All Things Must Pass: National Online, NYNMA To Go 404
Vestiges of an era when the phrases "Online" and "New Media" were really new and powerful, two institutions from that era have passed into history. Information Today, Inc. announced the temporary suspension of its National Online show, whose birth predated the dawn of the Web, while it contemplates how to relaunch the event in 2005 with a new focus that ITI hopes will attract content buyers and sellers more effectively. The show had lagged notably in recent years, overshadowed by its own Internet Librarian events, the broadening focus of the Special Librarian Association's major events and the lack of marketing synergy between professional content marketers and providers oriented towards the public Web. Meanwhile the struggling New York New Media Association acknowledged its weakening mission and folded its membership and remaining events into the Software and Information Industry Association, formalizing a takeover that had been evolving for months. The good news in all of this is that the content marketing concepts that were pioneered in these forums have gone mainstream, minimizing the need to treat them as aberrations from normal business practices. The bad news is that associations and events vendors continue to struggle to define "big tent" events that reflect how the powerful merging of content, technology and human values are creating a merged universe of services for institutions and individuals alike. "Online" and "New Media" may have gone status quo, but few have realized the focus of what defines vContent today.