Date of Award

1997

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Corporate and Industrial Communications

Department

Business

First Advisor

Michael Castro

Second Advisor

Ben Keuhnle

Third Advisor

Carloe Knight

Abstract

This thesis will focus on the study of multimedia at The Boeing Company in St. Louis, Missouri and on the corporate world as a whole.

Multimedia is for real. Though the contemporary hype exceeds the current level of real development activity, multimedia is properly billed as the next major dimension of computing.

Multimedia will promote a monumental clash of cultures between the software engineering and media production organizations within the corporate communications departments of major corporations. The convergence of media that is the very essence of what is being described as multimedia will spawn one of the great professional culture clashes in American History. It brings two of the most complex and highly regarded industries into integral and irreversible contact with one another.

In attempting to define this emergent industry, the trade press has nicely divided it into two parts: the enabling technologies and the content. The enabling technologies are comprised of the hardware and system software that makes digital media possible: the mass storage, transmission, and playback technologies. The content which is still poorly understood, is the highly valued electronic gold that flows across the plumbing provided by those enabling technologies.

The best multimedia content will exhibit a balance between media and logical assets - but few organizations will achieve, or even understand the need for this balance. All multimedia products can be neatly divided into their media assets - which serve the purpose of delivering a message - and their logical assets - which serve the purpose of making programs interactive and intelligent The very best programs will exhibit a near-perfect balance between these two types of assets.

To begin reaching its true potential in the corporate domain, multimedia will need enterprise-wide strategies. These are available today in conceptual form. But, again, the slow maturation of the necessary enabling technologies will keep these enterprise models in the incubator for some time. Until we have massive mass storage and extremely high-bandwidth networks, multimedia will fall short of its goal of becoming a databaseable, networkable corporate asset.

Corporations that embrace the multimedia technology will be perceived as being a high-tech global organization.

As corporate multimedia use grows so to will the in-house multimedia organization. However, for these in-house groups to grow, they will need to invest in the future with an acquisition of state of the art equipment. Sound strategic planning and implementation plans will be needed in order to build a quality based cost-effective organization.

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