Portable lab-on-a-chip device uses cutting-edge science to enable consumers to understand

their skin’s aging trajectory and gain insights into the skincare that works best for their needs

LAS VEGAS, January 6, 2025 – Today at CES® 2025, L’Oréal Groupe unveiled L’Oréal Cell BioPrint, a tabletop hardware device that provides personalized skin analysis in just five minutes, using advanced proteomics – the study of how protein composition in the human body affects skin aging.

L’Oréal Cell BioPrint is made possible by L’Oréal’s Longevity Integrative Scienceä, a groundbreaking approach that reveals how mechanisms in the human body can affect skin’s appearance, and through an exclusive partnership with Korean startup NanoEnTek. L’Oréal Cell BioPrint produces a personalized skin assessment in minutes including:

• Skin’s BiologicalAge: How fast is skin aging? L’Oréal Cell BioPrint can calculate skin’s age and provide personalized advice on how to slow down the appearance of aging.

• IngredientResponsiveness: Will certain active ingredients work on one’s skin? L’Oréal Cell BioPrint minimizes guesswork by helping to predict responsiveness to certain key ingredients such as

• Shiftingfrom Reactive to Proactive Skincare: Is one’s skin prone to dark spots or enlarged pores? L’Oréal Cell BioPrint can help predict potential cosmetic issues before they become visible, enabling users to take proactive steps to help protect the beauty of their skin.

“At L’Oréal, we’re always looking toward the future of beauty, blending cutting-edge discoveries with our long-standing beauty expertise. With skin being the largest organ, and a key part of

people’s wellbeing, we are thrilled to unveil Cell BioPrint, an exclusive microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technology coupled with our century-long skin science leadership. With the Cell BioPrint device, we offer people the ability to discover deeper insights about their skin through specific biomarkers and to proactively address the beauty and longevity of their skin,” said Barbara Lavernos, Deputy CEO in charge of Research, Innovation and Technology at L’Oréal Groupe.

In Pursuit of Increased Personalization in Skincare

The growth of the global skincare market, which is projected to reach $125 billion in 20241, is driven by consumers who are continuously seeking more information about, and more efficacious products for, their unique skin. According to a recent US survey of 2,000 skincare users, nearly 80% reported relying on trial and error to determine what worked for them, with the average person reporting trying seven different cleansers before finding one they love2.

1 BMS T2024l.

2 Conducted by OnePoll in conjunction with CeraVe.

3 ”Clinical vs. chronological skin age: exploring determinants and stratum corneum protein markers of differential skin ageing in 351

Using Advanced Biomarker Research to Pinpoint Beauty Accuracy

The advanced science in L’Oréal CellBioPrint is now being applied to skin intelligence thanks to decades of knowledge-building and innovation by L’Oréal’s Advanced Research team, which identified for the first time, unique biomarkers in the skin that can indicate key components of healthy-looking skin and longevity3.

The L’Oréal Cell BioPrint device also features NanoEntek’s exclusive microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technology, which leverages some of NanoEnTek’s 100+ patents to measure the presence of L’Oréal‘s groundbreaking protein biomarkers in five minutes. It works through a simple, non- invasive process comprised of the following steps:

1. Puta facial tape strip on one’s cheek, then place into buffer
2. Loadthe solution into the L’Oréal Cell BioPrint cartridge and insert it into the machine for
3. WhileL’Oréal Cell BioPrint processes the sample, the Skin Connect device takes several images of one’s face and a short questionnaire about skin concerns and aging is

L’Oréal Cell BioPrint is scheduled to pilot with a L’Oréal brand in Asia later in 2025.

About L’Oréal

For 115 years, L’Oréal, the world’s leading beauty player, has devoted itself to one thing only: fulfilling the beauty aspirations of consumers around the world. Our purpose, to create the beauty that moves the world, defines our approach to beauty as essential, inclusive, ethical, generous and committed to social and environmental sustainability. With our broad portfolio of 37 international brands and ambitious sustainability commitments in our L’Oréal for the Future programme, we offer each and every person around the world the best in terms of quality, efficacy, safety, sincerity and responsibility, while celebrating beauty in its infinite plurality.

With more than 90,000 committed employees, a balanced geographical footprint and sales across all distribution networks (e- commerce, mass market, department stores, pharmacies, perfumeries, hair salons, branded and travel retail), in 2023 the Group generated sales amounting to 41.18 billion euros. With 20 research centers across 11 countries around the world and a dedicated

Research and Innovation team of over 4,000 scientists and 6,400 Digital talents, L’Oréal is focused on inventing the future of beauty

and becoming a Beauty Tech powerhouse.

More information on https://www.loreal.com/en/mediaroom

“This press release does not constitute an offer of sale or solicitation of an offer to purchase L’Oréal shares. If you wish to obtain more comprehensive information about L’Oréal, please refer to the public documents registered in France with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, also available in English on our website www.loreal-finance.com.

This press release may contain forecast information. While the Company believes that these statements are based on reasonable assumptions as of the date of publication of this press release, they are by nature subject to risks and uncertainties which may lead to a discrepancy between the actual figures and those indicated or suggested in these statements.”

For further information, please contact your bank, stockbroker of financial institution (I.S.I.N. code: FR000012031) and consult your usual newspapers or magazines or the Internet site for shareholders and investors, www.loreal-finance.com, the L’Oréal Finance app or call the toll-free number from France: 0 800 66 66 66. 0 800 66 66 66

Follow us on LinkedIn @L’Oréal

Follow us on Instagram @lorealgroupe

www.loreal.com

The post L’Oréal Groupe Unveils L’Oréal Cell BioPrint, a Revolution in Consumer Skin Intelligence Rooted in the Field of Longevity Science, at CES 2025 appeared first on Good News!.

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By Jon Gertner

Edward Holmes was in Australia on a Saturday morning in early January 2020, talking on the phone with a Chinese scientist named Yong-Zhen Zhang who had just sequenced the genome of a novel pathogen that was infecting people in Wuhan. The two men — old friends — debated the results. “I knew we were looking at a respiratory virus,” recalls Holmes, a virologist and professor at the University of Sydney. He also knew it looked dangerous.

Could he share the genetic code publicly? Holmes asked. Zhang was in China, on an airplane waiting for takeoff. He wanted to think it over for a minute. So Holmes waited. He heard a flight attendant urging Zhang to turn off his phone.

“OK,” Zhang said at last. Almost immediately, Holmes posted the sequence on a website called Virological.org; then he linked to it on Twitter. Holmes knew that researchers around the world would instantly start unwinding the pathogen’s code to try to find ways to defeat it.

From the moment the virus genome was first posted by Holmes, if you looked, you could find a genetic component in almost every aspect of our public-health responses to SARS-CoV-2. It’s typically the case, for instance, that a pharmaceutical company needs samples of a virus to create a vaccine. But once the sequence was in the public realm, Moderna, an obscure biotech company in Cambridge, Mass., immediately began working with the National Institutes of Health on a plan. “They never had the virus on site at all; they really just used the sequence, and they viewed it as a software problem,” Francis deSouza, the chief executive of Illumina, which makes the sequencer that Zhang used, told me with some amazement last summer, six months before the Moderna vaccine received an emergency-use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration. The virus’s code also set the testing industry into motion. Only by analyzing characteristic aspects of the virus’s genetic sequence could scientists create kits for the devices known as P.C.R. machines, which for decades have used genetic information to formulate fast diagnostic tests.

In the meantime, sequencing was put to use to track viral mutations — beginning with studies published in February 2020 demonstrating that the virus was spreading in the U.S. This kind of work falls within the realm of genomic epidemiology, or “gen epi,” as those in the field tend to call it. Many of the insights date to the mid-1990s and a group of researchers in Oxford, England, Holmes among them. They perceived that following evolutionary changes in viruses that gain lasting mutations every 10 days (like the flu) or every 20 days (like Ebola) was inherently similar to — and, as we now know, inherently more useful than — following them in animals, where evolution might occur over a million years.

An early hurdle was the tedious nature of the work. The Oxford group had to analyze genetic markers through a slow and deliberate process that could provide insight into a few dozen characteristics of each new variant. It wasn’t until the late 2000s that drastic improvements in genetic-sequencing machines, aided by huge leaps in computing power, allowed researchers to more easily and quickly read the complete genetic codes of viruses, as well as the genetic blueprint for humans, animals, plants and microbes.

In the sphere of public health, one of the first big breakthroughs enabled by faster genomic sequencing came in 2014, when a team at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard began sequencing samples of the Ebola virus from infected victims during an outbreak in Africa. The work showed that, by contrasting genetic codes, hidden pathways of transmission could be identified and interrupted, with the potential for slowing (or even stopping) the spread of infection. It was one of the first real-world uses of what has come to be called genetic surveillance. A few years later, doctors toting portable genomic sequencers began tracking the Zika virus around Central and South America. Sequencers were getting better, faster and easier to use.

To many, the most familiar faces of this technology are clinical testing companies, which use sequencing machines to read portions of our genetic code (known as “panels” or “exomes”) to investigate a few crucial genes, like those linked to a higher risk of breast cancer. But more profound promises of genome sequencing have been accumulating stealthily in recent years, in fields from personal health to cultural anthropology to environmental monitoring. Crispr, a technology reliant on sequencing, gives scientists the potential to repair disease-causing mutations in our genomes. “Liquid biopsies,” in which a small amount of blood is analyzed for DNA markers, offer the prospect of cancer diagnoses long before symptoms appear. The Harvard geneticist George Church told me that one day sensors might “sip the air” so that a genomic app on our phones can tell us if there’s a pathogen lurking in a room. Sequencing might even make it possible to store any kind of data we might want in DNA — such an archival system would, in theory, be so efficient and dense as to be able to hold the entire contents of the internet in a pillowcase.

Historians of science sometimes talk about new paradigms, or new modes of thought, that change our collective thinking about what is true or possible. But paradigms often evolve not just when new ideas displace existing ones, but when new tools allow us to do things — or to see things — that would have been impossible to consider earlier. The advent of commercial genome sequencing has recently, and credibly, been compared to the invention of the microscope, a claim that led me to wonder whether this new, still relatively obscure technology, humming away in well-equipped labs around the world, would prove to be the most important innovation of the 21st century. Already, in Church’s estimation, “sequencing is 10 million times cheaper and 100,000 times higher quality than it was just a few years ago.” If a new technological paradigm is arriving, bringing with it a future in which we constantly monitor the genetics of our bodies and everything around us, these sequencers — easy, quick, ubiquitous — are the machines taking us into that realm.

And unexpectedly, Covid-19 has proved to be the catalyst. “What the pandemic has done is accelerate the adoption of genomics into infectious disease by several years,” says deSouza, the Illumina chief executive. He also told me he believes that the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of genomics into society more broadly — suggesting that quietly, in the midst of chaos and a global catastrophe, the age of cheap, rapid sequencing has arrived.

One morning last August, after the pandemic’s first wave had ebbed on the East Coast, I visited the New York Genome Center in Lower Manhattan to observe the process of genetic sequencing. On that day, lab technicians were working on a slew of SARS-CoV-2 samples taken from patients at New Jersey’s Hackensack University Medical Center. Dina Manaa, a lab manager at the center, handed me a blue lab coat upon my arrival. “I’ll walk you through the entire process,” Manaa said, and over the next 20 minutes, we went up and down the lab’s aisles as she explained the work.

The sequencing of a virus, much like the sequencing of human DNA from a cheek swab or a drop of blood, is painstaking. Samples are moved along what is essentially an assembly line: “weighed” on exquisitely sensitive “scales” to check the mass of the specimen; bathed with chemical solutions known as reagents; tagged with a “bar code” of genetic material so each sample can be individually tracked. Most of the preparations, Manaa explained, are about checking the quality of the virus sample and then amplifying its genetic material — in effect, transforming a tiny and invisible amount of the coronavirus extracted from a swab into vast quantities of DNA, all in preparation for being read and analyzed by a device built to do exactly that.

In another lab, Manaa paused by a row of five sleek and identical new machines, the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 — or “Nova-seeks,” as they’re called. These were similar to the machines used in China to sequence the virus for the first time, six months before. The NovaSeqs are about the size of an office photocopier and have few distinguishing features, apart from a large touch-screen interface and a vent pipe that rises from the back of the device to the ceiling. Each machine costs roughly $1 million; there are about 1,000 of them in the world right now. At a nearby lab bench, a technician named Berrin Baysa was pipetting minuscule amounts of clear, virus-laden solutions from one tube to another and moving her mixtures into small, spinning centrifuges. After nearly two days of preparation, these were the final steps for the Hackensack samples. At last, Baysa combined the tiny cocktails she had made by pouring them together into something known as a flow-cell, a flat glass cartridge about the size of an iPhone, containing four hollow chambers. She then carefully popped the flow cell into a drawer slot in a NovaSeq 6000.

