The SLA and SIIA are partnering for a Certified Content Manager course, feedback is extremely positive. There is a growing relationship that could be leveraged powerfully. Some members do not support the relationship, but Janice sees that both parties have an enormous stake in the future of information. Both want the best products, best information and for clients to be successful. If we agree on these core values we need to work together. Can advocate for products, licensing and other win-win propositions. SLA membership relies on information that will help them to make critical decisions. Predicting the future is a risky proposition, especially in public, but clear that prosumers will be stretching the limits of personal and professional expression. May reconsider the value of virtual universes such as Second Life, would be nice to replicate for SLA.

None of us will be getting much sleep any time soon, Janice notes. SLA knows what the customers want and they want to tell vendors. Use the SLA membership to help define the new information infrastructure. The role of SLA members is changing. Recent survey of SLA members, 75 percent likely to get a rewarding sense of job satisfaction over the next five years. How can they be happy when they know that their jobs are changing? 50 percent of corporate libraries are available electronically, how does this resolve? Change is creating opportunities for information professionals to be embedded in business units - new SLA units for competitive intelligence and knowledge management. Survey found 300 titles in disparate roles such as knowledge officer, business analyst, electronic resources coordinator, etc. Playing integral role in many decision-making process. Cindy Hill: local organizations realizing that they need to turn information into knowledge that hits the bottom line and decision making processes.

73 percent of execs spend 2-3 hours looking for information, huge cost to top management. Who's better qualified to explain to senior management the benefits of information technology or benefits of ads behind firewalls. Not every organization has seen the light. Some need to understand the value of human management over pure automation. Interested in Covey's comments on trust and credibility. Infopros also educate members on value of copyright. Members need to communicate their value throughout their organizations. Infopros are the strongest internal evangelists for premium content products, considerable influence on adoption.
Janice has done a lot to position the SLA far more aggressively to help its membership adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace for content services. Information professionals are becoming resources for insight into how knowledge is built in organizations using the best information available. Looking at the history of market data managers in the financial industry, though, the further challenge is for infopros to enable enterprises to integrate content from all sources, including internal and private sources. In doing so they face the challenge of trying to manage information budgets from within business units where decision-making processes may be different than in their traditional roles. As information professionals become distributed throughout enterprises increasingly it's line managers and key executives who are responsible for the final decision on content services. This only accelerates as publishers focus on workflow solutions that provide more turnkey solutions. Janice claims that infopros are oftentimes becoming the default decision-making point for line executives faced with these challenges, and in many instances.

I believe that she's right: the role of infopros will parallel the role of market data managers' role of trying to make cost-effective sense of a myriad of information services in a highly integrated information environment. But the sales process is shifting and placing more emphasis on direct selling to line executives, many of whom can access some form of premium services online and who may choose to deploy them more fully. As a generation of Web-educated executives enters the work force more business information providers will be working to ensure that they can reach web-savvy users directly - and to sell to them directly. Still, information professionals are likely to gain power in those organizations that know how to leverage their skills more effectively.

Labels: events, SIIA Content Forum 2007