Up-front editorial comment: I am familiar with a number of things that Time, Inc. is doing, they're really aggressive on many fronts to leverage their brands to the max online. Does that mean that these efforts will support their current valuation, management and cost structure? That's a different question. Look at Time within the framework of major media companies trying to find a path to the future by being all about brands from the bottom up. It's the right approach.

In every dark cloud there's a silver lining, continuing to evolve the business. Pages down 11.7 percent 2008, 2009 is looking worse, that's good news for us, because we're more than a magazine. Mergers such as CNN Money, one of the world's largest content companies, live in mags, books, online, mobile and more. Our trusted brand content is world-renowned. Strong multi-platform brands, RealSimple was conceived as a brand, not a magazine, promise is a life made easier. Product lines at Target stores. SI.com, the Vault with SI classic photos. Essence, with Warner Brothers launched the new Essence.com, the weekend of July 4th will have Beyonce at the Essence music festival. Nobody is better at telling multiplatform storytelling than Time. Created Life in 1936, photojournalism was that era's storytelling with technology. Words "plane crash in the Hudson," images of passengers on the wing, Luce's original concept remains the same. There's still a beginning, a middle and and end, but not always in order. When we text votes to American Idol the platform changes the experience. Can the new media platforms change the story? Yes.

Look at the Life brand, in continuous publication since 1936. Weekly issues, special books, one of the most iconic brands. If you're Time, how do you leverage ten million photos that you own? More than 73 million people search images, growing faster than any other type of search. In the middle of a digital image revolution. For the most iconic brand, they launched the Life archive search engine on Google. More and more are being scanned, example of Marilyn Monroe is a benchmark of scanning progress. New Life.com is a joint venture with Getty Images, millions of images from the annals of history.

Remember how magazine sites used to look, everything repurposed from print? No more. Content lives differently on each platform. Instyle knows how people feel about their hair, people can "try on" celebrity hair, upload your photo and try away. Editors have become great short format storytellers. Fifty percent of all finance videos are viewed on CNN Money.com. Editoral specials have become huge live online events. The People brand is growing, the "power of People" has become multi-touch-point, interactive community. When J-Lo's twins were born, broke news on People.com, interviews with their editors on TV, mag did 2 million copies, stories on People Espanol. One story equalled 133 million media impressions. Surround the story. Mia Farrow special issue is now a megabrand in its own way. People digital has several brands and skins. People Digital grew bottom line 48 percent. 2007 was 18 percent. Company overall bottom line now represents 10 percent of revenues of Time Inc., many of most profitable titles are online. (COMMENT: Yes, it's low compared to some B2B brands, but think of how quickly they've gotten back into the game). Users spend average 19 minutes on their sites.

We're a content company that makes great magazines. People who had their mags taken away for two weeks really wanted them back. Asked if they wanted them without ads, they said no, they wanted the experience (COMMENT: Lesson for online advertisers, you need to take more care to make your content a part of a person's online experience). Cosmopolitan, brand is getting hotter with younger people. Time's commemorative election issue sold five times more than normal issue. Mags overall up four percent for Time.

How to weather the storm?
1. Thow away your five-year plans. Look out two years at most, be nimble, stratgegy can be successful only when conditions are well understood. What worked today is not necessarily going to work tomorrow. Re-strategized, made three business units. Going to market more strategically, have bigger strategic discussions with clients.
2. Become true partners with your clients. Need to understand their businesses inside and out, have to come with full solutions (COMMENT: This is a long-term trend, ad shops are being trumped oftentimes by well-positioned brands such as Time, Inc.). Clients will remember who was in the foxhole with them when times were bad.
3. Collaborate. Take advantage of collaborative opportunities inside company. Lehman Brothers, a tenant in their building, came crashing down, Fortune magazine writers were chosen to cover it for Time.
4. Don't sweat the small stuff. Focus on mission-critical business issues, focus on what will win business and build the brand.
5. Trusted branded content matters. Branded journalism will take on an increasingly important role (COMMENT: True, but don't underestimate the power of personal social media brands.
6. Be optimistic. Bring a "can-do" spirit to the challenges.

Excellent address, great case studies, fun presentation. Good stuff, but darn, do big media companies need micropayments.

Question from audience - how do you handle much lower online ad rates?
A: If anyone thinks online digital revenues are going to make up falling print revenues, they're not getting it. Need to say to clients that they need each other, they need to keep each other from going out of business, going with collaborative solutions to clients, sometimes even basic merchandizing and bundling assets for them. We're helping them now and come back when times are better with fresh new ideas and new economic models.

Labels: events, SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009

Moderator: Patrick J. Spain, Chairman & CEO, Newser LLC

Panelists:
Michael Angle, Co-Founder, President and CTO, Alacra, Inc.
Christos Moschiovitis, CEO, tmg-emedia.com
Martin Howard, Executive Directors, Transaction Advisory Services, Ernst & Young LLP

Martin: Traditionally CTO was part of management team, CTO would report to CIO. CIO was more business-oriented, but now it's strategic, responsible for I.T. function, more and more has that CTO function, more heads. Still see some confusion in those roles, one may be called the other, titles in flux.
Michael: In my case a COO, my CEO introduces me as the person in charge of everything that plugs in. For our business is incredibly important to the success of our business, not just about accounting and back-office big iron. Unlike top sales person, etc., they have their own domains of expertise, what I do spans all of those functions in the company, help to develop new products, influence how sales does there job, influence how we do social media
Christos: Looking at a transformation in the media industry, CEOs and visionaries trying to figure out the appopriate roles, the marriage between CEOs and the technology function being worked out. Starting to see the ascention at the CEO level that have substantial ownership and understanding of the technology function (COMMENT: Hmm, just like Silicon Valley has done for decades. Amazing. We're finally getting past the post World War II MBA management phenomenon and back to people who want to make products and services work).

Patrick: "Insurmountable Opportunities," what are you embracing willingly and unwillingly.

