#GoPongo: Launching

The World's Largest Communications Network Connecting Every Device for Every Person in Every Language Everywhere on Earth

Daniel Webster

• Publisher: Daniel Webster
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781087957807
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Pongo is the World's Largest Communications Network Connecting Every Device for Every Person in Every Language Everywhere on Earth. For Pongo to launch, I must bring together 21 of the biggest, most powerful companies and entities which have already created all of the pieces and parts to build Pongo. To get the word out to the heads of these corporate families and entities, I am creating a series of videos on my Twitter account @danielwebster and writing this book, #GoPongo. You are likely reading this book because I sent you here from a video on Twitter. To get folks' attention, I must create buzz. I'm hoping #GoPongo trends, somehow. To help with that process, I went so far as to title this book with that hashtag. Thus, this book is my crowdsourcing project. Unlike other crowdsourcing projects, I don't need cash from those of you in the crowd. I need your connections. Therefore, if you know a head of one of the mentioned companies or know someone who knows the president and CEO, will you please throw Pongo a bone and tip them off that I'm wanting to meet with them to discuss launching Pongo. My Personal Invitation to them is the final chapter of this #GoPongo book.

1

Newspaper ‘No Man’s Land’

When I closed my Pioneer Press, $300,000 in revenue continued to sit on the table. It’s still waiting to be picked up. Taken together, billions of dollars are still on the table waiting to be spent in the local news markets which lost their news sources. That cash didn’t go to our large tech firms. I know.

When I bought my hometown small newspaper, the former Editor and Publisher Gary Mortenson gave me a piece of strange advice.

“There’s a ‘no man’s land’ in the newspaper business. Between $150,000 and $300,000 in revenue, a newspaper can’t turn a profit. You can’t make any money,” Gary explained. “You either need to keep it small, so you can run it basically as a one-person operation, or you will have to get over $300,000 to become large enough to make a profit. Your expenses will eat you up in no man’s land.”

Such advice seemed like nonsense to me at the time. Gary was correct.

Gary had kept his news operation small. I chose to push and beef it up.

I proved Gary right nearly every year I published the Pioneer Press in my small town.

Year after year, I hovered around $300,000 in gross revenue. It was nearly impossible to turn a decent profit. My biggest expenses, printing, distribution and payroll, ate it all up.

For a small hyperlocal market such as mine, $300,000 was the maximum amount in revenue I could bring in.

I tried every trick in the book to make my newspaper a financial success. I attempted the news conglomerate approach. I bought the struggling, court adjudicated Butte Valley Star, founded in 1929, for $1. I purchased the Klamath Courier, in the Klamath Falls Basin, for the equivalent of a sack of potatoes -- literally running my eastern news editions out of a potato warehouse in Malin, Ore. Even my regional approach to news couldn’t pay off.

I went into the news business in the wrong era, as local news was dying.

The notion of going digital was enticing. It would eliminate my two greatest expenses of printing and distribution. My revenue, however, would tank.

Going digital wasn’t a solution. I would take my revenue from $300,000 to mere peanuts, with the digital revenue solutions.

Nearly all of the $300,000 in revenue would remain on the table, unable to be picked up, in a digital solution. Going digital wasn’t actually a solution.

I wasn’t alone.

According to a report from University of North Carolina Hussman School of Media and Journalism, since 2004, we have lost one-fourth -- 2,100 -- of our newspapers in the United States, including 70 dailies and more than 2,000 weeklies or nondailies.

At the end of 2019, the United States had 6,700 newspapers, fallen from almost 9,000 in 2004, UNC Hussman reports.

If there was a viable digital solution, local news wouldn’t die. An online solution would allow local news to thrive, turning a profit from the internet.

Ultimately, I had to shut down my newspaper and become a statistic. The shame was that I had the solution.

When I closed my Pioneer Press, $300,000 in revenue continued to sit on the table. It’s still waiting to be picked up. Taken together, billions of dollars are still sitting on the table waiting to be spent in the local news markets which lost their news sources. That cash didn’t go to our large tech firms. I know. I see who is advertising on my social media and streaming feeds. My former advertisers aren’t spending the money they previously gave me.

We didn’t have to do it this way.

There’s a solution.

The solution works for far more than local news. It works for major news brands, social media influencers, movie studios, sports enterprises, political campaigns, product manufacturers, service providers and more. The solution is all encompassing. The solution to save local news has the ability to save the internet.

The solution is super-simple and easy to build. We’ve already created all the pieces and parts. We just need to sew the various pieces and parts into one complete platform.

The solution to the problem is a talking dog named Pongo.

This book, #GoPongo, is my request for you to help me launch Pongo, by throwing Pongo a bone.

2

The Secret Concert in the Hungarian Forest

I believe in the core of my heart, if we follow this foundational principle to build my network, Pongo will be the next Gutenberg Press -- and this time, it’s digital and personal. When history is written so far, we will read of the two monumental inventions which radically altered the world’s communications: the Gutenberg Press and Pongo.

In 1982 and 1983 I traveled with the Continental Singers and Orchestra behind the Iron Curtain to bring my faith’s Holy Scripture to a world through song where a ruling government reigned supreme under the influence of the former Soviet Union at the time.

Some of the countries where we performed do not exist today -- the map has changed.

Through most of our tour, we had agents following us everywhere we went, hiding in bushes with their machine guns watching every move we made.

There was one day, in Hungary, we got on the bus and the local man handling our concert schedule gave us directions to take a long, bumpy drive out to the middle of a forest, far from any town.

