I am a fan of the CBS show 60 Minutes.  I love the simplicity of the ticking stopwatch in place of a catchy tune that opens and closes each episode.  I love the informative journalism.  Each week I learn something new and have my eyes opened to goings-on around the globe I may not otherwise be aware of. 

 

                                    Although some weeks I am discouraged by the stories, some weeks sad, last night I was absolutely inspired.  The story about American Bob Ballard, undersea explorer, fascinated me.  Bob Ballard is a man who never gives up.  He does not let others shut him down, and he finds new and innovative ways to solve old problems.

 

                        For 73 years the massive cruiseliner Titanic rested undiscovered on the ocean’s gigantic floor in pitch black water, eluding the world’s most relevant and successful undersea explorers.  Before Ballard, the searches for Titanic were done in exactly the same way, using the traditional sonar approach.  Many had tried; all had failed.

 

                                    Then Ballard came along.  Ballard found his success by thinking outside the box.  Referring to the method of sonar exploration to locate Titanic, Ballard said, “Well, clearly that’s not working.” 

 

                                    Ballard expanded his search area.  Rather than use sonar to comb every inch of the ocean floor as others had done, he used cameras on a remote-controlled vehicle to hunt visually, spacing his search lines almost one mile apart.  By using this approach, Ballard was able to pick up the trail of debris left behind when Titanic was carried north by the ocean’s strong currents and left her in her final resting place, her bow buried 60 feet into the bottom of the ocean’s floor.  Ballard followed the trail and walked right into Titanic, arguably the most successful, relevant, and famous undersea discovery in history.

 

                                    Ballard found his success by thinking outside the box.  When asked how other explorers could not find Titanic before, Ballard said, “They were in the, ‘this is the way you do it’.  I live outside the box.  I’m always outside the box.”

 

                                    Officials in court are forbidden to use paperless writers or wireless realtime connections to hook their judges, despite the recurring issue of realtime freezing each and every day.  Can you even buy a new writer that produces paper notes?  I have no idea.  I don’t care to know.  That method of storing notes is circa 19- something.  1920 perhaps?

 

                                    Court administrators are like the explorers who came before Ballard.  They are locked inside the dark, dreary box, afraid to even peek outside their air-tight seal to see what possibilities lie outside.  They believe things are done one way and one way only, because that’s the way it’s always been done.  To innovation and the latest technology, they say no, no, no.  (I just broke into a sweat and started itching as I typed this last paragraph.)

 

                                    Imagine if Bob Ballard had acquiesced to the restrictive opinions of those who came before him.  Where would undersea discovery be today?  To court reporters everywhere I say this:  Get out of the box.  Let’s all follow Ballard’s example and think of new ways to solve old problems.  Let’s invite change, try new things, share our knowledge, and see where it takes us.

 

                                    Though it is unlikely we will discover ancient mysteries of the sea, where will we end up?  We will never know until we pack our box with all those old paper notes, USB to serial cables, outdated versions of software, floppy disks, and discard it once and for all in a land far, far away.

 

Twitter:  @lindakpool