Quietly, in the midst of chaos and a global catastrophe, the age of cheap, rapid sequencing has arrived.

“OK, keep your fingers crossed,” she said after punching some instructions into a touch-screen and then tapping “GO.” She held up both hands and crossed her own fingers.

For this particular task, it would take the machine two days to complete the readings, she said — meaning that at that point, the full genetic sequences of the virus would be ready for the “bioinformaticians,” who would look for patterns and variants in the samples.

The NovaSeqs represent the culmination of about two decades of technological development that in large part began with the Human Genome Project, which was completed in 2003 and funded mainly by the National Institutes of Health. The project showed that the human genome — “nature’s complete genetic blueprint for building a human being,” as the N.I.H. describes it — is composed of a sequence of about three billion “base pairs.” These are bonded chemicals coded as A, C, G and T, where A stands for adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine and T for thymine. The chemical pairs are frequently grouped together on our chromosomes, in about 30,000 information-dense strings, or clumps. The clumps are our genes.

The Human Genome Project required 13 years of work and cost more than $3 billion. Jeffery Schloss, who for many years oversaw technology grants at the National Human Genome Research Institute, a division of the N.I.H., told me that in 2002, he attended a meeting to map out the future of sequencing. “This had been a massive effort, to sequence the human genome,” Schloss recalls, “but we knew it was just the beginning of what we needed to do, which meant that sequencing had to change dramatically. And in the course of that meeting, some people brought up this crazy idea: What if you could sequence a big genome for a thousand dollars? What would that enable?”

Most of the scientists in Schloss’s circle believed it might lead to profound revelations. By studying the genomes of a large population of, say, Alzheimer’s patients, researchers might piece together how certain genes, or combinations of genes, could make someone more likely to become ill. In an even larger sweep, they might gain insights into the health or disease markers of entire population groups or countries. Sequencing might find uses beyond basic science — routine clinical scans for prenatal testing, say, or for genes known to increase the likelihood of certain cancers.

Schloss’s office invested $220 million in various start-ups and ideas over a period of about 15 years. The ultimate goal was to help bring down the cost, and raise the speed, of whole-genome sequencing. Even if the $1,000 genome remained out of reach, perhaps a new generation of machines might come close. “It was really unclear how long it would take for any of those to get into commercialization,” Schloss recalls. “They had to become commercially successful. It was all pretty uncertain.” Indeed, many of the sequencing start-ups from the early 2000s ultimately failed in the marketplace. A few, however, were subsumed into the core technology of other firms. A company known as Solexa, for instance, developed ingenious ideas — known as “sequencing by synthesis” — that involved measuring genetic samples optically, with fluorescent dyes that illuminated elements of DNA in the samples. That company was ultimately bought by another firm — Illumina, which quickly became a leader in the industry.

As machines improved, the impact was felt mainly in university labs, which had relied on a process called Sanger sequencing, developed in the mid-1970s by the Nobel laureate Frederick Sanger. This laborious technique, which involved running DNA samples through baths of electrically charged gels, was what the scientists at Oxford had depended upon in the mid-1990s; it was also what Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, was using in the early 2000s, as he and his lab partner, Tom Friedrich, tracked virus mutations. “The H.I.V. genome has about 10,000 letters,” O’Connor told me, which makes it simpler than the human genome (at three billion letters) or the SARS-CoV-2 genome (at about 30,000). “In an H.I.V. genome, when we first started doing it, we would be able to look at a couple hundred letters at a time.” But O’Connor says his work changed with the advent of new sequencing machines. By around 2010, he and Friedrich could decode 500,000 letters in a day. A few years later, it was five million.

By 2015, the pace of improvement was breathtaking. “When I was a postdoctoral fellow, I actually worked in Fred Sanger’s lab,” Tom Maniatis, the head of the New York Genome Center, told me. “I had to sequence a piece of DNA that was about 35 base pairs, and it took me a year to do that. And now, you can do a genome, with three billion base pairs, overnight.” Also astounding was the decrease in cost. Illumina achieved the $1,000 genome in 2014. Last summer, the company announced that its NovaSeq 6000 could sequence a whole human genome for $600; at the time, deSouza, Illumina’s chief executive, told me that his company’s path to a $100 genome would not entail a breakthrough, just incremental technical improvements. “At this point, there’s no miracle that’s required,” he said. Several of Illumina’s competitors — including BGI, a Chinese genomics company — have indicated that they will also soon achieve a $100 genome. Those in the industry whom I spoke with predicted that it may be only a year or two away.

These numbers don’t fully explain what faster speeds and affordability might portend. But in health care, the prospect of a cheap whole-genome test, perhaps from birth, suggests a significant step closer to the realization of personalized medicines and lifestyle plans, tailored to our genetic strengths and vulnerabilities. “When that happens, that’s probably going to be the most powerful and valuable clinical test you could have, because it’s a lifetime record,” Maniatis told me. Your complete genome doesn’t change over the course of your life, so it needs to be sequenced only once. And Maniatis imagines that as new information is accumulated through clinical studies, your physician, armed with new research results, could revisit your genome and discover, say, when you’re 35 that you have a mutation that’s going be a problem when you’re 50. “Really, that is not science fiction,” he says. “That is, I’m personally certain, going to happen.”

In some respects, it has begun already, even amid a public-health crisis. In January, the New York Genome Center began a partnership with Weill-Cornell and NewYork-Presbyterian hospitals to conduct whole-genome sequences on thousands of patients. Olivier Elemento, a doctor who leads the initiative at Weill-Cornell, told me that the goal is to see how a whole-genome sequence — not merely the identification of a few genetic traits — could inform diagnosis and treatment. What is the best medication based on a patient’s genome? What is the ideal dosage? “We’re trying to address a very important question that’s never been answered at this scale,” Elemento explained: “What is the utility of whole-genome sequencing?” He said he believed that within one or two years, the study would lead to an answer.

‘Sequencing is 10 million times cheaper and 100,000 times higher quality than it was just a few years ago.’

Some of the grandest hopes for sequencing have arisen from the notion that our genes are deterministic — and that by understanding our DNA’s code, we might limn our destiny. When an early reading of the human genome was unveiled in 2000, President Bill Clinton noted that we were getting a glimpse of “one of the most important, most wondrous maps ever produced by humankind.” But the map has often proved hard to read, its routes unclear. The past 20 years have demonstrated that inherited genes are just one aspect of a confounding system that’s not easily interpreted. The progress of using gene therapy to treat diseases, for instance, has been halting; it wasn’t until last year that physicians had a resounding success with a treatment on several patients with heritable genes for sickle-cell anemia. In the meantime, scientists have come to realize something else: A complex overlay of environmental and lifestyle factors, as well as our microbiomes, appear to have interconnected effects on health, development and behavior.

And yet, in the course of the past year, some of the extraordinary hopes for genomic sequencing did come true, but for an unexpected reason. During the summer and fall, I spoke frequently with executives at Illumina, as well as its competitor in Britain, Oxford Nanopore. It was clear that the pandemic had meant a startling interruption in their business, but at each company the top executives perceived the situation as an opportunity — the first pandemic in history in which genomic sequencing would inform our decisions and actions in real time.

From the start, the gen-epi community understood that the SARS-CoV-2 virus would form new variants every few weeks as it reproduced and spread; it soon became clear that it could develop one or more alterations (or mutations) at a time in the genome’s 30,000 base letters. Because of this insight, on Jan. 19, 2020, just over a week after the virus code was released to the world, scientists could look at 12 complete virus genomes shared from China and conclude that the fact that they were nearly identical meant that those 12 people had been infected around the same time and were almost certainly infecting one another. “That was something where the genomic epidemiology could help us to say, loudly, that human transmission was rampant, when it wasn’t really being acknowledged as it should have been,” Trevor Bedford, a scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, told me.

When Bedford’s lab began studying viral genomes in Seattle, he could go a step further. By late February, he concluded that new cases he was seeing were not just being imported to the U.S. from China. Based on observations of local mutations — two strains found six weeks apart looked too similar to be a coincidence — community transmission was happening here. On Feb. 29, Bedford put up a Twitter post that noted, chillingly, “I believe we’re facing an already substantial outbreak in Washington State that was not detected until now.” His proof was in the code.

Bedford’s lab was one of many around the world that began tracking the virus’s evolution and sharing it in global databases. In the meantime, gen-epi researchers used sequencing for local experiments too. In the spring of 2020, a team of British scientists compared virus sequences sampled from ill patients at a single hospital to see if their infections came from one another or from elsewhere. “We were able to generate data that were useful in real time,” Esteé Torok, an academic physician at the University of Cambridge who helped lead the research, told me. “And in an ideal world, you could do that every day.” In other words, sequencing had advanced from a few years ago, when scientists might publish papers a year after an outbreak, to the point that genetic epidemiologists could compare mutations in a specific location in order to be able to raise alarms — We have community spread! Patients on Floor 3 are transmitting to Floor 5! — and act immediately.

To watch the pandemic unfold from the perspective of those working in the field of genomics was to see both the astounding power of new sequencing tools and the catastrophic failure of the American public-health system to take full advantage of them. At the end of July, the National Academy of Sciences released a report noting that advances in genomic sequencing could enable our ability “to break or delay virus transmission to reduce morbidity and mortality.” And yet the report scathingly noted that sequencing endeavors for the coronavirus were “patchy, typically passive, reactive, uncoordinated and underfunded.” Every scientist I spoke with understood that the virus could evolve into dangerous new variants; it was many months before one in particular, known as B.1.1.7, emerged and demonstrated that it was more transmissible and most likely more deadly. Researchers were similarly worried that our sequencing efforts to track the pathways of infection — unlike more serious and government-supported efforts in Britain or Australia — were flailing.

One of the Biden administration’s approaches to slowing the pandemic has been to invest $200 million in sequencing virus samples from those who test positive. With the recent approval of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, a further $1.75 billion will be allocated to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support genomic sequencing and disease surveillance.

In late January, the C.D.C. began disbursing money to public-health laboratories around the country to bolster the sequencing work already being done at academic labs. But the effort was starting from a low baseline. One calculation in The Washington Post noted that the United States had ranked 38th globally in terms of employing sequencing during the pandemic; as of mid-February, the U.S. was still trying to catch up to many European and Asian countries. And it therefore couldn’t be said that new or dangerous variants weren’t landing on our shores or emerging here afresh. What could be said is that we were unable to know.

One day sensors might ‘sip the air’ so that a genomic app on our phones can tell us if there’s a pathogen lurking in a room.

One day at the New York Genome Center, a researcher named Neville Sanjana told me that he thinks of genetic sequencers not as a typical invention but as a kind of “platform technology.” The phrase resonates among those who study innovation. Such technological leaps are rare. They represent breakthroughs that give rise to “platforms” — cellphones, say, or web browsers — that in time revolutionize markets and society.

The immense value of a platform innovation is related to how it can be adapted for a range of uses that are unforeseen at its inception. It can be like a toolbox, waiting at the back of a closet. What happened with sequencing during the pandemic serves as a good example. Another is Sanjana’s work on new Crispr technologies, which he uses to modify or repair strings of DNA to better understand the genetic basis of human disease. Twenty years ago, when officials at the N.I.H. talked about investing in the future of sequencing, altering the human, plant or animal genome on a regular basis was not something they could have predicted. But Crispr requires Sanjana to constantly evaluate his editing by using sequencers — usually a desktop Illumina model, in his case — to check the results. “It would be impossible to do these experiments otherwise,” he says.

It has been the case historically that platform innovations don’t merely create new applications. They create new industries. And while countless genomics companies have already sprung up, for now just four companies run most of the sequencing analyses in the world. These are Illumina and Pacific Biosciences, based in the United States; Oxford Nanopore Technologies, based in Britain; and China’s BGI Group.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, Illumina controls roughly 90 percent of the market for sequencing machines in the U.S., and by the company’s own assessment, it compiles 80 percent of the genomic information that exists in the world in a given year. It is sometimes described as the Google of the genomics business, not only because of its huge market share but also because of its products’ ability to “search” our complete genetic makeup. In short, it dominates the business. Last year, the firm took in over $3 billion in revenue and about $650 million in net income. In its hunger for expansion, the company has recently made a run of acquisitions. In late September, for example, Illumina announced that it intended to acquire, for $8 billion, a biotech company called Grail, which has created a genomic test that runs on an Illumina sequencer and that an early study suggests can successfully detect more than 50 types of cancers from a small sample of blood. On a recent corporate earnings call, deSouza called Grail and early cancer detection “by far the largest clinical application of genomics we’re likely to see over the next decade or two.”

