Nokia: Running in molasses

Every time I think about Nokia and Symbian, I can't help picturing a man knee-deep in molasses, running as fast as he can. He's working up a sweat, thrashing and stumbling forward, and proudly points out that for someone knee-deep in molasses he's making really good time.

That thought came to me several times during a briefing day that Nokia and the new Symbian Foundation held recently in San Francisco. A recurring theme was a deeply earnest discussion of how big and complex their business is, and how proud they are that despite the complexity they can make forward progress. For example:

Charles Davies, CTO of the new foundation, pointed out to us that Symbian OS has about 450,000 source files. That's right, half a million files. They're organized into 85 "packages," all of which have been charted out in a diagram that will be posted soon on the foundation's website. Davies was proud that the diagram is in SVG format, so you can zoom in on it and see that "this is an architecture that's not just a plateful of spaghetti."

The diagram looks a bit like a plateful of very colorful spaghetti (although in fairness to Charles, that's true of every OS architecture diagram I've ever seen). Anyway, the big takeaway was how huge the OS is.

Davies talked about the substantial challenges involved in open sourcing a code base that large. He said it will take up to another two years before all of the code is released under the Eclipse license. In the meantime, a majority of the code on launch day of the foundation will be in a more restrictive license that requires registration and a payment of $1,500 for access. There's also a small amount of third party copyrighted code within Symbian, and the foundation is trying to either get the rights to that code, or figure a way to make it available in binary format.

Those are all typical problems when a project is moving to open source, and the upshot of them is that Symbian won't be able to get the full benefits of its move to open source until quite a while after the foundation is launched. What slows the process down is the amount of code that Symbian and Nokia have to move. I believe that Symbian OS is probably the largest software project ever taken from closed to open source. If you've ever dealt with moving code to open source, you'll know how staggeringly complex the legal reviews are. What Nokia and Symbian are doing is heroic, scary, and incredibly tedious. It's like, well, running in molasses.

Lee Williams, Nokia's software platform SVP who is moving over to become head of the Symbian foundation, picked up on the theme of massiveness. He said the OS is on 200 million devices, with 200 device types shipped and another 100 in development. With support for five different baseband modems, seven different processor architectures, symmetric multiprocessing, and a broad set of displays, "your options are dramatic and huge."

This sort of infrastructure is needed, he said, because IT, telecom, and the Internet "have merged almost completely.... It's the perfect storm of convergence. There's almost nothing it can't eat or it won't use." He compared its importance to the creation of movable type, color palettes, and the Renaissance.

He noted that some people think the Symbian Foundation is a response to Android and other competitive moves, but said the company can't move that fast, and actually the change was in the works long before Google announced its software.

At dinner, I had a chance to chat with one of the Nokia managers. He was kind enough to let me play around with a pre-release N97 (more on that below), and the discussion gravitated to the iPhone. He told me how excited he is by the many new products Nokia has in the labs but can't talk about yet, and expressed some frustration that people don't understand why it takes time for Nokia to respond to changes in the market. He described Nokia as a giant ship. "It takes a long time to turn it, but when we do..." he said ominously, and then reminded me that Netscape once had a lead over Microsoft before it was crushed.

The problem with talking to the folks from Nokia is that you're never sure what they believe vs. what's the official story they're trying to put out in the market. They're disciplined enough that they can stay on message quite well, and in most conversations they focus on talking about what they're doing rather than asking for feedback or getting into a two-way conversation.

So I'll assume that Nokia was being serious. In that case, let's look at some financials from 1997 (Netscape vs. Microsoft) and 2007 (Apple vs. Nokia):


All figures in millions of dollars.

Don't worry too much about revenue and net income; those are usually tied up by the ongoing operations of each company. The line I want you to focus on is cash. That is your ammunition -- the extra resource available to fund a big marketing campaign, or a new product development program, or an acquisition of an innovative new technology. Microsoft had 46 times more cash than Netscape in 1997, and it wasn't seriously threatened in any of its other core businesses. It could, and did, spend Netscape into the ground.

