__S__ueann Ambron surprises. First there's her appearance: With her short-gray hair, piercing brown eyes, and Talbot's-style clothing, she looks more like the head of the local Jaycees than one of the world's most influential shapers of multimedia and interactive communication. And at 49, she's older than the ponytailed populace that makes up most of Silicon Valley's major industry. That's surprising. But what startles on first acquaintance is Ambron's overwhelming mom-ness. She practically radiates a humane warmth that's jolting in an industry prone to social dysfunction.
In this case, first impressions speak volumes. "More than anything, I think Sueann is a nurturer of visionaries," says Brenda Laurel of Interval Research, who has worked with Ambron through the years. "She tries to give people a place to pursue their dreams and a context in which they might become realities. And she always has a clear-eyed smile and a new set of possibilities."
By all accounts, that's Ambron - the soothing parent who inspires her children to stretch. And it doesn't matter if those children are her own, or the people who report to her, or the multimedia products that arose from her imagination. And while Ambron might balk at the title, many in the computer industry are quick to call her the "mother of multimedia." After all, she not only coined the dreaded "M-word," as founder of Apple's seminal (and now defunct) Multimedia Lab, she also practically invented the concept.
"Everyone at Apple wanted to call the technology 'hypermedia,'" explains Ambron. "But I knew teachers wouldn't feel comfortable about 'hyper' anything. So I suggested 'multimedia,' because I knew teachers would be more comfortable with that word."
Today, as head of Paramount Technology Group's Media Kitchen in San Francisco, she is charged with turning the concept of multimedia into an honest-to-God reality that will filter into the nation's homes. The interactive technology she is shaping today will become products tomorrow for Paramount's television, movie, and publishing operations. Finally, multimedia is coming of age - and Ambron's efforts will help PDA-toting tourists find the best restaurants, lead couch potatoes to CDs and concert tickets, and let remote-control junkies surf the forthcoming superchannel. In the process, Ambron is delving into her own history - as an educator, as a developer of nascent technology, and as a business veteran - to forge new forms of electronic communication.
"The demands of interactive television require a new kind of person who merges knowledge of the computer industry with an understanding of the entertainment business," says Vincent Grosso who, as project director for AT&T Interactive TV, is working extensively with Ambron on her interactive TV projects. "Sueann has those special qualities, and they are very rare. With them, she has an extraordinary ability to innovate."
She's always had an eye for new possibilities. Way back in 1973 (after picking up her PhD from Columbia Teachers College, in New York), she began teaching in the relatively new field of human development at Stanford University. While there, she became fascinated by the work going on at nearby Xerox PARC. It was the research center's golden age - pursuing the new fields of artificial intelligence, computer interface design, and semiotics (conveying ideas through icons). "Since I was interested in how people learn, I began exploring how people make use of computers, which really were not easy [to use] in those days," says Ambron. Big understatement, and Ambron found herself in demand as a consultant in that area. One such client: now-defunct Quadrus, which wanted her help designing software for nuclear power plants after the Three Mile Island fiasco. "That consulting drew me into industry," Ambron says.
Time for a history lesson here. It's the late '70s, and two guys named Steve are still playing around in a garage, Xerox has recently released the groundbreaking Alto, and games kingpin Atari is the hotbed of research into the technologies that Apple will eventually call its own.
Ambron joined Atari, heading the group responsible for crafting education products. While there, she worked with Laurel, Keith Schaefer (her current boss at Paramount), Steve Arnold (of Lucasfilm), and Alan Kay (Apple Fellow and professional visionary). "It was a hotbed of work, with great resources, great ideas, and great people," says Ambron. "In those days I really had to justify my work because I had three babies, whom I breast-fed for eighteen months." And just how did she handle the seemingly conflicting responsibilities? "I was an earth mother, so I kept a crib in my office," she explains. "I was part of the generation that said you could have it all. And I went for it all. It never occurred to me that you could have a work life and a family life, but that the two would be separate. I always had my babies with me." Talk about credibility for work on educational products!
Case in point: During her tenure, Atari's engineers decided the education market needed, er, robots. (Lord only knows why the market needed robots, but it did.) And just to prove that engineers don't always consider form when they design function, these robots looked like big, hulking tanks. "So I asked my kids what they would want from a robot. And they wanted something they could jump rope with, or that would hold their hand - something more like a companion than a tank," says Ambron.
Mom made sure the engineers rethought the prototype's design. (Unfortunately, Atari dropped the project before a second prototype could be built.) But what's key here is the way she pushed people to rethink their assumptions. "Sueann gets people around her to be playful with ideas, so that the collective mindset leads to new things," says Kathleen Wilson, who once worked with Ambron at Atari and now serves as a producer/designer in the Media Kitchen. "I wouldn't call her a visionary. I've worked with visionaries - like Alan Kay - and it feels different. Visionaries come in with big ideas, and inspire others to have big ideas. Sueann pulls the big ideas out of people. You could say she presses the 'start' button."
Ambron left Atari to join Apple in 1982, after a year's stint at a Palo Alto startup, Human Engineering Software.
Those were the days when Apple really was an insanely great place to work. Apple placed a greater premium on creativity - and conducted itself more like a playground for the mind and less like a business - than practically any other company in the Valley. It was Ambron's job to head up software development for the relatively new Apple II. "We did everything from educational products to productivity to entertainment software," says Ambron. "Apple Works was one of my most successful products." And she adds: "Those were the days when I tried to convince Apple to switch to the software business."
Apple didn't spurn its hardware business. But in 1987 it did go through one of its too-numerous-to-count reorganizations. Once again, Ambron found herself in charge of new product development - this time as founder of Apple's Multimedia Lab. It was her lot to jump-start an entirely new technology that, the people at Apple hoped, would prove as successful in creating a new market for the Macintosh as desktop publishing had been. "That's my specialty - being on the edge of taking something commercial," says Ambron.
