I normally am involved in a number of consulting and advisory activities. I thought it might be helpful to provide some information on what I am currently doing or have recently done, updating their status from time to time. You can see that there is a broad scope of interests represented. Please click through the list below to get a sense of my involvements.
My current activities include:
Bill Creamer and I have teamed up to provide a series of seminars to businesses facing the need to make changes in their strategic direction in order to regain or maintain their competitive advantages. Our topics include:
Stay tuned for more information regarding these seminars.
Return to top of Current ActivitiesI've been more actively engaged in more of the various opportunities to be of service at Penn State Great Valley. These inlcude participation in various of the faculty meetings and the new Sustainability curriculum committee. This summer I'm sceduled to teach New Ventures 1 again (which I love to do), and in the Fall I will teach at an offsite cohort at PJM (which runs the Northeast energy interconnect).
Return to top of Current ActivitiesIn February, 2010, I began a long-term project for Kantar Media. The work is for their customer, DIRECTV. I am working with an international group of Kantar Media people, as well as the DIRECTV team. This project is a core part of what DIRECTV calls "ASAP" (Advanced Satellite Advertising Program).
We have been meeting face-to-face as needed, but we do a substantial portion of our meetings via web conferencing. The project includes a wide array of other vendor partners and the scope of the project is substantial. The list of partners in the project include Invidi (their “Advatar” system), Invision (their “DealMaker” system), Wide Orbit (their traffic systems), NCC Media (their Spot Advertising systems), Experian (their profiling data), and all their content management technology partners.
We are all working to get addressable advertising to DIRECTV's national subscriber base. There will be a wide variety of types of advertising, including zoned, aggregation, and ad hoc targeting. My responsibilities involve managing the Kantar Media project. Ours will be the system of record for measuring ad impressions (that is, counting exposures to the ad), and determining when (and if) the advertiser's required threshold of impressions has been met so that they can be billed for the targeted ad. There are challenges involved in obtaining the information sufficient to make these measurements, which is what makes this project interesting. That, and the very large multi-subsystem (and multi-vendor) integration aspect, and that the end result is a game-changing innovation for the customer and the industry.
Kantar Media is a part of Kantar Group, which has more than 20 companies and 27,000 employees working in about 80 countries around the globe. They are, in turn, a part of WPP, the world’s larget media intelligence company and one of the “Big Six” advertising holding companies, with nearly 140,000 employees in 2,000 offices in over 100 countries. Their companies include The Grey Group, Olgivy & Mather, Young & Rubicam, and JWT (formerly J. Walter Thompson Co).
Return to top of Current ActivitiesBeginnning in late 2007, I was involved in performing a systems audit, performing project analysis, and preparing strategy and documents in advance of litigation regarding a very large, multi-year, international software development project. I performed this work under contract through a consulting firm for the plaintiff's attorney (KPM Group LLC). This involved reviewing the weekly project plans, status reports, time sheets, memos and other documents to determine how the project got in trouble, costing millions more and producing far less than the contracts and work orders detailed. Project plans typically ran to well over 1,500 tasks at any given time with upwards of dozens of key resources assigned domestically and off-shore. The scope of the analysis required automating some of the analysis. My goal was to tell a top-down story of what happened and how certain decisions resulted in the issues. The reporting providing a starting point of high-level graphic displays, drilling down to successive levels of detail. The result is a clear picture of the evolution of the circumstances and the actions that created the problems.
Return to top of Current ActivitiesI recently began working with Chris Burkhard, founder of The CBI Group and his COO, Joe Guariano on their Advisory Group. My goal here is to help this great HR professional services company continue in its rapid growth. It has been on the Philadelpia 100 Fastest Growing Companies in successive years, as well as being in the INC 1000 (# 50 professional services company in growth). We are developing and refining strategies, identifying resources and processes, and leveraging the excellent regional customer base, expanding well beyond the Delaware Valley region. See http://www.thecbigroup.com.
Return to top of Current ActivitiesI am working with a group of my former New Ventures students, who are pursuing the idea they developed as their course assignment for one of my classes. This new and exciting idea, which I cannot disclose yet, will help change how we communicate and further "flatten the world". The group, all MBA's and well employed by prestigous firms, have come together to create this new firm, apply for technology patents, find early stage funding to build the prototypes, and bring the product to global market.
The product will be available to everyone, inexpensively, and will be distributed globally from day one... and it will change the world and how we think about it. I cannot wait until I can tell you more about it. Keep posted; more to come.
Return to top of Current ActivitiesThis firm was created by a former New Ventures MBA student in pursuit of a vision regarding finding certian kinds (which I cannot disclose at this time) of media, using a new paradigm to make finding and manage the search and results significantly more meanignful and aesthetically appealing. I am helping him with his business plan and search for funding, and as a business and technology development advisor. This product, when released, will blow the socks off of its segment.
Return to top of Current ActivitiesJawad’s paper was read by Adm Mike Mullen (Jt. Chief of Staff), Gen David Petraeus, and was reportedly presented to Pres Obama prior to his Afghanistan policy speech. Jawad was contacted by a famous Italian film maker (Luca Fachini) who is underway doing a life story about Jawad, and has a staff doing the screenplay now - with Hollywood producer backing. This could become a major Hollywood film.
In late July, Jawad began his journey back to Afghanistan, stopping for a week in Turkey. He is home now in Kabul, and is well. Karen and I wish him well, and he is in our thoughts every day.
Jawad Joya is a former student who graduated from Earlham College with degrees in Sociology and Anthropology, focusing on Economics and Development. He is also an IB (International Baccalureate) graduate of United World College in Trieste, Italy. He has been a Research Fellow with the U.S. Senate, working of the Armed Forces, Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Banking, Housing and Foreign Relations Committees. His area of work included analysis of the long term challenges to the U.S. economy and foreign policy with the emergence of new global powers. He has also worked in business, including as Assistant to VP - Investments, Global Wealth Programs at UBS Financial Services. The list of awards he has received and his other accomplishments is amazing - e.g., to name just one of many: 2005 Peacemaker of the Year by National Peace and Sustice Studies Assoc & the Plowshares National Student Conference.
I needed to outline some of Jawad's accomplishments because you need to know that this is one exceptional human being. He is an Afgani in the U.S. on a visa, and his presence is inspiring. While he is handicapped and wheelchair-bound, his energy, uplifting spirit, and charm are ever-present. We have kept in touch continuously since his attendance in my course.
Jawad has proposed an international conference on Afghanistan, to be supported by the new Obama administration, to explore new initiatives and policies for Afghanistan. He has met with Obama advisor (and 911 Commission Chair, among many positions) Lee Hamilton, as well as a network of D.C. influencers to promote the concept of creating a mini-Marshall plan for Afganistan. This kind of approach, winning through economic development, is superior to winning through military force and far better for both the U.S. economy and the Afghan people. His proposal will be presented to Obama by Mr. Hamilton upon completion of a position paper Jawad is authoring. My meager involvement is as a sounding board to Jawad, and I help him with some editing. I will keep you posted on progress.
Return to top of Current ActivitiesWhile at TargetTV (funded by QVC and Comcast), we developed new measurement technologies, methods, and analysis of television audiences. Without trying to upset the applecart of the current media buy/sell models, we quietly introduced much more precision and accuracy in audience measurement, and broadened the scope of what could be measured. The market is just now, years later, adopting this kind of measurement.
Part of my former team and I are partnering up to create this paradigm shift to yet another venue. I cannot talk about what that is yet, but keep watching to learn more in the future.
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