Michael: Cutbacks with "X" in the double digits, how can we help clients do that. I need to be a part of that charge, leading it if possible instead of following it. Have to have statistics on the ROI of content and services within client organizations. Unglamorous stuff, but you have to build cost control and measurement into the product.
Martin: ROI has to be on a business strategy basis as well as a cost basis. Organizations are asking CTOs and CIOs to be more strategic. Where are the very best places to spend to mitigate risk.
Christos: You bring to the table more than just technology but innovation as well, may not be an apparent savings at first. As technology has increased the size of organizations, more focus on profits and what it all means. We are seeing tremendous growth in our practice because of this reason, looking at what is most cost-effective way to bring in expertise. In each different are there are different value points. ROI is the governing driver.
Martin: Execution is also incredibly important.

Patrick: Issue of "fair use," has technology made the issue of fair use more challenging, are you more aware of what your technology can and should use?
Michael: Monitor for "bots" and scrapers, have automatic shutoff mechanisms. Sometimes you want to get scraped for business opportunities, but not every opportunity is helpful. Have to look at how it's being used.
Martin: It's a key factor for due diligence, for integration and acquisition intellectual property protection comes in very strongly. The law hasn't caught up in a neat way yet, but investors are struggling with the issues when they look at acquiring content companies. Deals can fall apart when internal protections were seen as inadequate or when the threat of its inventors walking away from the company scared off investors.

Patrick: More people contributing content, how does this impact I.T.?
Christos: First on copyright. Obviously the issue of copyright is very complex, involves legislation. If you look at it over the period of the last fifteen years, people have been running for the hills. Content has enormous value. People are doing extremely bizarre things to monetize content, yet people put it up for free to get the eyeballs. How do you think that we're going to protect it? NYT was wrong, if I go to a newsstand with the NYT, all I can do is to read the headlines (COMMENT: again, micropayments can help with this). The issue of IP protection is linked to this problem.
Martin: Content is still king, but that doesn't mean that content has to be turned by professionals. Bloggers have had a huge impact, most bloggers make money indirectly. Wikipedia hasn't put Britannica out of business but they've had to change. People aren't buying papers because they're reading Google News, good enough and free. For news, maybe that's better, reporters can be controlled. Some times people want to pay for access to the analyst for expertise.
Christos: We need to talk about the problems of the business models in a very fundamental way, the pink elephant is that the model is changing, we're going to face the came changes as the music industry has faced. Verizon is in a sweet spot, they own the last mile of connectivity, how do you translate that into the media business? Verizon "owns" Manhattan (COMMENT: well, not on an enterprise level), how does that translate into a media level? "It will go away after I am no longer president". It will always be the next generation's problem; well the next generation is here.
Martin: There is no problem with content, more than ever before, reading more than ever before, a simple problem of companies trying to make money the old-fashioned way.

Patrick: At HighBeam we created a mobile application, didn't make a penny off of it. Mobile has had such great promise, is mobile the new CD-ROM that will be surpassed, are we waiting for a good way to deliver ads?
Michael: In finance mobile is very real, many professionals have given up their desktop, how do I deliver information on a screen three inches square, how do you pull out the meaningful chunks. Need to get content on Facebook, have to look if it's appropriate to get messages on Twitter.
Martin: The technologies and methods of delivery is coming along, coming to a world where each person will have their own intranet (COMMENT: One of the more interesting comments at the conference. Compelling).
Christos: Technology offers something that was not available a year or so ago: location awareness. Can provide very specific content. The world of science fiction is becoming fact rapidly. Happened earlier with instant messaging, it's not that it can deliver quick messages, it is that you aware that you are available. It knows when you've signed in. Your phone tells me where you are and when you are available. Mobile is very real and will dominate the space.
Michael: Technologies solve the filtering and context problem, geolocation helps with that, but what if I am making a pitch to Xerox and want to close the deal? It's not so good for that specifically. For the user it's all about the filtering, for the provider it's about getting the right stuff to filter.
Christos: Now we have technology where we can sell words (hover technologies) for advertising, when you have content that's sellable to the word, how does that affect editorial and sales? The two groups need to collaborate much more closely as a result. Editorial can no longer be in an ivory tower, they are now responsible for creating community around content.

Patrick: Video is entirely new to some in the audience, if you're a content creator and distributor, do you need video or can you live without it?
Michael: Many sites include a video on the outside, more than a teaser, the thought of the day, accomodates how people see core information.
Martin: Video's best for some things, words for others, as aggregators piece them together, not sure that providers have to be all things to all people.
Christos: At the end of the day it's all about relevance, video is straightforward to produce. Can never be ignored, need to talk specifics, though.

Good panel, operational views are a challenge to present in a conference of this sort, I think that Patrick handled it very well and brought some really interesting contributors to the discussion. In Q&A, Michael Angle suggested in a tongue-in-cheek way that perhaps we need to fire everyone in I.T. over thirty. That sounds like a familiar refrain from my own youth, but with online media there's a strong ring of truth to it. The technology landscape is changing so quickly, you cannot afford to rest on your laurels on older views of how I.T. should be done and to hold back your organization. But in defense of more mature technologists, there are plenty of forward thinkers of all ages who are ready to rock with new publishing technologies.

Labels: events, management, SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009, technology

Moderator: Nicholas Ascheim, VP, Product Management, NYTimes.com

Panelists:
Sandy Malcolm, Executive Producer Video, CNN.com
Andy Plesser, Producer and Founder, Beet.tv
Kathy Yates, CEO, AllBusiness.com

Forecast was for a 1.35 billion market, was actually $587 million (eMarketer). Goalposts keep moving out but trends are promising. Number of people going up, Hulu up to 1.7 percent of all streams (COMMENT: that's better, but good..?).

Malcolm: Representing the content owner, cringe at Blodgett's comment about TiVos recording content. Our streaming service runs 24x7, podcasts, doing pretty well in video, in spite of tough times.
Plesser: Been doing a video blog for three years, help decision-makers in digital industry, a virtual meeting for "snacking" on conversations of authoritative voices. Small staff, low costs, small degree of profitability, going well.
Yates: For business owners, evergreen content, customers come to get smart quickly on topics outside of their domain expertise, 18 million of podcasts, webinars, video segments, video about 3,000 segments, also license content from other sources, including other video production units. Have invested quarter million dollars in video assets, operate on break-even with ads and sponsorhips.

Aschiem: What drove the decision to focus on video.

