June 2012

Developers to Apple: Promote Our Apps!

Developers are furiously dissecting the annual dose of software updates Apple unleashed this week, with many optimistic the new offerings will cement the company's status as trendsetter in the mobile market. But some programmers want more. The 5,000 or so gathered for Apple's developer conference in San Francisco are voicing what they see as an array of pressing issues that govern their apps, and hence their businesses. One common concern: what developers say is a dearth of ways to promote their app in the app store, which they view as vital to their survival.

Developers are key to winning the tech wars

Many smartphone manufacturers draw from the same stylebook: Make it sleek. Make it black. But what may determine the winner of the smartphone wars is the apps.

Creators of these software programs are seeing a lot of love from Apple, Google and Microsoft as the companies race for supremacy in the mobile market. For their success, the tech giants need these developers, even the small ones, to make sure their app stores keep up with rivals and offer something special. Apple touted how well it has served attendees of its Worldwide Developers Conference, showing off a screen shot of a $5 billion check — what it’s paid developers in the past year. At Microsoft’s TechEd Conference, also this week, the company courted developers to write programs for the app marketplace built into its upcoming Windows 8 system. Google is expected to make similar pronouncements at its developers conference, Google I/O, at the end of the month.

Political groups target key voting demographic on Pinterest

Politics has found Pinterest.

A boom in users on the social media site — and the fact that more than two-thirds are women — is attracting political messages to the site best known for recipes, crafts and I-want-that images. In political persuasion, as in marketing, "it's always the next big hot thing," says Zac Moffatt, digital director for Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. "And it's kind of hot right now." Beth Becker, a digital media consultant, says there was little or no political content on Pinterest when she started using the site in January. Now, advocacy groups such as ThinkProgress, a website run by the liberal Center for American Progress; the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank; the AFL-CIO; the Democratic National Committee; and a gaggle of Republican members of Congress are on the site.

NAB Asks OMB To Reject FCC Estimate of Online Political File Paperwork Burdens

The National Association of Broadcasters has asked the Office of Management and Budget to reject the information-collection requirements of the Federal Communications Commission's new online public file order, particularly the requirement that stations provide the commission with their political files, including spot prices, so they can be posted on an FCC web site for everyone to see.

NAB wants OMB to make the FCC test its paperwork burden theories before applying them to broadcasters. OMB's 30-day comment period on its Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) review of the new FCC rules began June 11, and NAB wasted no time taking aim at them. Among the PRA requirements is to "evaluate the accuracy of [an] agency's estimate of the burden of the proposed collection of information" and insure that it is not unnecessarily burdensome or duplicative. NAB says the FCC was way off in its estimate and that the burden is duplicative. In its comments, NAB points out that OMB has said that an information-collection requirement will be rejected "unless it is clearly justified and '[t]he burden on the public [is] completely accounted for and minimized to the extent practicable...'"

Joint Center Collaborates with Technology Council on Expanding Broadband Initiatives

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is the new convener of the National Technology Adoption Advisory Council (NTAAC), the bipartisan leadership forum of more than 120 municipal and state elected officials, and that the two organizations will synchronize their efforts to expand access to technology and support sustainable broadband initiatives across the nation.

Since it was founded in 2011, NTAAC’s mission has been to provide policy and legislative guidance, and to empower local and state government leaders in their effort to leverage broadband to improve the lives of their constituents – particularly in providing greater access to the power of the Internet to drive workforce development, education improvement, economic growth, and healthcare accessibility. Led by Co-Chairs Councilman Johnathan F. Austin of Birmingham, AL, and Michigan State Representative Maureen L. Stapleton of Detroit, NTAAC was launched in April 2011 as an extension of One Economy Corporation’s comprehensive campaign for advancing community based broadband adoption and deployment. NTAAC’s founder at One Economy, BMaynard Scarborough, will continue to provide administrative direction as the Executive Director of Government Affairs & National Engagement at The Joint Center.

Brazil mobile groups pay $1.3 billion in auction

Brazil’s major mobile phone carriers have paid a total of R$2.6bn ($1.3 billion) for spectrum for high-speed fourth-generation networks as Latin America’s biggest economy prepares for major sporting events in the next four years.

Aside from the major cellular operators -- which include Vivo, a unit of Spain’s Telefónica; Claro, controlled by Mexico’s America Movil; Tim, controlled by Telecom Italia; and Oi, part-owned by Portugal Telecom, investor George Soros’ Sunrise Telecomunicações -- also bought spectrum. With the upcoming soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics two years later, Brazil next week will get a taste of the kind of pressure its creaking infrastructure will face, as Rio de Janeiro hosts 50,000 visitors for the Rio+20 international environmental summit, which promises to overwhelm its hotel infrastructure and create traffic chaos in parts of the city. Brazil’s telecommunications market is one of the world’s fastest growing as its growing middle class takes to the mobile Internet.

