Investment banking firm R.W. Baird held its RFID Conference recently and issued a very informative report.

Key take-aways:

• "The near-term outlook is cautious given the immaturity of the industry. However, we continue to see data points that suggest building momentum as industry members express enthusiasm for standardization, growing industry knowledge and increased executive-level commitment. We expect accelerating opportunity during the second half of 2005."
• "...expect a production ramp during 3Q05 with full Generation 2 product availability by 4Q05."
• "...partnerships appear to be increasing in importance."
• "...technology development has moved along nicely and, therefore, is less of a concern. The greater issue for them is the ability to evaluate and change their business processes...."
• "Key risks to the RFID market: lack of adequate implementation talent, change management, lack of commitment/participation from upstream/downstream supply chain members and IP issues potentially leading to litigation."

Perhaps the best part of this report is the detailed insights into individual companies such as Alien, Philips and Unova.

Read the whole report. Compliments of Venture Chronicles by Jeff Nolan.

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Tom Ridge, the former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security is going to keynote at this year's RFID Journal Live! event in April. You don't want to miss this, especially if you are involved in developing or distributing security-related technology or products.

I've updated the Events Calendar on the right sidebar. Check it out for new RFID events. If you act quickly, you still have time to submit papers and/or speaker proposals for some of the events. Do I have to tell you that it's great visibility?

If you are organizing an RFID event that is not on the calendar, shoot me a quick email with the URL and I'll post it.

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The recent GS1 meeting in Brussels brought together executives and officials from 90 countries to discuss RFID and bar coding.

GS1 brings together two standards bodies for electronic product coding: the Uniform Code Council in the United States and the EAN International for the European market.

The meeting brought the usual statements about the huge potential for RFID. I won't repeat them -- you've read them before and by now they're old hat.

But one comment stood out, as reported by the story in SiliconRepublic.com:

"However, just because the interest is there, it does not guarantee the success of RFID. Bill Grize, CEO of Ahold US and a member of the management board of GS1, offered an insight into the problems facing the rollout of RFID technology worldwide.

"What is the big challenge facing RFID? Ourselves and time," said the engaging, grizzled veteran of the US retail industry who, as head of Ahold US, controls a retail and food service operation turning more than US$44bn annually.

Grize's thesis was that people were always the biggest barriers to progress. He saw a schism among the businesses that were embracing RFID -- between those that had a short-term outlook and those that were more visionary about it. The former group sees RFID as a way to cut costs; the latter sees it as the bedrock of future business relationships. "If you apply RFID and don't give it back to the customer, it's a short-term kick to your business," Grize claimed.

Grize also felt that too many businesses were still locked in an adversarial mindset, seeing RFID as an opportunity to get one over on their competitors rather than improve the efficiency of the industry as a whole. Co-operation rather than competition was needed instead to make RFID a success, he contended.

His conclusion was clear: products and standards are only one part of the equation. RFID will never take off unless businesses -- primarily retailers and consumer goods manufacturers -- agree to work together towards this common goal."

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The European Commission’s data protection and privacy body, Article 29, has published a report on RFID use. Concern is raised over using RFID to track people's movements. According to the report:

"The ability to collect a variety of data all related to the same person; track individuals as they walk in public places; enhance profiles through the monitoring of consumer behaviour in stores; read the details of clothes and accessories worn and medicines carried by customers are all examples of uses of RFID technology that give rise to privacy concerns."

The impact of this could be huge on any company selling consumer goods and items in European markets. We have to wait to see the full report, but suggested guidelines include asking permission from consumers before putting RFID tags on goods, and providing disclosures about what data will be collected.

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The California school that was testing an RFID-badge system to track students, has halted the program. The company developing the system -- that had asked the school to beta test for them -- has pulled out. Details here.

I can't say I am surprised. The United States is just not ready for anything that sounds like forced people-tagging. And if you were going to start such a program, you'd be wise to do it with consenting adults, not school children.

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RFIDInvesting.com has an excellent webinar "Follow the Money in RFID Investing." Requires free registration.

Several companies are represented. One of the highlights of this session is Beth Enslow, Vice President, Enterprise Research, for the Aberdeen Group. She says the RFID opportunity may be bigger than you think.

Here is her take on how RFID market applications break out:

Here is the RFID adoption cycle she anticipates -- she says it will mirror the bar code adoption cycle:

View the whole webinar.

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The RAND Corporation, a research think tank, has issued a paper outlining privacy concerns about RFID-enabled access cards in the workplace.

The paper, entitled "9 to 5: Do You Know if Your Boss Knows Where You Are?" focuses on how corporations use access cards, such as the ones we talked about here.

The study is based on a limited sample -- just 6 enterprises. It examined:

"...their policies for collecting, retaining, and using records obtained by sensing RFID-based access cards. We found that the workplace policies we surfaced share a number of common features (data are used for more than access control, access control system records are linked with other enterprise databases, and security and employment practices trump privacy concerns) and that these policies are not communicated to employees."

This is a very useful report on a subject about which little has been written. One of the most useful aspects is the "Recommendations" section. It recommends that any enterprise adopting RFID-enabled access cards have a policy on usage of the data collected. It gives specific advice for what to cover in the policy.

You can download a free PDF of the report here.

Hat tip to Lois of Metaforix for the link.

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School kids in Japan have been wearing RFID-tagged identification devices. Now the first elementary school in the United States, in the rural town of Sutter California, has adopted RFID-enabled badges.

The system is designed to simplify attendance-taking, reduce vandalism, and keep students safe. The program is actually a test pilot by ImCorp.

Predictably, the civil libertarians and privacy advocates are outraged. Some parents are up in arms, fearing that the information inside the RFID chips could end up in the wrong hands, endangering their children instead of keeping them safe.

The school superintendent says he doesn't understand what all the fuss is about.

Had he been a reader of this RFID Weblog, he might have been more in tune with the privacy debates. He might have realized the need to air the plan to parents in advance of adopting it.

People get pretty protective in this country when it comes to using RFID to track people. A California elementary school is probably not the best place to test an RFID security system for people tracking, at least not in 2005.

- Hat tip to George at Brewed Fresh Daily. From an MSNBC article via Smart Mobs.

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Research firm IDC has made 10 predictions for information technology in manufacturing during 2005, according to Vice President Bob Parker.

Among the predictions is this one: Lean Sigma enterprise initiatives will grow. And this one: vendors with specific point solutions will begin to talk about being compliant with SAP or Oracle applications.

But this contrarian prediction stood out from all the others:

RFID hype will implode. Many retailers will focus on leveraging current technologies that will deliver immediate results. "What you'll see this year is Wal-Mart keeping a very stiff upper lip, but other retailers will begin to lose interest in RFID," Parker says. "Companies are getting fed up with the efficacy of the [RFID] technology and are concerned about next-generation standards coming out." Retailers will shift their resources to other initiatives and will invest in other technologies, such as wireless terminals, kiosks on the retail floor, and better tools for sales associates, to improve efficiencies at the store level, Parker says.

This prediction strikes me as an overreaction. Too many pilots and initiatives are in the planning stages or underway for retailers and manufacturers to suddenly change course midstream.

What's more, there haven't been enough implementations yet to overreact from.

What we will begin to see is the early stages of reaction that is part of the "hype cycle." Some companies will become disillusioned, but not nearly to the degree predicted, and not nearly in such a short time frame.

The term "hype cycle" was coined by the Gartner Group, and describes the typical throes of the marketplace during a technology adoption cycle spanning --usually -- a number of years. The chart looks like this:

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