I am in the City of Eindhoven (home of Philips) where I am advising the City of Eindhoven on its ambitious and well advanced plans to develop an OPLAN.  It is encouraging to see such an enlightened municipality as this, which expresses its main strategic objective as being that, "The primary value of, and benefit from, this network (in the short and the long run) rests with the citizens, businesses and institutions of Eindhoven as users".  And that is the essence of the OPLAN concept - enabled as it is by the fundamentals of the underlying digital technologies of 'abundance'.

How ironic then, as I sit here in my room at the Holiday Inn in Eindhoven, listening to the morning programme on CNBC called Squawkbox.   The interview is with Anthony Fry - Head of UK Investment Banking at Lehan Brothers in London.  Anthony appears a thougthful, mannered and very interesting and intelligent man (as I am sure he is) but he is expressing bewilderment at what is happening in the telecoms and media sectors and saying that analysts and fund managers alike are 'confused' about what is going on and what lies ahead.  I am intrigued how and why such an intelligent person find it so - and so I am going to try and contact and engage in a dialogue with Anthony to see whether what I and an ever increasing number of others ( including the good people of Eindhoven) see as 'obvious', can be made clear to him.   Apparently, Anthony has some teenage children who he has a hunch, understand all too well that the world is changing and that they are changing it.  So that should help the discussion!

Anyway, I will report back in this blog as to where Anthony and I get to in our dialogue as I try to "open his mind to open networks" and all that that implies.  Not leas, a liberation of creative, communication and 'rich' conversation across communities and continents - coupled with a blood-bath in todays (or should I say, 'yesterdays') media and telecom markets.  It will be a battle royal between the sharehlders of the companies that Anthony tracks and advises - and the citizens of the likes of Eindhoven.  Which will gain the primary  'value' from the digital technologies of abundance?   I know the answer - and so does Eindhoven!  Let's see if we can get Anthony to understand.