So what does this all mean? Marydee Ojala chaired a panel of experts and observers trying to wrap up the conference. Key things that stood out in Marydee's mind: "chunking" content was big, collaboration was key. Michelle Manafy, editor of EContent magazine, notes that the road to success is not paved with zeroes and ones but with knowing the user and meeting your expectations. Chunks, unbundling, experimenting with pricing are concepts that have been around for a while but that seem to be driving many key changes in the industry now. Dennis Cahill of Factiva noted the changing value proposition moving towards supporting efficient decision-making and the Web 2.0 phenomenon being key to driving efficient application of content to drive business decisions. Text mining and visualization can also be key functions to support these goals.
Rafat Ali (egads! I am finally blogging Rafat!) noted that delivery platforms such as RSS are beginning to get information delivered more efficiently than ever before, allowing people to look at content value differently. It can take content beyond many existing models but he was surprised that few had taken this on as a topic at the conference.
Pam Rollo of the New York Public Library sees new ways in which people are sharing content and expertise that is placing pressure on buyers of premium content to justify the value of their acquisitions. She sees it moving towards validating "credentialed" content, which could include content coming from non-traditional channels in theory. This could have an impact on university presses as well as many other sources. From a public library perspective, tracking user interests to get the right content to surface to the top of the stack is something that most people aren't aware of as an issue. They just assume that the search engines are doing the right thing and are not necessarily thinking of the hows. Very few public library patrons have ever used a professionally prepared database to do research - not a good sign for many collection acquisitions.
David Seuss of Northern Light pointed out that it is a Google-centric world, one in which premium content appearing in organic search results next to contextual ads is sending a message that all of the content next to those ads must be free - it's a mixed message (don't agree whole-heartedly, but it's an interesting point). David sees in this concept a subversive doctrine that nobody at the conference questioned. "If you're hanging out with low-account friends you're going to be thought of as being low-account," David noted.
Michelle said that she gets a lot of content through trusted sources, oftentimes forwarded to her from colleagues. This also was not covered terribly well at the conference. "You can't force community," Michelle noted, and that we trust who we trust. Building that is a hard won victory (one that B2B publishers are trying to understand how to "re-win" in the online environment). Marydee noted that librarians have understood communities all along, even before services like Factiva came along to build early forms of online community around a content brand. Dennis sees that "online natives" are coming along and challenging aggregators to use new tools such as Web 2.0 tools such as mashups to get content into more contexts in which community can form - well beyond the librarian's model. "The amount of information out there is not bad. It's the lack of tools that are not able to bring together information into one experience that can support effective decisions is the future," Dennis notes.
Rafat sees a lot happening beyond Google and other search engines that are driving value. New tools may be discovered via search engines, but the tools themselves are moving beyond search as a solution. "The worse infoglut gets, the better," Rafat says, as it allows new tools and solutions to allow users and organizations to become aggregators in their own right (paraphrase).
Pam brought the discussion back to licensing, noting that there is a lack of effective solutions for enterprise licensing. David sees enterprise licensing being an issue when it's not distributed to the desktop but instead languishing on the desks of specialists who can support access by thousands of enterprise licensees entitled to access. Dennis sees integration at the desktop as the key solution for this problem, especially low-cost integration to make it easy for individuals to put enterprise-licensed content available in the most valuable context for their workflows. But still it's the "C" word - control - that's a key hot button from Marydee's perspective. Infopros don't want to give up control to access, she notes. Rafat notes that even he has problems with content being pirated by click fraud schemes to mask unsavory content. So control is a widespread issue.
Lots of other great comments, but this is the gist. It's been a great conference, and it's been a pleasure to have been providing some real-time notes on the proceedings. I will have my own wrapup posted later on today. See you next year!