Plesser: Was in PR and ads for 20 years, clients want to get in video, took video camera and taped people and put it on the Web, on the blog. Evolving into a business slowly in a B2B model, Adobe and Akamai want to reach their audience. Niche publishing, lots of opportunities.
Yates: Very nuts-and-bolts, like how to set up a LAN, handy if you don't have a CTO. Scaled video quickly based on feedback from customers, operate on a testing environment, look at which kind of segments drive the most usage.
Malcolm: In video for years, 2002 started a subscription service, started us really thinking about the business, tried a pay firewall, tough to integrate, a perfect storm of events helped us to see that we could do a pay service for live video, upped the clips, built a digital ad sales team that could sell cross-platform. Took the free live service online last year, phenomenal growth.

Ascheim: How much does it cost really to produce video?

Malcolm: We can pick and choose what comes in to Atlanta, few restrictions, look at what works best for the Web, not everything that works for TV works for the Web. Have an editor pool, can pick from the best.
Plesser: The cost of news gathering has changed, reporters send their videos from webcams to be edited, may edit Skype feed. It's not so much the cost as the access to the content. The cost structure has dropped for news gathering and production. Where you had to get big editing systems, now you can get final cut for a thousand dollars and you're good to go. This has become apparent to bigger news organizations. With High-Def, cost of streaming has dropped. We have an editor who works 20 hours a week, an assistant blogger any myself, sometimes ten original videos a week, 800 in archive, grab videos from CNN, again, costs are very low.
Malcolm: Looking at Skype, we understand the value of keeping costs low. Moving away from bigger systems, taking advantage of easier, nimbler and cheaper systems.
Yates: We benchmark production costs at about $250 per segment for 3-5 minute segments. Keep the same cost benchmark, have worked with providers who have developed video for long format, not really focused on what the Web needs, so in-house works better and helps to control costs.

Ascheim: I it mostly the size of your own library that drives traffic?

Yates: We're a long-tail site, so the more content that we have, the larger our audience. We've looked at this, the activity is driven by promotion, sensitive to how it's promoted to people landing on our site.
Plesser: The whole notion of video search is very important, if you have a service about a video or product, put the metadata around it, or use blogging to get the data in the search engines, there's a huge opportinity to get videos in search engines in a big way. People aren't necessarily going to get into your show. Google is making video more discoverable via universal search.
Malcolm: Opening more bureaus, we want to own as much original content as possible. We are not an open platform, you're concerned about where your content is going to end up, but you need to be smart about it, we have an embed player now.
Plesser: If your content is of value and you want to make money from syndication, our ad travels in an embeddable player, so it's possible to play on a much larger field with an advertisting component. What's happening with the Web is that it's becoming more and more a television medium. We're watching video clips, video has to be a part of a site, demand is skyrocketing. Content creators are going to be in a position to get revenues from a licensing fee or revenue share. There's going to be a big demand.
Malcolm: Our ad sales team is working on that now, you can stay on your site, get a high CPM, have to get out there in the marketplace, look closely at revshares.

Ascheim: Is the Web becoming a television medium

Yates: Not so much about what the editor wants as what the audience wants, ability to deliver video content is there now on broadband, the quality of the production is less important to the user than the producer. Obviously very low quality doesn't work, but the greatest value comes from the relevance of the information.

Ascheim: Longer form content, seems to be more demand today, perhaps because the experience is better, but most is in entertaiment. Is there a future for more as the format matures?

Malcolm: News is more disposable, shorter shelf life, long form is a little trickier, can do well, spots for that, live service has taken off, the amount of time that people spend increases, even if it is "snacking," you can get what you want, where you want it. Internet can also harvest live events.
Plesser: It's about snacking now, can't do video online too long, as it becomes integrated into living rooms it will grow.
Yates: For entertainment long form is growing, they watch all of their shows on the Web, annoying to find a second segment on Hulu and YouTube. A growing appetite for Webinars, people cutting back on business expenses, people watching them on the Web.

Ascheim: What models will sustain video?
Yates: Will go to 2-3 percent, perhaps larger, as an audience, today all ad-based but we'll see other models and higher production quality at lower costs.
Plesser: Watching video on PC will be irrelevant, a lot we'll see on mobile and in the living room, the notion of learning from and meeting people will be key, where video becomes a more interactive experience. Broadband and high bandwidth will allow video communication will become two-way. Will comfort people in the know to be in touch.
Malcolm: Program for various mediums, community involvement is key, Facebook was successful beyond measure, 26 million live streams, complements TV. TV is that lean-back experience, you can do that and lots can do that, but the online experience was more intimate, Facebook comments were running as the videos were running, people were commenting all night, created a new community around live. Interaction and the ability to get involved is key, have to plan for all of them.
Plesser: Live streaming is so easy now, not like in the old days where you needed a big professional crew. Bandwidth is really bad in the U.S. compared to other nations.

Excellent session, tightly managed, lots of key best practices. Can't ask for much more. The stats on the inauguration are compelling, that's a mass-scale audience for the feed and mass interaction at a community level. Models are still being worked out, but they follow logically from other social media/Web content.

Labels: events, SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009

Silicon Alley Insider becoming Business Insider, TechCrunch model, 2 million readers, but facing same ad challenges as everyone else. Not a "lifecaster," but real journaism. Still, a new form of journalism is evolving. Old style is to take existing content and to throw it online, reading it online is great, but that's not the real form of online journalism looks like, with strengths and weaknesses.

Aggregation is the key to the new journalism, the very act of aggregation can be valuable. High-velocity production, more similar to broadcasting, like a "text broadcast" (COMMENT: read, "real-time." Again, Wall Street's real-time legacy comes into the online news world). Some say it's garbage, that it will all fail, but if you hear that Steve Jobs is sick you're going to check it out and see if it's credible. There are plenty of people who know that it's true, and it helps to get the truth out more quickly. A source said that there's going to be a massive layoff, in short order we got a lot more information that this was indeed going to happen. Access is great, but on the other hand, when employees contact you with information and emails, access is less important. A lot of the readers will know a lot more than a journalist will know.

People want "snackable" content, see what's happened in the last hour. He wrote an article for the Atlantic magazine, good topic, lots of readership, but nothing like the first Twitter of the video of the rescue of the plane that went down in the Hudson. Online journalism is taking sound, text, video, it's not one medium or another. Gawker pushes this furthest, has eight TiVos capturing shows where someone might say something interesting, then clipping it for online. It's different from MarketWatch and TheStreet.com, which were more online newspaper models.

