One of the more interesting things about this panel was how so many of the techniques for generating value in publishing that were so cutting-edge at last year's conference have been assimilated so quickly into mainstream publishing. This year it's EXPECTED that there will be numerous bloggers at the conference, whereas last year it was still something of a novelty. David Meerman Scott's panel on user-generated content underscored this point. Rusty Williams of Prospero illustrated how user-generated content has made its way into numerous mainstream publications, including high-value niches such as woodworking in which custom cabinetry expert Steve Casey has a weblog for Taunton Press' Fine Cabinetry unwinds his insights into cabinet-making for high-end enthusiasts. I found this to be a particularly compelling example, as it targets a high-end market that is likely to pick up print content. But they welcome the contact with an expert such as Steve and have the opportunity to drop comments and participate in an online community. Larry Schwartz of Newstex highlighted their recent integration of weblogs with LexisNexis, in which Newstex licenses weblog content and pays back royalties from the use of their content by LexisNexis users. A very traditional arrangement, which is the point: webloggers are publishers, as Larry notes, and are viewed as quality sources of information by enterprise audiences catered to by LexisNexis. The point of user-generated media being quality content was underscored by Cyndi Schoenbrun of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, who ticked off a wide array of media-oriented weblogs that she monitors to keep on touch of the publishing industry - a list that she uses to alert her internal users to key developments. Cyndi has a screening process that separates in her mind the "serious" weblog content from other sources, but the key is that she sees it as industrial-strength content that frequently breaks stories and moves markets.

So in a fairly short period of time we have gone from user-generated media being a fringe technical phenomenon to a key factor in publishing that has the attention of professional publishers and enterprises in full. User-generated media has not changed the fundamentals of publishing, and in many ways it has been absorbed rapidly into the publishing mainstream, but they have changed fundamentally the balance of power that leverages published content. Nothing is more valuable to people than relationships with other people that can yield value to their own lives and the lives of their organizations. It's where the center of content monetization and value generation is forming rapidly. Thanks for a great panel, David.