Ed Tech Industry Summit: Bridging K12 and Postsecondary

January 27, 2012 By Karen Billings Leave a Comment

Selecting a program focus for the Ed Tech Industry Summit is one of the most valuable, yet most difficult, part of the planning process.

However, given the trends we see occurring within the education institutions and the ed tech companies, this year’s program focus “Bridging K12 and Postsecondary,” was relatively easy.

Closing the Chasm
Historically, there has been a major divide between K-12 and Postsecondary institutions. Years ago, there was little articulation or communication between high schools and colleges. Students in high school chose courses within a college or vocational track, graduated with the required credits and grades, then went off to a two-year or four year school where you started at ground zero with their course requirements.

Nowadays, students are earning college credits while in still high school – either to remain challenged, save money or both. For educational and economic reasons, high schools are becoming more ‘linked’ through:

  • The tremendous growth of Advanced Placement courses and exams, where students can earn college credit while in high school
  • The focus by US Dept of Ed and the current Administration on having high school students “college and career-ready”
  • The development of state and local programs, like:
    1) Jump Start to College and Concurrent Enrollment, where students take courses at their high school AND in nearby 2 year or 4 year institutions in the same semester.
    2) Early College High School where, in one program, the students take courses that meet high school graduation requirements and provide credit for the courses normally taken during the first two years of college.

The Industry Parallel
The vehicles for acceleration, exam credits and dual enrollments have paved the way for ed tech companies to transition their products and services from one market into an adjacent market.

For some companies, it’s:

  • Selling course materials originally designed for postsecondary into the high school market (i.e. changing sales and distribution strategies and sending sales teams into high schools or district administration).
  • Repurposing high school content and context to fit postsecondary course needs (i.e. Transitioning Algebra I and II courses into Developmental Math courses).
  • Discovering that their professional development programs and assets fit faculty needs, whether it be elementary, secondary or postsecondary levels (i.e. providing video PD segments about pedagogy to pre-service as well as practicing teachers or selling “how to” segments for using a software application to faculty at any level).

In conclusion, we are confident that this year’s theme, “Bridging K12 and Postsecondary”, will:

  • help distinguish the program content from previous years.
  • provide a basis for selecting the best speakers and contributors.
  • exemplify a trend in the education institutions and the industry.
  • highlight successful strategies for growing an Ed tech business.

Join us this year on May 6-8 and find bridging strategies that grow your business and customer relationships.

See you in San Francisco!
Karen Billings
VP Education, SIIA
202-789-4487

Karen BillingsKaren Billings is Vice President for the Education Division at SIIA.

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education Tagged With: , ,

Vision K20: Achieving Personalized Learning through Public-Private Partnership

January 26, 2012 By Mark Schneiderman Leave a Comment

[This blog was also published January 26, 2012 by the Alliance for Excellent Education, sponsor of Digital Learning Day.]

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is pleased to be among dozens of education and technology organizations partnering to promote Digital Learning Day (DLD), 2/1/12, sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education. SIIA is promoting DLD to its high-tech member software, digital content and online services companies, and asking them to promote DLD through their networks. 

For those with the vision and successful use of digital learning, the idea of a DLD awareness campaign — showcasing how technology supports students learning and teacher instruction – may seem unnecessary.  But the reality is that too many of our educators and education leaders have not been provided the support they need to understand what is possible, nor the resources to make it happen.  This shift is not simply about replacing print with digital or giving every student a computer.  This shift is about reimagining how we teach and learn, and creating more customized, engaging, and productive learning made possible through technology and through public-private partnership with high-tech innovators.

SIIA has developed a series of resources to assist education stakeholders in this process, including:

For SIIA member and other high-tech companies, we encourage you to support Digital Learning Day:

  • Sign up and be counted in this effort
  • Add the DLD button to your website, and promote DLD to your customers and partners
  • Provide access to your online teaching and learning resources for the day
  • Showcase success stories of how teachers and students are using technology
  • Visit the DLD toolkits for more ideas and resources. 
  • Promote SIIA resources for educators, including Vision K20 and Software Implementation Toolkit
  • Use your imagination and creativity to promote education technology and Digital Learning Day

Thank you to the Alliance and all DLD partners for this important effort and for including SIIA and the high-tech industry. We look forward not only to A successful day on February 1st, but more importantly to THE day soon when all students will have access to the most relevant, engaging and effective learning opportunities that meet their personalized needs anytime and everywhere.