Apple has about the same cash hoard as Nokia. Much more importantly, Apple can focus that cash on a narrower battlefront. Its situation relative to Windows is relatively safe. Although Microsoft can never be ignored, it is innovating so slowly that Apple can take some profit from its PC business to fund other things. The music player business is also stable; although it's not growing like it used to, no one has come close to matching the integration of the iPod and iTunes. So Apple is free to spend huge wads of cash to establish its new iPhone business. It can pick the countries and vertical usages it wants to dominate, and as long as it doesn't do too many things at once, it can outspend almost any competitor.

Nokia, on the other hand, has battlefields everywhere:
--In mobile phones it's fighting Samsung, LG, and SonyEricsson, and a badly wounded (therefore desperate) Motorola.
--In entertainment smartphones it's fighting Apple.
--In communicators it's fighting RIM.
--In OS it's fighting Google, Microsoft, etc.
--In online services it's fighting Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.

As Nokia EVP Anssi Vanjoki put it recently (link):

There’s a company that says they can index the world; we are going to go deeper - we are going to coordinate the world.

Sweet! He calls out Google and says he'll beat them in their core business. It's a noble effort. I love the company's ambition. But does Nokia have the resources to fight all those battles at once?

If the folks at Nokia really think they are well positioned to crush Apple, they need to go re-read The Innovator's Dilemma. Being big is not a benefit in a rapidly-changing market with emerging segments. A big company can't respond nimbly to that sort of change, and the segments attacked by new entrants are usually too small to justify huge investment by an incumbent. So new challengers like Apple and RIM pop up all around you, you gradually shed little chunks of market share, and you complain that people don't understand how powerful your core business is.

I am not at all saying that Nokia is doomed. They are an outstanding company, with smart people, a great brand, and enormous strengths. But they need to understand that turning the battleship a little faster won't win the war. Nokia's smartphone competitors are not standing in molasses; they won't stay still long enough for the 16-inch guns to be pointed at them. More importantly, the competitors on the services side breed like vampire rabbits. By the time you blow away a clutch of them, three dozen more have hatched and are sucking blood from the other side of the ship.

To succeed in smartphones, I think Nokia needs to start creating the sort of integrated software + hardware solutions that the smartphone winners excel at. And on the services side, it needs to start breeding its own killer rabbits (small entrepreneurial experiments that move fast and die quickly if they fail). So far what I think I see looks like a more design-savvy version of the smartphone business of Samsung (throw hardware at the wall and see what sticks) coupled with an effort to create a 16-inch cannon of services.

That's probably not enough to win in the long run. Nokia still has a lot of time to get it right. But do they really understand what needs to change? I can't tell, because all I usually get from them is monologues on how big their business is and how much cool stuff they have in the lab.

=====

A few other tidbits from the day...

N97: Second cousin twice removed of the Revo. I got a chance to play with a pre-release N97, Nokia's upcoming qwerty phone. The screen slides sideways to reveal a little keyboard underneath.

The look and size of the device reminded me a little bit of the old Psion Revo, although it's a pretty distant echo. The sliding process of the screen has a very nice feel to it; it's the sort of physical detail that Nokia excels at. Even in a pre-release state, the phone felt nice and solid in my hand.

The software needs a lot more work, but they admitted that. It's a pre-release device. No worries at this point.

As for the keyboard, I thought it was mediocre. The keys, and especially the microscopic letters on them, are a little too small for my taste (I have big thumbs). Typing was slower than I expect on a thumb keyboard. I'd put it about on a par with the Blackberry Storm (that's the Blackberry with the on-screen keyboard). The Storm has bigger letters than the N97, and unlike David Pogue I like the tactile feedback when you tap on its screen, although it is not as good as a real keyboard.

So the N97 has real keys but they're too tiny, and the Storm has bigger keys but they're not real. The tiebreaker is the software -- the Storm is notoriously unstable (it took me about 40 seconds to crash it). I think neither product is ready for the market yet. Unfortunately for RIM, the Storm is already shipping.