On Sweden’s Democratic Twitter Account, Some Odd Questions About Jews

A Swedish experiment in social media democracy struck a sour note after the latest average citizen allowed to post a weeks’ worth of thoughts to a national Twitter account made comments about Jews that many found objectionable.

The brainchild of the Swedish Institute and country’s government tourist agency, the experiment, called Curators of Sweden, has been running on the @Sweden Twitter account since December, with a different social media-literate Swede posting anything he or she wants without oversight or censorship each week. Sonja Abrahamsson, an outspoken 27-year-old writer who described herself as being from a small town in northern Sweden where “all people there are relatives and they all own tractors,” took the reins of the account this week and almost immediately tested the boundaries of that laissez-faire approach with a string of posts asking bizarre questions about Jews.

Always Thinking about Tomorrow

What’s Next?

Public interest philanthropist Charles Benton, Chairman of the Benton Foundation’s Board of Directors, summed up ideas and insights gleaned from the conference. He emphasized that conversations in hallways and away from the panelists were as enlightening as the panels themselves.

“This is a wholly new field for the Foundation and it is both urgent and inspiring,” Benton said. “What is very clear today is that our efforts to develop new digitally capable broadband subscribers will only be successful with partners in business, non-profits, the government, and the seniors themselves.”

Benton announced that his foundation will convene a working group including practitioners, nonprofits and other interested parties that will stay in regular contact, sharing best practices and avoiding duplication of effort. “Given one of the things we learned here today was that the seniors who are completing the training are valuable partners to all of us in this endeavor,” Benton said, “Our working group will include several of the ‘graduates’ from the current partnerships to enhance our work going forward.”

“I am inspired by ways around challenges I heard from this group of talented people,” Benton said. “What a good idea to incorporate a pictorial layout in the teaching materials to help address cultural, language, or literacy matters. November will bring a new political context for our work in 2013 and beyond. Whatever that new context is, we must be nimble and creative to adapt to the circumstances. As it is with technology, conditions change and survivors will adapt.”

“Market forces alone will not get us to universal broadband adoption,” Benton said. “We heard some very compelling demographics from Tony [Wilhelm] on our changing age populations.” For example, “by 2015 more people will be over 60 than under 15.”

Think strategically about the approach to government funding, Benton advised the conference attendees. Several agencies purportedly award grant money to connect low-income minorities to broadband, but participants said several previous channels of funding had dried up, or were approved but not funded.

“Maybe there will be federal funding opportunities for digital inclusion through the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act, or Americans with Disabilities Act – or even in the health care law in the digital records component,” Benton said. “In fact, despite the evolving nature of how health care ends up, the health care law may be the most likely to be useful to us.”

“We need to find new ways to convince both the public and private investors in these partnerships that there is such a significant return on their investments that they should be sustained, if not increased. What is needed generally is a lifelong learning framework for independent living.”

One of the ways partners might be able to find more broadband subscribers for service providers is to encourage providers to offer a pre-paid plan or a month-to-month subscribership, Benton said. “If reticence over entering into a two-year contract is a barrier for our seniors becoming subscribers, we may be able to help mitigate that with subscriberships that are designed for them,” he said.

“Then there is the issue of traditional as well as digital literacy, and the opportunity of recruiting retired teachers to be instructors in teaching low-income seniors is a good idea, and worth pursuing,” Benton said.

He also expressed concern for the future of the NTIA’s new digital literacy portal. “This is a tremendous resource, and we must be thinking about what happens when and if its funding goes away. In the meantime, the NTIA’s idea of building a new website for a “Seniors Community of Practice” is excellent and that should be a part of our working group’s continuing conversation.”

“We’ll also want to work with the Institute for Museum and Library Services on their Digital Inclusion Initiative. How to get Public Libraries mobilized on this, especially with the audience of seniors and making their communication needs a front and center priority.”

“We will be watching with great interest as researchers try to find a way to measure the return on investment these extraordinary partnerships are providing,” Benton said. “All of us in this community must think more creatively about broadband access and partnerships with providers,” he said. “We will be closely watching and weighing in frequently with the FCC on their deliberations about reordering the Lifeline program [for low income phone service] to include broadband delivery.”

