I think the Obama administration should tap Laverne H. Council to manage the transition to digital health records, also known as electronic medical records ( EMRs). 

On November 14 I heard Council, CIO of Johnson & Johnson, speak at the New Jersey Technology Council‘s lunch. Based on that savvy but witty speech, I believe she has the smarts and people skills to inspire diverse groups – IT and medical – to come to agreement quickly.

Council came to J&J; by way of Ernst & Young and Dell. In a startlingly short time period she standardized all the IT departments in J&J;’s entrepreneurial culture. That included more than 200 operating companies and more than 3,500 information management employees with a budget of $1.6 billion. To whip or cajole everyone into line was an amazing feat. 

 “If you don’t standardize, you can’t digitize,” she said. We had to sell it as cost savings. If we digitize, we can innovate.” 

Council is a long-time supporter of the idea that government should provide the standards for digitizing drug development. At the lunch, she pointed to the Vista software that the Veterans Administration developed. (For an account of a hospital that successfully used this software see Laura Landro’s article in the Wall Street Journal).

 Council noted that the government has already spent a lot of money on this software. Unlike privately developed software, it doesn’t require lots of tweaking. Said Council: “Sellers of software don’t want you to pick it up and use it.” 

It won’t be easy to stamp out errors, as the medical community eliminates paper, but then Gutenberg had his problems too. I found an amusing account of an early printer’s error on the blog e-patients.net. It seems that an errant typesetter left the word “not” out of the Seventh Commandment. All the Bibles from that press run read “Thou Shalt Commit Adultery” and the edition became known as “The Wicked Bible.” 

Disclosure: I don’t know Laverne Council, have never interviewed her, have never even talked to her. This year the NJTC named her CIO of the year. I do try to follow the digital health record scene because I am interested in the progress of a Princeton-based personal health record firm, Zweena Health. 

Former National Urban League head Hugh B. Price told the Princeton Chamber yesterday that one of the strategies for improving education is to increase and enhance the opportunities for student recognition. Prizes, awards, parades – they matter more than we would think, he said.

Looking back at the previous Sunday, when Not in Our Town gave out the 12th edition of its Interfaith Unity Awards, I get it. There wasn’t a dry eye when The Witherspoon Five, five eighth grade youths from John Witherspoon Middle School, gave their recitation of a poem by David E. Talbert on what it means to young black men for Barack Obama to be president. Evelyn Counts, JWMS counselor, had organized this for a Martin Luther King Day assembly, and the effort earned them the awards, a state citation, and a U.S. Savings Bond. (Pictured, Carole Krauthamer, left, with Evelyn Counts and the boys). JWMS Principal Bill Johnson has scheduled the Witherspoon Five to recite for a third time, at the Martin House graduation next week.

Not in Our Town is the interracial, interfaith social action group that recently presented a White Privilege workshop, co-sponsored by the Princeton Public Library, which brought 90 participants. NIOT also honored PHS seniors Moriah Akrong and Tamara Curtis as role models in their efforts to promote respect for diversity and to advance the cause of good race relations. (Tamara is pictured with her father, John Curtis, at the NIOT reception at the Carl Fields Center on the Princeton University Campus. For more photos, click here.)

Friends, family, and school officials spoke at length, affirming each of the honorees. The eighth graders, in particular, are at that perilous age when it is not a sure thing that they will succeed – and they are not afraid to wear their emotions on their sleeves. Jamal Williams’ mother (pictured with her sons by the banner) told of how, as a single mom, she was proud of her son and his friends, and it was especially poignant when Isaac Williams piped up to say how Jamal took care of him like a father.

Price, a product of the DC public schools (where his father was a doctor) plus Amherst and Yale, is a warm and witty speaker. He put much of his advice in his latest book, “Mobilizing the Community to Help Students Succeed.” He is in the first year of a five-year endowed visiting professorship at the Woodrow Wilson School, so he’ll also be around for the next couple of years. (He speaks in Trenton at Gallery 125 at 6:30 p.m. )

Another idea to celebrate achievement: herd the entire third grade of Trenton and surrounding area schools into the Thunder stadium or Sovereign Bank Arena and have them read a book in unison together. The only cost would be the buses and I bet that would be a popular corporate grant idea. Or give out a free bike, as they did in New Rochelle, to any youngster who read 50 books in a year. That year, 600 youngsters read 25 or more books.

“Children are hungry for this kind of engagement,” Price said. “The point is to create a drum roll for academic achievement, and engage the community in beating the drum.”

So — drum roll, please!

Esther Dyson, alternately dubbed the First Lady (or the Court Jester) of the Internet, will speak at the Princeton Chamber’s Thursday, July 9

Yes, I know, there is a dismal future for investigative journalism. Same for arts criticism. In a previous blog, I told about Richard Bilotti, former publisher of the Times of Trenton, pitching the unpleasant proposition that journalists should be entrepreneurial. Richard K. Rein’s U.S. 1 Newspaper column told of a panelist at Princeton University saying that experienced reporters were being replaced by youngsters making $35k a year. Neither option good.

