Corrections or additions?
These articles were prepared for the November 15, 2000 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
For Writers, New Blocks
For most people writing home to mom and dad is a writing
challenge in itself. Professional writers working in the new interactive
media can find plenty of variations on the old writers’ block: How
will their words play out — in print, video, graphics, and animation?
The Princeton chapter of Moving Image Professionals assembles a panel
on Wednesday, November 15, to sort out the issues in this new medium.
As the press release asks, “Is there one tried and true way to
structure content and write for interactive media?”
The meeting will be Wednesday, November 15, beginning with dinner
at 6:30 p.m. at the Olive Garden restaurant on Route 1 in Lawrenceville.
The presentation starts at 7:15 p.m. For directions, visit www.movingimage.org.
Or call Dennis Nobile, president of Moving Image Professionals,
at 609-716-1737. Free admission for MIP/ITVA members; others are $10.
On the panel: John Loven, who designed his first interactive
program for Strawbridge and Clothier stores in 1983 and since then
has produced or designed more than 160 interactive multimedia programs;
Victor Davis, who began his career in video, at NBC and NJN,
and then became a corporate video producer for such companies as GE,
Unisys and Lucent; Lena Lattanzi, an interactive industry veteran
with experience in program development, graphic design, project management,
and instructional design; and Robert Gengerke, whose New York-based
firm, Magic Box Communications, produces interactive programs for
training, public relations, and trade shows.
The moderator: Andy Kienzle, director of content solutions for
RAC Productions at 182 Nassau Street.
Among the topics on the agenda:
Key differences between writing for interactive media and print, video,
live presentations; steps for organizing content; how much technical
knowledge of programming is required to write effectively; challenges
in recasting information from other media; differences between CD-ROMs
and websites; and elements that make websites effective.
Thursday, November 16
On the Internet
In cyberspace, no one can hear you scream. That’s why
it’s important to know where you stand legally when you start to do
business on the Internet. Attorney Richard Ravin, head of the
E-Commerce and Intellectual Property Group of the law firm of Hartman
& Winnicki in Paramus, speaks to the issue of “The Internet, the
Law and Your Legal Rights,” at a free seminar sponsored by the
New Jersey State Bar Foundation, the educational and philanthropic
arm of the New Jersey State Bar Association.
The seminar will be held Thursday, November 16, from 7 to 9 p.m. at
the New Jersey Law Center, off Ryder Lane, in New Brunswick. Woodbury
attorney Allan Richardson and Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott
Christie will also be featured. Advanced registration is required.
To register, call 1-800-FREE-LAW, or go to www.njsbf.org.
Ravin has been interested in E-law for several years. “I had been
practicing commercial law for many years, and then I personally discovered
the Internet around 1995,” he says. “I realized that this
was where business was headed, and that in order to practice business
law I needed to learn as much as possible about Internet law. Before
long I was giving the seminars and representing clients with various
Internet issues. Now it’s the majority of my practice.”
Ravin is a graduate of Syracuse University and the Newhouse School
of Public Communications, and took his law degree at Nova Southeastern
University School of Law. He is currently the co-chair of the Internet
law Committee of the New York Bar Association’s Intellectual Property
Law Section. He is also a member of the New Jersey State Bar Association’s
Intellectual Property Law Section and lectures for the New Jersey
Institute for Continuing Legal Education, the Venture Association
of New Jersey, and the New York State Bar Association. He has written
many articles on Internet law.
Ravin defines E-commerce as “doing business electronically: communicating
electronically, advertising electronically, entering into contracts
electronically — that’s that area that is going to develop over
the next few years. But one cannot and should not think about E-commerce
without thinking about privacy concerns, database security, and database
privacy.” Ravin lists several areas that are of prime importance
to anyone doing business on the Internet:
Intellectual properties in cyberspace. If you own andwish to control your website and domain name, it’s very importantto know that the contents and inventions that come out of your websitemay not belong to you. If you hire a website designer and you do notexercise control over the content, the ownership of the copyrightcan fall to the designer or subcontractor.Franchise agreements and arrangements. Many franchiseagreements provide that the franchisee has the right to exclusivelyadvertise in a particular area; a retail franchise will normally getgeographic exclusivity. But with the Internet, if one franchise goeson the web, he could be invading other franchisers’ territory. Andwhat if the franchiser sells retail on its website? Many of thesefranchise arrangements existed before anyone thought of the Internet,and the courts are in the procedure of sorting it out.Copyright and linking arrangements. Linked sites comein two categories: referring sites and referred sites. If you linkto another site, and that site has engaged in copyright infringement,you could be liable for copyright infringement too. The same is trueof defamatory statements.In the same way, framing can be problematic. Framing is the processof sending people to a linked site by framing the original site sothat the viewer never really leaves it while looking at the referredsite. However, the referring site can now be considered as a publisher,and liable for claims and statements made on the referred site. Andif the referring site, by the framing process, is blocking out advertisementsfrom the second site, the first site could be liable. Deep linking(linking deep into another site and bypassing the main page) couldalso bypass disclaimers and terms for services.The Federal E-sign Law. This law, which took effect October1, says that any notice (an eviction, for example) which legally hasto be in writing can now be given electronically. The law is vagueand leaves the courts to determine what constitutes reasonable notice,verification of a delivered notice, and other ramifications. Thereare exceptions — wills, for example, cannot be E-mailed.Privacy statements on the Internet. Ultimately, says Ravin,the world will go the way of the European Union Privacy Directive.That directive states that before collectors of data use any personalinformation (name, phone, habits) collected on the Internet, theymust disclose to the subject what the information is to be used for,and must get permission to use it. This directive specifically excludestelling people that they are giving permission