InnovaScapes Institute vs AstroVirtual Inc.

 Ah, yes, a number of friends have told me --confusing.  Are you still doing InnovaScapes, or is your attention now on AstroVirtual?

And the answer is YES.    But even my AstroVirtual partner seems a bit confused.  So let me try to explain.

AstroVirtual is a 'for profit' company, although to date it has operated in a non-yet-profitable mode.  AVI has designed a number of 'multi-screen environments' that are suitable for displaying many virtual large-screens, each of which is inter-active within itself.  The set of multiple screens are simultaneously shown.  AVI designs, produces, and delivers these environments for clients who want to feature a series of simultaneous displays for their customers.   Imagine that you 'sell' access to all of the March Madness basketball games simultaneously, or all of the nation's NCAA football games on any October Saturday.  

AVI's environments give you ways to show all of these.  You could simulate a Las Vegas betting room, or a Fox Sports Multi-Channel.  Instead of switching your TV from channel to channel to see different games, you watch all of them simultaneously on an AVI diorama.    

AVI licenses the environment to you, along with a modest annual maintenance contract.   Your task is to select the content you want to display, and either load it yourself (AVI will teach you how to do this), or hire a content team to do it for you (AVI also will contract to do this for you, but it is not our main business).  And then, your task is to advertise your offering, and deliver this montage of pictures and interactive screens to your customers.   You might use these environments to build a business 'war-room' or a Situation Center, or altenatively, you might build a local Health Observatory for your community, or a Historical Hall of Fame for your Service Club or local organization.

InnovaScapes Institute is a specialized research organization, which on occasion may be either a content provider for customers, or a content producer for either client or public consumption.   Projects have been quite varied over the years, including COPD and COVID studies, innovation drivers and enhancement tools, in-depth topical interviews such as historical figures in computer science, and creation and initial operation of institutional recognition programs.

I am the founder and CEO for InnovaScapes, operational since 1991.   I am also a co-founder and managing director for AstroVirtual, since 2023.   

The confusion, aside from the fact that I am involved in both orgaiznations, is that we have illustrated  some InnovaScapes research content on AstroVirtual prototypes, to stimulate potential clients to imagine how their own material might be used.

To the extent that a potential AVI client, or interested newcomer, might see some of these prototypes, it is not hard to see why a potential client might conclude that AVI is, say, a COVID research team, and miss the notion that AVI is content agnostic, and in fact doesn't offer any content for sale.

We can illustrate this with pictures, and maybe that would be a good idea for the next post.

Where has the time gone?

 The last InnovaScapes post was in October last year?   Whew!  What, what?

And the last two posts in October included passages about the impending Trump election, raising concerns that I would certain support fully at this point.   But, this blog is not really intended nor appropriate for political discourse, so we'll move past that one.

The October 5, 2024 post did however include a one-sentence news item about Hurricane Helene -- "spreading widespread destruction to areas with little warning, killing hundreds and leaving countless thousands with out food, water, or shelter.  Tragic."

What I did not yet know was that I would be one of those affected by Hurricane Helene, and it was not a very pleasant discovery.   Unbeknownst to me for a few days, "Hurricane Helene led to a significant shortage of intravenous (IV) fluids, including saline solutions, in the United States. The hurricane damaged a major IV fluid manufacturing plant in North Carolina, which produces a large portion of the nation's supply. This disruption has caused hospitals to ration IV fluids and explore alternative methods for patient care." (Wikipedia).      

In mid-September, I was scheduled for hip replacement surgery in early November (I'd had one years earlier for the other hip), but just after I wrote the blog post, my surgeon called to say that this outage of the Baxter Labs facility in North Carolina was severe, and my surgery (since it was elective) would be postponed until April 2025.   What?

Well, it turns out that this one lab produced something like 60% of America's saline solutions, and "Blam, sorry Ma'am" the country is out of luck.   I did muse about how could one company get a virtual lock on such business, sounds pretty monopolistic to me.   I did not pursue this line of reasoning further.

I finally got the surgery on April 2, 2025, and also finally, on May 13, 2025, Baxter Labs said, "Hey, we're back in business, hooray"     https://www.baxter.com/baxter-newsroom/hurricane-helene-updates

Meanwhile, lasst autumn, my hip got worse and worse.  I went from a cane in October and November (actually, a shillelath, not a cane.  Shillelaths ward off evil spirits, canes are for cripples), to a four-wheeled walker of sorts in December.  By January, all the way to April, I was virtually house-bound, with adequate pain levels to justify pounding Aleve at higher rates than recommended.

And, voilà, today the surgery has healed, and I am able to walk again without mechanical aids, provided I don't do anything silly, like try to walk on uneven ground, or more than one hundred yards at a time.  In effect, I got so out of shape from no exercise, that I am unsteady, and using Physical Therapy folk to recover is taking more time than I had expected.

So, yes, I could have been writing blog posts, but it has been hard to even sit at the computer.  This idea of getting older with slower recovery times is not a perfect plan, but compared to the alternative, here we are.   Meanwhile, time moves on, and our company AstroVirtual has made progress that I can report on a bit in the next post.   I will also note that I did use the computer time that I could tolerate to begin an AstroVirtual blog, which you can find via the AstroVirtual website (https://www.astrovirtual.com/astrovirtualblog)

So, for now, InnovaScapes Institute is up and running, and posts might again be moderately regular.

Cheers,

Chuck