An Internet Workshop for Economists and Investors September 10, 1995, Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco Sponsored by NABE in association with the NABE Silicon Valley Roundtable, Marcar Management Institute, MMS International/S&P, and Corlund Industries. Some 124 participants attended the session. Summary prepared by Dave Raphael. PRESENTERS: Dave Raphael President, Marcar Management Institute; President, NABE Silicon Valley Roundtable email: dave@marcar.com Lu Cordova CEO, Corlund Industries; VP & Director, Standard and Poors MMS International email: cordova@corlund.com Glee Harrah Cady Author, Mastering the Internet; Manager, Information Services, Netcom email: glee@netcom5 Hal Varian Dean, School of Information Management and Systems, University of California, Berkeley email: hal@info.sims.berkeley.edu Wendie Lash President, Internet Roundtable Society Bradley S. Bishop Chairman, Avcom Systems Chris Cooper President, Quote.com Richard Green President, Charter Media Ten written case studies and comments were provided by the Census Bureau, Aeltus Investment Management, Electronic Industries Association, Bethlehem Steel, Investor's Edge, Charter Media, Lawrence H. Meyer and Associates, CommerceNet, Wall Street Research Net, and MoneyLine Corporation. The workshop consisted of 3 sessions: Introduction and Keynote; Communications and Research; and Commerce on the Internet. SELECTED COMMENTS BY SPEAKERS Dave Raphael welcomed the participants stating that the NABE Silicon Valley Roundtable hosted two Internet workshops for Economists and Investors during the year 1995. The Pacific Bell Company estimates that 60% of Internet communications start or end in California. Silicon Valley is particularly active on the Internet due to involvement from key companies such as Hewlett Packard, Silicon Graphics, Tandem, Applied Materials, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Netscape, Netcom, Apple Computer, Intel Corporation, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, Knight-Ridder's San Jose Mercury Newspaper, SRI International and Joint Venture:Silicon Valley - a new high-tech organization that links electronically over 1000 firms. Mr. Raphael said that the Silicon Valley Roundtable has an Internet site that contains a summary of presentations by recent speakers, and displays future meeting dates & speakers. NABE members visiting the San Francisco area are welcome to attend meetings. (see the Silicon Valley Roundtable site on http://www.marcar.com/svrt.html) Lu Cordova discussed the growth of the Internet, growing to over 5 million hosts, or computer locations, connected as of this year. There can be one or a thousand users at each location. There are an estimated 38 million users in 88 nations that have access to the Internet. (The full presentation is available on the internet with slides (http://www.corlund.com/lu_comrce.html). She has compiled a list of Internet addresses, in 12 groups: Economics and Finance, News, Politics, The Virtual Library, Employment, Internet Information, Software, Fun and Home, Cool Sites to Learn From, Marketing, Malls, and Security. (http://www.corlund.com/urls.html) Ms. Cordova also described the significant potential for conducting commerce on the Internet. She said it is important to think about what you want to accomplish by going on the Internet. Putting your business on the Internet is more than just designing a home page. It includes using the Internet to retain and expand market share, to create new revenues, to diversify business, and to lower costs. One estimate is that the Internet has cuts the cost of using a facsimile machine by over 30% for some businesses. Demographics are an important design criteria - the Internet works well if you are interested in researchers, economists, analysts, and young yuppie geeks. Web site design requires some thought - the site can be active, dynamic with information changing constantly - like Charter Media's intraday financial market commentary, or it can be a resource for people to visit and look up important references or data. A unique feature of the web site is the ability to link to other sites easily. Let's say you cite another paper in your research paper. The reader clicks on an underlined reference, and - zap - the reader is sent through hyperspace to the referenced paper in another web site. The full paper can be read or printed at your location. There are important new developments to improve security on the Internet. External security protects your information against hackers and others through "firewalls" and security audits Internal security protects it from your own employees who may inadvertently download virus-infected files or leaving their machines on for others to break into. The market on the Internet is expanding rapidly. Advertisers in the business press, such as Business Week, are increasingly showing their Internet web site address to provide fuller description of products and capabilities. Lu recommends that you consider three elements of building the web site: 1- construction: bringing together the necessary hardware, software, communications; 2 - operations: preparing to manage the web site including the ability to process orders and develop new business; and 3 - financial: developing accounts and cash and credit capabilities for customers. Glee Harrah Cady of Netcom described numerous ways to use the Internet: from chatting on a newsgroup, to determining whether your Fedex package arrived, to finding out weather conditions in a remote location, to connecting with other professionals. Email is the most used feature of Internet. Email can be used to organize meetings, set agendas, prepare proposals, send quotes, and "see" events. There are video cameras which can display the weather, ski slope conditions, or the view outside the Fairmont Hotel where we are located today. You can listen to radio outside the standard listening area - on the Internet. (Try web http://www.radionet.com) It is accessible from computers around the world. The Internet is multimedia - it provides text, sound, graphics, motion pictures. The entire presentation by Glee Harrah Cady is available on the Internet (http://www.corlund.com/lu-comrc.html) Dr. Hal Varian of the University of California, Berkeley recommended two important web sites for economists and investors: the Michigan Site and the Berkeley Site. Hal discussed the usefulness of sites such as the Department of Commerce, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Edgar site of the Securities and Exchange Commission for electronically filed SEC forms, and others. He also stated that the Journal of Finance now as a web page, other journals are planning to set up their own web pages. Information will include papers accepted for publication, important dates, and other notices. The Journa top five economic and the top five financial journals. Economists will be able to search for and access full papers in these journals from the year 1990 forward for a minimal fee. Dr. Varian compared the current level of trade between the top 10 trading nations and the United States. The top ten nations (in order of highest physical trade) are Canada, Japan, Mexico, United Kingdom, China, South Korea, France, Netherlands, and Hong Kong. The top ten nations in order of information trade (number of information bytes traded) are Canada, Australia, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Japan, and Finland. It is interesting to note that Japan is 2nd on our physical trade list but 9th on the information trade list. Dr. Varian has a very interesting web site for SIMS - School of Information Management Systems See SIMS at http://www.sims.berkeley.edu Wendie Lash of Internet Roundtable Society gave numerous examples of communications and the Internet including the use of email, facsimile, and multimedia. One new feature, the WebChat, involves the "live conversation" with photos of the speakers, slides, graphs, and even photographs. Economists can read, via the Internet, the full discussion with illustrations, during or after the conclusion of the conversation. These has excellent potential for meetings, conferences, product showings etc. Bradley Bishop of Avcom Systems described the use of browsers, such as the Netscape browser, to search for, read, and download research information easily. He discussed the use of Net Search and Net Director, Lycos, Yahoo, and other search engines that facilitate information retrieval. He provided a live demonstration while "surfing" the net reaching the Statistical Abstract, Census Bureau, and a variety of useful sites for economists. Chris Cooper, President, from Quote.com gave a lively demonstration of quotes from the major stock exchanges as well as international exchanges. Richard Green, of President, Charter Media, also demonstrated some of the valuable economic information and commentary available through his organization on the Internet.