Barry Bealer, CEO of Really Strategies, got a call from a publishing company, complaining that they were competing with their efforts, they too wanted to help their customers to publish. What does it mean to be a content services company today? Mark Maddocks, SVP for product technology at Reed Elsevier, Larry Tunks, CIO, Congressional Quarterly, Jonathan Glick, Directory of Research Operations, Gerson Lehrman Group.

Mark: LexisNexis TotalSearch, bringing together LN content and customer content in a LN-like content to allow common search. Enables customer to take advantage of best-of-breed publishing services and infrastructure. Goal is to create a win-win scenario, helps KN to move into workflows and solutions. Larry: How do publishers evolve? Have a thriving online business, search syntax was getting in the way of new customers coming on site, had to be un-publisher-like and create a new search syntax, tech vendors could not do this. Jonathan: Hosted platform, GLG uses to manage expert networks. 180,000 experts, many who clients bring to them, main clients are departments needing expert input, strategy and M&A, professional services. Clients needed some way to have expertise come into their environment, created GLG News, contract-driven blogging environment, experts create blog posts or news post, very popular [neat - blog model at a highly professional model. I can see LinkedIn running with this]. Next step is to enable experts to publish fragments to Web, may be next evolution, so from a hosted software system being pushed inexorably to content for business purposes.

Barry: blurring lines back and forth, stumbling blocks that organizations have faced in embracing these changes? Larry: One-way model has broken down, publishers acknowledge it, but many don't know what to do with it. Need to interact, triangulate. Needs to be put in an actionable context. What does brand mean in this environment? Credibility. Information is not hard to find, credibility is more fragile and hard to find. Mark: Speed. Expectation to bring things to market much quicker, uncomfortable [COMMENT: trials of database-driven products, the culture of DB developers is extremely hard to change, RE has done better than Thomson in breaking this, but it's a choke point]. B2C expectations hard to adapt to. No longer from print to online, multiple delivery channels, understanding when people will be using info on Blackberry, PC, print, different uses, different challenges.

Barry: At what point do "accidental" publishers hit the radar of publishers? Jonathan: thousands of B2B experts, could be a huge blogging network, boutique research firms, iSupply, tech research firm, consultants are all in network, aggregator of 3rd party expertise. Was NYT online product developer, was difficult there to recognize that the front door was not the front door, search changed everything, too much concentration on front page, no matter what the data said. Publishers think about front door as brand, also difficult to deal with external content contributors who NYT does not embrace. Winners seem to be community-driven content that gets search engine placement.

Barry: If I am 90 percent in print, how does that publisher move forward? Larry: Go ahead and invest, at CQ we look at mission first and then technology to enable it. End of 90s was very print oriented, now flipped, 80 percent electronic now. Mark: Go back to fundamentals, look at what custs are trying to achieve. At BBC, research showed that audience researches three things: facts, people, concepts/ideas. Innovate - try out small, iterative betas, try things out. Work out what you're really good at and add value to it. What is the role of an aggregator in a world where search can help people to get content easily? Work it out and add value. Larry: Look at content that you're presenting, search is only part of the equation, a brute force way to get at information [KEY THEME]. Harder to find credible actionable information on Web, too much. Jonathan: Can change platform easily, have advantage of being a technology company from DNA perspective. Have ability to roll out changes easily, not deployed in enterprise, hosted service.

Question: Wiki technology, share thoughts on what you're doing in that arena, what's the rewards structure. Jonathan: Collaborative Reports, 5-10 page documents, thought that it would be writeup-critique model, but was easier to select the right experts and put it in a wiki environment and let experts edit expert. Within 72 hours can great a 5-10 page document. Some are more active than others. Participants at end decide who was the best participant, that determines compensation, a little game theory, want to impress how helpful they were, creates collegiality through compensation motivation. Proprietary to clients. E.g., 50 page report people worked on it for a month. Larry: Web was introduced for this very reason.

Barry: Publishers introducing consulting services, taxonomy services, why? Larry: just another way to monetize investment, but there have been failures, publishers need to know what business they want to be in. Mark: Crossing the line isn't the question, it's whether it's part of the core skill set. Barry: orgs like GlG pushing envelope. Jonathan: live in fear of Reed Elsevier, all of those ratings, who's truly appreciated, if they wanted to [Mark: Good idea!]. Mark: lots of collaboration opportunties, lots of win-win. Actually, as a greater percentage of what people do in their work is around the knowledge economy, everybody is becoming a broker of expertise. Larry: Agree, that's what strikes fear in hearts of publishers. Publishers used to hold that power of being the purveyors, only have it go one way. Very important for publishers to recognize cultural shift. It's no longer up to publisher to dictate medium.

How do you get things to be spontaneous in a Wiki but still searchable? Jonathan: retrained SEO firm, experts get SEO consultants. Custs had lost faith in traditional editorial model, lost faith in objectivity of Forrester and Gartner, editorial community was unable to solve, RE couldn't come up with a custom WSJ, decide what business you're in. Mark: Adaptability is about legacy, companies created now can be architected in a more flexible way. That's a fact of life. Time in business picks up good things like brands and recognition, need to work out legacy issues in that context. Larry: Reconverting data is a monumental task with legacy, culture builds up, resistance to thinking about what you're trying to do fundamentally. Things get a tendency to get too large too soon, need a discipline. Mark: Sometimes a cultural challenged used to having a book or whatever, better get everything right, online is iterative, mind set change for online.

Great stuff!