“We should encourage and support policy makers at every level to regularly convene stakeholders and Interagency working groups,” Benton said. “The more we can all navigate the complex waters of universal broadband adoption, the better we will have served our country and our cause.”

Policy goals, Benton stressed, should focus more on access and training than the technological components, which will always evolve and change.

Challenges, Evolution, Inspiration

Policy Implications and Community Perspectives

PANEL:

Moderator: Cecilia Garcia, Benton Foundation

Tony Sarmiento, Senior Service America

Dr. Stephen Reder, Portland State University

Daniel Wilson, National Caucus and Center on Black Aged

Dr. Henry Pacheco, National Hispanic Council on Aging

Jim Tobias, Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology and Inclusive Technologies

Leslie M. Smith, SeniorNet

The first and greatest challenge facing getting seniors online is the daunting task of organization that precedes it in any low-income community in the United States. Portland State University Researcher Dr. Stephen Reder offered that our national approach to the gigantic challenge of connecting vulnerable populations to broadband needs to shift away from a consumer perspective to a community perspective.

“We have to be thinking now about a framework – either at the national level, or one centered on the community level – of lifelong learning," said Reder. “Other nations are serious about this… not just for seniors today but also for other adults who will later face new technology as they become seniors.”

“We know the technology and digital literacy playing field will change, and change again,” Reder said. “As a society, we need a serious lifelong learning framework to guide our persistent efforts to navigate the digital economy. We need that now, but nobody is talking about such a framework.”

IBM corporate executive, Leslie M. Smith, who also chairs the Board at SeniorNet said the big challenge in terms of policy is a lack of understanding among seniors (and many Americans in every demographic) of how policies are made in the first place.

“The terms and vernacular used to describe the various policies, and strategic direction, are beyond the grasp for many organizations that support and work with our seniors,” said Smith. “We’ve talked about how seniors could support the various policies. This will not happen until seniors and organizations know what those policies mean.”

Smith suggested including seniors in policy making, “Sharing the positive and adverse impact would be immensely beneficial.” Every day, he said, thousands of senior volunteers at SeniorNet reach out to seniors in gated communities, rural and urban communities, and on Indian Reservations, “…with the sole intent of sharing and educating. This practice of seniors communicating with seniors should be more widely used.”

Jim Tobias is with the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology, Raising the Floor, and Inclusive Technologies, which all support technology accessibility and usability for people with disabilities. “We need to take the issue of disability out of the shadows,” Tobias said. “About half of all seniors have some form of disability that may jeopardize their use of technology, whether it’s related to vision, hearing, dexterity, or cognition. Designers and developers need to hear that.”

“The huge and diverse technology market is creating the raw materials for meeting all the needs and preferences, but that’s not reaching many of these potential users. The policy world needs to improve delivery on the promises – backed up by laws and regulations – of inclusive broadband,” Tobias said.

“Hardware and software providers have delivered some amazing results to expand technology’s range … while lowering prices,” Tobias said. “The same is not true of network service providers. Sustainable broadband adoption programs must continue to focus on keeping those monthly bills low.”

Policy director for the National Caucus and Center on Black Aged, Daniel Wilson, said, “Our greatest challenges boil down to economics, that’s going to be true across the country. Many low-income seniors just can’t afford the computer and the hook-up has to be a public private partnership.” While maintaining that subscriptions should not be free, Wilson said that for low-income seniors, “The cost of the subscription must be almost free to get over this hump.”

Tony Sarmiento, Executive Director of Senior Service America, noted that the main challenge was launching and sustaining a large scale effort to connect low-income older adults, not more pilot and demonstration projects. To win support for the large government investment required, advocates will need to argue and demonstrate that such an investment will strengthen the national economy, improve public health, and enhance civic participation. Market forces alone will not connect all seniors.

“Making a computer, and broadband connection, part of every home is in the national interest – since that is now a part of how the government distributes services and information,” said Leslie M. Smith, agreeing with Sarmiento’s contention that broadband access is a public utility. “Today every computer is a deliverer of government services,” Smith said.

Increasingly, pursuing education as well as applying for jobs can be done only online, Sarmiento said. “When the GED Test is given only online starting 2014, what will happen to the nine million Baby Boomers who dropped out of high school, never went back, and are not likely to be online?”

What is the business model for nonprofits to bring big private partners into partnerships like the non profits represented at the conference? “We brought AT&T to our partnership,” said Daniel Wilson. “Many seniors didn’t have cell phones, and then bought phone plans after their training, which added to the bottom line of the carriers. Also, AT&T wound up developing a senior plan for phone use.”