As the pandemic unfolded, I spoke often to genomics executives about which industries could be transformed by their technologies and how their machines would be deployed in the years to come. One model for the future was built around the strengths of Illumina — big machines like the NovaSeq, with an extraordinary capacity for sequencing, housed in central testing labs (as they are now) and run by specialists. But a very different set of ideas emerges from one of Illumina’s main competitors, Oxford Nanopore. Oxford’s sequencers involve a technology that is electronic rather than optical; it is based on the concept of moving a sample of DNA through tiny holes — nanopores — in a membrane. The device measures how genetic material (extracted from a sample of blood, say) reacts to an electric current during the process, and it registers the letter sequence — A, G, C, T — accordingly. One distinctive feature is that a nanopore device can read longer threads of DNA than an Illumina device, which can be helpful for some applications. It can also give readouts in real time.

Yet the biggest difference may be its portability. In 2015, Oxford Nanopore began selling a sampling and sequencing gadget called the Minion (pronounced MIN-eye-on) for $1,000. It is smaller than a small iPhone. The chief executive of Oxford Nanopore, Gordon Sanghera, told me he sees his company’s tool as enabling a future in which sequencing insights can be derived during every minute of every day. Inspection officers working in meatpacking plants would get results about pathogenic infection in minutes; surveyors doing environmental monitoring or wastewater analysis can already do the same. Your dentist might one day do a check of your oral microbiome during a regular visit, or your oncologist might sequence your blood once a month to see if you’re still in remission. A transplantation specialist might even check, on the spot, about the genomic compatibility of an organ donation. “The company’s ethos,” Sanghera says, “is the analysis of anything, by anyone, anywhere.” Indeed, there happens to be a Minion on the International Space Station right now.

The technology, compared with Illumina’s, is considered by most scientists I spoke with to be less accurate, but it has advantages beyond those that Sanghera mentioned. It was the Minion that enabled scientists to test for diseases like Zika without any infrastructure beyond a laptop; more recently, it’s what allowed Esteé Torok and other researchers in Britain to track viral mutations in real time in a hospital. “That ability to do sequencing in the field, even in rural Africa, has opened up possibilities that were never previously even envisioned,” Eric Green, who runs the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the N.I.H., told me recently.

Bringing the equivalent of an iPhone into genomics may not effect a revolution overnight. Sanghera doesn’t imagine that big central testing labs, or Illumina, could fade away anytime soon; indeed, his own company markets a line of large sequencers for big labs, too. And for sure, related technologies can coexist, much like cloud computing and desktop computing, especially if they solve different problems. For now, Sanghera regards the coronavirus, and the surveillance efforts in Britain and the U.S. that are increasing demand for his company’s products, as hastening the culture’s genomic transition. He said he sees no obstacle to a $100 whole human-genome sequence in the near future. His company, he told me, is also working with a new chip that may eventually bring down the cost to $10.

It seems beyond debate that the pandemic has demonstrated that we can benefit from genomic sequences even before we fully unravel all their mysteries. We can use them as a sort of global alarm system, for instance, much as they were used by Eddie Holmes and Yong-Zhen Zhang when they shared the SARS-CoV-2 sequence in January 2020. As it happens, there are a variety of different surveillance efforts underway, some driven by health agencies and others by academics, that would go much further than simply posting a sequence on a website — efforts that would share critical public-health information faster and, more broadly, might be useful for another new coronavirus, a deadly influenza strain or even a bioterror attack.

Pardis Sabeti, a geneticist at Harvard, told me that last May she received a philanthropic grant to help develop and deploy a pandemic “pre-emption” network called Sentinel. “We’ve always aimed for that ability to do surveillance,” she told me, adding that the goal of Sentinel would be to use genomic technologies everywhere — in rural clinics in Europe, villages in Africa, cities in China — to detect familiar pathogens within a single day of their appearance and novel pathogens within a week. The system would then race to share the data, via mobile networks, with health workers and communities so as to elicit a rapid response: travel restrictions, quarantines, medicine. Anything necessary to break chains of transmission. With a virus that spreads exponentially, a day could matter. A week could mean the difference between a small but deadly outbreak and a global cataclysm. (The time between the first case of Covid-19 and the release of the sequence of the virus was most likely about two months.)

As successive waves of the pandemic washed over the world, I noticed that the buzzword at the sequencing companies also became “surveillance.” For the most part, it meant tracking new variants and using sequencing codes to help reveal paths and patterns of transmission. Yet surveillance sometimes seemed a flexible concept, given that Illumina and Oxford Nanopore were selling flexible machines. Surveillance could mean the search for the next novel virus in Asia or even early cancer detection in our bodies. And it sometimes meant mass testing too. Last year, both deSouza and Sanghera successfully adapted their companies’ machines to do clinical diagnostic tests for the coronavirus; the goal was to step in and help increase global testing capacity at a moment when many medical facilities were overwhelmed by the demand.

In many respects, a genetic sequencer is over-engineered for the task of simply testing for a virus. A P.C.R. machine is faster, cheaper and less complex. And yet there are potential advantages to the sequencer. Illumina eventually won emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration for a diagnostic test for the NovaSeq that can run about 3,000 swab samples, simultaneously, over the course of 12 hours. Thus, a single machine could do 6,000 coronavirus tests per day. Two hundred NovaSeqs could do more than a million. In addition to this immense capacity, it’s viable to test for the virus and sequence the virus at the same time: An analysis run on a sequencer could inform patients whether they have the virus, and the anonymized sequencing data on positive samples could give public-health agencies a huge amount of epidemiology data for use in tracking variants. “I can envision a world where diagnosis and sequencing are kind of one and the same,” Bronwyn MacInnis, who directs pathogen genomic surveillance at the Broad Institute, told me. “We’re not there yet, but we’re not a million miles off, either.”

Last summer, a few big clinical laboratories, notably Ginkgo Bioworks in Boston, began plans to roll out tests for Illumina sequencers, pending authorization from the F.D.A. Ginkgo, with help from investments from Illumina, as well as a grant from the N.I.H., began building a huge new laboratory next to its current one, where the company would install 10 NovaSeqs. “After we get the big facility built, that’s when we’d be trying to hit 100,000 tests a day,” Jason Kelly, Ginkgo’s chief executive, told me at the time. It was technically possible to sequence many of the positive coronavirus samples, too, he said.

When I asked Kelly what he would do if his capacity goes unused, he didn’t seem concerned. He doubted his sequencers would be idle. “By betting on sequencers as our Covid response,” he remarked, “we get flexibility for what you can use this for later.” After the pandemic, in other words, there will still be new strains of flu and other viruses to code. There will be a backlog of sequencing work for cancer and prenatal health and rare genetic diseases. There will be an ongoing surveillance effort for SARS-CoV-2 variants. An even bigger job, moreover, involves a continuing project to sequence untold strains of microbes, a project that Ginkgo has been involved with in search of new pharmaceuticals. “I think of this as like building fiber in the late 1990s, for the internet,” Kelly said. “Back then, we laid down huge amounts of fiber, then everything crashed.”

But it turned out that a decade after the dot-com crash, optical fiber was essential for the expanding traffic of the web. And what Kelly seemed to be saying, I later realized, was that he would expand his lab because sequencing had to be the future, in all kinds of different ways. There was no going back.

Opening illustration includes a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 genome released to the public in 2020.

Jon Gertner is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of “The Ice at the End of the World.” He writes frequently about science and technology, including features on Tesla and Climeworks, a Swiss company that is removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

#dna #sequencing #revolution #help #fight #covid #genome #technology #tool #key #variants #code #tech

The post A DNA Sequencing Revolution Helped Us Fight Covid. What Else Can It Do? appeared first on Good News!.

Under the Regional Law, PromoTurismoFVG, in collaboration with ERSA, is the chosen organisation for the Trail’s complete management and coordination of all members. Thereby making Friuli Venezia Giulia the only region in Italy, at this time, to have a single organisation managing the wine trail projects and undertaking all actions related to the operation with its own internal resources. To this effect, PromoTurismoFVG receives funding from the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia and uses it to fulfil the purposes of the system and the operators that belong to it.

The “Tastes of Friuli Venezia Giulia Food and Wine Tour” project also brings another important change to the Italian wine tourism world: Friuli Venezia Giulia is in fact the first region in Italy to regulate (art. 6 of the Regional Law 22/2015) the administration of traditional agro-food production, and speciality and quality non-cooked production along with tastings during wine cellar visits.

The SVS aims to give tourists a true holiday experience, surrounded by the wine and food of Friuli Venezia Giulia, just like a genuine, authentic and quality sample of the “Made in Italy” taste. Among the targets of SVS are the creation of products and bespoke services for the wine-tourist, organised either individually or in groups, the development of activities related to wine and other local products, the implementation of promotional activities aimed at placing the offer in the market, the communication and promotion of a single receptacle that holds all of what the region and its partners have to offer, the integration of the SVS contents with PromoTurismoFVG’s sales promotion strategy and all regional partners’ strategies.

The key word characterising SVS’s first actions is synergy: in fact, PromoTurismoFVG has worked closely with a work group, composed of the regional food and wine world’s main players, to build a product that can easily be shared within the region. The fruits of our labour came from the
experience and work done when managing the previous tourist wine trail..

SVS, which involves the community as a whole, is not a physical journey but a single receptacle in which six different life experiences areprovided in related areas, which will benefit from unique promotion.
The following categories and subjects can only, and exclusively, join Tastes of Friuli Venezia Giulia Food and Wine Tour: wineries, i.e. cooperative wine cellars and private wine producers; agro-tourism operators with accommodation and board or one of the two activities; restaurants, trattorias, osterias with kitchen, restaurants located in hotels of at least 3 stars; farms producing and processing traditional food products. From 2018, membership of the following will be available: tasting shops, bars and other similar places with or without kitchen (bars, breweries, bakeries, cafes, wineries); arts and crafts companies which focus on items linked to the rural, wine and food world, food and wine museums, eco-museums and structures with inherent local traditions linked to food, wine and craft products; the environment, culture and infrastructure of artistic and cultural interests or parks; service companies (travel agents, tour operators, transport hire firms, cooperatives of tour guides) and professionals and entertainers linked to tourism, culture and local traditions

The “Tastes of Friuli Venezia Giulia Food and Wine Tour” participants benefit from promotion provided by PromoTurismoFVG, which includes web marketing, media relations, advertising investments, participation in trade fairs and specific marketing aimed at improving the identification and enhancement of structures. SVS will also have a logo and corporate image.
To ensure a high standard of quality, the required minimum qualities for participating are listed in
individual membership cards, by each category.
These requirements, along with other relevant details as to how SVS operates, can be found within the regulations that govern the project.

The post The regional revolution of food and wine tourism: the “Tastes of Friuli Venezia Giulia Food and Wine Tour,” Click Here for Videos & Podcasts… appeared first on Good News!.

Wed, July 26, 2017
2:00 PM – 9:00 PM PDT
Add to Calendar

Pasadena Convention Center
300 E. Green St.
Pasadena, CA 91101

SPEAKER BIOS
HOLLYWOOD-CHINA DEALS
Max Epstein, Vice President, DMG Entertainment
Mark Rafalowski, EVP-International Distribution, Dick Clark Productions
William Pfeiffer, Executive Chairman & Co-founder, Global Gate Entertainment
Sarah Platt, International Business Development, Wanda Studios
David Uslan, Partner, Uslan Entertainment
Eric Mika, Senior VP, LeEco
Tom McGrath, COO, STX Entertainment
Moderator: Robert Cain, Partner, Pacific Bridge Partners

DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT INNOVATION & INVESTMENT
Marc Jackson, Managing Director/Founder, Seahorn Capital Group
Chang Xu, Investor, Upfront Ventures
Bert Reuler, Global Product Lead, Emerging Tech, Mattel
Gary Kho, CMO & CTO, Wanda Studios Qingdao
Moderator: Danny Le, Partner, KPMG
TECH CHATS: VR – LA to CHINA
Shiraz Akmal, CEO & Co-founder, Spaces
Pete Blumel, CEO, The Rogue Initiative
Isaac Yang, Partner, China Big Time Fund
Ryan Wang, Co-founder & General Partner, Outpost Capital
Azel James, VP of Content, Immerex Inc.
EB-5 FINANCING & ECONOMIC IMPACT
Kevin Wright, Consultant, Baker Tilly Capital
Jor Law, Co-founder, Homeier Law & VerifyInvestor.com
Christine Lu, Co-founder & Partner, America Innovates
Tyler Rooker, China Investment Manager, Gemdale USA Corp.
Moderator: Justin Thompson, Partner – Real Estate Practice Group, Nixon Peabody

VIDEO CLIP
Peter Crosby, Producer, Return to the Belly of the Dragon
MC: Rebecca Fannin, Founder/Editor, Silicon Dragon
2:30pm – 6pm Forum at Pasadena Convention Center
6 – 7 pm VIP Reception: Gold Room, Pasadena (VIP tickets only)
7:30 pm – 9pm Rooftop Party, Downtown LA
(included in forum ticket)
Thanks to Sponsors: KPMG, Nixon Peabody, Pasadena Economic Development
Supporters: Pasadena Economic Development, PlusYoou, Plug and Play, Innovate Pasadena, N3XTCON, LAEDC, CIE, Geoskope, America Innovates
Media Partners: Forbes, Variety, China Daily, Startup Digest, Crowdfund Beat, LA Tech Digest, Twitter, WeChat, BeFast.TV

Silicon Dragon
Organizer of Silicon Dragon LA 2017 + VIP Reception + Rooftop Party
Organizer Website
Silicon Dragon publishes news of technology, venture capital and startup trends in emerging markets and hosts forums in innovation hubs. Forums are held regularly in New York, Silicon Valley, London, Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangalore.
Silicon Dragon was formed in 2010 by Forbes journalist, author and media entrepreneur Rebecca Fannin. Ms. Fannin has been covering tech innovations trends globally for 15 years, beginning with Red Herring magazine during the dotcom era. She is the author of two influential and well-received books, Silicon Dragon (McGraw-Hill, 2008) and Startup Asia (Wiley, 2011).
Silicon Dragon spans a global network of 15,000 startups, emerging companies, venture capitalists, angel investors and startup stakeholders. The group is based in Silicon Valley with offshoots in New York City and Hong Kong.
For more info, see:
www.silicondragonventures.com
and
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccafannin/
@rfannin
@silicondragon

Silicon Dragon comes to New York, June 21, NASDAQ funders event. Rebecca Fannin shares her Good News.
June 21

at Nasdaq, Times Square 2pm – 6pm

Plus After-Event Reception with Food & Drinks

Celebrate Summer on The Terrace!