by not saying no —they must specifically say yes. No country in the European Union canexport data to a country without proof that the other nation has asstringent protection as this. Ravin believes that there will be similarlaws set up in the U.S., so you might as well set up your websitenow to reflect this trend.Personal jurisdiction. This is a big issue in cyberspace:An Ohio viewer clicks to a New Jersey website via a Pennsylvania server.Whose law applies? That partly depends how interactive the websiteis. Is it a passive website? Is the customer entering into agreements,submitting purchase orders, or using a credit card number?Common sense should, and hopefully will, prevail on the Internet,says Ravin. Just don’t do anything you wouldn’t do in the bricks andmortar world. “People think that because the Internet is freeand open territory they can say and do what they want. It’s just nottrue. Copyright infringement, bulletin board libel, harassment byspammimg — they’ll all get you into trouble; and you in your turnare protected against them. Just like in the real world.”— David McDonoughFriday, November 17Top Of PageTaking a New MeasureFor Business SuccessThe game has changed. The way people are managed isa much greater source of competitive advantage than ever before,”says Mark A. Huselid, associate professor of human resourcemanagement in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations.Though human resources departments have moved into the 21st century,says Huselid, accounting finance departments are stuck in the 19thcentury: “The way firms measure and report what they are doingis linked to a measurement system invented 150 years ago. For an industrialage company, conventional metrics work great, but for a new softwarestartup, they don’t.”Huselid will give a class entitled “The HRM Scorecard: Criteriafor `Valuation’ of Your HRM Assets,” on Friday, November 17, from8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Rutgers Center for Management Developmenton Rockafeller Road. This lecture is third in the Human Resources”Hot Topic Faculty Speaker” fall series. Cost: $375 includingbreakfast, lunch, and an afternoon networking session. Register at732-445-5526 or call Bonnie Westbrook at 732-445-5448. The nextsession in the series is attorney Barbara A. Lee, dean of theSchool of Management and Labor Relations, speaking on “ManagingOrganizational Liability and Reducing Exposure in Handling Whistleblowers”on Friday, December 8.Huselid’s book “The HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy, andPerformance,” has been co-authored by Brian Becker of SUNYBuffalo and David Ulrich of the University of Michigan and isdue out in March from the Harvard Business School Press. He also editsthe Human Resource Management Journal (www.rci.rutgers.edu/~huselid).A graduate of California State at Fresno, Class of ’86, Huselid hastwo master’s degrees from Kansas State, and a PhD from SUNY Buffalo.His parents were entrepreneurs with a parts distribution business,and he himself ran a machine shop for eight years. He is also an aviddrag racer and though he has curtailed his racing career, he is evennow building a car. He and his wife, a professor at Hunter College,live in Princeton Junction and have two preschool children.Organizational number-crunchers realized 10 years ago that their metricscould only tell what did happen, says Huselid, and that they couldn’ttell what is going to happen. They began to try to measureintangibles: How does HR create value? What is it, where is it, andhow can we measure it? “We are developing measurement systemsto track that. We are extending the idea that intangibles and peoplematter.”Then in 1996 Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton cameup with some answers in the best selling business book, “The BalancedScorecard: Translating Strategy into Action” (Harvard BusinessSchool Press, $29.95). Even now this book is in the top 400 best-sellingbooks of Amazon.com and the authors’ follow-up title (“The Strategy-FocusedOrganization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New BusinessEnvironment,” September, 2000) is in the top 100 sellers on Amazon.Huselid explains the concept. “If you are an R&D company and youknow that one of the key drivers of your success is cycle time fornew products, our approach would ask, What are the HR types of thingsthat could drive cycle time?”These factors are not generic to every company, Huselid says. “Thehard part is deciding what creates value, getting a sense of whatthings you need to do to drive business success.” Once you getanswers on what the key factors are, then you need to collect thedata and figure out how to present that data to the management team.At an R&D company, for example, the driving factors might be attractingand retaining talent, promoting workers quickly, giving workers crosstraining so they don’t leave, and offering incentives for them tostay.For another company, the crucial factor might be to help employeesknow where they fit in the organizations. “How employees understandtheir roles and their contribution to the firm’s success — thatis a leading indicator of success,” says Huselid.A factor like understanding roles can be measured by survey data andmonthly random polls, but what the company really needs to do is weaveemployee understanding throughout its company culture.Have company meetings.Put “nested” goal setting systems in place. (Ifyou work for me and meet your goal, that helps me meet my goals).Install incentives that align everybody’s behavior. Youmight key variable pay to the number of new patents generated or theshortening of product to market cycles.In one famous case, Sears Roebuck pulled itself out of a deepslough in the early ’90s. “They spent money going through theconventional mission statements and it didn’t change anybody’s behavior,”says Huselid. “Then officers went to the stores and asked theemployees `What’s your job.’”They were dismayed by the standard answer: “We’re trying to protectthe company’s assets.” In other words, the salespeople were puttingtheir energy into preventing shoplifting, not boosting sales.Executives then asked the salespeople how much the company kept outof every dollar spent in the stores. The usual answer was 40 cents,but the real answer is closer to two cents. In other words, they hada very low level of understanding what they were supposed to be doing.At that point Arthur Martinez, the CEO, and Tony Rucci,who was senior vice president of PR, developed a measurement system,not only to help employees understand the system but to track theirprogress. They used a learning map, a 4-by-6 foot graphical representationof key business problems. For cash flow, for instance, they used anillustration of water flowing from a faucet.Rucci is no longer with Sears, but the results of this strategy madebusiness history. As Kaplan & Norton say in their newest book, “Measurementcreates focus for the future because the measures chosen by managerscommunicate to the organization what is important.”Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