The destiny of Trolltech. About a year ago, when Nokia purchased Trolltech, I wondered what they were going to do with it (link). Now we know -- Trolltech's Qt software layer is going to become a graphics layer for Symbian. No word on what happens to Trolltech's other products.

That's nice, but what's it good for? Symbian is adding symmetric multiprocessing to the OS. In a session discussing the change, a member of the audience asked what you'd use symmetric multiprocessing for on a mobile device.

Long pause. "Well, some games use it..." Another long pause.

This is the difficulty of taking a technology-only approach when talking to developers. Although software developers are technophiles, what they really care about is what sort of cool products you can enable them to build. If your feature doesn't let them do something cool, they won't care about it.

(By the way, according to an article here, the benefit will be in performance tuning and battery life -- critical to handset vendors, but sanitation issues to application developers.)

Some alternate opinions. Some other people briefed by Nokia are not as worried as me about the molasses thing. In the interest of balance, here are a few examples:

Commentary from SymbianOne (link).

Fabrizio over at Funambol (link).

SonyEricsson on the event (link). (Never mind, that was a report from 2003. I am so embarrassed.)

THE MOST FREE PLACE ON EARTH

The famous "hole" where many slabbers bathe. A hot spring empties into and drains out of it. "One of the great showers of my life," many say afterwards.
The "invisible" hand of human territoriality distributes folks nicely. Land disputes are rare. Only John Clarmont, a slab patriarch, has a reserved area respected by all.
Looking east from the LOW area
Some cobble together a home like this one and shade it with army camouflage netting.
And sometimes in departing leave a mess like this--the biggest unsolved slab problem.
Pastor Doug and wife somehow make a life here supplemented like missionaries by outside churches. I pondered whether the harm his doctrines inflict is offset by the quasi meaning he generates.
This club, now under new and enthusiastic owership is aimed largely at discontented LOWs.
Did not get the story on this club.
One of the two bandstands at the slabs with makeshift seating for the audience. Bands play twice weekly for donations.
My favorite slab character Container Charley in his workshop. He is skilled, brilliant, articulate, friendly,artistic, and creative. He found no suitable niche in the world till he came to the slabs and made one for himself in the middle of an acre of trash, transforming much of it into art works. He earns $1000 a month doing specialty soldering. With little overhead he flourishes financially.
Container Charley engaging our WIN hiking group.
Charley's art car which he displays at Burning Man festival near Reno, Nv.
Leonard Knight at work. Could you devote 25 years of your life to your passion?

Bagpipe Bob working with me in preparation for the "INTO THE TANK" experience. Note the Kama Sutra type paintings and the central one of Hindu God Shiva. Bob earned his freedom playing the bagpipes professionally.
220f our group dared to enter the tank and experience the "vortex of sensuality" ritual. (beautifully documented in Diana,s blog: life on the open road 2)
ONE SQUARE MILE OF ANARCHY

Three miles east of Niland Californis is a square mile of anarchy that everyone calls “The Slabs”, the remains of a short lived marine base named Fort Dunlap. It closed in 1947 and all its buildings were removed, leaving only concrete slabs. Soon afterwards campers began wintering here because it was warm and free. The state inherited the land but had no good reason to drive off the seasonal settlers who by now feel a kind of squatters rights. There are no services here, water, power, sewage or mail and the streets are marginal. Add to this an almost daily BOOM from the nearby bombing range and you wonder why this square mile has become so famous.

The Slabs is the only permanent free campground in America–perhaps in the world.
The big draw is sunshine and freedom. A kind of freedom that few on the planet ever experience:
freedom from mortgage, rent, zoning laws, and most important expectations and government. Hard to imagine but it’s absolutely real. You can come here and live free as long as you wish. Just select yourself a spot from among the thousands available and settle in. Define your territory if you like, as many do with tape, string, sticks, tires etc. THEN JUST LIVE YOUR LIFE. Be a hermit or a social butterfly, no one will pressure you either way. A full spectrum of humanity live here, from tent dwellers to million dollar motor homers; from mentally challenged to super intelligent, from socialite to sociopath. Supplies and services are just a few miles away. The lifestyle here is powered by solar panels, batteries and generators. I estimate there are 400 people here now. During the hellish summer heat it shrinks to perhaps 50.