757 Third Ave. Grant Thornton 6pm – 8pm

PROGRAM

New York’s Global

Innovation Revolution (bet you didn’t know there was one!)

PITCHES

VC JUDGING

$200K AWARD
VC PANEL M&A DEALS PANEL TECH CHATS BOOK TALKS TECHNION IN NY

NY’s TOP VCs

JUDGE THE PITCH CONTEST

Jim Robinson RRE Ventures Brian Cohen NY Angels

AFTER-EVENT

RECEPTION: 6-8pm

Where: Grant Thornton on the terrace

757 Third Ave.

For skeptics of New York City’s startup scene, it helps to have a close-up view. Rather than look at things through the lens of Silicon Valley, the Big Apple has developed its own brand of startups.

Of course, this has long been called Silicon Alley. That used to mean mostly startups centered on advertising, media and e-commerce.

But today, it’s branched out to artificial intelligence, biotech, virtual reality, fintech, natural drinks, livestreaming content and mobile app for foodies, sports and drivers looking for a parking space.

Just like Stanford, Berkeley and UC Davis fed entrepreneurial talent to the Bay Area, it’s Columbia, NYU, Princeton and Cornell in New York that are churning out a new generation of well-educated and well-rounded techies.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg put this startup movement into action — and the new Technion-Cornell Institute that is opening up on Roosevelt Island is just one example. Indeed, Silicon Alley is much broader than the area around the Flat Iron district where it grew up the late 1990s Internet boom.

Silicon Dragon has been involved in this ramp-up too, holding a pitch contest at Nasdaq MarketSite June 21 for the best and brightest up and comers in the city.

Read Forbes post: Does NYC have what it takes?

DEALS & FUNDS

Chinese bicycle sharing app MoBike has raised $600 million in a Series E round from lead existing investor Tencent and Sequoia Capital China to aim (amazingly) to bring the station-less bikes to 200 cities globally by end of 2017. Mobike has raised nearly $1 billion since October 2016. The race is among China’s bike-sharing rivals to ramp up the fastest.

VC deals in the transit sector are where it’s at. Chinese used car trading platform Quiza has raised $400 million in a second round from Sequoia Capital China (again!), Matrix Partners, BlueRun Ventures and Hive Capital. Used car sales are on the upswing in China as first-time drivers upgrade to their next model.

NOTEWORTHY

In a quantum leap forward, Chinese scientists have come up with a breakthrough satellite and physics technology that could lead to an ‘unhackable’ global communications network. Even the Pentagon described the advance as “notable.”

China’s detention of the chairman of Anbang Insurance Group and Chinese banks’ curbs on sales of the company’s investment products could ripple through the country’s financial system. The crackdown comes as Anbang has been testing the limits on expansion and funding sources in a global M&A shopping spree that included the iconic Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York in 2014 and talks to buy a Manhattan office tower from Jared Kushner’s family.

Even the Vatican has gotten into startups! Inspired by the Pope’s call for tech startups to do more social good and fight climate change, Fresco Capital founder Steven Forte started a two-month accelerator program in Rome that includes $100,000 in equity financing and a demo day in December at the Vatican. Honolulu-based agtech startup Smart Yields made the first cut and is headed to Rome.

Michael Bloomberg

The Asia Society of New York hosted a summit discussing the Belt and Road Initiative. Speakers included Michael R. Bloomberg, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and former mayor of New York City, Kevin Rudd, president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, Ambassador Cui Tiankai, current ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the U.S., and C.H. Tung, vice chairman of the Twelfth National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
Check out Bloomberg’s remarks on climate change and a full video of the Asia Society program. It was a packed house!

UPDATE: The Clock is Ticking!

SILICON DRAGON’S PITCH CONTEST

June 21 at Nasdaq

15 FOUNDERS HAVE WON THE CHANCE TO PITCH

Judges Q&A, Audience Feedback

Winners will be announced on stage, June 21

2 Finalists go to Beijing August 18 to compete globally

Global champion wins funding of up to $200,000 ++

Buy A Ticket

To Watch The Show LIVE

WINNER OF THE SILICON DRAGON PITCH CONTEST 2016

The post Silicon Dragon, LA 2017, Video and Podcast are Here… appeared first on Good News!.

NEW YORK–October 19, 2016. For Immediate Release: On the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 the Hungarian Consulate General in New York, the Hungarian Cultural Center, and the Glowing Bulbs Visual Arts Collective are engaging in a major undertaking by bringing the legacy of the Revolution to the public — the universal message of freedom and self-determination.

Media Representatives were invited to attend the following events Additionally, media is welcomed to use this footage, please let us know at paul.sladkus@goodnewsbroadcast.com. Technical Note: The sun shined brilliantly that day and created sun spots in the camera on some stories, as God shined down to strengthen the message of Freedom. Freedom is a right along with peace and by listening to many of the interviews of Freedom Fighters you will hear how important it is. Thanks. Paul

October 22, 6:30 pm. Reception at the Hungarian Consulate. 22 East 52d Street.

A reception marking the Hungarian National Day Anniversary will be held at the Hungarian Consulate General, 227 East 52d Street, NYC. This will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Revolution, with Hungarian American organizations and representatives of the Hungarian Government in New York.

NOTE: Reservations are required: jg@phoenixventures.net

October 22. 8:00 pm. Video Mapping in DUMBO. Pearl Street Triangle.

A large scale video mapping installation in DUMBO will tower above the Pearl Street Triangle, at a height of over 90 feet, using state of the art video mapping technology, bringing to life the heroic story of the historical events that toppled an oppressive Stalinist regime to achieve self-determination, freedom and democracy. The area of DUMBO, Brooklyn, at the heart of New York City’s video mapping scene, has emerged as a premier art center.

October 23, at 12:30 pm

A public event will take place at Riverside Park and 113th Street, when a new permanent memorial honoring the freedom fighters of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, will be presented. Survivors of the Revolution, as well as public officials and dignitaries, will participate in the dedication ceremony.

October 23, at 4:00 pm. Gerald W Lynch Theatre at John Jay College 524 West 59th, NY.

The Spirit of Hungary, Performance by the Hungarian National Dance Ensemble.
Witness the debut of the brand new show of Hungary’s pre-mier folk dance company featuring contemporary and thematic dances of the revolution, created especially for the anniversary.

According to Ambassador Ferenc Kumin, Consul General of Hungary in New York, “America has a direct connection to the Hungarian Revolution and its aftermath. After the Freedom Fighters were defeated by the overwhelming force of Soviet troops and tanks, over 200,000 Hungarians fled their homeland to avoid imprisonment. This included hundreds of students who would have made major contributions to a democratic country. About 40,000 persons found new homes in this country, which offered them welcome and refuge.”

CONTACT:

Reka Virag Csaba, Hungarian Consulate. 646.233.6079
Jerry Goodman, Strategy XXI. 917.847.2980
Paul Sladkus Strategy XXI 917.687.1790

The post VIDEO – Hungarian Consulate Organizes Reception and Manhattan Bridge Video Celebration Commemorating 60th Anniversary of 1956 Hungarian Revolution–October 22-23, 2016 appeared first on Good News!.

“A fascinating book!”
–Dillard’s Chairman and CEO Bill Dillard

“An enjoyable and engaging book written by a man
it is a privilege to know and work with.”
–Madison Murphy, chairman of Murphy USA

“It’s a story as American as apple pie.”
–Gen. (ret.) Wesley K. Clark, former NATO
Supreme Allied Commander

“The book’s prologue, in fact, opens on Sept. 14,
2001, and Morgan describes the building of The
Bad Guys Database. Passages like the following
make the book a page-turner: ‘Data mining is the
new gold rush, and we were there at first strike,
dragging with us all our human frailties and
foibles. In this book’s cast of characters you’ll find
ambition, arrogance, jealousy, pride, fear,
recklessness, anger, lust, viciousness, greed,
revenge, betrayal—and then some.’ There’s
more—oh, so much more—to the memoir,
including juicy bits about a fierce proxy battle with
Acxiom’s largest institutional shareholder”
–ArkansasBusiness.com

Corporations, marketers, and governments are exploring the practical and legal limits of collecting and utilizing Big Data. One man began thinking about its value decades before anyone else, and he’s revealing his professional insights, personal experiences, and career triumphs in a new book, Matters of Life and Data: The Remarkable Journey of a Big Data Visionary Whose Work Impacted Millions –Including You (Morgan James, ISBN: 978-1-63047-467-6; Cloth; 320 pages; $24.95; July 6, 2015).

“The man who opened your lives to Big Data finally bares his own,” reads the introduction to this most stirring memoir. Indeed, he has much to share, as Morgan, 72, should know a few things about Big Data. The company he helped grow into a technology and marketing powerhouse, Acxiom, is a world leader in data gathering and its accompanying technology, and has collected over 1,500 separate pieces of information on some half a billion people around the globe.

His book recounts and celebrates a journey from his modest upbringing in a small town on the Arkansas River to his role as one of America’s all-time Big Data visionaries. During his 36-year tenure, Morgan grew a small data processing firm of 25 employees into a global juggernaut by becoming one of the largest aggregators of data and consumer information in the world. He transformed the small data processing company into a publicly held, $1.4 billion corporation with 7,000 employees and offices throughout the world.
Other topics covered in his book include insights from his current experiences as a serial entrepreneur – founding, leading, and serving his many ventures that include PrivacyStar, a technology solution to support consumer privacy in mobile, and Querencia, a luxury golf and residential community in Los Cabos, consistently named a top course in Mexico by Golf Digest.

Morgan is available to discuss the challenges of Big Data, including:
* How he mined Big Data to assist the FBI in a post-9/11 terrorist investigation
* How to strike a balance between a company’s needs and a consumer’s interests
* How to maximize value from data
* How to serve the government’s security needs while protecting a citizen’s privacy
* How to integrate Big Data technology with existing infrastructure at a company
* Ways to balance and address risk and governance issues

He also addresses some unique approaches taken at Acxiom, including how he:
* Tore down 13 layers of organizational management and did away with all job titles
* Helped the company avert bankruptcy by imposing massive temporary pay cuts
* Made Acxiom the first technology company to create the position of Chief Privacy Officer (after a
breach with Citibank)Led the database giant’s transformation into a digital marketing company

His book explains how he was inspired by his hardware-store-owning great-grandfather, and how he learned about running a business when he worked as a boy at his parents’ motel after school and on weekends. After getting his degree in mechanical engineering in 1966, his first job was at the Little Rock office of IBM, where he quickly became the state’s top systems engineer.

Morgan also shares scores of leadership tips, insights on handling growth, managing a corporate culture that continually expands through acquisitions, and stories of how his growing database company once ran the most advanced data mining system of its time. Its then-revolutionary List Order Fulfillment System (LOFS) helped manage the subscription mailing lists of Fortune and Life magazines and helped 14 of the 15 largest credit card companies reach out to consumers to sign them up for millions of credit cards. In 1994, the Sales & Marketing Executives Association named Morgan Manager of the Year. In 1996, Fortune named Acxiom one of the “100 Best Companies To Work For,” and in the late 1990s Working Woman named it one of the nation’s “Top 100 Companies.”