Huffington Post bigger than the Boston Globe, they find the most interesting stories on the Web, it's cost-effective, which the Boston Globe is not. Gawker Media blog network was twice that of the LA Times. Total team: 80 people, LAT 800. Can't support that kind of newsroom with that kind of traffic, Nick Denton is way ahead. But still big problems, online readers think that everthing should be free. That has got to change, just not enough advertising. Ads haven't evolved, same little box ads, shouldn't have to mimic a newspaper (COMMENT: or a television). People complain nobody clicks on the ads, but we have done almost nothing to innovate. Advertisers only care about clicks, a great ad without a click is viewed as a failure, yet in print nobody clicks and people consider those ads successful.

But the problems are far worse for traditional media. Newspapers have had a great 200 year run, but now it's over. Disruptive technologies are not necessarily better, many products created with it are miles short of The New York Times, but it's cheaper and gradually it gets better. In the meantime the old technology pushes towards premium users with more expensive technology, pretty soon they're pushed out of the mass markets. Google is pushing Microsoft to the high end, won't stop Google's onslaught. The cost of producing online journalism is so much lower, HuffPo 20 editorial staff, Gawker only $15 million while NYT is $1+ billion, profits from lower costs are working. Craigslist is free, unlimited real estate, a lot of traditional publishing companies are hosed. But some do well, like Bloomberg, Dow Jones doing well, the NYT can be saved but will have to cut 40 percent of the cost and re-explore charging for online (COMMENT: yes, but not through the old models. Micropayments will be the way, we can pick up the New York Post for a quarter at the newsstand, micropayments will work if done neutrally).

Journalism is in great shape, will look different but it will be in great shape. There are vastly more journalists than ever before, experts can express their opinion online. Editors need to co through this, some are paid to be editors, others comment on others (COMMENT: or link to it in blogs, what Robin Good calls "Newsmasters." In today's world "Deep Throat" would have sent documents to "The Smoking Gun" and it would have all been online. Papers will continue to get hammered, some will adapt, many are already writing real-time, but they will survive (COMMENT: Maybe). Online journalism will continue to grow, some will build sustainable models, will develop more professional talent, will hire credible journalists, the only thing that will change is that the shareholders of existing companies will get hammered. Creating destruction will bring us to the better future.

COMMENT: Overall, completely spot on. This is the new role of media today, though I think that he underplays the role of on-site expertise, which is a definition that varies with events. For example, sometimes a lawyer or a stock analyst with a blog will be an on-site expert about events in their profession, other times a laborer in China who happens to be near the epicenter of a major earthquake who is equipped with Twitter will be the expert. Expertise is becoming more contextual, but the truth is always larger than a journalist. I do think that CQ's Bob Merry's outlook is closer to the greater truth - we've had journalism in its current form only for about two hundred years, it will continue to be a good profession in its own way but the aggregation of news is taking its place in many aspects, making insight from on-site facts more important.

Labels: Blodgett, events, SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009

Moderator: Jim Kolleger, CEO, Genesys Partners, Inc.

Panelists:
Dan'l Lewin, Corporate VP, Microsoft, and Head, Strategic and Emerging Business Development
Neal Lipschutz, SVP and Managing Editor, Dow Jones Newswires
Steve Lohr, Senior Writer and Technology Reporter, The New York Times
Jon Miller, Founding Partner, Velocity Interactive Group, former CEO, AOL

Jim: Economy?

Steve: Federal Reserve was the lender of last resort, now the Federal government will be the spender of last resort, but it will be a targeted approach, not just shoveling potholes. Anti-trust needs to be watched, new appointee, worked on Netscape/MSFT deal, anti-competitive practices will be scrutinized.

Jon: Our consumer business means impact, as seen in our recent financials, as enterprises cut back economic impact is in the long run optimistic, scaling out of seamless computing is good, very powerful smart devices, blending content that's user-created is key.

Neal: As long as this downturn is going to be, it's hard to go back to what we had before boom times, technology growth and disruption will make some sectors like finance risk-averse, jobs creation is going to be key but it's easier said than done. Free enterprise will be less so than recently.
Dan'l: EBITDAs aren't right, Ballmer's "reset" does not mean that they are going to go back to having companies trade at old levels.

(COMMENT: It's a shame that easy money propped up the valuation of fundamentally weak publishing properties for the past several years. This kept smart money from being spent more effectively on needed transformation in the industry. That doesn't mean that a good part of that transformation hasn't happened, it's just that so much investment was thrown at failing models.)

Neal: America is going to be less important now, opportunities may be greater outside of the U.S.

Steve Lohr: Isn't it amazing how the world fell off the cliff September 15th?

Jim: Money velocity has driven information velocity, will old media dollars be even digital dimes? "A new normal."

Steve: NYT approach is to double down, selling off portion of building, hope is that you can swim to the other shore. Online model that was supposed to help change from print is changing radically.

Neal: Business models will have to rely on quality content and subscription revenues.

Steve: Can the genie go back in the bottle once everyone decided to give it away?

Dan'l: Big believer in news business, not necessarily the newsPAPER business. News is proliferating, consumption never higher, I use 20-30 sources, many do. What model to get from there to there is not known, not supporting things now. The genie does not go back in the bottle.

Jim: Political change, were you suprised about going from X-Box to Atari in White House technology?

Dan'l: They think that digital can have a big impact on recovery plan, it's a question of how you go about it.

Jim: The tools of the teenager are now in the White House (COMMENT: Gentle jab, Jim, the teenagers grew up. It's young adults, now, that are driving social media growth). Organization for America, can be a force for good, but can ricochet, microscripts may embed themselves.

Steve: Obama admin message has been top-down and consistent, stuck with message, no panic when Hillary won in PA primary, in that sense very elitist. (COMMENT: It's different in social media, not a mater of polling strangers but of listening to people with whom you have relationship).

Jon: The polling methods of McCain who was going with where the wind blew showed through.

Jim: 37 billion of stimulus coming.

Steve: Health IT was 20 billion, broadband was 6, broadband will increase. Will not just throw money at things, pay per performance with metrics will rule. We've done this on a small scale so far, will be interesting to see where it goes.

