if it happens in another country, then they will cry that they are barbarians and we should bring their governments downs for NOT allowing free speech and freedom to demonstrate publicly.

Something that is tough for me to understand.  It seems they have a bipolar vision of reality.

Then this morning I am watching and then reading about the Police in Aurora, CO stopping cars in the middle of the street, then at gun point bring all passengers out of their vehicles, women, kids, teenagers, older citizens, under the assumption that one of them is a criminal.  Probable cause they are arguing, so it always poses the question if they were just “fishing” or they had a description of the bank robber, then why not only take men that had a similarity to the description. Or in this case they have no description of the bank robber ? This means they could have stop anybody ? Just like in any of those countries that we so much criticize becasue they have no freedom and there are NO laws to protect citizens?  When I was much younger we used to say that in the US the rule was that it was better to leave a criminal in the loose than to EVER bring an innocent into the Police ordeal… it seems now that we are all under a “police state” just like the one we all fight so much when the Soviet Union was a super power.  Where are our values ?

When the Chief of Police of Aurora, CO., say that removing 40 people from their cars at gunpoint, handcuffing and detaining them it is not extreme. Chief Police of Aurora, Oates went on to state to a local newspaper, that although he was sorry for detaining innocent people, he felt the ends justified the means… I wonder if that is true, then anything is now valid under the assumption that we are protecting society.  But isn’t this same Chief of Police the one that couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t stop a massacre at a movie theater ? Where was he at that time? why he was not “vigilant” of the safety of Aurora’s citizens ? Maybe because there was no “money” involved?  Police seem to be eager to defend anything related to money : Bank money in exchange for 2 hours of having a teenager handcuffed? If this teenager had been my son, I dont know where all that would have ended.  Just think that because of the Colorado laws, some of those citizens actually have the right to “bear arms”, so this could have ended in a battle between Police endangering my family and me defending it….

Dave Perry, Editor at the Aurora Sentinel, writes :  ”We cannot, under any circumstances, allow the police or military to round people up, detain and handcuff them, unless cops have a valid and compelling reason to suspect they’ve committed a crime. This kind of policing is what the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent”. I recommend reading his article.

peace officers don’t conduct themselves this way; gang members do.

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin, (1818)

@beck “… isn’t it up to us the citizens to temper the actions of our city officials.  As a community our apathy is the real crime here.

Somehow we have come to believe that monetary damages from lawsuits
is the way to communicate our disapproval.  This approach only seems to
sting their ego’s since they seem to have unlimited supplies of our
money.
“

It is funny how nobody talks anymore about “engagement” of the audience, how that happens (through content) and then association of a brand with the content creates a “transfer of the good association or engagement” to the brand or product itself. In discussions with a very smart friend of mine, canadian, head of the largest TV shopping channel over there, I found several points of discussion.

The Retail Council of Canada, is conducting their annual symposium and going through all the key note conferences, the only I could find that is relevant was this one:

Why Local Matters
Peter Kvarnstrom, Vice President, Glacier Media Group
The presenter will review just how community newspaper publishers engage their readers by delivering highly relevant, compelling and unduplicated content. The resulting high level of reader engagement is leveraged on behalf of all advertisers by providing this highly conducive environment to deliver their message within.

That is the essence of “engagement”.

Last, I found it funny that no marketeers talk these days about the old concept of GRP’s or TGRP’s. Now that media convergence is a reality, shouldnt we go back to the concept that the media doesnt matter, it is how you “get” to a person with your brand and how many times, disregard of the what was the specific media?

Marketeers need to go back to the basics.

WE step away from the measurement and the concept that ONE person needs to hear a message through different channels, same message, different iterations according to each media, and for each product or service the number of times is what becomes very, very important. For marketing to convince me to modify my consumption pattern needs to be able to deliver me the same message for a number of times, during a limited period of time.

While we were discussing if newspapers should get on the WEB or not, while we were fighting over how Craiglist took over the crown jewles of newspapers; a new phenomenon developed and is about take a larger piece of the newspapers : the separations between News and Information.

The Register Citizen (registercitizen.com), Serving Torrington, CT

Business
Arturo Duran to lead digital efforts at Journal Register Company

Monday, August 9, 2010

YARDLEY, Pa. – Arturo Duran has been named executive vice president, digital, for the Journal Register Company, parent company of The Register Citizen, Litchfield County Times, New Haven Register, Middletown Press and Connecticut Magazine and a number of weekly newspapers in Connecticut.

Duran will report directly to CEO John Paton, who took the reins at Journal Register in early 2010 and has rapidly transformed it from a traditional print-focused newspaper company to a local media company that puts “digital first” in its approach to news and advertising.

Duran, until recently the CEO of Spanish-language publisher impreMedia Digital, will be responsible for coordinating the company’s digital strategy and business development initiatives as they relate to its digital efforts.

Duran is considered a leading executive in the digital world and has a strong track record of success. He was, until recently, the chief executive officer of impreMedia Digital a company he grew from the ground up establishing innovative, value-creating partnerships with companies like MySpace, AOL, PBS and MTV.

He is a former executive of CanWest, AOL, Polaroid and Unisys, where he served in different capacities and was responsible for operations in the U.S., Canada, China, Europe and Latin America.

Journal Register Company is a leader in local news and information serving 992 communities in 10 states. The Company’s 324 multi-platform products reach an audience of nearly 14 million people each month. For more information visit the company website at www.JournalRegister.com.

URL: http://www.registercitizen.com/articles/2010/08/09/business/doc4c5fee459b2ce434772297.prt

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