If you’re the social type, there are four clubs you may join: The LOWs (Loners on Wheels),Traveling Pals, the Oasis and the church group that cluster around pastor Doug and his wife. The LOWs are most numerous but impose a stringent policy of singleness. If they suspect you have “coupled up”, you will be ousted from fellowship. Other clubs have no such policy.
Surprisingly, the number of men and women is approximately equal.

The only business here is solar panel sales and installation by “solar Mike”, a longtime resident and super nice guy. Nighttime often finds him and his harmonica making great music with a local band. One guy cuts hair, another fixes things and “Container Charley” makes a fine livelihood doing specialty electronics work in the giant insulated container he calls home. We were awestruck at the amount of solar power at his command.

A major draw here is “Salvation Mountain”, a huge outdoor artwork constructed of mud, straw and paint by Leonard Knight, a childlike man of simple religious passion. His message: GOD IS LOVE. An estimated 200 people a day come to see it. Sean Penn came and filmed Leonard for the movie.INTO THE WILD.

I’ve been here many times over the years. I’m comfortable here. My main interest, however is philosophical: What kind of society evolves when government is absent or minimal. Bottom line conclusion:THE ANARCHIST WERE RIGHT; they claimed that functional order would arise naturally from chaos—and it has—somewhat! In 35 years, a kind of system has emerged: territories have been defined, named and largely respected. Serious miscreants are “pressured” into compliance. History and tradition are honored but not mandated. Creativity constantly emerges. One guy has made a serviceable home in an abandoned tank. Now and again, a cleanup campaign will activate residents to tackle the slab’s biggest problem—trash.

Extreme freedom is heady stuff–and quickly addictive. Once experienced, it is like power–hard to surrender. Not everyone can handle it because meaning, when not driven by necessity must be generated out of ones fascinations.

People here rise from bed only when they want to and likewise lay down. They fill their time with their private projects. Some are odd indeed: One man glides the streets in a sail car. Another raised a Llama. “”Queen” raises cactus and vegetables. A sensually motivated guy painted in larger than life figures the whole catalogue of sexual possibilities from the Kama Sutra on a giant abandoned water tank. A tiny lady has built a makeshift domicile from pallets and tarps. A preacher-in-training tells his tales here.

Enough said! Come here and garner your own impressions. It’s free and you are welcome. Myself and 60 of my friends have enjoyed a marvelous 10 days exploring every nook and cranny. One day we borrowed Leonard’s ladders and 24 of us trooped over the walls and down into a giant tank, dry and unvisited in 71 years. We created a ceremony inside climaxed by a bagpiping march round and round. Perhaps we were indeed “resensualized” as I promised. My ex girlfriend has beautifully documented this wonderful experience in her latest blog: life on the open road 2.

Proposition 8 and community review sites: Everyone loses

What happens to a community review site when members of the community use it as a weapon against people they don't approve of? Sites like Yelp and Citysearch are finding out, as users target businesses that supported California's Proposition 8 (the state's recently-enacted gay marriage ban). The results so far are not pretty. They illustrate some of the weaknesses of online reviews, and the complexities of managing a community site.

It's a learning opportunity for any company that relies on online reviews or runs a website that allows user comments. I wrote about it over on the Rubicon site (link).

Mobile data: Be careful what you wish for

The consensus around the industry seems to be that mobile data is starting to take off. Text messaging is still the leading data function, accounting for about 65% of total data revenue, according to Informa (link). But Nielsen reports a steady rise in the number of mobile Internet subscribers (link), and a faster increase in revenue (implying that those who do use the mobile web are increasing their online activity). Young people are apparently important drivers in the increase, with 37% of US adults age 18 to 24 using their phones to access the web, according to the Mobile Marketing Association (link).

The cause is supposedly not just the iPhone and other smartphones; what I'm hearing from multiple companies is that web access and other data usage is rising even on feature phones.