Morgan took the company public by age 40 and oversaw significant growth. Annual revenue grew from 7 million to 90 million dollars from 1982-1992 and then it grew to more than a billion by the end of the 1990s. Morgan retired from the firm in 2007 after a buyout deal with Value Act and another private equity firm fell through.

His book also speaks with surprising candor about his messy divorce—so messy that Oprah invited him to discuss it on her show (he declined). After his divorce was final, he married his present wife of nearly two decades, a former Miss Arkansas USA. He also discusses his other love—racing cars. Though he crashed and landed in a trauma unit more than once, he was willing to pay the price to get the rush of going over 200 miles per hour. He also won 19 races, including the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Daytona.

Though Morgan candidly admits to “wrestling with questions of leadership” and “making bad decisions,” he brings forth an honest look at a legendary career, a successful company, and a passionate private life.

Charles D. Morgan
Biography

Charles D. Morgan is the CEO of First Orion Corp., a private company that developed and markets PrivacyStar, an application that helps protect mobile phone users’ privacy. He is also an equity owner of Bridgehampton Capital Management LLC, for which he also serves as chairman of its advisory board and co-manager of investments.

His memoir, Matters of Life and Data: The Remarkable Journey of a Big Data Visionary Whose Work Impacted Millions (Including You) will be published by Morgan James (July 2015).

Morgan has extensive experience managing and investing in private and public companies, including Acxiom Corporation, the information services company where he served as CEO from 1972 to 2008, and that he helped grow from an early-stage company to an international corporation generating $1.4 billion in annual revenue. The New York Times cited Acxiom as “a top performer in the late 1990s” and both Fortune and Working Mom said it was “one of the best places to work” at that time.

Morgan has served on the board and in various leadership roles with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), including as its board chairman in 2001. Prior to joining the company that became Acxiom, Morgan was employed by IBM as a systems engineer, and he holds a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Arkansas.

He is on the board of INUVO, Inc., a public company focused on simplifying performance-based advertising. He also serves as a member—and is the past chairman of the board of trustees—of Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. Morgan is also chairman of the board of Querencia, a private golf development and golf course in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

A lifelong lover of auto racing, Morgan has participated on both the amateur and professional circuits. He has built and driven his own race car, competed against the best in the world, and has driven to 19 professional victories. He and his wife, Susie, a former Miss Arkansas USA, live in Little Rock, Arkansas. They have three children and seven grandchildren.

For more information, please consult http://www.mattersoflifeanddata.com/

Charles D. Morgan
Q & A
Matters of Life and Data

1. How can we protect the privacy of individuals but still allow companies to benefit from the use of Big Data? Big Data has the potential to do a great deal of good in our world today and for many years to come. On the other hand, Big Data will create a lot privacy issues. Today, much more data is being recorded about each of us than you might imagine. In February 2015, for example, Samsung admitted that their new TVs will be collecting data about the people who watch them. That data will include voice data (what you say about what you are watching), picture data (your expressions as you watch), and viewing data. Samsung of course claims that this data will only be used to improve the quality of the overall experience of using their product. Do I believe them? I don’t doubt that this is what they intended these data-collection TVs to do, but it sure doesn’t take much imagination to see a great potential for misuse of such data. We will never be able to write enough laws to totally solve this problem. We cannot stop companies from using data that improves the quality of products and services. However, we must somehow protect ourselves from misuse. At Acxiom, our motto was “consumer privacy is a state of mind.” It didn’t matter if something was legal; the question should be posed, “Is this right? Is this the way we would want to have our data collected and used?” Companies have to have education programs for their employees and create that state of mind—that the security of people’s personal data is important to our whole society.

2. If you were to advise an entrepreneur looking to launch a company today, what three things would you share? By their very nature most entrepreneurs are very optimistic people. When they have an idea, they believe that it can be developed and made commercial with much less effort than it generally takes. My executive summary is this: It’s going to be a lot harder and take a lot longer than they could ever imagine. First, entrepreneurs must be sure that the product they have is real and the plan they have is real. By that, I mean that the product and plan can be converted into a commercial success. It’s very easy for people to fall in love with their own ideas and to want to ignore all the pitfalls and the downsides. A product plan and a marketing plan are essential to test the basics of whether this thing that they’ve come up with is even practical. Marketing is where most plans fail to be realistic. For example, be sure the cost of acquiring new customers is real. Second, I would say that when you’ve convinced yourself that this new idea of yours has potential, then try to enlist the support of others. No person by himself is going to be successful developing an entrepreneurial idea. It takes a lot of people, and all those people have got to believe strongly in the concept that is being developed. If enlisting others is impossible—or even very difficult—then examine once again the practicality of the whole business idea. Finally, and most importantly, the developer has to be sure that he or she has access to adequate capital to develop the business. All too often people think they’ll be able to get more money after they show how cool their idea is. Most often that additional money is never found and the team just wasted a lot of their own money and some of their friends’ money. Best rule: Line up two times the money you need to get to phase 1—and you will be lucky to squeak by with that much.

3. You say that Acxiom Corporation, a world leader in data gathering and its accompanying technology, has obtained some 1,500 separate pieces of information on over a half-billion people worldwide. How do we make sure the information is not used wrongfully? I had great concerns about the possibility of data misuse at Acxiom. We had literally hundreds of thousands of data files with extraordinary amounts of in-depth information about everyone who lived in the United States and many in Europe. I developed a philosophy that we could not create enough rules at Acxiom to solve the problem. Eventually I came to believe that creating an atmosphere and culture of data protection was the best answer. We chose to educate our people and to create a simple set of rules. For example, the “do right rule” taught our employees to think about the data that they cared for as data about people just like themselves—in fact, it could even include their own family members. So treat that data like you would want your own data to be treated. Of course there were more complex rules that applied in all of our data practices. There were—and still are—laws that protect people’s credit data. Credit data could only be used for preapproved credit offers and not for other kinds of marketing. To help oversee all this process of education and oversight with our employees and our customers, in 1991 I appointed a chief privacy officer. Jennifer Barrett became the first chief privacy officer in the United States, and today she still holds that position at Acxiom. Jennifer has become a global leader in marketing data use and data protection.

4. You helped build your own race car, having won numerous races including the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring. What kind of rush did you get going 150-160 miles per hour? Did you ever crash? At the ripe old age of 58, I was driving at Daytona in my last event before retiring from professional racing. I was in a Ferrari 333 SP in the middle of the night, and on the front straight I was regularly hitting the rev limiter—a device designed to restrict the maximum speed of an engine. I came into the pits and asked the engineer how fast my car was going when it hit the rev limiter. His answer was about 205 miles an hour. Admittedly, that was quite a rush, but most of the time as a race car driver you’re totally unaware of the speed at which you’re traveling. Your goal is to go as fast as you can without crashing or tearing up the car. In my heart I’m a geek and an engineer. I liked designing and building cars as much as I liked driving. My son and I drove several races together, including a major race in Canada that we won in a car I designed. That was as big a rush as going 200+ miles an hour at Daytona. Other than the fact that I occasionally went 200 miles an hour, I was a pretty cautious driver. If I crashed I had to pay for it, and we might not have enough parts to fix the car at the racetrack, ending the weekend for me. As a result, I didn’t have all that many crashes. But you can’t drive race cars for 25 or 30 years and not be involved in accidents. I had my share of driver errors and mechanical failures that resulted in some pretty serious wrecks. I hit the guardrail at Watkins Glen racetrack doing nearly 150 miles an hour. Earlier in my career I hit the wall at Road Atlanta and was helicoptered off to the trauma center. Fortunately, in neither case was I seriously hurt. The Road Atlanta accident had an amusing sidebar. I was in the trauma center all by myself, plugged into all sorts of stuff. The door to the trauma center kept opening and closing with hospital personnel sticking their heads in the door—only to quickly turn around and leave. Finally, I heard one complain loudly, “That’s not Paul Newman.” Paul Newman was racing at road Atlanta and the rumor had gone around the hospital that he was in the trauma center, but to the staff’s disappointment they found only me.

5. You’ve also raced motorcycles and flown jets. How does the adventurous side link to your business life? Some amount of measured risk-taking occurs when you race cars, drive motorcycles, and fly jets. By the same token, most successful entrepreneurs are by their very nature risk-takers. They would never have started that business or risked their family fortune without being able to stand a certain amount of risk. Also in business, you have to believe that you’re going to be successful and overcome those risks. By the same token, you don’t enter a race and think, Oh goodness, I might crash and hurt myself. I always wanted to manage my risk to the greatest degree possible. I’ve never raced so hard that it was win or die, and I’ve never bet everything on a business venture. Well, almost never.

6. You are the CEO of your latest tech venture, PrivacyStar. It’s been seven years since you stepped down as chairman and CEO of Acxiom. What did you still find rewarding—and challenging—in trying to grow another company? Creating and building a small company is a lot more fun than trying to manage a much larger company. Sometimes at Acxiom I felt like I was trying to herd cats as I provided leadership on a multitude of fronts. Many parts of the public company CEO’s job are really not very enjoyable. You have to deal with lawyers and boards as well as many other distractions, like unfriendly press. I always wanted to spend as much time as possible on new product development and leadership activities at Acxiom. Down deep in my heart, I felt like life was being sucked out of me by activities that were beyond my control. There were things I just had to do and couldn’t get out of but I sure didn’t like them much. I felt like I didn’t have enough time to do the job that would contribute most to the growth and success of Acxiom. In a small company like PrivacyStar, I am able to spend much more of my time working on things like new product creation and development. We are doing things that no one else is doing in the mobile space. We built ourselves from a big money loser to a profitable company. That is fun. There’s still a lot of work and worry, but the overall satisfaction level is a lot higher for me when I feel more in control of my destiny and doing things that I enjoy. If we miss a quarter at PrivacyStar, it’s only us who are disappointed, and there are no newspaper headlines.

7. While working at your first job at IBM as a systems engineer, you were called back just a few days into your honeymoon due to an urgent office matter. Was this the beginning of your career consuming your life? I was shocked, only a few days into my honeymoon, to receive a call from my new boss who said, “Charles, we need you back in the office.” He knew where I was because he had come to the wedding in Fort Smith, all the way from Little Rock. Without too much protest, my wife of just a few days agreed that we could go back to Little Rock and I could start work. My first job at IBM was to get involved in a troubled installation of a computer on which I’d had absolutely no training. I had to teach myself what I needed to know in order to help get these problems resolved. I did that in a number of other situations that seemed to follow one after another. I was working all day and studying many nights to try to figure out how to achieve a good result for one customer or another. That was the story of my early experience with IBM. I was either working at a customer’s office—sometimes all night—or off on a trip to learn about some new machine or learn some new skills. In those early days, IBM sent new people off to school in the first two years for about 20 percent of the year. During that time, I recall having at least two one-week schools, two four-week schools, one six-week school, and one seven-week school. Those first two years were a compressed learning experience. And my job was far from purely technical. Besides learning about programming and design, I became very involved in the selling process, as well as in the organizational process of being sure customers were properly prepared for their new computers. The downside of all this is that I became quite one-dimensional. It was all work and I had little time for family or other activities. I was very successful at my job but not nearly as successful at home and with my kids.

8. Early on your company was in debt and couldn’t make payroll. You asked people to cut their pay in half for a period of time in exchange for paying them a more once you got past the dark period. How did that turn out? We got to a point in 1976 when we were losing money and were in danger of not being able to make payroll. Our principal owners, the Wards of school bus fame, were in terrible financial shape and they had no ability to help us out. There was no one to fire and no way to cut expenses that I could see. So I came up with the crazy idea that if we could make our payroll a third smaller, we could survive. All we had to do was to get the top six most highly paid people, including myself, to take a 50 percent pay cut. I can’t imagine going to a management team today with such a scheme. We were working on some new very promising opportunities that would make the company profitable if we successfully completed them. I told everyone that they would get two dollars back for every dollar of pay they gave up, should we succeed. I must’ve been very convincing because they bought it and no one left. And not only did they double their money, but through this crisis we also developed increased levels of trust and a stronger bond within the top leadership team.

