The Pace of Change:

This has been a very challenging, but interesting week for my exploration of the Multi-Media frontier. With our Old Town Central Valley Buzz TV host, Chuck Leonard hospitalized, our weekly show has taken a little different twist. Today’s show (6/19/14) on KAIL-TV will be hosted by Mike Briggs and my guest, retired Mariposa H.S. Athletic Director Lloyd Hobby, with a little help from my friend Historian Tom Phillips, introduced me to the “Sports” traditions of our High School.

I learned about team pride, school pride and ultimately community pride! I think the show tells an important story about “who we are”, as a “mountain community”. It’s about triumph in a challenging environment. Lloyd talked about the difficulties of starting and maintaining an athletic program in a rugged/dispersed environment (read long bus rides for would be athletes) and lack of funds for equipment/facilities. How the teams were small (in numbers) because we did not have enough student athletes to make up a full-sized team in early times!

In many ways, the struggles of our High School athletic program is a metaphor for the struggles/challenges we have faced/are facing in our community with respect to economic growth/stability and advancement! The success of our athletic programs over the years reflects, in many ways the successes that we have had as a community in facing economic adversity and our small triumphs over the years.

So I read, recently, in an Old West Magazine, that “we can’t understand where we are going until we understand where we’ve been!”. The lessons of history are important for us, as a community (County, State, and Nation) to move forward! That is the thought that kept me awake last night and is motivating this little 3MC “Note” this morning!

It was around 1980 that I convinced the Board of Supervisors to allow me to buy a Tandy TRS-80 desk top computer for the Planning Department. I needed it to write/edit the new General Plan update. Ahhh, the debate. We had IBM Selectric typewriters! Why did we need a computer to “type”? There was Supervisor Bill Moffett who thought we could “get by” with a Commodore 64, like the one he had! Of course, I did not know about how the Commodore 64 worked by I liked the TRS 80 that Reed Marks, who operated the little Radio Shack store down town, operated. I had learned how to use the Tandy word-processing software (which was a lot like modern day HTML coding) and I was introduced to the concept of a “Spreadsheet” (does anyone remember Multi-Plan?).

Eventually other County department obtained IBM based computers and life in Mariposa County “progressed”. I did not realize how much we had progressed until, in the late 80s I went to work with the City of Merced (Planning) and ran into a “steno-pool”, IBM Selectrics and A desk-top computer that nobody used! I brought my own computer/software to Merced to help write their General Plan update!

Today, we are at a new frontier with the implementation of Multi-Media technology! This time, I’m not the “innovator” or leader in bringing this technology into general use in our community. The leadership comes from OUR school system. With instructors like Walt Hebern, and his Multi-Media class and administrators like Jon Corripo, our Assistant Superintendent of Schools, we are breaking new ground up here in these mountains.

Yesterday, we got this week’s show out on the Web and it “airs” today at lunch time. Yesterday, I also had a stimulating meeting with Jon Corripo and Carol Fong, our local Internet/Web Designer, on the implementation of our new I-Beacons down at the Gold Coin. Walt could not join us because he was in training up at the High School.

Jon brought this technology to our attention a few months back and Carol has been exploring how we can “adapt” this technology to our Restaurant operation. The I-Beacon is a communication device that is “located” in a building to alert a potential “user” (with a smart-phone or hand-held device with the proper application software) that there is some “information” available about the “place” that they are NOW in!

The “engine” that makes this technology “work” is what we, in our little 3MC group call Multi-Media “Content”. Written text, sound (spoken words/music), pictures and YES, video!!! All displayed on someone’s mobile communications tool!

Carol has taken my written documentation and translated that into an I-Beacon “message” (The Gold Coin App.) and now, when the Beacons are installed, (this afternoon) our customers can learn about the rich and colorful history of the old Fremont Adobe building and our Gold Coin Restaurant; that includes our menu!!!

We have a few details to work out before we install the Beacons and the Software company has been working with Carol to adapt this multi-media communications technology to our application/setting. This really is ground-breaking stuff! I fully expect that when it is up an operating we will have created a model for how this multi-media application can be applied throughout our community AND yes, sooner or later I expect that we will see it applied in places like Merced, Fresno and Modesto!!!!

Ahhhh, someday the word is going to get out about how these “backwoods” innovators, up here in PosaVille, really are operating on the cutting-edge of technology. We have to “innovate” because WE see ourselves as “behind”, like our successful H.S. athletics program. Have a good week and I’ll be talking to you soon. Bob

Robert Borchard
Bett's Gold Coin
4850 Morningstar Ln.
Mariposa, CA 95338
Phone 209-966-3412
Cell 209-617-8366