Learn more about Digital Learning Day at http://www.digitallearningday.org.

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Filed Under: Ed Tech Government Forum, Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education, Education Events, Education Policy, Personalized Learning, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

SIIA Previews Companies Showcase Innovation at Information Industry Summit

January 25, 2012 By SIIA Leave a Comment

Contributed by Grace Schalkwyk, Gramercy Digital Strategy Advisors

Larry Schwartz, Previews Chair and president of Newstex, outlined the evolution of the Previews program which celebrates its 6th anniversary this year. Started as an experiment, this year it is a core part of the main-stage program at Information Industry Summit with 6 company previews and 6 mobile previews. Next year’s conference will feature the 100th preview.

Crowd Fusion, Brian Alvey, CEO
Crowd Fusion is a publishing platform that combines several popular applications — like blogging, wikis, tagging and workflow management — with some original concepts to solve the pain points of online publishing at scale.

At SIIA 2012 Brian outlined the features of the “publish everywhere platform”. It is a cloud native, multiplatform content management system that allows editors to design once, instantly format the content for all devices, then provide for painless device-specific edits. It is sophisticated software for large-scale publishers to convert from legacy systems to digital- and mobile- first production capability. In the process it offers the opportunity for significant cost savings from more efficient workflow, and superior published product.

Crowd Fusion counts The Daily and Tecca among its customers.
Crowd Fusion’s personnel have come from the publishing industry and understand the criticality of its customers’ current systems. It is able to transition customers’ current workflow in a multi-stage, non-disruptive fashion, avoiding the business-threatening all-at-once changeover that challenges even the bravest managers. It is based in New York and funded by Marc Andreessen, Fuse Capital, and Greycroft Partners.

Narrative Science, Stuart Frankel, CEO
Narrative Science performs the miracle of creating large numbers of standard-format narrative reports in a human voice. In fact, in a unique voice tailored for each publisher. Instantly, without human intervention or the need for editing. In its own description, it is a technology company that transforms data into stories and insights. Their technology application generates news stories, industry reports, headlines, etc. – in fact they can create narratives from almost any data set, be it numbers or text, structured or unstructured.

Their technology was birthed at Northwestern University and combines technical and editorial expertise. It is a proprietary artificial intelligence platform that is horizontally scalable and has broad applicability. Based in Chicago, Narrative Science was seed funded by Battery Ventures.

Reportlinker, Benjamin Carpano, CEO
ReportLinker.com seeks to solve the problem market researchers and businesspeople have of defining their markets and opportunities. It describes itself as a search engine, offering an access to the largest online collection of industry, company and country statistics and reports available worldwide. It crawls 200,000 trusted sources and millions of documents in as many formats to produce usable, consistent, accurate, fielded data to form the basis of business plans, financing pitches, and strategy documents for businesses everywhere. It operates on an affordable subscription model that starts at $79 per month. Based in France, it has strong European experience and is now expanding its US market penetration.

BestVendor, Jeff Giesea, CEO and Founder
BestVendor helps people in businesses make faster, smarter purchasing decisions through social recommendations. In our over-sharing world, we make our lives easier for each other via tips on vacations and health care providers, but less so for the business enablers we use every day — such as accounting software, CRM providers, and productivity tools. BestVendor uses a give-to get system to populate its recommendations. It combines that with information culled from sources such as Twitter mentions and Youtube uploads to advise who is using what products, and the most recent user generated comments on them. Now in beta, the site is in its content building phase. In the future it will provide vendors with product pages, ways for them to engage with users, and the opportunity to purchase keywords.
BestVendor is financed by venture capital investors including Peter Thiel, RRE Ventures, SV Angels and Lerer Ventures. It is based in New York.

Praetorian Group, Robert Dippell, VP Products
Praetorian serves policemen, firemen, EMS people, Homeland Security, and corrections officers to share knowledge on strategies, tactics, best practices, best supplies, technologies, and devices. Beginning with PoliceOne.com in 1999, and continuing with FireRescue1.com and www.EMS1.com, their online properties are visited by more than 2 million first responders and public safety professionals each month — making them the leading online company in the public safety market.

Calling themselves ‘ESPN meets CNET’, they are a knowledge network with best of breed information: industry content such as tactical tips, and product research in the form of buyer’s guides for 400 product categories. They are ad supported, but their model is a recurring subscription advertising model that is both stable and profitable.