It took us more than an hour for our bus to arrive at our “concert location.” We pulled into a clearing in the forest, which made no sense at all. We were so far removed from any population, we joked that we would be singing to a bunch of trees.

Our normal routine of setting up lights and sound equipment went out the window. There was no electricity for miles.

There wasn’t really a set time for this concert. It would start when the audience arrived. There were no billboards and posters plastered throughout towns and cities announcing our concert in the forest. We were told that the promotion was all word of mouth.

Agents obviously were not aware of our concert -- they weren’t hiding in the bushes and behind trees this time. It was a secret concert.

As we hung out waiting, from the forest, through the trees, people began to walk out into the clearing. More people began to show up. They appeared from the trees encircling us.

Considering it took us an hour to slowly drive on the rough, dirt road through the forest, the people walking had to walk hours to get there.

Thousands upon thousands had made their way to the clearing in the middle of the forest. Our interpreter said it was time to start.

We were trained to sing with softer blended voices, allowing the sound system to amplify our singing and instruments.

Seeing the size of the audience, without amplification, our director instructed us to all sing in the loudest full voice possible, our orchestra was to blast their instruments like never before, in order to reach the masses.

As we sang, more and more people continued to arrive.

When we finished our concert, the audience wouldn’t let us leave. They chanted and screamed for more. We gave an encore. They wanted more. We gave them another encore. They still wanted more.

Obviously, they hadn’t walked for hours, just to hear an hour and a half concert.

Our interpreter told us to do the entire concert again.

We started at the top and performed the entire show.

More. They wanted more.

We gave them the whole concert a third time.

We were aware that it was now approaching darkness and the audience would have to walk through the night to get home.

After the concert, two young Hungarian men in their 20s came up to visit with me. They spoke English fairly well.

As we talked, they told me about their secret church where they met every week. When they got together, they exchanged their Bible pages. That wasn’t a concept that made sense.

I asked them to explain.

They both pulled out from their hidden spot in their clothes a folded, printed page in the Hungarian language, which appeared to be a page from the Bible. They showed it to me. It still didn’t make sense.

They explained, their whole community shared a single Bible. It’s all they had. Bibles were illegal. They carefully ripped out every page and gave everyone a page of their Holy Scripture for the week. The most exciting part of getting together every week was receiving their new page of the Bible. This too wasn’t a concept that made sense.

“You only have one Bible?”

“One,” as he held up a finger.

“Can you get another Bible?” I asked.

“No. Never.”

“Hold on a moment. Stay right here. Don’t move,” I told them.

I ran to the bus, opened my carry on bag. I grabbed my compact, smartphone-size full Bible I had purchased for the trip, because it was lightweight.

I ran back to the two boys and handed it to them.

“Here, I can get another.”

One held it, silently, felt it, turned it, didn’t open it. The other watched intensely.

“I’ve never held a Bible before,” he said.

It wasn’t a concept that made sense to me.

He handed it to his friend. “Here. Hold it.”

They started sobbing.

I had no understanding for the context of their visceral emotional response. It was one of the most impactful scenes I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime.

In their tears, they handed it back to me.

“Thank you for letting us hold your Bible.”

“No. It’s yours. My gift. I can get another one when I get back to America,” I replied.

I’m a print guy. I love print. One of my favorite books is the massive hardbound most important front pages of the Los Angeles Times. I could flip through it for hours, all over again.

In my view, the Gutenberg Press was the greatest invention of all time.

Publishing the Holy Scripture for EVERY religion, culture, country, language, language group, tongue, tribe is the highest calling for a printing press.

It also is the foundation of all free communications. Publishing the Holy Scripture for every religion opens the floodgates for all other freedoms. Making sure all Holy Scripture in every religion is translated into every language for every person everywhere on earth establishes freedom of speech, allowing all other freedoms to flow.

Johannes Gutenberg only had one audience, one community, one language and one religion in his target market when he used his new printing press to completely alter the world of communications. Imagine targeting all languages, all religions, all communities, all audiences, all people, everywhere in the world. Pongo will do just that.

I believe in the core of my heart, if we follow this foundational principle to build this network, Pongo will be the next Gutenberg Press -- and this time, it’s digital and personal.

When history is written so far, we will read of the two monumental inventions which radically altered the world’s communications: the Gutenberg Press and Pongo.

Which is why I am inviting Wycliffe Bible Translators to be in my number one spot in the Founding 21 Pongo Launch Engine. They are the world’s foremost translators. It is a solid foundation for our mission statement that will have a translation system by which all Holy Scriptures -- and all communications -- are able to reach every person in every language everywhere on earth -- from the biggest to the smallest.

Wycliffe Bible Translators has translated enough of the Bible into 3,415 languages to use artificial intelligence applied to its Bible translations to place the Pongo Engine core public interaction shell into those languages. A digital recording of a native person reading their Holy Scripture in their native tongue could be used by artificial intelligence (AI) to allow Pongo to speak in those native tongues.

I believe that AI applied to someone digitally and verbally reading in that person’s native tongue would allow an AI talking dog to speak. Pongo must ultimately speak every language.

Wycliffe is the most advanced in general translation work around the world. By Wycliffe being one of the 21 Pongo Launch Engine companies, Pongo conceivably, shortly after launching, could be in as many as 3,415 language groups. Although, Pongo will likely launch in one language, English, it will automatically transform into speaking all languages possible.

According to Wycliffe, 3,945 languages still have no Scripture completed, with 2,014 languages still in need of translation work to begin. Pongo has some work to do. Our job won’t be finished anytime soon, alt...