Digital Discourse / Archives for SIIA

Webinar – How to Sell The Way Your Customers Want to Buy

May 30, 2012 By

With the onset of social media and mobile technology, marketing and sales professionals face a non-traditional sales cycle. Sellers are no longer in charge of the customer buying process and the customer expects immediate responses and results. If you are struggling to deliver this demand, then listen to this pre-recorded webinar featuring revenue coach and author, Kristin Zhivago on How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy.

To download a copy of the slides, click here.

 

About the Presenter:

Kristin Zhivago is a revenue coach. She teaches CEOs and entrepreneurs how to increase their revenue by understanding what they want to buy and how they want to buy it. She spends her days solving marketing and selling problems for her clients, and writing and speaking about what works. She interviews customers constantly for her clients and has interviewed literally thousands of tech buyers. Zhivago founded Zhivago Management Partners, Inc. in 1979 in Silicon Valley. She operates now out of Jamestown, RI, blogs at RevenueJournal.com, and is the author of Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy.

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Filed Under: Software, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Search Engines: From Indexers to Distributors?

May 30, 2012 By

We are excited about our partnership with the InfoCommerce Group to produce DataContent 2012, coming up October 9-11 in Philadephia. The conference will focus on discovering the next big thing in publishing: The intersection of Data, Community and Markets at DataContent 2012. If you don’t know him, Russ Perkins the founder of InfoCommerce Group, is one of the more thoughtful individuals in our industry on all things data. As we lead up to the conference, we will be highlighting posts from his blog which focus on the issues and topics we will be discussing at DataContent 2012. Enjoy!

Search Engines: From Indexers to Distributors?

A New York Times article this week, entitled “From Search, to Fetch,” describes moves by both Google and Bing to get you to an answer faster. Called the “Knowledge Graph” by Google and “Snapshot” by Bing, you’ll find that searches for certain types of information will now bring you a highly summarized presentation of key facts without needing to click on any of the links shown in the search results. Read more.

Russell Perkins is Founder & Managing Director, InfoCommerce Group Inc. Russell has over 20 years experience in all facets of the database publishing industry. He is the author of Directory Publishing: A Practical Guide, which is now in its fifth edition, and InfoCommerce: Internet Strategies for Database Publishers.

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Filed Under: Content, Content Events, Data Content, DataContent Tagged With: , , , ,

Ed Tech Industry Summit Guest Blog: Seismic Changes in Education

May 23, 2012 By

Recently, I attended the SIIA Ed Tech Industry Summit in San Francisco, CA, the nation’s leading education technology conference. Leaders of edtech companies came from around the country – and the world – to network, attend keynote speeches, participate in panel discussions and focus groups, and enjoy the annual CODIE Awards. The theme of this year’s conference was Bridging K-12 and Postsecondary, so the agenda addressed transitioning and leveraging edtech businesses from one marketplace to another.

One particular panel discussion that caught my attention was entitled, Adapting to the Seismic Change in Education Culture. The write up in the SIIA program read:

It’s not just about digital transformation. From teacher accountability and superintendent turnover to funding and standards — all areas across both K-12 and Higher Ed education are experiencing transformational changes in the culture of education. This is beyond a trend. Tweaking our business models and product offerings won’t be good enough to survive. How should businesses adapt to the huge shifts in education culture? Listen to a panel of industry gurus on how successful businesses recreate themselves in times of great change.

Moderator:
Randy Wilhelm, Chief Executive Officer, Knovation (formerly netTrekker)
Panelists:
Farb Nivi, Founder, Grockit
Justin Serrano, President, Kaplan K12 and College Prep, Kaplan K12 Learning Services
David Straus, Vice President Product, Kno, Inc.

The panel discussion was a guided Q & A session, and below you’ll find a summary of some of the most salient points that were made during the one-hour discussion:

What’s the key to adapting to seismic change?
Straus: Two important elements to successful adaption are: 1) Evolution, not revolution; and 2) To think international, not just domestically.

Which education trend will have the greatest impact on K-20 education in the next three years?
Straus: Mobile, because of its portability, intimate user experience, and the increased touch environment.
Serrano: As things get cheaper, that will determine which trend is most impactful. I agree with Straus – mobile will have a huge impact due to its portability.

Nivi: Social learning – peers teaching peers – will have a huge impact. For example, real-time chat rooms are changing the way test prep is done. However, I also think that a variety of trends will be impactful, including mobile, print to digital, etc. It’s important to give people options, because determining which tool is the right one, depends on the particular person, school, etc. In general, we should be trying to find ways to amplify the ways people can connect with each other. In a world where the rate of technological change is affecting our lives more than anything else, if we don’t embed technology in education, then we’re not preparing children for the world.

