The classic example of why LBS services may not have reached their market potential yet is a story I first told at a CTIA event over 5 years ago. It happened to me about a week before the show and has the perfect metaphor for the state of LBS services. It has been re-told by pundits  and even published in trade magazines. Indeed many now tell this story as though it happened to them! So now without further pre-ample is the LBS story of the daughter, the wife and the doll. 

We were going “through the woods and over the hill” to grandmother’s house. In this case the woods were 180 miles of New York State Thruway and the hill was the Catskills Mountains. The car was packed for the weekend with me, my wife and three kids. 

 

Okay, I am not deterred, technology will get us out of this problem, I assure my increasingly skeptical family. All I have to do is figure out what zip code we are driving through, then call the 800 number again, navigate the 78 step voice system and voila!, I will have the location of the nearest Toys-R-US.

 
In my previous blog I presented a slice of the diverse life we have in New York. Living and working in New York provides a Mobile company such as Upoc Networks an advantage in providing innovative services that reach a diverse marketplace.

 

 

 

Many companies spend endless hours training and talking about diversity in the workplace; we live it, at work and at home.

When I think of diversity I add other factors such social-economic background, age, education, work experience and sexual orientation. My awareness of our total diversity is obviously incomplete, but I would venture to say that we would be hard pressed to find more than a couple of employees who were similar in all aspects.  This is the workforce we draw from, this is the city where we are headquartered, and most importantly , this is representative of the marketplace in which we compete.

We did not sit down as a Management team and place various diversity hiring goals, it has been not necessary. I have observed throughout my career that if your existing organization has diversity, it will attract and retain diversity.

There are obviously many companies and regions that have diversity, but no city has the history and the reputation of being the world’s melting pot.

New York is a city with over 100 nationalities, every major religion (and probably more than few that are not so “major”), every ethnicity, culture, race, creed, sexual orientation, political affiliation and social/economic status. 

What is perhaps truly amazing is that this patchwork quilt of cultures co-exist in relative harmony within New York.

Moslems and Jews, Blacks and Whites, Japanese, Chinese and Koreans, Catholics and Protestants , Serbs, Russians, Hispanics, the list goes on and on. In other areas of the world the same groups might be at war, but in New York they seem to blend and even feed off of each others culture.

It must be something in the water!

New York, New York.

Just another weekend in New York-

While this entry has little to do with mobile applications – I decided to share a slice of the uniqueness of New York.  It does , however go to the heart of why New York, with all of its diversity and culture enables mobile companies to be competitive.

Last Sunday my family decided to go to “The City” to see a Broadway Matinee play.    On our way in we got caught in traffic and the usual 90 minute (20 mile) drive stretched to over 3 hours.  We missed our play but decided to hang out in Manhattan.   We walked two blocks from the theater parking lot and were greeted by approximately 500,000 joyous parade goers.  This Sunday was the Dominican Republic day parade.   The music was as much felt as it was heard.  The cheers were deafening and the parade floats and marchers seemed to stretch forever.  You did not need to speak Spanish or be Dominican to just enjoy the Mass celebration.  

After about 30 minutes we walked the two blocks to the Madison Avenue street fair.     Madison Avenue was closed for approximately 20 blocks (over a mile) and became home for food vendors with the  cuisine of Mexico ,Italy, , China , Thailand, Poland, Israel, France,  Greece,  ;  and various American flavors from New Orleans, New York (where else can you really get a Knish?) and Southern BBQ.   Needless to say, we did not go hungry.  Music form every ethnicity played from stalls that sold anything and everything.   We stopped along the way to listen to a Klezmer Jazz band that was outstanding.

After we satisfied our palette, we started to walk back to 6^th Avenue and decided to stop by St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  They were having a special Spanish Mass that we watched for a couple of minutes before we continued our walk. 

Before we got back to 6^th avenue, the gravitational pull of the Nintendo flagship store attracted by teenage son.  We successfully extracted him without monetary damage to any credit card.  We showed the family Rockefeller Plaza and then walked the last block back to the DR day parade.

After another hour we left to go home.   Where else could you go through such a diverse range of the DR parade and the Madison Avenue street fair by just walking 2 blocks?  New York New York , it is unique.

My next blog will go deeper into the competitive values of a diverse community and employee base.