9. To what do you attribute your success in becoming a dominant force in the market database world? Several things. We had a number of principles guiding our business strategy and execution. One was to hire outstanding people—we recruited intensely at area colleges and universities and were able to attract the best and brightest young graduates. Another was to provide world-class service to our customers, which helped us both acquire and keep customers. Take Citibank—it became a customer in 1983 and is still a major customer of Acxiom’s today. From our earliest days we also put a premium on designing and creating leading edge software, and that gave us a leg up in the marketplace. In the mid-1970’s, for example, we created a revolutionary way to manage and deliver mailing lists for the Direct Marketing industry. The List Order Fulfillment System (LOFS) was faster, better, and cheaper than existing mostly manual systems were at the time; more importantly, LOFS was more accurate. Another game-changer was called AbiliTec, introduced around the year 2000. AbiliTec made large-scale name and address data far more accurate than ever before, and to this day it remains a key component of Acxiom’s technology arsenal. We created a business culture and an organizational strategy that helped us be more nimble—and more efficient—than most other companies our size. We instituted formal initiatives that emphasized leadership, and we provided our people with training in the qualities of effective leaders. We also did some pretty radical things, such as doing away with corporate titles. When I gave up the title of CEO and introduced myself simply as Acxiom’s “Company Leader,” I got more than a few puzzled stares. All of these concepts worked together to create an effective leadership team and to achieve solid results for our customers, over many years. But satisfaction wasn’t limited to customers—employees liked the atmosphere at Acxiom as well, and the company is full of people who have stayed for decades.

10. You struggled with time management. What advice do you have for those consumed by any distractions and desires but who seek to manage and grow a company? Being leader of a large organization is a study in frustration for the top executive. Much of the CEO’s time is commanded by the corporation and the duties of his position. Boards of directors, top customers, and the company’s leadership team can eat up a significant number of hours in a CEO’s day. Over my 35-year career at Acxiom, I struggled to learn to be more effective. In my early years, I thought I had to be involved, at least to some degree, in virtually everything. But I knew I wasn’t very good at things like accounting and administrative work, and in time I figured out that there were people who could do these things better. At first I was worried that they would screw it up and maybe I should stay more involved. And of course I was right—they did screw up many times. Finally, though, I figured out that if I delegated things to the right people and showed them that I trusted them even though they occasionally failed, they would end up doing a better job overall than I could in those areas. That was one half of the equation—to shed the tasks where I could provide limited value to the corporation. The other half was to develop techniques to allow me to spend more time on the activities in which I could create the most value, such as research and development.

11. What challenges did you need to overcome as a leader during the number of acquisitions and mergers your company participated in? Acquisitions are always very difficult. When you finally get the deal done, which often takes months or even years, the work is just beginning. Every situation is different and none of them are without their challenges. A small one can be every bit as hard as a big one. Technology integration, cultural differences, and distance are all barriers to the smooth successful merging of two companies. I really don’t think we ever got it truly right. I know that my being involved always helped. Leaving small deals to others was often a bad idea. If a deal is worth doing at all, the CEO should take an active role to be sure that the integration of the two companies is accomplished successfully. With smaller acquisitions, probably the biggest challenge was forcing myself to spend enough time with the management teams in these acquired companies to make them feel part of Acxiom as a whole. The leaders of acquired companies are always nervous in the best of cases. They’re not sure how they’re going to be accepted by their new bosses. They’re not sure what to expect or even how to act and respond to various things that they are told or asked to do. They need to know that they’re considered important and that they’re being listened to, especially by the top guy. I found I couldn’t just move on to the next deal until enough nurturing had gone on to ensure the long-term success of the previous acquisition. Some of that nurturing could only be done by me.

12. When you took your company public, what opportunities and dangers did this open up to you? When Acxiom went public in 1983, it opened up many new opportunities for us. For example, it helped give us the credibility that we needed to be able to deal with large banks and other companies on the East Coast. The money created by the initial offering gave us financial freedom and the ability to build buildings and buy computers that were critically needed. On the downside for me, I now had shareholders and a public company board looking over my shoulder. For the first 20 years of being public, that was never a terrible burden for me or for Acxiom senior leadership. But when Sarbanes-Oxley was passed and the new activism by shareholders began, our lives changed forever. Ever-increasing amounts of my time were devoted to board matters and dealing with shareholders. Sarbanes-Oxley wasted a tremendous amount of time for us and created a great deal of unnecessary expense.

13. What is your hiring and firing philosophy? My philosophy was very simple—hire the very best people you can find. That philosophy extended to the concept that you hire people when you can hire them, not necessarily when you need them. Over the years I’ve hired a number of people that I really didn’t have a job for at the time, but I knew they were so good that we would eventually find a great spot for them. They were generally some of the very best hires and made the biggest difference. Another key component of my hiring philosophy is that the senior leadership of any company needs to be very involved in the hiring process. Stars hire stars and duds hire duds. People doing the hiring have to be sure they’re putting good people in the right places. If you hire a superstar and put him or her in a dull and boring job, it usually ends in failure both for the company and the individual. Really good executives don’t like to fire people. If they hire a person, then they feel invested in him and want to see him succeed. When a hire isn’t succeeding, the tendency is to give that person numerous chances before resorting to the pink slip. And then the most common first statement after that firing is, “I should’ve fired him six months ago.” So my philosophy, often not followed by me, is that you know when it’s time for someone to move on. Take action, make your decision now, and realize it’s the best for the person and for you. Generally, you’re both in misery over it and know it’s coming, but you keep putting off the inevitable while hoping for a miracle. I have to admit I still do that. The upside of that is that you get a reputation for not making snap decisions about people who work for you. I guess it’s a good thing, and something that others respect you for, because you give a person multiple chances. At the same time, others will say, “Charles took too long to make that decision. I wish he was more decisive.”

14. At one point you eliminated everyone’s office title. How did that go? Eliminating titles came about at Acxiom through a complex set of circumstances. We had multitudes of titles just like most companies do today. We had directors, senior directors, and associate directors. We had levels within levels. Acxiom in the early 90’s was in desperate need of simplification. We had way too many bosses in our organization, and management structure was getting in the way of getting work done. It was just too hard and took too long to get anything accomplished. So we had to get rid of all those titles and layers of management. We redefined the company into three layers and replaced titles with roles and responsibilities for each person in the company. At the highest level you had me—I was now the “company leader.” Working for me were division leaders, and working for them were business unit leaders. That’s about as simple as you can get, but it left an awful lot of people that once had management titles, such as director, possibly with no title and nobody working for them. As you can imagine, that was not an easy transition. We lost a few people. All I can say is, we got through it and we became better for it. It gave us a great deal more flexibility to move people around in the company where they were needed. Things got done faster because there weren’t so many signatures required.

15. Is this a good time for database marketers? Now is the best time ever to be in database marketing. Today all successful marketing programs have a significant component built around the database and database marketing. Companies have access to much more data than ever and a myriad of wonderful tools to help them analyze that data and create successful programs. Still, it’s not magic. Database marketers have to be sure they have the right software for their needs and have to apply that software properly. That software must have access to accurate and relevant data for the kinds of problems being solved. The old adage still applies—garbage in, garbage out. Most people don’t realize that Acxiom’s true value-add during all those years was just getting the data right so that marketers had good data to work with. Many of our large customers employed some of the brightest database marketers and analytic specialists money could buy, but before Acxiom their results were spotty, at best, because of bad data. There’s a great deal of opportunity in today’s world for people who possess a good blend of the skills to get the data right and to apply the right tools to database marketing. As more specialized skills are required, a number of subspecialties have grown out of database marketing. For example, today you can have an entire career in just getting the data right. To that end, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock now offers a PhD in Data Quality.

16. Do you think the laws will change with technology as it relates to what information is gathered, shared, and used? Controlling the gathering and use of data has always been a complex problem to administer. The Internet is making this problem almost too big to comprehend. Certainly laws will have to be written and old laws amended to give basic protection to citizens of the world. On the one hand, people say, “I don’t want anyone using any data about me without my permission”—even as those same people post everything about their private lives on Facebook. On the other hand, companies say, “We’re going to protect the consumer and their information”—even as those same companies are putting cameras and listening devices in their TVs to collect information about viewing habits. Much of the data that companies collect for a specific reason is used to benefit consumers. The problem is that the quantity of the data that is being collected, by electronic devices and over the Internet, is growing exponentially today. Access to the data that companies collect is usually carefully protected, but not always. There have been a number of widely publicized situations in which well-respected companies have gotten in hot water for collecting and using data improperly. Additional laws are going to be complex to write, but are certainly needed to cover potential Big Data abuses. We do have examples of successful laws, such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act—25 years and counting, and that law is still serving us well. The best way to solve these problems is not to rush to a conclusion, but to get industry involved in making recommendations in new areas like the Internet. All I can say is, I’m glad I’m not a legislator or a lawyer, because I really don’t have great answers in this area.
Selected Excerpts
MATTERS of LIFE and DATA

A Honeymoon Cut Short
In jokes, the punch line usually comes on the third beat. So it was with our honeymoon. After a couple days, I got a phone call from my new boss. “I need you back here.” He said, even as I protested that I was on my honeymoon. He couldn’t be swayed. So after only three nights and two days of our planned weeklong vacation, Jane and I packed up and drove to our new apartment in Little Rock. The digital future beckoned.

Out Of Money
But as 1976 faded into 1977, I faced that the moment I had dreaded—had tried my best to stave off—was upon us: We would soon be out of money. Between payroll and the debt on the new computer, we would be in a negative cash-flow positon until we started generating income from the LOFS project. And there was nothing I could cut, nobody I could lay off—everyone was working 60 hours a week and we needed all their projects just to stay where we were. And I thought I’d known the meaning of the word dire before.

Then a brilliant, if radical, idea came to me—what if we executives take 50 percent salary cuts? That was the starting point; from there I worked out a formula for eventually making them whole again, and then some.

When the crew showed up for my impromptu meeting, first words were, “I see no choice but to cut everyone’s salary in half.” That, I promise you, is a real attention getter. Now there was silence in the room, all eyes and ears trained on me. I explained the circumstances that had brought me to that decision; then I went on to say that if this scheme kept the company afloat long enough for us to start making money, I would pay them back double what they had given up. In other words, if someone earned $3,000 a month and we cut that to $1,500, when this was over I would pay that person $3,000 for every $1,500 he had forfeited during the three- or four-month period I expect this belt-tightening to last.

Once the shock subsided, most of the executives went along with this emergency measure without serious qualms—they believed that much in the potential of LOFS. But no matter how fervent their faith in our project, it was their ability to survive for months on half salary that determined their response.

Racing Cars
In time I would learn that, for the most part, car racing isn’t quite as intense as motocross—even though you’re going much faster. Maybe it’s the nakedness, the physical vulnerability in motorcycle racing that greatly increases the intensity. But car racing is intense, and the zone transfers from the bike seat to the cockpit. When you’re successful in car racing, you’re almost totally unaware of the coming corner—and you’re not aware of the next one at all. You’re thinking, I’m going to go to there and brake. You’re just doing it from somewhere outside yourself. Instead of driving the car, you start feeling it: I feel the car slide. I feel the front end doing this. I feel the car getting looser. It’s like you’re aware of what the car’s doing, but not thinking about what you’re doing to drive it.

Big Banks, Big Data
And when Acxiom was getting started with the banks, most of the data was structured credit bureau data.

The big banks were marketing credit cards, which would become the basis of our great success. But it wouldn’t all happen overnight—in fact, it would take us some 15 years to give the banks everything they wanted to achieve. Because in the early ’80s, their voracious vision of the power of data surpassed all capabilities of the time. Computers had to get faster and cheaper. And even with our literally acres of computers, we had to embark on a long-range program of building the tools to reach their goals. From the start we had their end games as a concept, and we could slowly add to it. But along the way, we had to develop new techniques for managing unprecedented volumes of data, combining that data, updating that data, cleaning that data, maintaining that data. Those techniques and processes just didn’t exist on this scale on the early ’80s. So there was a huge amount to be invented to realize the big banks’ dream.

So accuracy of information is what it’s all about. And that’s the reason we had so much success with the banks—our whole business strategy was directed toward building computing systems, and software, and tools to allow our customers to create their models on these huge data assets. A model built on faulty data is junk—garbage in, garbage out. We had a computer strategy the banks needed, a software strategy they needed, and even our organizational strategy was directed toward working with Citibank, say, to find out exactly what they needed. For us, the bank work wasn’t just some add-on; it was what we did. We might not have been able to achieve the banks’ whole goal immediately, but even by the mid- to late 80s we could get to step one—then to step two, step three, and beyond—faster and with more accuracy than anyone else, and at lower cost. And we kept getting better and better. The banks tried occasionally to get other people to do it, so as to test us, but we were the guys who produced the best quality data—allowing them to create models that were highly predictive. So we dominated this industry. We dominated because, thanks to our unique computer strategy, we could process Big Data. Nobody else could.

Wiping Out All Corporate Titles
“We went from thirteen levels to three,” says Cindy. “And we eliminated all titles so that people didn’t have that competition thing going on.”