This increased activity is creating an uncomfortable problem for some mobile operators: it's apparently overloading their networks. There have been predictions for years that this could happen -- a report from 2005 pointed out that the typical 3G network would be overloaded if 40% of subscribers used video just eight minutes a day (link). It predicted potential traffic overload by 2007. There have been charges that service problems on the AT&T network in the US have been caused by the iPhone (link).

In the UK, the BBC's popular iPlayer streaming video service is supposedly threatening the economics of even wired ISPs (link -- very interesting article), so it's easy to imagine what it could do to mobile networks if broadly deployed. Supposedly the mobile version of iPlayer for Nokia S60 is set up to stream only over WiFi, but the discussion here (link) points out that restriction is likely to be evaded by enterprising users.

It's very hard to confirm exactly what mobile data is doing to the networks because the operators don't like to discuss this sort of thing in public. But the number of data-capable phones is definitely growing faster than network capacity, so overload is just a matter of time. I've gotten several off-the-record comments from friends in the industry saying that the operators are worried about the problem and are quietly trying to throttle traffic, especially to online multimedia services that consume a lot of bandwidth.

The problem is complicated by the all-you-can-eat data plans that have been adopted by many operators. If you're charging people for the amount of data they consume, their data use becomes self-limiting. But limited plans are unpopular with users, who get practically unlimited data on their PC web connections. When you tell people that they can have the web on their mobiles, they expect to be able to use it like the web they already know.

So the operators are stuck with either throwing out people who use the "unlimited" network heavily, or covertly degrading the quality of their service so they'll stop using so much data. Both practices are very dangerous to their long-term prospects.

The problem is that the people who use a lot of data aren't just the freakish fanatics that the industry would like to imagine them as. They are Internet power users, a group that we labeled the Most Frequent Contributors (MFCs) when we recently researched Internet usage patterns at Rubicon (link). They don't just use a lot of video -- they are generally very involved in all sorts of online activities. Most importantly for the operators, they write the majority of the reviews and user comments posted online.

So, if you kick a power user off your network, or throttle their performance, they are extremely likely to write about you online. Extensively. Where their complaints will be read by most other Internet users. Check out the comments here and here if you want a sample.

Systematically punishing your noisiest customers is not the way to build a sustainable business.


What else can the operators do?

I wish there were some magical formulation that would make users happy and operators financially sound. But there isn't, because the problem is inherent to the way a wireless network operates. And as the installed base of smartphones grows, and video and other multimedia services increase in popularity, the problem is only going to get worse.

The most damaging approach is that one that operators seem to be leaning toward now, covertly throttling traffic. They can probably get away with that for a while, but eventually people online will compare notes, figure out that network performance is being systematically distorted -- and then the class-action lawyers (in the US) and government regulators (in Europe) will be unleashed.

Honesty is the best policy. Ultimately I think there's no alternative to moving to pricing plans that acknowledge the physical limits on the wireless Internet. That, and the operators need to resist the temptation of advertising their Internet as identical to the wired Internet. The MFCs are technically sophisticated, and capable of understanding the need for tiered pricing if it's explained to them clearly and honestly. What causes endless friction is the hypocrisy of calling something "unlimited" and then limiting it.

=====

Belated thanks to Voip Survivor for featuring my post on app stores in the Carnival of the Mobilists (link).

The Influencers are dead. Or not.

As we continue to sort through the results from Rubicon's recent research on Internet usage (link), we're finding interesting insights on how the web is developing. One insight is around the concept of Influencers.

When we first looked at the results of the survey, we thought they confirmed the Influencer idea. But after some more digging, our thinking has evolved. There are basically two schools of thought online about the influencing process. Some people say a small group of Influencers drive most consumer decisions. Others argue that the Influencer idea is a fantasy, and that ideas spread through society from random starting points, without a hierarchy.

The evidence from our research shows that both groups are wrong in important ways, especially when the web is taken into consideration. That has big implications for how companies market online, so we wrote about it. If you're interested in learning more, you can read the analysis on Rubicon's website here.