Now, for the first time I hear (on public radio, natch) of some honest to goodness good ideas.

Studio 360’s Jonathan Mitchell talks to a freelance film critic, Mike D’Angelo, whose print jobs disappeared, but his readers chipped in to send him to Cannes.

That won’t pay the rent, but here’s another option: Visual art critic Lori Waxman has funding from the Warhol Foundation to travel around, set up her desk in museums and galleries, and write 20-minute on the spot reviews. It may not sound like much, but it would be an enormous boost to an un-reviewed artist to have a review from a bona fide critic.

Andras Szanto (pictured) of the Artnewspaper.com — quoted on the program — cites a bunch of likely ideas, ranging from the Carnegie Foundation’s Vartan Gregorian suggesting that foundations fund newspaper subscriptions for college students (replenishing future readers) — to foundations “tithing” one percent of their arts organization funds to support arts criticism, sort of like how builders, in Philadelphia, must dedicate a percentage of the building costs to artwork for that building.

Other ideas: “Community funded reporting” where people who want something investigated can make a tax deductible contribution to http://www.spot.us, with monies held in escrow until the sum is collected (usually under $1,000) and then the writer does the story. As Mitchell said, it’s the “pitchforks and burning tar” method.

Or think about “Kachingle, sprinkling change on the blogs you love.” You, the philanthropist, dedicate some amount per month ($5? $50) in advance. Automatically the money is distributed in proportion to the amount of time you spend at each of the sites.

This assumes the blogs you read have their Kachingle button in place. Note the absence of one here. I still haven’t even figured out how to count my stats. (Since this was posted, Steve Outing of Editor & Publisher has written about Kachingle’s competitors.)

Szanto agrees that it’s easier to find arts critics than investigative journalists, and it’s easy to agree. When U.S. 1 Newspaper went weekly more than 15 years ago, I was doing both business and arts reporting. We found a terrific arts editor, Nicole Plett, and I relinquished the arts portfolio – until now. As part of my volunteer gig here, I encourage myself to do dance reviews.

It’s the good and the bad that the arts attract writers willing to work for little or no money. Fellow members of the Dance Critics Association have been bemoaning that for years, and it’s worse now. Those with outside support (inherited money, spouse support, a day job, an academic job) are the ones who can afford to devote some serious time to arts writing, whether for print or online.

Having left my staff job, I can imagine doing dance reviews for free. I’m doing that here because I feel strongly that, since I’m trained to do it, and if I can possibly find the time, the dancers deserve that effort. And I’m willing to do basic reporting for free, to go to an event and spend a couple of hours reporting what was said, on the hope that the information will be useful to somebody in the future. But I can’t imagine doing a day-long or longer business reporting job for free. Thankfully, I can still get paid for that.

Not to be maudlin about it, but it was certainly sad when Doris Duke’s possessions, which I’d seen at Duke Farms, showed up sitting forlornly on tables at the Morristown Armory. Today was the first day of a two-day auction of the less valuable of Doris’s things. Now I know why my father-in-law didn’t want an auction. 

There was her history, the facets of her complicated personality, from exquisite Asian art to bawdy cocktail glasses, from the gold penknife with the initials of the father she dearly loved (you can imagine her treasuring it in her drawer – didn’t some family member want this???) to an outdoor statue of a deer. From the oh-so-comfortable red chairs in her Theater room to four dilapidated cars. 

Catalog prices were way low, perhaps to attract amateurs like me, and the bidding was sky high, partly because of the provenance. I tried my hand at a bid, choosing a huge Japanese drum that I could hardly lift, because I imagined Martha Graham beating on it as she gave dance lessons to Doris. Bidding started at 100, I got out at 400, and it sold for $11,500. That was the way it had gone all day, said a Chinese collector. At any other auction, he said, less than perfect pieces would go for low prices or unsold. There aren’t any bargains today, he said. 

Most of what I covet goes on sale tomorrow, whereas today was Asian art and books. The Chinese collector said that, for the big New York auction, buyers came in from Asia, but today they were bidding on the Web and by phone, making preemptive bids and leapfrogging like crazy. 

Nosing around, I talked to one of every kind: the elderly gentleman who had served on a trustee board with Doris duke at the community college, the African American couple and their young daughter who collect Lalique and Steuben, the former postman who is enamored with leather-bound books, the fashionable matron on an outing from New York, and, yes, the people who just liked Doris Duke and what she had stood for in the community. 

“I don’t know what they were thinking,” said the woman who lives in Hillsborough (pictured here). “It just doesn’t seem right that after all the wonderful things she did, that Miss Duke’s possessions should end up in the Morristown Armory.” 

More stories should go with this, and perhaps I’ll have time, but meanwhile here is the link to the photos I took today. It’s worth going on Sunday, if only as a reminder that no matter how rich you are, you can’t take it with you, and all you really leave behind is your reputation.