Ah, but humans will be humans—won’t we? “In hindsight,” says Cindy, “we should’ve done it a little differently. Because what we realized was that to some people when you lose your title, you lose your identity. So it rocked the organization. Thirty percent of the people were, ‘I don’t care.’ But seventy percent were, ‘Oh no!’ so we did replace it eventually, but not with traditional titles. We came back with you’re a team leader or you’re a business unit leader. We put leader in the title and that was intentional, because we wanted people to start leading. And we kind of adopted a motto—you manage things and you lead people. And if you can’t lead, then we’ll let you go manage things. But you can’t manage people. So that’s kind of how it started. That was a pretty big turning point, organizationally.

The Divorce Oprah Wanted To Televise
Being the former bookkeeper she was, Jane had kept every scrap of paper—every canceled check, every check register, every bank note, every IOU, every tax return, every ledger book—from the 60s on. So she and Steve had a veritable field day sifting through all those documents and building a case claiming that Jane was the power behind Acxiom’s success—that without her, I wouldn’t have happened. It was absurd, between 1991 and the end of that decade, our annual revenue would grow from $100 million to $1billion—and that was thanks to Jane?

“The Oprah show called to invite Dad on, “ says Carrie, “because the question in the legal culture in that period was, does staying home and raising children and taking care of a household entitle you to fifty percent of what in Dad’s case was then about $100 million? That’s what Steve saw at the time—lets go back and show what Jane’s contribution through the years was…besides the well-adjusted children!”

We were in no way contesting the Arkansas law that said she gets half of all community property. The question was, how do you define half? Half of what?

But what really made my attorneys nervous was that it looked she was trying to build a case that she could get more than half—because, as we interpreted what we of her argument, she came into this marriage with money, which she put in, but she never received stock, so I really ripped her off. That was the reason for all the depositions. I think it was a negotiating ploy mainly designed to inflict pain on me, because we certainly couldn’t ignore her claims that she should be getting more than half. Of course this ploy also created big legal bills.

King Of Big Data
Understand, even then Acxiom was starting to be known as “the Big Data guys.” We were getting talked about as this relatively low-profile company in Arkansas that had data on everybody—especially bank data. Among our clients were 14 of the 15 biggest credit card companies; seven of the top 10 auto manufacturers; and five of the top six retail banks. We analyzed consumer databases for such multinational companies as Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, and General Electric. So as the Internet increasingly became a vast, interlaced world of infinite promise, it naturally attracted opportunists the ways gold mines once attracted prospectors and con men. Data became the new currency. And if you were the kind of person who preferred to steal data rather than mine it yourself, where did you go? To the mother lode.

First Chief Privacy Officer
“The result was that, in 1991, I named Jennifer to the newly created post of Chief Privacy Officer. As a dedicated monitor ensuring the responsible use of all data in our possession, Jennifer Barrett broke new ground – she was the first such privacy officer of any company on the planet.

There was nothing at all altruistic about this appointment. I just knew that if marketers kept saying screw the public, one day we would have a big blow-up, and somebody would write a big privacy bill that would virtually shut down the industry. I decided to be proactive in confronting that possibility. I could already see that without a strong code of conduct, there were increasing opportunities for us to make the wrong decision and get into trouble. Jennifer’s new job was to keep us away from that.”

Holy Grail Of Big Data
“The Decade of the 2000s began brilliantly, with AbiliTec being touted as something akin to the data industry’s Holy Grail. In 2000, the year the dot-com bubble burst and sent the NASDAQ into a 30-percent plummet, Acxiom stock was up 65 percent. Clients using AbiliTec included such giants as Microsoft, Citicorp Credit Services, Mercedes-Benz USA, Palm Inc., Rodale Press, Bank One Services Corp., and American Express. In the first quarter of our2001 fiscal year (April 1, 2000 to March 31, 2001), earnings from AbiliTec amounted to an estimated $5 million; in the second quarter, the first time AbiliTec’s contribution was separated out from other earnings, the figure was $40 million. AbiliTec, I told the business media, “is changing the heart of Acxiom.”

The Beginning Of The Cloud
Today, the grid system we created would be called “cloud computing,” except ours was a private cloud, just for Acxiom’s use. We were the first to develop such a system, though there was this small company out west called Google that had a similar idea. Today when you Google something, you’re using that very secretive company’s acres and acres of linked computers.

About Acxiom

Acxiom, described by Forrester Research as one of the largest database marketing services and technology providers in the world, has annual revenues of $1.15 billion, representing more than 12% of the direct-marketing services sector’s $11 billion in estimated annual sales.

As the world’s largest processor of consumer data, Acxiom has identified 70 types of consumers with its segmentation product Personic X. In addition to collecting data on people, it helps marketers anticipate the needs of consumers, according to the documentary, The Persuaders.

Founded in 1969, the Little Rock, Arkansas-based marketing technology and services company trades publicly on Nasdaq (ACXM) and has offices in the United States (Chicago, New York City, Nashville, and Foster City, CA), Europe, Asia, and South America.

Acxiom offers marketing and information management services, including multichannel marketing, addressable advertising, and database management. Acxiom collects, analyzes, and parses customer and business information for clients, helping them to target advertising campaigns, score leads, and more.

Its client base in the United States consists primarily of companies in the financial services, insurance, information services, direct marketing, media, retail, consumer packaged goods, technology, automotive, healthcare, travel, and telecommunications industries, and the government sector.

In 2003, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint before the Federal Trade Commission against Acxiom and JetBlue Airways, alleging the companies provided consumer information to Torch Concepts, a company hired by the United States Army “to determine how information from public and private records might be analyzed to help defend military bases from attack by terrorists and other adversaries.”

The FTC took no action against Acxiom.

In 2005 Acxiom was a nominee for the Big Brother Awards for Worst Corporate Invader for a tradition of data brokering.

On May 16, 2007, Acxiom agreed to be bought by leading investment firms Silver Lake Partners and ValueAct Capital in an all-cash deal valued at $3 billion, including the assumption of about $756 million of debt. On October 1, 2007, however, a press release announced that the takeover agreement was to be terminated and Charles Morgan would retire as Acxiom’s company leader upon the selection of a successor.

In 2013 Acxiom was among nine companies that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating to see how they collect and use consumer data.

September 11
by Charles D. Morgan

Tracking 9/11 terrorists was the farthest thing from my mind in the days after 9/11. It was one of our associates who came to me and said his team had found some of the 9/11 guys in Florida. This was right after the Justice Department had released the names of several of the terrorists, including that of Mohamed Atta. I insisted that we do more checking and was advised to call the FBI as soon as we were sure that the data could possibly be useful to the federal authorities. That started the process of chasing the bad guys, and it went on for several months.

We engaged with the international terror experts from the FBI, who came to Arkansas and worked out of our building. We assigned a team of some 30 of our people to build what we called “The Bad Guys Database” and to do analysis to see what we could figure out. I was quickly drawn in myself and became a key member of the team looking for any information about the terrorists that might be helpful to the authorities. Law enforcement was particularly interested in knowing who and where the terrorists’ associates were. We assembled a massive amount of data from our customers, from the credit bureaus, and from the federal authorities, and we secured permission to use this data through the use of subpoenas.

We then went on a massive manhunt that would completely consume me for several months. By 2001 we had developed a product called AbiliTec that was of tremendous help in this effort. It allowed us to link people with different names and even at different addresses so that we could comb through all this data and come up with accurate answers. We found all the terrorists who had lived in the U.S., as well as most of the places where they’d lived. We used that data to look for other possible conspirators in the locations where we knew the terrorists had lived. The apartment house in Florida and another building in New Jersey were places that many of the 9/11 conspirators had spent time. The FBI and the Justice Department told us that the work we did was tremendously beneficial to them. The whole experience was quite surreal for me. I could never have imagined that I would be working with the FBI to track down terrorists.

My only regret is that there’s still a lot of the 9/11 story that has never been told. For example, we located a Saudi who made trips in and out of the U.S. and always had a different destination for his stay here. All the while, he owned a house in the Washington DC area and a car that was registered to the same apartment house address in Florida where Mohamed Atta had lived for several years. I never found out what happened to this guy, but I’m quite sure he was in some way associated with them—most likely as one of their sources of funding.

Sadly, I also learned some things I wish I hadn’t. I discovered how woefully inadequate law enforcement’s systems and technology were at that time in this country. The FBI agents we worked with used extremely outdated equipment, if they used any equipment at all. Several of the international terrorist experts didn’t even know how to use a laptop computer in 2001. The laptops that several of them carried were more than five years old and weren’t compatible with any of the tools that we were using in our process. For example, I couldn’t even transfer spreadsheet data to their PCs. Much has changed since then, as the exploits of NSA demonstrate. But it was certainly an awakening for me at the time.

As a dedicated team of researchers pursued the suspects, we were able to learn a number of things about the way the government brought information together – mainly that there need to be significant advancements in that area.

So even as we hunted down the bad guys – we began thinking about techniques and strategies that, if implemented, could increase the probability of heading off terrorist attacks in the future. And we began formulating a plan to put our special capabilities on the table, in front of the people who needed to know such things. They could then decide whether or not they wanted to take advantage of them.

We made some phone calls and took some meetings. Tim Griffin, then an assistant U.S. Attorney and later a U.S. congressman from Arkansas, was very helpful. So was retired general Wesley Clark. Former President Bill Clinton came to town with Mack McLarty and spent an afternoon with is going over our findings. Our two U.S senators, Blanche Lincoln and Tim Hutchinson, had more of an in with the Bush Administration, and it was through him that we secured a private meeting with Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The meeting took place in the summer of 2002, in the Vice-President’s room at the United States Capitol. Our team included General Clark, Senator Hutchinson, Jerry Jones, and me. Cheney was accompanied by one of his senior aides. Cognizant of the Vice-president’s time, General Clark opened the meeting and got right to the point—that government agencies had embraced information technology over the past 30 years, but that as the individual agencies’ systems had grown, the ability to share this information within and between agencies had not grown with it.

Then General Clark introduced me. I made a short presentation explaining how government could solve its massive data integration problem in a manner that would be respectful of individual privacy rights, which was critically important and technologically feasible, and at a cost that we thought would be acceptable, all things considered. The Vice –President seemed to find this plan quite intriguing, and in fact the scheduled 20-minute meeting stretched on to nearly 45 minutes.

At the end of the presentation, we left the Vice-President with a 13-page single-spaced memo called “Data Integration in Government Agencies”—subtitled “Facilitating Information Sharing While Protecting Privacy and Agency Autonomy.”

Long before 9/11 we knew that data could get out of hand and be abused. And that was just reinforced for me recently as I began following the NSA’s secret exploits. Before 9/11 I never thought about using our data and technology for the purpose of national security. But those in the Justice Department and the FBI with whom we interacted were amazed at our capabilities—so much so that we had a chance to present our ideas to Vice President Cheney in Washington DC. In the aftermath of 9/11, we actually did decide to design systems using our technology to benefit national security. And we struggled mightily over how to put the right safeguards in place to keep from creating a monster.

I’m proud to say we came up with some very innovative ideas that required processes to protect people’s information and abuse. Sadly, very little of that seems to have been picked up by the NSA. We have an opportunity and a problem with Big Data. The opportunity is that many things can be done to potentially prevent another 9/11 from ever occurring. Data analysis tools today can scale to the point that every phone call into and out of this country can be monitored at some level.

It’s not hard to imagine some enterprising technologist saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually captured the conversations in some of the suspicious situations.” The problem is, one thing leads to another and another and another, and before you know it you’ve got a situation that further compromises our individual privacy. The NSA could build a capability for scanning every telephone communication from the United States to foreign countries, as well as all other electronic traffic, including email. But where does it stop? The answer is that it will never stop unless we put adequate controls in place through Congress.

Big Data
by Charles D. Morgan

Today we hear the term “Big Data” all around us, and I want to clarify what we’re talking about. The term Big Data generally refers to extremely large masses of unstructured and partially structured data that typically has some kind of content that can be used for marketing, or for business decision-making, or even—as you see in my book’s prologue –for tracking bad guys. Unstructured data only started becoming a factor in the late 1990’s, and very much so in the 2000s.

Back in ’70s and ’80s, though, we didn’t even use the term Big Data. We talked about “massive databases” or “huge data problems” or something like that. And even if we had used the term Big Data, it would’ve referred to something much different from what we mean by that term today. The data then was different both in body and form. First, there just wasn’t as much data available. We didn’t record what came into a call center, and business wasn’t done by email; it was done by phone and letter, and we didn’t have any way of translating it.

Big Data is just what it implies—a lot of data. Typically big data also indicates that the data may be both structured and unstructured and come from a multitude of sources. The growth and diversity of data in this country has increased in all dimensions due to the internet and the millions of devices around the world that collect data of all kinds. Big Data is useless without the ability to organize and glean information from it. In the past, we relied on traditional relational database architecture, which has turned out to be quite inadequate in the world of Big Data.