Their newsletters have an audience of 245,000 officers in the US and Canada, which are complemented by websites, iPhone apps and social media distribution. They estimate 35% audience penetration to date. They are San Francisco based.

First Stop Health, Patrick Spain, CEOFirst Stop Health seeks to solve the challenge people face when have an unusual, serious, or long-running health problem. But it also a service for people would like help managing and coordinating a family’s worth of health care providers and coverages, including occasional off-hours crises like mysterious hives. It is a patient-centric health concierge service that offers 24/7 tele-access to qualified medical professionals, coupled with a rich resource of proprietary online health information to help users understand their choices. It offers access to a human patient advocate to provide expert advice navigating the health care system. It offers the opportunity for patient-created and controlled electronic medical records. Its freemium model is priced at $250 for individuals and $750 for families, and includes a certain amount of consultation time. First Stop Health is based in Chicago.

More on SIIA Previews:

John Blossom of Shore Communications’ blog post

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Filed Under: Content, Information Industry Summit Tagged With: , ,

Mark Anderson’s Tech Predictions for 2012

January 25, 2012 By SIIA Leave a Comment

Contributed by Susan Becker, Consultant

On opening day of the SIIA’s Information Industry Summit, Mark Anderson, CEO, Strategic News Service made his top technology calls for 2012. His theme for the year is “Integrate Everything”.

Anderson opened with three items:

1) IP – There is an increasing threat to intellectual property with theft of IP growing at an alarming rate and intensity;

2) Europe – Merkle will save whatever is worth saving in Europe and the region will soon morph into three: Nordic Europe (out) core Europe (stays in), marginal Europe (leaves or gets kicked out); and

3) China is going to hit a wall with pollution and the lack of a free market economy.

Anderson’s predictions as of December 8, 2011:

1) TV becomes the new center of gravity. Smartphone TV integration software becomes a new category. Apple hustles to get out Apple TV.

2) Tectonic shifts in phone markets. Asia is in. Skandanavia is second and Nokia loses top spot. Smartphones will dominate the total cell market. Why would you have anything else.

3) Clouds are for consumers and pilots. Enterprises should stay away due to security and reliability

4) Security hits the tech world for real – big spend.

5) SIRI stuns the world. The new world of personal assistants has arrived. New assistants will begin entering the world.

6) Voice recognition comes of age. Connection to SIRI. The time has come for computers and humans to talk together. By the end of this year, talking to machines in normal voice works.

7) eReaders prosper, but Pads will dominate. Pads are at their core consumption devices.

8)  The consumption world explodes. New players, new consumption models, new content, etc. People are now ready to pay.

9) Governments and corporations focus on IP. IP is not valued as replacement cost, but as it’s global strategic value.

10) Amazon gets it all. Outselling the booksellers, outmalling the malls, etc. One company can have it all. Plus eBooks, self-publishing and distributions. It is trying to have it all. Will have a terrific year in 2012.

More on Mark’s predictions:

John Blossom of Shore Communication’s blog post

Steve Lohr’s post in New York Times’ Bits blog

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Filed Under: Content, Information Industry Summit Tagged With: ,

The British Invasion: Leading the Global Media Charge at the Information Industry Summit

January 25, 2012 By SIIA Leave a Comment

Contributed by Susan Becker, Consultant

On the first day of the SIIA Information Industry Summit, attendees listened to a lively discussion of what it takes to be a successful publisher in the global world. Michelle Manafy, Director of Content, Free, Pint Limited moderated a panel of senior executives from four remarkable UK-based brands that are consistently cited for outstanding performance: Eric Maumes, CTO of the The Economist Online; John Leitch, Executive Director of Metro UK, Ann Sarnoff, COO of BBC Worldwide America and Elissa Tomasetti, VP Marketing & Global Audience Development of the Financial Times.

The British Invasion

In each case, the organizations took their vision global after a successful run in their home market. Each talked about the need to combine strategy with data driven experimentation. Social media has been at the heart of their growth. The Economist went global via a two-prong approach, looking abroad for both content and subscribers. The Metro UK was started as a free newspaper that capitalized on London commuters and they eventually replicated the model to 50 other cities across the world. Only now as they form a relationship with Amazon, are they looking to introduce a pay model. The BBC Worldwide has grown commercial licensing and audience in order to reduce their reliance on fees paid by UK citizens. The Financial Times, internationally recognized for the global business community was the pioneer of the metered pay model.