On the edge, for sure. Here they were, building prototypes that somehow took existing movies and allowed users to manipulate and view whole clips in whatever order they felt like - and the Cupertino company had not a single video engineer. So Ambron did what every instigator of creativity before and since has done: She reached out to others possessing a complementary creative spark. Those partners were about 60 miles up Highway 101, nestled amid tall redwoods (Lucasfilm); and 3,000 miles away in Washington, DC - three blocks from the White House (the National Geographic Society) and in a red brick castle on the Mall (the Smithsonian Institute). From Lucasfilm came an enormous breadth and depth of production skills. The National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian each provided a wealth of content (photographs, movies, and illustrations) and knowledge of the natural sciences. The Multimedia Lab added computer expertise. Together, they stirred the digital pot to bring forth such landmark videodisc products as Geographic Television (for middle school classrooms), the Visual Almanac, and Life Story. All broke new ground with interface design and the merging of son et lumiere in a way users could control.
There's one other element these products shared: At introduction, not one was intended for the commercial marketplace. At least one (Geographic Television) was given away to schools as a way to ratchet up students' interest in geography. And while giving away expensive toys is all well and good for the nonprofit National Geographic Society, it probably wasn't the best use of Apple's workforce. Last year, it shut down its multimedia think tank.
Last year, Ambron joined her old colleague, Keith Schaefer, at Paramount Technology Group. Once again, she is in the business of transforming big thoughts into tangible products - but with a decided difference. "We created the Media Kitchen to partner with other Paramount companies - such as Paramount Television, Paramount Publishing, and Madison Square Garden," says Schaefer, the group's president. "It's our job to push the envelope of multimedia development, and to assume the risks so our operating units don't have to. And it's our job to devise products that will almost immediately become a new business or a new source of profit for Paramount."
In other words, the Media Kitchen is no R&D boutique, like that of Apple or even Xerox PARC. Its advanced prototypes are intended to make Paramount a more nimble entertainment force than its rivals - in publishing, in theme parks, in television, and in the movies. But the Media Kitchen has a finely honed edge in its efforts, and that edge is content. From Star Trek, to a vast movie and television library, to Frommer's travel guides, Paramount owns the images and the words. And the Media Kitchen has access to that content. What's more, the Paramount companies boast state-of-the-art production capabilities and top-line talent in the form of production staff and book editors. The Media Kitchen works with them, too. And when Paramount doesn't have the resources it needs, Ambron reaches out to technology partners, like AT&T and GeoWorks, to produce the prototypes that will turn into profit.
So what's cooking in the Media Kitchen? For one, there's the prototype Paramount Publishing asked Ambron's group to devise for Frommer's travel guides, from Prentice Hall Travel. Using the Tandy/Casio Zoomer as the delivery vehicle, the Media Kitchen worked with GeoWorks to create a working prototype. The Kitchen scanned in one of the books, reformatted it so all related information would fit on one Zoomer-size screen, and created new maps and icons. Voila: a traveling companion that Prentice Hall likes so much, it is now taking over the project.
Then there's interactive television, for which the Media Kitchen has all burners firing. In New York, Paramount owns Madison Square Garden, a local sports channel, the New York Knicks, and the New York Rangers. What better use of these riches than to create an interactive sports desk? "We want to know what people are willing to pay for," says Kathleen Wilson, a producer/ designer on the project. "So with our prototype, users can watch one game live and intercut with a recorded game. They can also find out scores, hear interviews with players and coaches, and listen to game analyses - all on demand."
Sound appealing? Well there's another prototype, for now called "Entertainment Tonight Presents..." It will let couch potatoes play games across the vast television network, buy music CDs, and order tickets for Janet Jackson's latest concert (after viewing a schematic of available seats and price ranges) - all with a press of the remote control.
To cope with the expected glut of the 500-channel future, The Media Kitchen's Entertainment Tonight Companion could help make channel surfing a breeze. Using intelligent agents that remember past viewing selections, this interactive melding of sound and video will suggest upcoming programs you might want to watch.
Many of these television projects were developed with AT&T - continuing Ambron's practice of making outsiders part of the team. "We can't afford to let new technology wash over us, which is why we try to work with a partner that's also in the early stages of developing hardware, software, or delivery technologies," she explains. "In fact, the stage is so early that we, as a content company, can influence what features they put in. Hopefully, what develops is a much better product for that collaboration."
Ambron has done her damnedest to make sure her side can add its creative spark to any collaboration. The mother in her made sure her staff has the benefit of wide-open spaces, high ceilings, and comfy mauve chairs arranged in a conversation pit. The result: collaboration and brainstorming. And for its palette, Ambron's staff has its own interactivity lab for testing prototypes on focus groups, and one impressive production studio. "The Media Kitchen is about invention, creation, and coming up with new products and businesses," she says. "But it's hard to put in one place all the art, the sound, and the production capabilities you need for that. Think of the space a songwriter needs to write a song. That's what I've tried to create here for our type of work."
Her staff seems to appreciate her efforts. And her. "Sueann Ambron is absolutely the best boss I've ever had," says Nicholas Iuppa, a producer/designer for the Media Kitchen. And he's had a lot of bosses, having worked at Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Kodak, and Bank of America, among others. "It's not unusual to get her okay on a proposal, but with the condition that I make sure I'm stretching the envelope. She never plays it safe."
And that's the point. The Media Kitchen's raison d'etre is to be at the edge of the new. Naturally, not every prototype or pilot will make it to production. Those that do will be transformed faster than you can say "profit and loss" into a product we can buy, prod, and play with. And they'll get here through hard work, an open mind, and Ambron's generous use of TLC - for her colleagues and for their ideas.
