RFIDWorkGroup

Yesterday I met with the University of Wisconsin's RFID WorkGroup. Wonderful presentations from senior people grappling with all the complexities of making an application keep its promises. Alfonso Gutierrez of the university's RFID Lab runs it. Specifics are confidential, but I came away with a sense that a few people are finding ways to squeeze out enough short-term ROI to keep projects alive even in this disastrous economy. I spoke on marketing applications of RFID and where new marketing applications will come from in the future.

EcoRFID

Andres Botero of SAP provides an insightful overview of RFID's green side. He cites reducing spoilage (EG by monitoring the cold chain), waste, product recalls, carbon emissions, landfill to name a few. http://www.rfidproductnews.com/issues/fall2008/expert.php

Good memory, too. He talks about pertinent applications from an RFID World speech I gave last fall. He adds that CHEP, a client of SAP's has launched a reusable pallet program.

Superpowers

From the first page of the book, "What would you do if you knew where everything is? Suppose that, as suddenly as Spiderman, you get this superpower: you can know exacly where things are. Whatever things you're interested in. Millions of things."

RFIDiscourse

Today I'm writing my speech for the University of Wisconsin on February 13, '09. Its working title is"Marketing Applications of RFID."

Green

How could RFID have saved thousands of tomatoes from destruction? "Industrial Control/Design Line" ran key ideas from my recent speech, "RFID and the Rise of Convenient Sustainability":

"The government of Hawaii got a well-deserved award at RFID World 2008, for a system of RFID tracking to promote food safety. With RFID tagging of every bin and case of produce, it can be tracked all the way from one corner of a field to the end-user, and then backtracked all the way to the field again, if there is a problem. When food recalls are necessary, they can be swift and small.

They can avoid the massive environmental wastefulness of fiascos like the one the US just went through, in which some people got sick, so we jumped on the tomatoes and threw away fields and fields full of somebody's tomatoes, somebody's irrigated and cultivated and fertilized and harvested and transported tomatoes, and then decided it wasn't tomatoes after all and threw away fields and fields of somebody else's peppers. Sinking tanker ships is not the only way to waste fossil fuels and damage the environment. Food safety regulators, unaided by RFID, can be drunken sailors too."

To see more "RFID and the Rise of Convenient Sustainability"go to industrialcontroldesignline.com/210604775?pgno=3

Contents

Here's what you'll find inside the book:

Chapter 1: Introduction-A Search Engine for Things
Chapter 2: RFID and Relationship Marketing
Chapter 3: Customer Relationship Management with RFID
Chapter 4: CRM 2.0 is Customer Experience Management
Chapter 5: Personal Identification and Privacy
Chapter 6: Asset Tracking Creates New Business Media
Chapter 7: RFID and the Retail Experience
Chapter 8: RFID and the Greening of the Customer Experience
Chapter 9: RFID Authentication and Product Safety
Chapter 10: Admission, Permission, and Tickets
Chapter 11: RFID in Payment Systems
Chapter 12: RFID and Patient Relationship Management
Appendix: How RFID Works

Pictured here are RFID library pedestals in the UK. I hope my book makes it into that library. Since they can make sure it won't be stolen, more people will get to read it.

The title is finalized. The cover design is complete. The footnotes have all been double-checked. The last of the blurbs for the book jacket arrived at the publisher today. Can the book possibly be finished?

I guess it must be so, they're taking pre-orders at paramountbooks.com

After a full year of writing, I've begun teaching again. But it looks as if more writing is in store for me. I'm considering an offer to write a monthly column on RFID and the Customer Experience.