(COMMENT: Interesting to see how this year's panel is really not about gadgets, as has been Jim's usual focus. It's now about what the technologies have done to change society. See "Content Nation" for more).

Jon: Now a matter of public discussion and policy to make more open and avialable content happening.

Jim: Other technology trends impacted by these issues?

Jon: Broadband is a big deal, more recent countries coming online have more, we're falling behind.

Neal: Some major cities will not have major newspapers in print, the trend will accelerate. If the downturn is longer, the trends will accelerate.

Dan'l: Fundamental trends, end of Moore's law, virtualization is starting to happen, lot of infrastrucutre going on, action in conversations at this conference is at the application level, but the data is where there's a lot of action. CIOs looking at where they will balance their infrastructure, where will the storage be, where will the backup be. New markets forming in education, global markets where infrastructure is growing. Won't see a pause. Robotics is hot, vision, spatial, voice interfaces, all of these are evolving rapidly.

Neal: The value of content will be there no matter what the technology, delivery mechanisms will change, but targeted content still valuable, though it may not include general news.

Jim: Always a new wrinkle, what's the new wrinkle?

Jon: Most recent is video and social networking on Web, before that Yahoo and AOL, goes in four-year waves, things do change. But the stuff that rises to the top isn't every day. The industry will continue to re-create itself over time, it's not the thousand little things. (COMMENT: Disagree. Reference the Museum of Modern Betas, where there are more than 4,000 new social media tools in four years. It's the little and the big and the little that become huge).

Jim: Huge changes for the industry?

Jon: iPhone was a huge change, most revolutionary was inclusion of Safari browser in iPhone (COMMENT: Agreed, the platform will be forgotten eventually, the Web will not be forgotten).

Jim: Where does workflow fit in?

Dan'l: Where you are is becoming increasingly important, your location and context is key, what comes to you is key, location-based services are growing, those kinds of services will surface soon. Notion of location in the cloud that's yours that synchronizes with friends' devices is being investigated at Microsoft, social networking is a little out of control, is it mostly noise.

Jon: Speaking up for consumer side, at end of 2008, consumer usage of Internet surpassed enterprise usage for first time (COMMENT: The world is indeed a nation of publishers!). Consumer applications are driving much of the Web use, that will work its way back.

Steve: Where would you invest?

Jon: As a consumer-oriented business, my whole thing is what the consumer is doing. Closed on sale of Expedia from Microsoft, over 3 billion, bad week, dot-com crash ended travel, no precedents, Barry Diller said will consumers continue to travel in the future, and if so will they do more of it using online tools. Video consumption is taking off, makes perfect sense as it is. On a worldwide basis, video consumption is still early days.

Jim: Jon, you ran AOL, how do you see online game playing out?

Jon: Two big trends, consolidation and breakups, content and distribution breaking up (COMMENT: Agreed, but depends in some sectors on availability of monetization tools).

Jim: If you're a company, what do you keep your eyes on, where are the opportunities?

Dan'l: Paying attention to lots of stuff, my particualr interest is to look at entrepreneurial activity and where the money goes to support them. Pragmatic answer as to how they help them. A pretty good bead on that side of global innovation. Larger concerns are there for acquisition, too. You'll see more of the same.

Jon: Mentioned video earlier, what are people doing in mobile environments, need to understand usage contours. iPhone apps, haven't yet understood behaviors, will be profound in a lot of ways.

Steve: iPhone was not an original idea, why couldn't Microsoft do it?

Dan'l: We should have, we'll play catch up. Microsoft is a "hundred flowers bloom" approach to platform, not the tight store and service integration of Apple, historically.

Great panel as always, high-level discussions like this are not always productive but Jim manages to keep them well-focused.

Labels: events, innovation, SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009, technology

Moderator: Lee Greenhouse, President, Greenhouse Associates, Inc.

Panelists:
Diane Corrado, Vice President, Sales, Wolters Kluwer Health
Tom Brown, Vice President, Financial Services Solutions, LexisNexis Risk and Information Analytics Group
Joe Jaksha, Vice President of New Product Development, Thomson West

My former Quotron colleague Lee Greenhouse kicked off a panel of major enterprise information services providers from legal, credit and medical sectors. Lee's kickoff question: Michael Wolff said that the value of content is declining. Is that so?

Tom: For public records, applications built on them can quantify value. Maintaining a certain value proposition requires the ability to add to it constantly.
Diane: Clients say content is king, if the right data isn't there, then it's not worth it.
Lee: But they won't pay a king's ransom for it.
Diane: They don't want twelve million hits, they want one hit.
Joe: Raw aggregated content is less valuable, but you have to have that and layer on more value. Unfiltered, unannotated content is less valuable but clients expect it to be there.
Lee: How has West added value to content?
Tom: Classification of laws, the legal code, was the first step. Now focus on specific customers and wrap it in a package with sophisticated technologies and a services model (COMMENT: Again, it comes back to the Wall Street model. Lou Eccleston from S&P didn't come - again - but it would be nice for a financial person to nail this concept home). Adding value to the public record so that it's the authoritative record. Deploy analytics to make it more actionable in high-volume enterprise environments. In banking, help them to prevent money laundering, help them to know the individuals with whom they are doing business. Also focus on identity theft, will get worse as economy deteriorates and people from the inside help crime. Help customers evaluate companies that are not covered by the credit agencies, on terms that are acceptable to the consumer.
Diane: In legal and medical, years ago you had to bear a gift to get information from a corprorate librarian. Now it's in the hands and the pockets on portable devices of users. Books in a big room have to exist now on an iPod and be fast. Google is fast, but you don't want five million hits, you want the information that you're looking for, with as little librarian intervention as possible. Use contextual design process, work with clients in non-standard way. Usual client interviews give usual answers, contextual design watches how people actually do their work. (COMMENT: This is a key, key factor in product research, I've learned more in interviews just being quiet and watching how a subject responds to a phone call or works at their desk). Helps to reduce fatigue from information use - sometimes as much as 65 percent. We are a publisher, but also integrators, integrate from Thomson and other sources, new tools manage these sources side-by-side. Has revolutionized our industry (COMMENT: Again, done decades ago in finance, corprorate world is just starting to have the technology for more general content sources to catch up). We carry both peer reviewed content and clinical use information, so people can see both the theory and the practice side by side.