Dr. Henry Pacheco, with the National Hispanic Council on Aging, said, “Today’s technology is a living ecosystem – with an evolution of products and services. Human capital is using it for self improvement, business, commerce and other online activities.”

Pacheco expressed confidence in the track record of baby boomers to get policy to adapt in the most useful way. “I have great faith in baby boomers to make changes in the way broadband and digital services are delivered.”

Sarmiento emphasized that universal digital literacy and broadband access are critical to our democracy. “If you are not online, you are invisible,” said Sarmiento. “As more local as well as world news becomes available only online, how can you be an informed voter as well as consumer? Accessing the Internet at home has the potential to help overcome isolation and build social capital across communities, cultures, and the globe.

In terms of hands-on training and logistics of low-income seniors, one of the pleasant surprises in the current partnerships is that the senior trainees quickly become remarkably effective coaches – and cheerleaders – for new trainees.

The social and financial return on the government investment, however that can be determined, hopefully will persuade and inspire ALL citizens to support efforts to ensure that everybody can enjoy the benefits of being connected in this new digital environment.

The Only Constant is Change

Federal, State and Local Policy Implications

PANEL:

Moderator: Amina Fazlullah, Benton Foundation

Joanne Hovis, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors

Mary Alice Ball, Institute of Museum and Library

Christopher Baker, AARP Policy Institute

David Keyes, City of Seattle

John Horrigan, TechNet

Policy analyst and researcher John Horrigan is the Vice President of TechNet, a network of CEOs and senior executives promoting technological innovation. “We know that the cost of technology is one of the main reasons people don’t adopt digital habits,” said Horrigan. “In a survey for the national broadband plan, there were many seniors who also said it was just not relevant to their lives, in addition to the lack of digital literacy.”

“The most fundamental question going forward is sustaining the progress we have made,” Horrigan said. To that end, Horrigan and other panelists endorsed moves by the FCC to partially change the “Lifeline” program (providing low-income phone service) to include broadband coverage for low-income consumers.

“It is important to remember not to blame the victim,” said David Keyes, the Community Technology Program Manager for the City of Seattle, Oregon, who added he frequently hears, “don’t they understand the power of Internet?” in conversations about getting low-income seniors online with access to broadband. “Convincing carriers to invest in helping low-income seniors use their services is inherently in their own self interest,” Keyes said. “This effort will only grow their subscriber base and their business. This helps everybody’s bottom line.”

Christopher Baker, with the AARP Policy Institute, encouraged participants to remember the basic mission of the 2009 National Broadband Plan, upon which all the matters of broadband access are based. Baker said he still carries a dog-eared copy of the plan around with him.

“Remember that the essence of the National Broadband Plan is to promote policies for our common economic security, health care, and quality of life,” Baker said. “We need to keep our focus on addressing the speed of broadband. Today, cities are evaluating qualities of life and their business environment, based on broadband access.”

“What we see with low-income seniors in our work is the issue of affordability of broadband. Seniors worry they have to give up their medicines to afford broadband subscriptions,” Baker said. “Understanding the cost of broadband is part of that.” Usability, cost, and other matters relating to digital literacy have to apply to the lives of America’s seniors, Baker said.

A former Peace Corps volunteer, Mary Alice Ball, now with the Institute of Museum and Library Services encouraged the conference to dig deeper into finding and understanding the return on investment that every program must consistently demonstrate. “There are different types of returns on investment,” Ball said, urging creativity on the approach to developing an assessment of an evolving technology, social mores and the need to be responsible stewards of federal and private money. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is, Ball said, “Focusing on communities, where we think the greatest impact is. In any large endeavor, first you convene stakeholders, then map assets, make a plan, follow it, revise it, and evaluate it.”

Advocates have done that, Ball said; government has done that, so there is a widening body of knowledge about what works. That work will continue, evolve, and maybe even emerge in a different way.

A broadband and technology specialist, Joanne Hovis is the president of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, the president of CTC Technology and Energy (an engineering and business consulting firm), and a member of the Benton Foundation’s Board of Directors.

“We are still in the first generation of figuring all this out,” said Hovis. “For the demographic we seek to reach, relevance and cost are directly related to each other. Given the essential nature of broadband to all manner of national commerce, there has to be some government intervention to ensure cost is mitigated as a factor. As we craft online programs, dealing with privacy and security is absolutely essential. We know that 95% of what passes over the Internet is toxic waste, something that won’t be in the experience of new senior users.”

Benton

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