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The Content Division of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA - www.siia.net) held its ninth annual Information Industry Summit on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, in New York City. The event, which brings together executives from across the digital information industry, carried the theme "Ready…Aim…Future!" and it does seem like executives in the room are experimenting with different business models and social technologies in ways that were nearly unimaginable just a few years ago.
The first day's keynote speaker was Michael Hansen, CEO of Elsevier Health Sciences, and while he started his talk referring to a scientist who lived 400 years ago, Hansen was actually reminding the crowd that Galileo Galilei was someone who changed the world by defying conventional beliefs. That notion of experimenting outside traditional paths surfaced in nearly every presentation, from author Ken Auletta's talk on 'Googled: The End of the World as We Know It' (http://digbig.com/5bbakf)to a panel of execs including Andrew Lack from Bloomberg LLP and David Eun from YouTube talking about new business models.
With traditional media in freefall, publishers are more open than ever to considering new models, new partnerships, and new approaches - rapt attention to the iPad announcement live-streamed for attendees during the closing lunch showed just how open. (The room's reaction to the supersized iTouch design of the iPad was tepid, but that was understandable on a day when Outsell analyst Ken Doctor showed slides of the yet-to-be-revealed Apple Tablet as a gift to publishers of biblical proportions.) Custom publishing, ad-supported models, crowd-sourcing and 'data as service' were all on the table for consideration. We'll be keeping an eye on innovative product strategies to feature in upcoming issues of VIP Magazine.
Another theme that emerged was how very quickly customer expectations are changing. For that, however, I was disappointed not to hear more of the voice of the customer at the show - FreePint's own Robin Neidorf presented some learnings from last summer's Economic Impact study, some of which was at odds with the anecdotal stories by publishers. It would have been interesting to hear a information content buyer panel commenting on some of the ideas and opportunities put forth.
Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing my IIS interviews with Matt Turner, Senior Consultant at Mark Logic, regarding his company's work with vendors to provide customised publishing solutions, and with Copyright Clearance Center's Ed Colleran about international copyright issues (another topic that he and I agreed was in scant evidence at IIS.) I'll also share the interesting new products from IIS' popular 'Previews' program, short CEO presentations from early-stage content creators, aggregators, and technology vendors.
The CODiE Awards for fifteen categories in the content arena were also presented during IIS- my full coverage of the awards program is available on the EContent Magazine website at http://digbig.com/5bbakc |
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