Joe: Focused on smaller information bites, could be just a piece of metadata that's monetizable, as a publisher you can take that same piece of information and present it in many different contexts. Contract attorneys get what they need at the point of need. Have to understand what target customers need.
Lee: Do you really get more money from customers or is it treading water?
Joe: Definitely a mix of the two, bigger part is making it a sustainable business model, contextual content changes how our clients do business, the "sticky, viral" way of doing business becomes part of what they do.
Tom: Depends on how much it's a pain point for customers, adding coverage, that's where the pain point is, clients are required to vett each client they do business with, if it's just redundant information, less valuable. Also new applications are key, in some ways we're in a nascent market sector, what we're doing is providing information about the "underbanked" to help people understand them.
Diane: It's also helping our customers' customers, our clients have to do more with less, if you have a relationship with their clients you can command higher prices, you can get a larger share that enhance client relationships, puts us in a unique position. Many are clinicians, scientists, drug manufacturers, defending legal cases, customer's customers could be doctors, consumers, product developers, important to prove value to them. Providing better materials that explain what the product does is valuable, getting the buyer to understand the value is key.
Tom: That's the essence of what we do, we try to be more relevant to the client.

Lee: What's the hard stuff?
Joe: Combining unique combinations of content that cannot be replicated by the next hot technology play. Customers are more and more specialized, means that where they get a question outside of their area of expertise, they need help. (COMMENT: Good point, and a very interesting one). People on the end of a phone line can help, too.

Lee: Lessons from failures?
Joe: Shoehorning content in a product or space where it doesn't belong, looks good on a drawing boards but doesn't work in real like. In contract law, we tested and re-tested things, but if you guess wrong with the customer, you may as well start over.
Tom: If you assume that the need is greater than it is, you can wind up over-engineering products.
Diane: We were working on a high-end product, someone released a similar thing as freeware that wasn't too bad. Have to make sure that it's a unique need.

A good panel, danced around some of the key challenges such as clients and third-party technology platforms eating up the same value proposition, but showed the typical best practices of today's enterprise publishing services.

Labels: credit, enterprise, events, legal, medical, SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009, STM

Kristian J. Hammond, Co-Director, Intelligent Information Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Northwestern University

You have incredibly valuable content but nobody can tell the difference between it and something that someone has hacked up and thrown on the Internet. People get what they can from it and go away, driving up the bounce rate. Why should anyone in the world get it for money? People can wait it out, and it will be free. NYT will say, "Just take it, at least show up some time."

People think that they can defeat Google on its own turf with search. Like a new soda trying to go head-to-head with Coca-Cola. Unless there is a serious cultural change, the last battle that you fought is going to be fought over and over again. There's an arms race going on, someone out there is trying to bust into your information. We'll crawl the Web and have a parallel information repository to make "one-stop" shopping for our vertical. Nice idea, but still head-to-head with Google. Or, make a deal with Google, but that's just getting your information out more efficiently, doesn't address monetization.

"We suggest leapfrogging the problems altogether..." In cellular telephony, adoption in developing nations surged where land lines were mediocre at best. Leapfrogged rather than trying to make technology work in old environments. We work on frictionless information systems, or intelligent information systems. "Whatever you're thinking, we'll get to your heart's desire." We want to get rid of the search box, so that you don't interact with it directly. Need information systems that are aware of the context of your behavior. Knowing your customer at this second and using it as a driver of information. We're a lab, we don't care where information comes from.

Examples: the desktop relevance engine and "beyond broadcast," for online video, and "make my page," for machine-generated content. Pulls information on the Web based on the document being read (COMMENT: not really so different from "more like this" feature or training data for semantic searches). Really on-point, finds docs first on own Web site, then other sites. Also pulls up discussions, experts, methods, learning, Web and desktop collections. (COMMENT: good idea. Not done often enough). Integrated with desktop activity (COMMENT: like Watson, kind of), can pull from any searchable source. Kind of like doing enterprise portal services for the world).

Then looked at server-side versions of this. Chicago Sun-Times example, other blogs, videos, Web, other S-T news, S-T blogs (COMMENT: This is a lot like Sphere in a sense, all fine and good, but Sphere is not really helping publishers to generate engagement or revenues to any significant degree). In video, main context is watching television. Build a small piece of code for TiVo box, "beyond broadcast," watches television with you, notices what channel you're on, look at closed caption text, feed that information to server, hijack a TiVo remote button, would build a microsite based on the content and the context. Different for cooking show, how-to show, dramas, etc. (COMMENT: This has strong potential as a concept, contextual content and ads for television). Were elated with this, people will come to us, but then YouTube happened and convergence happened anyway without television. Took same system, moved it online. Works pretty much the same, change banner ads based on what' being discussed in the video.

Looked at a few examples, "good eats" on the Food Network, links to Wikipedia entry on corn dogs. Look at other version of recipes, etc. (COMMENT: Again, not much new on one level, but doing it in real-time is a fantastic tool, equivalent to AdWords on Google search). Give them everything that they might be interested in (COMMENT: But do publishers really want more distractions from their content? I agree with the "real-time portal" based on content of interest, but again, Sphere experience raises questions).

"Make my page" function, pulls together new document, primarily links to other document, open to social media editing. Highly relevant, will percolate up to the top and stay there. (COMMENT: Now, that works better. Make the associations of content more enduring, even when they are assembled in real-time. If the aggregation works for one person, it may work for others, and it will be improved for others. Similar to my old concept of distributable objects that grow in value as they are passed from person to person contextually). "We will get you to your heart's desire."

Great stuff, I like the idea of the persistent contextual objects that grow over time, that's the real winning ingredient. Many of the other ideas have been done before, but if you can create content that becomes more popular over time automatically as it expands and transforms over time through contextual use, it will be self-optimizing for engagement.

Labels: enterprise, media, publishing, SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009

Moderator: Dan Duncan, Senior Director, Government Affairs, The McGraw-Hill Companies

Panel:
Ed Collaran, Senior Director, International Relations, Copyright Clearance Center
Dominic Young, Director of Group Publishing Services, News International
Caitlin Grusauskas, 3rd year student, Columbia University School of Law
Mindy Pennington, Manager, External Content, Library Services, Pfizer Global Research and Development

Duncan: Apple taking DRM block off of music, France suits, law would have mandated taking off DRM, effort was abandoned. Apple got together with industry, no restrictions on reuse at a higher price. Today, new users all the time, new solutions as well. What works?

