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I’ve been teasing it out with Linked In, Facebook, my bio on Twitter, but it’s nice to officially be able to blog about my new job. As of February 1, I’m the Senior Vice President of Emerging Technology at WEA Corp., Warner Music Group’s US Sales and Retail Marketing company.

At Warner Bros. Records, the technology department started with the aim of not letting movements in other industries be predicates to movements in ours. The music industry, to a point always worked with technology. RCA and the phonograph, Phillips and the CD, and even dead formats (MiniDisc, DAT) were with music industry partnership. However all were predicated on a manner of control in the same vertical integration methodology that served us so well for so long. The music companies locked everything from talent recruitment to distribution, and formats included.

File formats don’t support this methodology, and while MP3 is far from a free and clear format, it was enough in the open to challenge the vertical integration strategies of the past. Let me be clear here: this is a good thing. Industries need a push from the outside, and that can usually be a positive if there are people to push back, work with it, and innovate. I was brought in to do that. Innovate, push back, work with technology in a very difficult time.

We did this from 2005 onwards and through our departments work we developed a Direct to Consumer platform based on open-source software, did some innovative marketing things with technology (Madonna’s Confess line, the R.E.M. campaign among many others) and in general, experimented, built a solid online business and had a lot of fun.

At a certain point, we started looking at all the data this fun was generating. It’s not enough to just put something out there unless you can recombine what you learn into more things you can push to market. It ended up that as the market turned, as things settled, data, and more importantly the experience it generated was emerging among all else as the strongest asset we could have. Experiences used as a means of enabling a tighter, more cohesive and unfettered relationship between the artist and their fan.

And building fan experiences through data is why I’m now at WEA.

In the last few years, WEA has transitioned from being about putting records on shelves to also helping the labels with merchandising, Direct to Consumer initiatives and now technology. The work we started at WBR is in a sense scaling upwards and outwards to help all the labels.

I lead up the Emerging Technology group within WEA, doing what I do best: finding new stuff, seeing if it works for us, vetting it out and slotting it into operations. I’m working with amazing people in our digital strategy and business development group and engineering and project teams, and in general doing what I did on a much broader scope.

We are at an interesting point where the externalization of human progress far exceeds our ability to process it. Really, a world of too much information, all at even disposal. Its as easy to get local as global. Big as small, small as big. One million for one, one for one million. The quantification of scale doesn’t exist, and indeed because of this fractal sensibility, the comprehension of a concrete artifact representing any one thing likewise doesn’t exist.

In this type of world, when the primacy of the artifact is diminished to such an extent, becoming nothing solid, but instead a Deleuzian rhizome leading further and further down the rabbit hole, it’s experience that drives the market over any intrinsic value of a concrete, reified “thing.”

With our business, the fan experience starts becoming that which contextualizes what was known prior as an artifact. It, in conjunction with the artifacts referent becomes the unit of measurement of product, property, tangible something to buy. And at the root of this is data. Data that helps contextualize the experience for the fan, data that helps us find the fan for an experience and conversely, helps find the experience for a fan.

Data and experiences as tools are powerful and demanding. Powerful because it can wield absolute power over human agency, and demanding for the same reason. It’s not enough to just wield data to make experiences, but to actually innovate with data, you must use the tools of innovation and participate in those tools’ ecosystem.

I posted in a post that data is our new asset base. I believe that holds true, but given the abstract nature of data, it is important for me to remember: I work in the music business. Our business is representing artists. The work that we represent for those artists is their life. It is our job to make sure we treat their life with the preciousness it deserves.

I’m happy, excited and inspired to be working in such an amazing business at such an amazing time. I worked in newspapers from 1995 – 2002, and saw some interesting things indeed. Most of what I saw was the collective myopia imposed by self administered horse blinders. It’s nice to work in a company, with people who not only are operating with perfect and clear vision, but burn the horse blinders at the door.

As I said:

“Data: our asset base. Artists: our core. That is the new music business. It’s an exciting time indeed.”

And that still holds, even more so now.

Cool stuff, but using Control4 is cheating. And expensive.

[From The iPad that controls all - CBS 6 Tech Talk : WRGB CBS 6 Albany]

I’m due to post a progress report on the new home. In three weeks we move in, so I’m in the middle of the planning for the electronic components of the house. I decided early on that I was going to wire the house up as if it was an office. That meant I wanted to use hard wire for networking rather than wifi with bridges. Because the home didn’t have cat-5, and I’m not in the mood to pay thousands for putting it in, I decided to use MOCA (Multimedia over Coax) to do the whole house network. However I am getting an estimate on cat-6 runs, so these MOCA routers might be on E-Bay soon! UPDATE: $100 a drop I’m quoted, so yes, will be on e-bay soon.

To do so, I purchased five MI424WR Rev F routers from Actiontec, the same devices used by Verizon for FIOS. I bought them on eBay. Each of them will be at a cable terminus with wifi and coax enabled as bridges, so we’ll have maximum wifi saturation as well as 200mbps wired networking in each room.

Each device has a gigabit switch on it, so in certain rooms DirectTV boxes will be connected, in others, computers. The DirectTV coax will run outside of the house and punch in through the walls where the receivers are, while the main in-wall coax will serve the MOCA.

The first 30 IP’s on my network are mapped to VPN to the office, so I’ll be maintaining the class c in a split configuration to ensure things that shouldn’t route through VPN don’t. ie, the surveillance cameras won’t be directly accessible except through a web interface.

I’m debating doing two different VLAN’s on the Netscreen, to segregate things like the camera traffic from the main house traffic, and AV traffic, but not sure if that’s necessary.

I’ve been ordering equipment in advance of the install from MacHomeStore.com, Amazon.com and Smarthome.com.

Anyhow, here is the networking diagram.

The grass is always greener on the other side…

[From 'Junkware' comes standard on Verizon, T-Mobile smart phones | Technology | Los Angeles Times]

This is so cool. Love that under New York is this hidden world of old.

[From 18th-Century Ship Found at Trade Center Site - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com]

So, its not as good in the screen, the speed, weight, cell modem, video or apps, and yet is a competitor? How?

[From Out Of Nowhere, The iPad Has A Real Competitor « Mike Cane's iPad Test]

I find it amusing that the same people who lament, mock and take glee in the demise of traditional media are very happy that one of the hallmarks of “New Media” – Techmeme – got a (deserved) profile in the New York Times.