Which one group/thing will be most responsible for transforming K-20 education?
Serrano: The government. The government is not going to inspire transformation, but it’s the group that has to give it permission to happen. But it’s also important to remember that technology is not necessary to fix education; many charter schools are successful without using technology. But like it or not, the government is going to play a huge role.

Straus: Companies and systems need to provide a compelling argument to help students engage. However, it’s the government that will be most responsible for transforming K-20 education.

Nivi: I think students should be the answer. When I was growing up, the best technology was at school. Today, schools are technology prisons where you’re not allowed to bring anything in. Until schools are technology meccas and not technology prisons, we’re not going to get change.

Which organizations/conferences do you believe will help shape or address K-20 trends?
Nivi: ASU SkySong, because moving big things in a short amount of time will most likely occur here.
Who will benefit the most from the changes taking place in education?

Serrano: This question assumes that the changes are positive. But to answer it, I think the students will benefit most.

Straus: Teachers. The role of the teacher is going to improve and transform into that of a facilitator.

Where will the fastest evolution in education occur?
Seranno: This question is asking about speed, and to address that point, the evolution of education will happen fastest wherever you have a more focused and centralized vision.

Nivi: The fastest growth will occur in other countries, because the stakes are higher. Internationally, there is more competition. Other countries leapfrogged the table phone and went straight to the cell phone. They leapfrogged the desktop and laptop and went straight to the tablet. When it comes to technology and education, other countries have the incentives and are not tied to any existing models. Because of this, they will be able to take advantage of new technology.

When they took the movie “High School Musical” to China and wanted to remake the movie for a Chinese audience, they encountered a major problem in the storyline. In the Chinese culture, the athletes are the losers and the smart students are the cool kids, so they had to flip the story line. The reason I share this story is because we need to change the culture of the U.S. As adults and leaders, we need to be examples of lifelong learners.

It was a great discussion, wouldn’t you say? And one we need to be having more often – not just at edtech conferences, but at the federal and state levels of government, lecture halls of universities, local school board meetings, teacher gatherings, classrooms, and homes. There’s no denying that technology is changing, and will continue to change, the way we think about education – both in regards to the content and the delivery of information. However, in order to successfully adapt to these changes, we need to make it a priority to reflect on our current state of education and think about how what we’re doing now, both individually and collectively, will impact the future.

Beyond that, we should continue having open discussions, such as this one undertaken by Nivi, Serrano, and Straus at the SIIA EdTech Summit, addressing the current state of education and looking ahead to what’s to come. These conversations need to occur at all levels of society and involve a variety of key players, including the government, education companies, universities, employers, school leaders, teachers, students, and parents. In this manner, we can be assured that the future roadmap of education will be the result of a collective effort and represent a shared decision for how we should adapt and move forward with education in America.

 

Mandela Schumacher-Hodge is a former middle school teacher and doctoral student at UCLA. She is currently the co-founder & chief operation officer of DemoLesson, an innovative online hiring platform for teachers. In her spare time, Mandela loves to exercise, spend quality time with family and friends, and search for new adventures and experiences.

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

IBM Watson and the Cloud- Implications of the Next Generation of Computing: SIIA’s All About the Cloud

May 19, 2012 By

After attending this year’s All About the Cloud, Abdullah Mashuk shared a summary about the IBM Watson and the Cloud: Implications of the Next Generation of Computing Presentation.

Presenter: Stephen Gold, IBM Corporation

Discussion Points:

  • Watson had 70% unaided awareness within American population. In jeopardy Watson needed to wait 3 second before buzzing to answer a question affirmatively.
  • Watson helps convert unstructured data into something meaningful
  • Trillion interconnected devices 2 billion mobile devices driving information’s. Information is becoming new oil. Oil in the ground does not have much value, but once it extracted refined then it had value. Information has same implication. Big data by itself is not that interesting, but what you do it can be insightful.
  • Next generation system will be learning system, systems that are not just programs, but systems that are taught. System that will get smarter with each iteration, with each outcome, with each new information.
  • On big difference between programmatic system vs. learning system is the notion search vs. discovery.
  • Next generation of system will be about bringing back relevant information.
  • Deterministic vs. probabilistic system. 2+2 may not always 4 it may have probabilistic answer.
  • 90% of current world data is collected within the last two years
  • 80% of data is unstructured
  • Only 20% of date currently leveraged by traditional system.
  • 83% CIO thinks big data / analytics is important
  • Differences among Watson and other systems is Watson’s ability of Natural Language processing. Its ability to break question into sub components and evaluate each components for possible answer/solution.
  • IBM Watson use case in health care – Medical information will be doubled by the time a med student finish the entire curriculum. It will be impossible consume all the data. 81% physicians spends 5 hours or less per month on medical journal. Watson can process vast number of information and help a doctor quickly diagnose a patient and prescribe right medicine. Watson currently being used in pre-authorized treatments. Announced development partnership with cancer care institute.
  • Other use case can be in financial services industries.
  • IBM Watson is delivered as a service through cloud. (public/private/hybrid)
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Filed Under: All About the Cloud, Software Events

