Spear-to-Spear File Sharing, Dave Ulmer

I've decided that given my stock in trade is my rolodex, periodically I'm going to do blogs on some of my esteemed colleagues. We'll start here with Dave Ulmer, who is most definitely a member of the "10-year+ Club" I alluded to in an earlier blog (fellow pioneers in Digital Music). About 10 years ago, Dave was at Adaptec forming the group that went on to become the world's leading CD recording company, which morphed into Roxio, which became today's Napster. He's now in charge of Motorola's music strategy & initiatives like iRadio http://broadband.motorola.com/iradio/ which I encourage you to check out. I'll tease you to do so with one of their taglines which is "We got tired of changing stations. So we changed radio". Basically allows you to program your own radio experience while you're charging your phone overnight so you take off the next day with a fresh batch of tunes.

Dave is a master of wit, and we both attend virtually all the same industry conferences on digital music and digital media convergence. Last week we were at one such conference and Dave was on a panel where they were talking about the music industry (past and present). Someone started on the path that there were thousands of musicians performing 100 years ago, to which Dave replied "yeah, that's when we had spear-to-spear file sharing". Classic example -- Dave's brilliant at these comebacks in the context of events like this. If you get a chance to experience him on a panel session or at a conference don't miss it! And do check out his baby, Motorola's iRadio service; when Dave's at the wheel you want to be in the car.