A multitude of new tools and capabilities are being developed by vendors around the world to effectively extract true information from Big Data assets. Some of these new companies, like Splunk, are very successful with their efforts. It concerns me personally that the quantity of data collection about our daily lives is increasing exponentially. With all this data collection going on, the opportunity for misuse is ever present.

Thanks partly to Edward Snowden and the NSA’s excesses, today’s ubiquitous Big Data is a concept that many people respond to with suspicion or outrage. It’s absolutely true that some holders of information misuse it – I’ve met some of those people over the years – and others don’t give a damn about your privacy – I’ve run across those types, too. But in telling my story, what I hope to show you is that data itself, as well as data gathering, is neither good nor bad; it’s how it’s used that matters.

The post Charles D. Morgan – Matters of Life and Data… appeared first on Good News!.

Please join us in celebrating the life of our beloved partner who once welcomed all of you to the Digital Age.
This is a moment to comprehend the tragedy that took Ellen and many others from us. It is also a time to understand how the Digital Revolution needs to bring the rest of America up to date.
Most of all, it is a time celebrate the life of every Entrepreneur’s friend, a beloved wife, mother and an inspiration to everyone she ever met!
The performers include Jennie Walker, gold-record artist Patti Rothberg and Lion Kingperformer Ntomb’Khona Dlamini directed by Joel Arnow a Berklee School of Music graduate. All the artists were friends with Ellen who collaborated with us on various projects.
Seating is Limited – Please Register for this Event (there is no charge)
Please visit the memorial website – bit.ly/ellenmemories – to remember our beautiful friend.
Thanks again for your continued support.
We look forward to seeing you
Sincerely, Alan Brody, Alexa, Julia, Danielle

Convean: iBreakfast – iEvening – eTV World – Startupalooza

NtombKhona Dlamini

Jennie Walker

Patti Rothberg

More about the Memorial concert on Thursday. Over 400 people have signed up!
The performers were all people who knew and in some way worked with Ellen and I.

Patti Rothberg is a Scarsdale based singer-songwirter who had a gold album in the 90’s, who writes and performs very moving songs. Patti and I collaborated on a song entitled Genius Bar after she performed with a then unknown artist. They had both just broken up with people who worked at the same Apple store on 5th Ave. This inspired our song at bit.ly/a5f5cm. The other artist’s song was a little different and turned out to be a little more successful onceChristine Aguilera picked up on it. It is called Say Something and that other artist was Ian Axel. It is also sadly ironic……

Jennie Walker is a terrific singer and songwriter who has charmed us with her performances and collaborated on a musical play I wrote called Broad on Wall. She will sing Its Our Time, a song she once dedicated to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The Clintons got to meet Ellen at her part-time job at ICD Jewelry store, and they too, were taken by Ellen’s warmth and wonderful presence. The Clintons have been very kind and supportive in the wake of this tragedy.

Nthomb’Khona Dlamini is one of the original performers at our legendary South African-style Barbecues (The Scarsdale Braai) that began in our backyard and over the years brought hundreds of people to various parks in Westchester. She and her husband, bass-player,Jimmy Mgwandi were the hit of our events and her voice is reminiscent of a young Miriam Makeba. Even after Disney discovered her and put her in the Lion King, she continued to perform at our events. Ellen loved her version of Pata Pata and many other songs in Zulu and Xhosa whose meanings she may not have understood but whose emotional impact she got completely.

The musical director, Berklee School of music graduate and professional drummer, Joel Arnow is a family member.

This is not a fundraiser but we are asking people, if they wish, to help us offset the cost of mounting this kind of event at a top performance venue in midtown Manhattan.

We have not forgotten the other victims in this tragedy and can only hope this will begin the healing and inspire the best minds of our industry to help those in legacy industries to do better. We never knew we were interdependent. Sadly, now we do.

The post Following a Tragedy – A Joyous Life Remembered! appeared first on Good News!.

The 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall with Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, Germany. http://www.gewandhaus.de/gewandhaus-orchestra/

With today’s performance, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig and its music director, Ricardo Chailly, wish to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall, which took place exactly 25 years ago, on November 09, 1989.

A month earlier on October 09, Germany’s Peaceful Revolution reached a crucial point in Leipzig when more than 70,000 protesters rallied without intervention from East Germany security forces. The peaceful demonstrations culminated with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The occasion of this 25th anniversary has enormous meaning for the members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, who are honored to share this important occasion with New York audiences.

This was a special performance at the Lincoln Center presents White Light Festival, fifth anniversary
October 7 – November 11, 2014

“Their performance of Bruckner was out of this world, the city of Leipzig many years ago welcomed and appreciated Bruckner and his work, including the Symphony No. 7 in E Major. As a result of their love for his music played it with all their hearts and the audience was mesmerized by the beauty of the performance.” Paul Sladkus, Founder of Good News.

HISTORY

HISTORY
The earliest roots of the Orchestra can be traced back to the year 1479, in which the City Council first appointed three musicians – Kunstpfeifer (“artistic pipers”) – as municipal employees. This small ensemble remained in civic service until 1840, by which time their number had increased to seven. The musicians played a central role in Leipzig’s cultural life, performing at functions in the City Hall, providing the musical accompaniment for services in the city’s churches and participating in theatre productions, as well as forming a part of the orchestra of the Große Concerte (“Grand Concerts”).
This concert enterprise was founded in 1743 by a society comprising both nobility and regular citizens alike – the first venture of its kind in Leipzig. The original “Große Musicalische Concerte” were held in the more spacious of homes of Leipzig society. The concerts’ popularity soon, however, necessitated the hire of a hall in the hostelry “Zu den drei Schwanen”. For over thirty years, this inn played host to those citizens of Leipzig who could afford the society’s substantial annual membership fee, from which the musicians were renumerated. The original orchestra comprised sixteen musicians, half of whom were professionals (the Kunstpfeifer), half students of the city’s university.
The year 1766 saw the opening of the Komödienhaus (“Comedy Theatre”). This theatre employed no musicians and ensemble of its own, rather hosting itinerant theatrical and operatic troupes, for which the Leipziger Stadtmusiker were engaged as orchestra. As time passed and the demands of the theatrical productions increased, the orchestra was to be ever more frequently bolstered by the musicians of the Große Concerte. So began the gradual symbiosis of Leipzig’s concert and theatre orchestras.
At this time, the Gewandhaus, the trading house of the city’s textile merchants, had no use for a substantial part of the upper floor of the building. On the initiative of the Mayor, this space was converted into a concert hall. In November 1781, the firstGewandhauskonzert took place. The audience consisted of the members of the society which had promoted the concerts in the inn; the 32-man orchestra comprised the musicians who had given the Große Concerte, the majority of whom were, by this time, also employed regularly by the theatre. The orchestra of these Gewandhaus Concerts, therefore, soon came to be known as the “Gewandhaus and Theatre Orchestra”.
In 1786, the musicians of the Gewandhaus- und Theaterorchester signed a reciprocal agreement, in which the organisational, disciplinal and artistic affairs of the Orchestra were ordered, as well as the founding of a pension fund for the members. This constitution included, for instance, measures to ensure the “good reputation of the Orchestra”, as well as the communal pledge “to stand, all for one and one for all.” This solidarity contract can be regarded as the genesis of the Orchestra as an independent body.
In 1789, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart travelled to Leipzig in order to give a concert in the Gewandhaus. The hall was, by this time, well established as the centre of Leipzig’s concert life and would remain so for the subsequent 100 years.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto received its first performance in the Gewandhaus in 1811 and the first complete cycle of his symphonies worldwide was to follow in the 1825/26 season – during the composer’s lifetime.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s celebrated tenure as Gewandhauskapellmeister(conductor and music director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra) began in 1835. His “Scottish Symphony” and Violin Concerto in E minor were both premiered in the Gewandhaus. Mendelssohn conducted the first performances of symphonies of Robert Schumann and of Franz Schubert’s “Great” C major Symphony.
In later years, both Richard Wagner’s “Meistersinger” Prelude and Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto were first presented to the world in the Gewandhaus, conducted in both cases by the composers themselves.
This period saw the development of the Gewandhaus- und Theaterorchester’sadditional role as orchestra of the city’s churches. The musical provision for the services held in Leipzig’s two principal churches, St. Thomas and St. Nikolai, was the responsibility of the Thomaskantor (Cantor of St. Thomas’s), who also embodied the position of Civic Music Director. The Thomanerchor (St. Thomas’s Choir) sang in both churches, accompanied by the Stadtmusiker. Here too, however, were the musical demands to increase; from 1789, the City Musicians were augmented by seven members of the Gewandhaus and Theatre Orchestra. During the following years, members of the Orchestra became increasingly involved in the realisation of the churches’ musical requirements until, in 1840, the Gewandhaus- und Theaterorchester was officially declared the “civic orchestra” by the City Council. The performance of sacred music has, since this time, formed a staple part of the Orchestra’s duties.
In 1868, a new opera house was opened in Leipzig. This theatre was able to accommodate significantly more ambitious, more elaborate stagings than the erstwhileKomödienhaus (remodelled as “City Theatre” in 1817). At this time, the Gewandhaus- und Theaterorchester numbered 58 musicians, a strength which was not sufficient, firstly, to satisfy the orchestral requirements of the larger-scale operas now being staged and, secondly, to fulfil these increased duties adequately in addition to its symphonic commitments in the Gewandhaus. The ensuing conflict between the theatre and Gewandhaus managements was resolved by the City Council’s decision to augment the Orchestra to a total of 72 players.
As time passed and the 19th century ran its course, the concert hall in the Gewandhaus became increasingly unable to cope with the demands placed upon it by the Orchestra’s steadily burgeoning public. Following several measures over the years to increase the audience capacity, the management of the Gewandhaus eventually bowed to the necessity of erecting a new concert hall. Following two-and-a-half years construction, the “New Gewandhaus” was inaugurated in December 1884.
The Neues Gewandhaus witnessed the tenures of Arthur Nikisch, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Bruno Walter, among others, as Gewandhauskapellmeister, as well as playing host to the likes of Johannes Brahms, Peter Tchaikovsky, Edvard Grieg and Richard Strauss conducting their own works. Anton Bruckner graced the New Gewandhaus with an organ recital. The new hall was also the scene of the Gewandhaus Orchestra’s first audio and film recordings.
The Gewandhaus Orchestra undertook its first foreign tour during, of all times, the First World War. Prior to this, the Gewandhaus directorate had been thoroughly opposed to such ventures, “due to the risk that our illustrious orchestra, which has, heretofore, served only noble causes, could descend to depths, such as those occupied by a philharmonic orchestra in Berlin with its commercial undertakings. Should the orchestra members begin to travel, they will very well take to the variety this affords and demand its recurrence.” On receiving an invitation from Switzerland in 1916, however, the City Council and Gewandhaus approved the enterprise, “on the grounds that it represents an artistic cultural mission of great significance.” Two further visits to Switzerland were to follow before the colossal undertaking of a first extensive tour of Europe in 1931. The political developments of the ensuing years were, sadly, to prevent the Orchestra capitalising on its newly-established reputation beyond Germany’s borders. The Gewandhaus Orchestra would have to wait until 1951 to represent Leipzig abroad anew.
Both the Neues Theater and the Neues Gewandhaus had been destroyed by bombing during the war. Since the cessation of hostilities in Europe in 1945, opera performances and concerts had taken place in temporary, sometimes somewhat makeshift locations in Leipzig.
Following the opening of the city’s new opera house in 1960, Leipzig would have to wait a further two decades for the construction of a new concert hall for theGewandhausorchester. The “New Gewandhaus” (named, as its predecessor, Neues Gewandhaus) opened its doors to the public in 1981 – the only dedicated concert hall to be built in the GDR (former communist East Germany). Overwhelming credit for the realisation and success of the project must be given to the Gewandhauskapellmeisterof the day, Kurt Masur.
Masur’s successor, Herbert Blomstedt, led the Orchestra – now numbering 185 musicians – into the 21st century, before handing the baton on to Riccardo Chailly.
Much has changed in Leipzig during the past decades – one thing, however, remains constant: the Gewandhausorchester performs in the Gewandhaus, in the Leipzig Opera and, together with the Thomanerchor, in St. Thomas’s Church. The combination of symphonic, operatic and sacred repertoire continues to imbue the Gewandhaus Orchestra with an artistic profile of unparalleled diversity and richness.

Claudius Böhm

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The Machine Age is Ending and the Industrial Revolution will no longer define our future.

The Map of Time is our navigational guide through the lessons of history and our lead to the future.

We are Catching Up With The Ancients who knew the keys to our future.

Physical, Emotional, and Intellectual energies progress through their four seasons of development, and points of chaos, to bring change to the nation.

An original theory presented by K. David Katzmire.

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