Caitlin: People have expectations that it's all going to be free, quick answers from things like Google Toolbar. The idea of copyright is foreign, you assume that you can share it, has serious implications for content owners.

Pennington: People want to make it easier to share, things like CCC Rightsphere work but take time to set up, content is desired on mobile devices, how or whether it works can be problematic, as is who you can share it with. Taking something from your digital library and giving it to partners is a problem, need for more flexible relationships.

Colleran: From the user's standpoint, they're busy people, make it easy as possible, but offering broader rights is key. Pharma industry initiative to broaden contract terms, looking to share content that they license as a key contract factor.

Young: Part of ACAP, news initiative for managing access. To actually manage and control it without licensing is needed in some way, licensing not well adapted for all circumstances, ACAP allows end-users to take control more easily when it's legal and reasonable to do so.

Duncan: Many users don't look at terms and conditions, if they do access it they don't access it or understand it. From the perspective of users, where do they fit in today?

Young: Doing it in a way that's highly automated is key, tools don't exist to do that, so people do things because there's no reasonable alternative. Business models aren't there, either (COMMENT: Micropayments is underutilized, technologies are there that COULD support it, but there is resistance. That resistance is a key factor in today's media revenue gap.)

Pennington: We get questions about usage even with Rightsphere, most people are aware of what they're allowed to do, internal news stories and other communications about what's allowed.

Duncan: Pfizer has its own valuable intellectual property as well. Caitlin, in your experience, are students aware of terms and conditions?

Caitlin: In law school it's different, they rely on Westlaw and LexisNexis, people understand that there are terms and conditions with their accounts. In the broader university community, I can access materials from the university library seamlessly. In some ways there's a problem because there's so much out there.

Pennington: In the last couple of years new programs provide text mining, automated systems may pull thousands of articles in a couple of hours, users may notice first when content is blocked. Work with publishers, understand what's allowed, text mining system will be programmed to obey terms. (COMMENT: But what if an agreement could be executed automatically? Huge under-explored opportunities, let people get a taste for free, when throttles are reached then an ecommerce opportunity can be activated, either through online human agents or an auto-execution micropayment system. Works for mobile carriers, folks, it's not rocket science).

Young: Search engine access works well for some publishers, not for others, ACAP helps search engines to discover terms and conditions. Can be done machine to machine. But scaling up the capability of the network is a challenge. (COMMENT: ACAP still has potential, but, no offense to my European friends, it's being pursued in a lethargic manner, needs to go open source, with multiple serving agents, akin to DNS services).

Collaeran: With social media tools, publishers find it to be an incredible branding tool, FT gives first five articles away, then second five with registration, then you have to pay. Don't have to pay for each article.

Duncan: Caitlin, what's your reaction?

Caitlin: Depends how easy it is to use, didn't sign up for NYT premium, but if price is right, it's worth it. Some kids want to "stick it to the man," but if it's pretty easy to do the right thing, then they comply. HuLu, good quality, people want it fast and quick, people will pay.

Pennington: A lot easier for people not to worry about it when the corproation licenses it, but more flexible arrangement for doing the right thing would be important. When the physician sees the advertising and is measurable, that's important. So, why not make a version of the online product that looks like the magazine? Why won't publishers make another version? We have devices like Kindle now. With copiers sharing was harder, would be nice to have technology advances for today's needs.

Caitlin: People doing online research are used to putting in all sorts of search terms to see what pops up. Topical search would be nice, to see what pops up, more like an index than a traditional book (COMMENT: Works on relatively discrete content sets with tools such as taxonomies).

Young: Things like ACAP are a step in the right direction, we have gloom and doom about old business models, innovation can help. In a world that's well functioning, rewards will be linked to access.

Colleran: Not just about text content, any type of media could be involved, need to license those different kinds of content. Not just publishers, authors are taking a far more prominent role with self-publishing.

Duncan: How will authors be paid for content, major publishing companies have marketing department, sells into an area where the customer understands the value.

Collaran: Creative Commons-style authors may want some content out there for free, but others may want payment (COMMENT: CC does have hooks in its licensing for payment, early days still, remarkably, on activating that capability.)

Pennington: Make licensing more relevant for the specific people using content, critical going forward, especially as organizations divide into global business units, granular licensing needed.

Caitlin: People may use terms and conditions, the ability to share music is there, but I haven't tried it, don't want to be restricted by DRM. Rhapsody is one model, could work for other types of content.

Colleran: Ease of use and compliance are key "microscripts" coming out of this. Education is not sexy but it can help. Users need to be educated what they can and cannot do with copyrighted content.

Young: Micropayments would be wonderful, need the best innovators to help the best content to win out, that may be authors as well.

Pennington: People are willing to pay for what they need.

Question: Agreement between Gatehouse Media and NYT on Boston.com?

Duncan: Not that familiar with it, but not settled law. IP community on the publishing side were happy, but also scratching heads.

Great panel, excellent moderation, Dan.

Labels: enterprise, events, media, SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009

Views from the "evidence-free" zone.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was the father of the atomic bomb, as they were getting ready to test it in New Mexico for the 6AM detonation, Oppenheimer noticed that the mathematician was not there, when to get him, he said, "If I got the math wrong, none of you are coming back."

We got the math wrong on a lot of things in the past several years, but certainly since September 15th.

2005 dinner with new senator Obama, Walsh concerned that Democrats aren't prepared for a knife fight. You're the savior of the Democratic party? Where's the bench strength? You're it? "Who knew?"

Politics is an odd business, it's Hollywood for unattractive people, like Junior High, one-day sale with 100 percent market share. Political marketing: how does it work and how does it affect consumer marketing?

When a sound bite takes hold it's hard to get rid of, we still attribute the "Al Gore invented the Internet" to him, but he never said it. Sound bites become micro-scripts, help your constituents to attack your opponents. "They work." 24 months ago, "Lipstick, Nowhere, Maverick, Change" were not microscripts, the campaign made them so. Candidate doesn't have to defend records with microscripts. When they work, they're powerful. Became the branding tactic for the whole campaign, gave us permission to validate Obama's aspiration and forgive a light background and plan details. "Change we can Believe In" - two microscripts together.

