HERE YEA, HERE YEE...GET YOUR COPY HOT OFF THE PRESS
"SMART STARTS FIRST PERSONAL NATIONWIDE NEXTEL USERS GROUP"
I finally broke down. I must confess, I've resisted this long, but its time to cut to the chase and ignite the true spirit that I think is out there to be tapped NOW, not later. It's time to really take to heart Nextel's ad campaign. It's time to:
Get Smart and Get Nextel!!
Smart Bandwidth, LLC - my new company - wants to jump start a revolution.
We are already fast doing this here in Chicago, but its now time to take no prisoners and let this empowering model of "no rules" start to blow people away.
I want to challenge every Nextel user to view him/herself with an unlimited potential to not only grow your business by raising the bar on service, but by tapping into this emerging massive reservoir of new energy that's growing right smack beneath the surface of our day to day lives.
What I am really talking about is really taking the bull by the horns and doing whatever you can to open youself and your business to the direct and indirect power that cheap bandwidth will be showering opon us over the next 5-10 years.
Craig, Bill Gates and others want to use this power in the worst way. No offense to Craig, but I think we have an opportunity to get ahead of this curve and start tying together networks of empowered, trusting individuals who happen to use Nextel and who are beginning to see the initial power of networking, connecting, reconnecting with one another. Not just on email, voicemail, video, but right in the hear and now on this initial very basic - some would say - crude walkie-talkie feature that we all love to love and love to hate sometimes.
We don't have to wait for Nextower, Nextlink, Nextband, Teledesic or the rest of this strategy to unfold. We can seize the moment NOW!!
What the heck am I talking about. Let's start for starters with:
1) Nationwide identity and tracking of ALL Nextel users - we've been forming this Next-Telephone system and BY GOD let's start creating our own yellow pages! I have the technology to start this NOW.
2) Establishment of local, regional and national Nextel user groups aligned by industry, market, sector (public/private), etc. I have the technology to kick start ALL these groups.
3) Establishment of a nationwide Nextel referral network of users. The technology is there.
4) Acknowledgement that ALL Nextel users have the power to take ownership of other inputs in there day to day business and personal lives: basic things like long distance, integrated SMART cards with Nextel phones, affinity buying & selling groups that we can all organize ourselves NOW - BEFORE the bogyman, banks or Gates comes around and puts a gun to our head while placing a new PC in our lap.
- we need someone to step forward - aside from me - to take this ball. Does Nextel own US?? That's like saying AT&T owns us. My answer is: we greatly appreciate the technology, but its really up to the way Nextel's reps, indirect reps and Nextel itself reaches out and touches us on these an other matters - day after day - that will determine the who, how and why behind this question.
5) Developing a nationwide ongoing focus by concerned Nextel users who are open and giving to use this and other technologies to grow an awareness about the need make a difference in the world. Examples could include:
- clear out drugs and gangs in crime ridden neighborhoods. This is being done with Nextel phones in certain parts of the country - including 25 phones on my network in Chicago. We need to take all these isolated empowered examples, string them all together, connect the dots and start pushing back negative energy out of neighborhoods and filling them back up with positive, empowered, hopeful energy.
- take networking to "a higher level" by setting examples of the great good that can come from intercompany networking for those companies that allow this. Its all about opening up vs. closing down. Giving versus taking. Sharing and growing energy. All this new energy can and will physical manifest itself in the form of empowered, energetic individuals who can and will walk, talk and embrace their streets, neighborhoods, communities in ways that can begin to rebuild the broken fabric of our cynical nation that seems to be defined more and more by the slogan "who cares!"
- start demanding that Nextel/Motorola uncork and unbundle their plans for SMART cards and Java initiatives. We need to get users involved in these developments NOW, before Gates or someone else tries to develop the next postage meter which could be the albatross we do not need.
6) We need to reiterate the need for Motorola/Nextel to jump start the SMART card initiative.
I personally think Nextel-phone enabled SMART cards would be HUGE!! Its a captive, focused market that ALL business and expects the most out of point of sale interactions. Can you imagine if every Nextel phone could conceivabley become a point of sale (POS) device? If shopkeepers did not have a regular Smart card POS device, then a Nextel phone would be a great way to do double duty on this score.
This, combined with DC would throw (leverate) ALL the nations shopkeepers out into the street - into their cars, etc. I can see armies of college students developing new, flexible, buying service industries for struggling, exhausted parents trying to find time to catch their breath and know their kids.
5) Nextel has been growing over the last 2-3 years by first tageting all the low-lying fruit, of which there is plenty more to eat. BUT....the real payoff for Nextel and its users is if we can all learn to climb up to a higher limb and get to know and understand how we all potentially link and connect with each other in more ways that simply the DUMB spagetti-bowl business networks that are out there.
We all need to ask Nextel: When, if ever, will the average DC service transition to the state where it can either be on a closed DAP or an open DAP - open meaning that customers could conceivabley contact anyone else that's also on the "open nationwide omnibus DAP".
7) A need to know NOW, not later, when DC is sheduled to go nationwide. This is a huge development which we should not be left in the dark about. An announcement on this could have huge growth implications going forward.
8) On another need to know NOW versus later the exact status, when, how concerning "data link" which is scheduled to come sometime "nextyear" - no pun. Along with this, it would be helpful if Nextel would open up their API platform to application developers - perhaps Java? - which would begin to make future phones dance, run and sing.
I think I have written more than enough. If you are interested in forming such a group and discussing how we can all work together, please feel free to contact me.
All the best everyone.
Smart but "long winded." |