A DAY ON THE ROAD

I begin my day investigating this tiny snap together house situated in a stand of tamerisk trees. No mortgage or foreclosure problem here. The builder/owner seemed cozy and contented with his domicile.
The mighty Imperial Dunes--they stir strange yearnings in me. A gargantuan sand box where a hundred thousand come to play,
Exquisite form and feature--reminded me of Ester Williams.
Holtville hot springs---perfect temperature, flowing freely, cleaned regularly--and free to the public.
That barely visible vehicle on the right in the distance is smoothing this roadside to be able to detect alien footprints.
There were more than a hundred of these marvelous sculptures scattered across the desert near Borrego Springs, Ca.
Desert loving, off road sub culture--bigger than you ever imagined.
Ahhhh----I'm Home---down there with my family---The wandering WINs

EVERYTHING INTERESTS ME

A day on the road

I once asked a hobo when he was happiest. He said: “When I’m sitting in a boxcar headed out of town.” I can identify, because moving day for me is more exciting than arriving. Many of my companions feel differently.

Anyway, here’s a more or less typical travel day, as I moved from Yuma, Az to Borrego Springs, Ca. to spend Thanksgiving with my travel club, the WINs (Wandering Individuals Network—wwwrvsingles.org)

My first stop is at the extraordinary rest stop dead in the middle of the gigantic Imperial sand dunes.(six miles wide, 70 miles long) It is much beloved for its good water supply–fresh and free to all. Off road dunes people fill up here for their weekend adventure. Surprisingly it is located within the median of Interstate 8.

This six mile dunes crossing required incredible feats of engineering. For years the only way to cross it was by a difficult plank road. Even more difficult was the All American Canal which also crosses the dunes here. The easy route for the canal would be a few miles south but that would dip into Mexico and give others some control over the precious water. America paid the price, dug through the dunes and now 90% of the Colorado River is diverted 40 miles west to the green fields of Imperial Valley, where 10% of the nation’s vegetables are grown.

My next stop is at Holtville hot springs, a fine tub of hot flowing water; hot enough to do you good; mellow you out. Boondockers cluster here for the winter, building rituals around daily soaks. Canadians seem to be over represented. On this day a lovely Hispanic lady with curves more graceful than a racehorse posed for my camera.

In El Centro Wal Mart I supplied myself for an extended desert stay. North on Hwy 86 I pass through a Border Patrol checkpoint. (Always located at strategic choke points) The officer always wants to hear you speak. You can imagine why.

West on Hwy 78 I stop to investigate a huge cloud of dust. The Border Patrol is dragging a smoothing apparatus down the roadside. They do this so that footprints of illegals crossing in the night will show.

I stop at Ocotillo Wells to appreciate the vast subculture of off road recreation.

I stop again to photograph the art works scattered across the desert near Borrego Springs. A rich guy (Avery) bought up the desert and commissioned the sculptures.

Settling in among my friends in the Anza Borrego desert. It’s been a good day and unlike tourist, who just see the sights, I see what I see.

HIGHWAY INTO SOLITUDE

These are good friends who have scattered themselves to enjoy solitude.
The stealth trailer "claims" its hundred acres of solitude.
My friend Pete, a very clever engineer. His is the most fine tuned rig in boondocking history. Worthy of a separate blog. He sits, soaking in the sun. I kept this respectful distance.
General George Patton commanded war games here 68 years ago in preparation for invading north africa. The evidence is everywhere.
120 miles west of Phoenix and 5 miles north on hwy 95 is
La Paz valley (valley of peace)–well named because here is where mobile people come to get away from it all. Photos suggest how we scatter into solitude–to pull ourselves together–when we are weary of groupiness. I claim my spot and settle in—I’m deliciously alone in the desert. I tune in my electronics–locate the tv satellite, turn on my cell phone, place my verizon air card in the window. (4 bar reception–good!) My satellite radio is always ready. Yes, I’m here for solitude and yet I’m connected to the whole world. I can theoretically interact with anyone in the world, but I don’t want to interact PERSONALLY with anyone for a while. Most, I presume can identify with the paradox.