Marketers must have shorter ways to define their brands. Unique selling proposition - USP - the one thing that you can say about your brand that nobody else can. These are the future mantras in our markets. It will leak into our world. "It's not an elevator speech any more, it's a bumper sticker." Kids say "whatever," it's kind of a sub-microscript. How do we increase the bandwidth of customers and citizens? "Are we screwed?" This administration is the "reboot", Obama speaks deliberately and slowly, has thoughtful approaches, "the anti-microscript, human Ritalin." People will shun the easy label, the bon mot. Everybody knows when promises are kept and not kept, political marketers know it, other marketers have to catch up. Some proportion will not get it, they will continue to use microscripts to process things. "Playing to the base" is off to the left or right, they get microscripts such as "God, guns and gays," still useful. Try to bring the bell curve to where the microscripts don't work. "We're better than that." But my microscript: "Shift happens." Shifting away from patent phrases (COMMENT: great points, but I think that history shows that simple concepts are important for communication. They help to build consensus broadly. He acknowledges this in the Q&A when he acknowledges that brands like Apple do microscripting well. I think that the key point today is that social media allows us to discuss, spin and position microscripting very rapidly in a broader conversation).

Labels: commentary, events, media, SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009

Hal Espo, President of Contextual Connections, LLC interviews Glenn S. Goldberg, President Information & Media, The McGraw-Hill Companies. McGraw-Hill has a global footprint in which it delivers both traditional media and enterprise information products. "Content really matters," Notes Goldberg, looking at the energy markets Platt's is doing very well as an example, also helping OEMs build their network in China.

Espo: Content matters more in some markets and less in others. What does McGraw-Hill do to stay ahead?
Goldberg: B2B is key, construction marketplace is a good example, trading and energy also, people make big bets. B2C is more dubious, but in BWeek, traffic has returned to trusted brands.
Espo: Tell us about recent content investments.
Goldberg: Organized around principles, made the McGraw-Hill Construction Network, not just about advertising but also about solutions, not all efforts succeed. Need to understand how leverageable your brand is in specific spaces. We get some plaudits, but the customers need to respond, some customers are slow to pick up in some sectors.
Espo: Layered applications, how do you see content and technology interplay?
Goldberg: Believe deeply in it, but we're not there yet, some do wonderful things around code, still suspicion around motives. Most startups challenge large companies to think different about customers, then they hit a ceiling and look away. There are demarcations that need to be broken down in our own company to be as nimble.
Espo: Tell us about JD Power
Goldberg: Syndicated model focused on customer satisfaction, well-known by auto marketers, helped Toyota get into the marketplace. Were getting paid for surveys and access to surveys, saw that they were missing underlying value, went further in their research into other corporate roles, took a generation or two to move up the value chain. Sweets can now sell lead generation and other extensions of the core value proposition.
Espo: Is the overall strategy a portfolio play?
Goldberg: JD Power is a marketing services company, in autos but also in financial services. We view industries that have benchmarks and standards that can be embedded in the workflow of customers. Each of our properties are the standard in their industry in their own ways. Platt's is the benchmark in oil prices, construction - those are the standards that we look at, don't want to be all things to all people.
Espo: McGraw-Hill purchased Umbria, what does it do so extend the brand?
Goldberg: PhD/Math guys, every year we do syndicated studies, get paid a nice fee to sell studies, but in Web 2.0 once-a-year studies aren't going to cut it. They scrape the web for information on products and brands, can pull comments about brands, e.g. Honda is launching a new Accord, organize in "tribes"/market segmentation, can organize it in ways as to who's saying what by demographics, can complement once-a-year reports.
Espo: Web 2.0, in customer 3.0 model customers are going to dictate model. Shopzilla, Pricegrabber, etc.?
Goldberg: Good point, if you're building a billion-dollar brand, you'll need more than Shopzilla. People still care about quality information, quality content. It's a balance, don't turn our cheek to Shopzilla, but there are other angles.
Espo: Platt's - tell us about this.
Goldberg: 60 percent of revenues are from out of U.S., our oil prices are the industry benchmark. Hard not to see that with globalization trading in commodities is going to be the future. In industries where there's a benchmark, we do it well.
Espo: New energy sources, is that's where Platt's headed?
Goldberg: If it's commodity-related, that's where Platt's is headed.
Espo: What do you think about the new administration's impact on Platt's?
Goldberg: Hopefully they will get the economy in better shape, that will help Platt's, but "shovel-ready" projects will help construction, bailouts of Detriot OEMs will help, investment in education will help.
Espo: What role do ads play.
Goldberg: In aviation and construction it was all advertising, much more broad-based. Major constraint is not hurting brands. Trust is built up in aviation for initiatives for conferences, for example, but you need to be respectful for brand.
Espo: BizWeek, forecast?
Goldberg: Slower years recently, news is commoditized but content matters. We serve a business news audience, last 4-5 months traffic is better, the editorial model needs to evolve, need to create content as they always have, but will also curate content, not just a gatherer and interpreter of news and creating communities. Another way to think about content, helps editorial and helps advertisers, since advertisers want to see their ads in context.
Espo: Television, let's overlay print with TV changes, insufficiently local, what makes it different?
Goldberg: Needs to change as well, hard to envision the longer-term, but people are still going to it in some demographics, kids still put on ESPN, it's not about the medium, it's about the value proposition. When an avalance occurs people still turn to the television. The challenge is to respond to both localization and broader markets. TV still has a longer role to play in markets, but the balance is still to be figured out.
Espo: People turned to CNN.com, not television, for the revent airplane crash landing.
Goldberg: Some of our Web sites have more traffic than local Web sites. The economic model is a balance. We're not an enormous media player, being smaller gives us the opportunity to figure out.
Espo: You're a senior officer in a well-known company. What are the major challenges that you and your peers face?
Goldberg: Sounds trite, but the reality is we have people who really understand what the custoemr needs, I think that I have the right people to solve the next 25 years, but the barriers between content and technology people are hard to break down. Can you get it done, can you keep things simple and communicate with your audience and give them a stake in t