2009 August | David Chan

Senator Ted Kennedy – On Leadership and Heath Care Reform

August 30th, 2009 By DavidChan 2 Comments

As a business development professional, I believe leadership is a fundamental quality required to succeed in this career. Senator Ted Kennedy demonstrated all of the qualities of leadership and then some, including vision, openness, and above, all, compassion. His tireless effort over four decades fighting for health care reform is a legacy that will transcend beyond his senate seat. I read with great interest the Newsweek article written by Mr. Kennedy himself The Cause of My Life, wherein he describes what has been his lifelong passion regarding universal health care.

Senator Ted Kennedy has had his share of sorrow and tragedy throughout his family’s legacy. I learned a tremendous amount about why health care reform was so important to him. In 1973 he learned firsthand how families had to make critical decisions about health care for their children because of their ability, or worse, inability to pay for medical care.

At that time, his 12 year old son, Teddy, had to have his right leg amputated because of an aggressive cancerous tumor. During the treatments to fight cancer, Mr. Kennedy met and interacted with other parents who were financially less fortunate than him to pay for aggressive, sometimes experimental cancer treatment.

That was a defining moment for Senator Ted Kennedy’s health care reform stand. He goes on to state that “That experience with Teddy made it clear to me, as never before, that health care must be affordable and available for every mother or father who hears a sick child cry in the night and worries about the deductibles and co pays if they go to the doctor.”

Mr. Kennedy talks about his son Patrick who had asthma serious enough to require hospitalization on numerous occasions. His daughter, Kara, was also diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002. Thankfully, because of quality health care and chemotherapy, she has survived that insidious scourge.

Here is a man who has the wealth of the Kennedy family to afford the best medical treatment for himself and his family. Why should he care about those who cannot? There are certainly other legislative policies that Mr. Kennedy could have taken up that would have been much easier to “win.” But, he chose this piece of legislation because he is a leader of the cause and plight of the common people.

No matter what side of the political fence any of us sit, the cause for health care reform, or more appropriately, universal health care is one that is consuming our country’s attention. Many have asked to rename Barack Obama’s health care reform after Mr. Kennedy. This is certainly a worthy idea as many of the tenets of President Obama’s plan come from Mr. Kennedy’s four decades of work in health care.

I just returned from visiting one of my UC Berkeley school mates. He is also terminally ill with cancer. Over the last couple of months I’ve learned how our broken health care system has tried to initially deny his hospital stay and then his desire to live out the rest of his short life at home. It has been proven time and time again that end of life patient care at home provides a better quality of life than in a hospital setting AND it saves money!

If Senator Ted Kennedy’s health care reform policies and lifelong work succeeds in the hands of the current administration, he will have achieved what countless presidents and politicians before him have failed to do … not just universal health care, but a platform for a more fair and just society. After all, isn’t that why our forefathers immigrated to America in the first place?

Solving the Education Crisis One Textbook At A Time – Information Alliances

August 23rd, 2009 By DavidChan Leave a Comment

Here’s another example of how information alliances can greatly improve the customer experience. Even more compelling is how information alliances can improve our children’s education, in light of budget cuts and the cut backs in government support.

School Districts Allowed to Delay Updating Textbooks. This was the headline in a recent Sacramento Bee article. The story reports how the Elk Grove school district will be allowed to delay adopting new textbooks until 2013. Budgets that were designated for upgrading 2002 and 2003 books will instead be used to save jobs in the district. The article goes on to suggest that by the time new books are adopted California schools may be using 15 year old math books and 9 year old history books.

The reality is that the publishing industry needs to be significantly overhauled, just like many other “closed networks”, such as the real estate and music industries. The education market would greatly benefit from Information alliances between publishers, writers, teachers, students, and many other collaborators who have skills and experience. The problem is that every old industry tries to hold on to as much of their empire for as long as possible. However, the ferocity of the Internet is conspiring to decimate these industries.

UC Davis has taken a unique approach to solving the “pricey textbook” problem. In the article Professors hope to turn page on pricey textbooks , I read that UC Davis professors have come up with a unique way to make textbooks more affordable. The article, written by Caitlin Cobb, goes on to say “Expensive, used textbooks have long been a bone of contention among college students.” Well … duh!

