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Hot Coffee Coming Through

March 29th, 2007

Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks, visited the campus of the University of Notre Dame today to accept the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Award for Ethics in Business at the Mendoza College of Business. He is well respected for making Starbucks a world-renown global brand.

I’ve seen him interviewed on 60 Minutes and most recently on PBS when Starbucks was profiled in the Good to Great show and books by Jim Collins (amazing book). Mr. Schultz is very articulate and quite charismatic—not to mention a billionaire. He humbly accepted the recognition distinguishing him as a champion of business ethics and corporate social responsibility. He also confidently and respectfully fielded questions from the audience about Starbucks—many of which were not easy.

It was a surreal moment for me because as I walked with my colleagues to the lecture, we were discussing (even debating) mockup designs for the new nd.edu site (we are working on this big project) and how this effort is going to present Notre Dame’s content, messages, stories, and contributions to the world in amazing new ways. This lecture was a true reminder of how significant of a responsibility this is to us as communicators, not to mention an honor. I realized how important this is to us because we spent the entire walk back across campus discussing innovative ways to capture such an event and how we can use the Internet to continue the dialog.

Also, while we were waiting patiently in the lecture hall, we each had our laptops running. We updated Howard Schultz’s Wikipedia profile to include the award and his lecture at Notre Dame. In the foreground of my field of vision was my colleague adding this content to the wiki, and in the background was Howard Schultz preparing to receive the award.

One last note…lots of people swarmed Mr. Schultz on his way out, so we got out of the way and walked out of the building. As we exited, Mr. Schultz (remember this is Mr. Starbucks) was right behind us in a hurry. He had to fly back to Seattle that night. My colleague, John, stopped, walked over to him, and stuck out his hand. What John did not realize is that the rest of us could see his “entourage” sizing John up in case something was not quite right. Thankfully, Mr. Schultz walked over to John and was kind enough to shake hands. A colleague then asked, “How much did that handshake cost Mr. Schultz?”

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Score One for IPTV

March 5th, 2007

Yesterday, I purchased a full-length feature film from iTunes. This was a limited release movie that I missed when it came out during the past summer. It cost $14 and took about an hour to download. I had no idea that this impulse buy would cause me to rethink the fundamental way that I consume video content. I used to think that my satellite was the only way to get quality movies and TV shows. However, looks like this is no longer the case.

I read a few weeks ago that users will choose convenience over quality when it comes to web technologies. Just look at the success of YouTube. Plus, video technologies are just now starting to get to the point where they actually look good. But, there is a lot of room for improvement. It seems to me that most people are accustomed to their computers only accessing fuzzy, graining, and choppy video. This is about to – or already is – changed.

I downloaded a movie (Goal! The Dream Begins) in no time. And, I have the slowest, cheapest, DSL on the market. I then turned on sharing from my PC (days are numbered on that old clunker – another story), powered up my MacBook’s Airport, plugged the DVI cable to the back of my HDTV, plugged the audio jack to my stereo speakers, and voila! Movie time.

I seriously watched a two hour downloaded movie on my family room television – technically, streaming from the computer in the den to the wi-fi on my laptop, to the TV in real time. John would call this “black magic.” The funny part was that I could barely tell the difference. I mean, if I watch a standard definition signal (non-HDTV), it basically looks like YouTube anyway. SD signals are really, really ugly on my HDTV. So, it is a low hurdle (I think I owe Joe a royalty for that one-liner).

iTunes streaming video over Wi-fi to my HDTV is quite elegant. Front Row looks slick. The sound effects are techie, and the quality is noticeably smooth. I kept waiting for it to choke, or for the signal to die. It never did. The only thing that felt off was the tiny remote. That did not feel like a television remote, but so what. It works.

This was a serious dose of the future. I love this sort of thing because it is the first taste of how things will work in the very near future. Now I am thinking about purchasing a Mac Mini to run permanently attached to my HDTV — get my Joost, iTunes, and YouTube streamlined into the family room. What an escape.

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