The first question posed by Manafy was, “Should all media companies consider going global?” From Metro’s point of view, the answer is no because the content has to be relevant to the readers which makes sense based on their city-centric focus. Tomasetti says that the FT learned to combine local content and global content. As the BBC sees it, “It’s all about offering a hybrid content offering” in order to satify subscribers and advertisers. The Economist Online provides a view of the world and then customizes through regional publications.

Social media has been central to growth. While organizations like the Financial Times, are employing community managers (and making them accountable for the community relationship), The Economist was able to take it one step further by leveraging a self-organized community of 40,000 – 50,000 members to innovate new widgets.

Lastly, the panel debated the growing significance of mobile in their growth strategies. For the Financial Times, mobile has become the largest source of subscriptions because users are more engaged. For the Economist, 10%-20% of the audience comes from mobile devices. Metro UK is moving its print audience online and figuring out how to monetize through strategic partnerships with eCommerce partners. Clearly the combination of mobile plus social is clearly an area to watch in 2012.

More on The British Invasion:

Blog post by John Blossom of Shore Communications

Article by Christopher Hosford in BtoB Media Business

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Filed Under: Content, Information Industry Summit

First-Ever Peter Jackson Innovation Award Goes to Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle

January 25, 2012 By Laura Greenback Leave a Comment

Yesterday, SIIA unveiled the first-ever Peter Jackson Innovation Award and presented it to Brewster Kahle, digital librarian and founder of the Internet Archive. The award honors the late Thomson Reuters vice president and chief scientist, and his profound impact on the B2B publishing industry. Dr. Jackson was an active board member of the SIIA Content Division.

SIIA created the Peter Jackson Innovation Award to recognize individuals who are an inspiration to the entire digital content industry. Brewster Kahle is an industry pioneer who has dedicated his career to philanthropy and efforts to improve and preserve digital content.

Because of Brewster’s work, the Internet Archive now offers a staggering 85 billion pieces of web geology. His unyielding vision and creativity has made it possible for our society to chronicle the growth of the Internet and continually celebrate the lasting impact of digital content. In the same spirit as Dr. Jackson, Brewster has demonstrated tremendous commitment to advancing digital media, and in doing so, has been an inspiration to so many of us.

The Peter Jackson Innovation Award was given to Kahle during the SIIA’s annual CODiE Awards dinner, held in conjunction with the Information Industry Summit. In addition to the award, a donation of $1,000 will be made in Kahle’s name to the Peter Jackson Fund for Keyboard and Guitar at the MacPhail Center for Music. The Peter Jackson Fund for Keyboard and Guitar recognizes the profound impact of music on Dr. Jackson’s life by providing music lessons for disadvantaged children.

Beyond his achievements with the Internet Archive, Kahle has worked in other areas of digital content and technology, including the Open Content Alliance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the GNU Project. His academic studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were in the area of artificial intelligence—an area of interest also shared by Dr. Jackson.

View the memorial video for Peter, which was shown during the reception:

Laura Greenback is Communications Director at SIIA.

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Filed Under: Content, Information Industry Summit Tagged With: , ,

SIIA Responds to Proposed EC Data Protection Regulations

January 25, 2012 By Mark MacCarthy Leave a Comment

The European Commission today proposed a comprehensive reform of the EU’s 1995 data protection rules for online privacy. The proposal includes two legislative proposals setting out the Commission’s objectives: a Regulation setting out a general EU framework for data protection, and a Directive on protecting personal data processed for the purposes of prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of criminal offences and related judicial activities.

SIIA welcomes revisions that would make it easier for global companies to demonstrate compliance with the EU privacy regime, and to ease the administrative burdens. However, we are concerned that the breadth of these proposed regulations threaten the internet economy and impede economic growth and job creation. SIIA looks forward to working with EU oifficials to resolve any concerns about substantive new privacy rules such as the proposed new right to be forgotten and requirements for affirmative consent.

Mark MacCarthy, Vice President, Public Policy at SIIA, directs SIIA’s public policy initiatives in the areas of intellectual property enforcement, information privacy, cybersecurity, cloud computing and the promotion of educational technology.

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Filed Under: Policy, Policy - Privacy
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