I’m not an expert on education, but it appears to me that their unique idea, of building information alliances between multiple authors, i.e. the wiki approach, makes complete sense. The Davis Enterprise elaborates on how the collaboration is amongst students from multiple colleges and universities.

“Students have to spend a lof of money on textbooks, and publishers will come out with a new version of the textbook, but really they are just playing around with the used book market.” This was a quote from Andrew Waldron, the vice chairman for undergraduate matters.

In my estimation, Mr. Waldron is all too correct. Information today is very fluid and dynamic. And, with the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, information flow and collaboration should be the mantra. In fact, let’s extrapolate the solution a bit further. What if the information alliances were extended to the local printing company, such as Kinko’s/FedEx? Those students who really wanted a “hard copy” of the textbook can select their favorite local printer; click a button and presto – instant textbook. It might even be bought at 1/2 the cost of the “publisher’s version” sans expensive book cover.

The idea of a collaborative textbook makes SO much sense. You now give the “intellectual power” to a collective whole, rather than limit it to a select few. It’s hard for me to fathom that any one publisher or any one author is the final and ultimate authority on a topic, especially in this new age of accelerated Internet discovery.

One other powerful offshoot of these textbook information alliances is that you’ve now engaged students at a much higher level than ever before. They now can take a sense of ownership in the materials and content. In this way, they may even learn and absorb more. Isn’t that what learning is all about anyway?

Is this a novel idea or an idea whose time has come? After all, aren’t we in the 21st century?

How to Fix Amtrak Through Information Alliances

August 20th, 2009 By DavidChan Leave a Comment

I’ve been a long time Amtrak rider since moving to the burbs north of San Francisco seven years ago. I must admit that I hate driving and prefer to be driven. It would be great if I could own a limousine and hire a chauffeur, but alas, I’m limited to public transportation or driving my own car.

The problem with Amtrak and generally most public transportation is that they don’t really cater to their customers. The information alliances that they’ve built with partners are zero to none. For example, how often have you jumped on Amtrak, say from Sacramento, and got to your final destination in San Francisco, without missing some type of connection? An information alliance / business development effort with the San Francisco public transit system could solve this problem in a heartbeat.

I remember one day leaving San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf on Amtrak and arriving in Richmond, CA only to have missed my connecting BART service by 52 seconds. Yes, that’s how long it took to get from the Amtrak track to the BART track … down one set of stairs … up another. Again, an information alliance, an exchange of data … bits … would have helped me to make my connection.

The problem, I’ve been told, is that each transit authority is only responsible for their little fiefdom. Forget about customer service. Let’s just get our trains there on time … our time, that is. An information alliance with other transit authorities does not help individual company’s “on time” schedules, but it would help us, “the customer.”

I recently read an article about the slippage of Amtrak train ridership on the Capitol Corridor route. The story was written up in the Davis Enterprise. The article states that while ridership is down this year, on-time arrivals are at an all-time high. It doesn’t take a brain scientist to see how easy that is to accomplish … ridership DOWN … on-time arrivals UP?

Amtrak, like so many other public transportation systems should consider themselves as being in the “people moving business”, as Jeff Jarvis would say, NOT in the train business. By building information alliances with BART, the San Francisco Muni, AC Transit, CalTrain, and countless other transportation companies, we all might take public transportation more often. And, after all, isn’t that what we all want for a greener America?

Here’s another information alliance that can be exploited. What if when you arrived at your final destination a rented bike rack was waiting at your disposal? Or, what if a Zipcar or heaven forbid, even another public transit system that was timed to meet up with a “foreign” transit system?

There is no easy answer to this problem. But, there is no way out without an answer. In other words, we have the ability to build information alliances and data exchange. Someone has to start this business development effort in order to change the “drive my car” mentality in California.

It’s outrageous to hear companies like Amtrak boast about on-time arrivals when the real end-to-end experience for the customer is what’s really lacking. An information alliance / exchange of data and a tad bit of planning would really enhance the experience for the customer. It might even perhaps raise ridership because customers would feel confident in getting to their final destination hassle free and timely, if not “on time.”