Next day, curious how alone I am, I scan the horizon with my binoculars and surprise, I can see 4 of my friends rigs scattered widely , each separated by a quarter mile or so.

Probably they’re here as I am to LET NOTHINGNESS HAVE ITS WAY WITH ME. I welcome it like I often welcome the darkness letting it slowly envelope me like water wraps around a sinking ship. Oh how sweet! Perhaps it’s a form of cocooning–like enclosed insects we are self contained and hopefully we too are quietly transforming. Time, quiet and solitude “knits up our raveled sleeve of care.”

I don’t demean the social hubub I have left–it’s been good for me. But like a trip to the marketplace, I come “home to myself” to sort and savor my gains. Four days later I’m out of my cozy cocoon, refreshed and ready to go venturing..

This wonderful place is no secret. I show you the red highway from Quartzsite, Az to Bouse; 30 square miles of free clean desert. Come find your place, your peace–and heal.

ARIZONA'S OUTLAW FORTRESS

A REAL-LIFE HOLE-IN-THE-WALLHere is a photo of the original. History buffs will know that is located in Johnson county, Wyoming, in the Big Horn mountains--its most famous residents, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Not so well known is the fact that several outlaw gangs sheltered there simultaneously in relative harmony, with codes of conduct understood and enforced. Truly "honor among thieves." One outlaw gang comprised 75 armed and mounted men--a veritable army. Also not well known is the fact that the fortress was never penetrated by the law despite several attempts by determined posses. All were turned back, often with casualties. Amazingly, the outlaws held on to their sanctuary for 50 years. It faded from history by 1910.
Spread out below me is a real life band of "outlaws" taking refuge in Arizona's version of the infamous criminal fortress. Our "crime" is trespassing on state land. I daresay that only I actually bought a permit and am legal. The others know all about the forgiveness/permission paradox and are not worried. We are camped on the outer lip of the canyon because cell reception is good here AND because the inner canyon has gotten a bit scary. Unsavory and dangerous characters are said to live "in there."
And of course I want to go "in there." This nice lady pointed the way and described the dangers.
This hole-in-the-wall, like that in Wyoming, is a narrow one road in or out canyon.
Barely inside a hundred yards, I encountered this unlikely occupant, an attractive lady camping with her dog. She's on a cross country adventure to the coast. I approached, chatted, and told her my mission, and she----surprise----wanted to go with me. Together we journeyed.
At an abandoned campsite we found this clock. Stolen, abandoned loot?
Notice the semi hidden camper in mid picture.

This hole-in-the-wall is full of surprises.
This "outlaw" is obviously a minimalist camper. He waved--friendly like.
But later as we were leaving, things turned sour for him. He was required to squat under guard while another officer searched his vehicle. Unlike Wyoming, the law has penetrated here.
Denizens of outlaw canyon. There's a good story here but I don't have time to tell it.
Ah, but mostly the campers here are respectable, adventurous, warm-hearted folks. These were curious to tour my stealthy trailer. They listened to one of my poems and gave me a friendly bon voyage.

Marcy, it turns out is a very interesting lady, a practitioner of the arcane art of quantum touch. (www.chibodywork.net) She tried in vain to explain. In return for computer time and wine she brought me up to speed on couch surfing (a hospitality exchange network) and she enriched my writing with two memorable phrases: “frightened people who throw their fears on me” and “thinking from their television set.”

I think I will not reveal the location of this desperado canyon. My friend Glen chastises me often for betraying boondocker secrets. I will just say that it is accessible from Az hwy 95 between Needles and Parker.

DESERT UTOPIA

CALNEVARI, NEVADA
Camped "in the seam"
Flew in for breakfast
Plane on main street
Every house has one
“BIRDS” OF A FEATHER

There it is below: Calnevari, a town of 278 literally winged souls. I was puzzled as you would be to see a town this far out in the desert with no obvious raison detre. (reason for being) It’s 9 miles south of Searchlight Nevada, (a one casino, speed trap of a town the world would never mention, were it not the home of Senator Harry Reid, senate majority leader.) I was headed toward Laughlin, NV.

