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Raymond Alvarez

COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT: Raymond Alvarez, president and owner of Nextwave Communications. Nextwave provides cutting edge communication services to the Colorado business community. The Boulder County firm offers research, writing, strategic planning and analysis.

BACKGROUND: Raymond Alvarez is a journalist, micro-blogger and author. A longtime writer and now an emerging expert in social media, tracking developments in nanotechnology and science, Alvarez established a communications consulting business in 2002. A communications career follows 25 years in newspaper publishing (The Denver Post, Denver Business Journal, Boulder Daily Camera, Colorado Business and Littleton Independent). Over the years, education focus has taken a Nieman-fellowship approach – essentially cherry-picking couses in everything from civil procedure and contracts to e-commerce, web design and crisis communications. Training includes graduate/communications study at the University of Denver (2005) and University of California-Berkeley (2002). Alvarez also studied law at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1981) and completed a BA in journalism at the University of Northern Colorado (1976).

A member of the DaVinci Institute, Alvarez follows developments in technology (particularly alternative energy) and science, and promotes these subjects in the Twitter micro-blog under the pseudonym NextWaveRay. Alvarez is a film buff, aspiring screenwriter and illustrator.

Alvarez lives with his wife of 31 years and two of their three children in Boulder County.

CONTACT:

Raymond Alvarez
720-810-1534
nextwave@comcast.net
(@NextwaveRay on Twitter)

FAVORITE QUOTE: “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” – Eric K. Shinseki, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

FAVORITE AUTHOR: In recent weeks, that would have to be Brian Schwartz. His book 50 Interviews grabbed my attention and I’ve been talking and posting about entrepreneurship and its zeigeist ever since he addressed a DaVinci Institute audience in mid January. I read articles on science and nanotechnology. I follow events on Twitter and in digital versions of familiar publications – the New York Times (science page), Wired, Popular Mechanics and many others. I also read not-so-familiar, online journals such as Small Times and Technology Review.

OUTLOOK FOR BUSINESS: “Information is power. As the ‘blogosphere’ grows, the role of the communication professional will grow in importance. The trend could lead to opportunity for services that keep companies abreast of news, possibly a cottage industry apart from business-focused publications and mainstream media. Synopsis writing professional bloggers will keep companies informed of events that affect them. The information overload challenge will be met by an army of specialists tuned in to breaking news and rumor crackling across the far reaches of cyberspace. Professionals will tap, filter and feed tailor-fit streams of relevant news – at least until software comes along to replace them.”

GENERAL OUTLOOK: Archived stories in cyberspace are not being erased. At the outset of my journalism career, it was commonly believed everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame. What we couldn’t have expected at the time was that fame would be frozen in Internet archives.

The speed of recorded information has accelerated beyond anything imagined. Now everyone has the potential for fame that may fade but not disappear. Everything from Superbowl day wardrobe problems and inaugurations to plane crashes and banal Twitterings are being locked in electrons.

The Internet, and now social media are driving change in communication. The Blackberry and iPhone are hastening a spread of citizen journalism. Mainstream media may still command who takes center stage, but reliance on traditional news outlets will give way to citizen journalists who are quickly transformed from ordinary citizen by simply showing up to events with a handheld device and reporting what they experience.

Hunger for real-time information reached a crescendo in recent months with such disturbing events as the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Demand for real time information will keep pressing media to adapt.

Meanwhile, competition for that 15 minutes has never been greater.