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Friday, Aug 04, 2000
A Letter to a Colleague
August 4, 2000
John,
Thanks for passing along my name. One of the things I've been sorting out is where I want to go next. One of the things which interests me is the evolution of technology.
Here's an example of one evolution I've thought about. I bought a new digital camera for my travels. It's a digital still camera from a traditional camera company, Nikon, but it has some video capabilities. It can do 40 seconds of CGA resolution video, or a few high resolution frames at a slower rate. This got me thinking about HDTV. This consumer camera has resolution 4x of HDTV, and has real-time video capabilities, although not at the same time. The major limitation today is storage. However, over the next few years the convergence of still camera and video camera will continue, image compression will get faster and smaller, and solid state storage will advance. In a few years consumers will have capabilities outstripping NTSC by a long shot. I believe that capability in consumers' hands will provide the consumer pull lacking from HDTV today. That pull will have many repercussions in many markets.
This is an example of some of the thinking I've been doing over the past few weeks. In addition to my own thinking, I've been doing a bit of reading to understand where others see technology going, and how technology and culture will interact.
I think my single largest contribution to [DigitalVideoTechnology Inc.] was defining the initial architecture and feature set between November 93 and January 94. I did this on the basis of understanding how to fit the technology (digital video) to the customer, [BigSatelliteTV Inc.]. It took a while to sell to that particular customer, but the fit was there from the beginning. (Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to perform this role on the management system!!!)
Rather than a VP engineering position, I think a "technology direction" position would be better for me. This could be VP Eng. in a very small company, or CTO, or marketing or even an M&A position in a larger company. For the latter two position, I think it's very important to develop stronger communication skills, which is one of my goals in this sabbatical.
So that's where my head's at right now. How are thing's with you?
regards,
-Mark