Tired and curious when I reached Calnevari, I called it a day, settling into a SEAM–one of my favorite tricks for free camping: parking exactly midway between two enterprises so that each, if they notice you at all, considers that you have business with the other. I’ve celebrated this strategy in verse:
BOONDOCKING IN THE CITY

Let us travel more boldly,
Range into urban locales;
Dare to camp in the city
Outside campground corrals.

Enjoy its treasures and splendors
And when comes time for dreams,
slip away from no-no land
into the city seams.

Seams are iffy zones
Where oversight is rare.
Sleep a full eight hours,
Then move away from there.

Doing the boondocker shuffle.
Moving twice a day,
Living free and easy
In Phoenix or San Jose.

I settled midway between the airport and the restaurant. No one troubled me. I walked into the casino/bar/restaurant–one of those places filled with regulars, so bored that everyone turns to look at whoever enters, desperately hoping for a stranger like me to create some excitement. As always, there was a pretty waitress that caught my eye generating a momentary fantasy of “taking her away from this one horse town.” (I flashed on my first sexual experience which happened just this way–with a twist. A strange, beautiful woman walked into my father’s bar and took me away to a motel in Monroe, La–God bless that woman!)

I slept soundly but was awakened early by small airplanes taking off and landing. I was surprised to see planes hitched like horses outside the restaurant and others actually driving on the one main street of town. The truth of things soon became apparent. I flagged down a deputy who was pleased to tell me some history. In the 50's, Nancy and Slim Kidwell started this airplane based community, inviting like minded enthusiast to “come fly with me.” The town name is a PORTMANTEAU of California, Nevada and Arizona. I walked the town verifying that every house had a hanger.

GOOD NEWS FROM THE WASTELANDS

Do you see what caught my eye?
A silent army of alchemist transforming sunlight to electricity
MR CLEAN---ENERGY

Driving south on Hwy 95 from Las Vegas, I saw something huge, and compelling, far out in the wastelands; something silver and black in color. (I had to know! I had to go! –but the sign said No!–-I went anyway!) I’ve learned that if “they” are really serious, “they” will barricade the road or post a guard. And it is true that it s easier to get forgiveness than permission.

I just had a memory flash–One of my earliest memories is watching my father dismantle a barricade in the headlights of our panel truck. We were bootlegging whiskey into Oklahoma (at that time a dry state) and our drop spot was down that road. I guess I come by this outlawry honestly.

Anyway, down into the mysterious valley I went till I came to the glittery acres of glass and aluminum. Wow! Do I love this. Acres and acres of solar panels quietly, cleanly, making power for the masses. I took a photo but I needed facts. A truck drove by inside the fence and I yelled. He came and gave them gladly: They are generating electricity by concentrating sunlight on a pipe filled with oil which heats to 400 degrees and travels to a heat exchanger where it turns water into steam that runs a turbine.

This project cost 263 million, covers 40 acres, generates 64 megawatts, powering 48,000 homes. ( coincidentally, the population of nearby Boulder, Nv is 50,000) The engineer was just getting warmed up. His face glowed as he spoke of future expansion, now underway, trebling its size–AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE–(He’s really enthused now, almost dancing) “WE’VE FOUND A WAY TO MAKE IT PRODUCE 24 HOURS A DAY. “Easy now” I said! “Even great engineers can”t make the sun shine 24 hours” I thought he would jump the fence in his rush to tell me the secret: “You see, we are now building a HUGE heat storage tank that will keep making steam all night.” “AND” he said, “WE’RE GOING TO PUT WINDMILLS OUT THERE.” He almost broke into poetry as he raised both hands prophet-like and said: “WE WILL MAKE THIS VALLEY CRACKLE WITH ELECTRICITY.”

His gospel converted me! I went away singing the praises of solar power—and then I remembered that I’VE BEEN SOLAR POWERED FOR 17 YEARS.