"A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority; what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority." Eric Hoffer

"In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"While we are postponing, life speeds by." Seneca

Today's image: the winter garden 1/12/08 by gary isaacs' photos' Photostream. Exquisite. Thank you for sharing.

Preparing for an upcoming talk, the majority of recent days are filled with reading, reviewing, collecting and organizing materials. Connecting with folks via email and phone, the objective being getting dialed in to what's happening right now, looking for help in an attempt to see around the corner and perhaps get some sense of what's next. Pages of notes. It's a process. The research, the prep, the thinking required to grok the relevant issues. Getting it down as close to cold as possible so that a first draft of an outline can be produced.

As my talk will be delivered to managers who work in broadcasting, I've spent time immersed in the sites devoted to broadcasters, those beyond the usual suspects (i.e., the trades). Searching for diversity and fresh povs, time was devoted to a series of deep dives, first up the low hanging fruit - blogs.

Readers of this blog are aware of my thinking. Simply put...we are living in the most exciting era in the history of measured media.

Weeks of reading the blogs brought The Tempest to mind, to wit: "...what's past is prologue, what to come In yours and my discharge."

My sense is too many blogs appear to be the work of old white guys not happy with the way things are going, folks clearly upset about change in the industry. Moreover, too many of these bloggers seem to be either obsessed with bringing back some new version of the past or possessed by a compulsion to deliver little more than critical rants about the present. It's not healthy. To be brutally honest, it's a waste of bandwidth. But there's good news. Doing the math it's easy to project that these old guys have more days behind them than ahead. Let them live out their days shouting at the tide or barking at the moon. None of what they say really matters.

Let me finish the post with some really great news. There's a very cool new generation at work in broadcasting today and more fresh, bright entry level folks on the way. Have no doubt, the best is yet to come. For as Emerson once said we belong to the party of the future and not to the party of the past. Stay tuned.