Using Cloud to Manage Business Growth: SIIA’s All About the Cloud

May 18, 2012 By

After attending this year’s All About the Cloud, Abdullah Mashuk shared a summary about the Using Cloud to Manage Business Growth Presentation.

Moderator: Michael Pearl, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Speakers: Nara Balakrishna (Appirio), Guy Shani (Clarizen), Gil Zimmermann (CloudLock)

Discussion Points:

  • Mike help client leverage cloud to drive their business
  • Nara – Cloud solution provided, help mid size companies to move to cloud. How he uses cloud to run his buinses
  • Guy – collaborative online project management services. 1600 customers (midsize to large companies). How his company leverages cloud to drive his business
  • Gill – Cloud data security. Help leverages enterprise leverages the cloud secured way. 100s of enterprise customer, millions of users use cloud securely.
  • How to leverage the cloud to manage the growth of the company
    1. Support millions of users without having a single server
    2. Continuously innovate, continuously provide value to customer
    3. Built on Google App engine, so not need to focus on infrastructure management, just focus on software development
  • Share some experiences about connectivity and collaboration across the org
    1. Disparate group across many geographical locations. Use own solution to communicate and collaborate with own employees.
    2. Also other cloud based solution like Saleforce, Marketo etc
    3. Only 100+ employees but supporting many customer world wide
  • Nara sharing perspective of how Appirio grown and how you managing your customer
    1. 3 guys supporting 500 people
    2. all project run using own solution build cloud based solution
    3. Able to move quickly (on baording new employees, )
    4. Spend a little less on IT
  • Some challenge from IT organization that you serve (how do they respond)
    1. How you go around IT
    2. IT leader recognize the shift in market
    3. 70/75% spending keeping their lights on
    4. Moving form IT maintenance to innovative business solution
  • Guy’s perspective
    1. 5 years ago only early adopters SAAS based model for project management
    2. More streamlined a way to deliver cloud based solutions
    3. Is SAAS the right vehicle no longer a concern
    4. SAAS is valid option to consider
    5. Spend more time focusing on the right solution
  • Security and Risk Management (how customers manage this aspect)
    1. CIO stands for Chief Information Officer (Not infrastructure office)
    2. CIOs need to make sure information available securely
    3. Making sure IT provide the best application
    4. People will find a way collaborate, so CIO need to enable cloud based solutions that are secured from the company data point of view
    5. Dropbox are users breaking corporate policy
    6. How can do things before and do more securely on the cloud
  • Future of IT (two path for IT organization)
    1. One – strives for best of breed technologies
    2. Other – will just keeps the light on
    3. Roles are changing
  • Example of most innovative way to leverage cloud
    1. 2 examples – Helping twitter to scale from few sales force to 100s of salesforce. Helping them implement tool like Salesforce.com and other cloud based solution
  • How clients are using project management tools:
    1. Immediately value is people are using the tool, more adoption among users
    2. Managers have full visibility to data that was not there before
    3. Help make real time decision
    4. Cut timesheet process to days to hours
    5. Customers (Marketo) are teaching them how to best to use theirs own software
  • How customers learned more about the information using Cloudlook
    1. 60 seconds to instal in any size organization
    2. Data on the dashboard is eye opener for the customer
    3. Moving from windows based servers to cloud based solutions
    4. Once organization gone from traditional file servers application to Google Apps, it is very hard to go back.
    5. Paradigm shift, data does not belong to server anymore.
  • Perspective on cloud adoption of companies that already invested heavily on Legacy applications
    1. Collecting information from the different system and putting in front of users. Start with that then extend to other services. (Front office first, collaboration second, HR and other services next)
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Filed Under: All About the Cloud, Software Events

VIA Recap

May 18, 2012 By

Angus Robertson

On May 9 & 10, the SIIA Content Division hosted Content VIA Platforms – a conference dedicated to educating media, publishing and information professionals about the technology and business issues related to distributing content via mobile, social and other platforms. Guest blogger, Angus Robertson, Principal Robertson Advisors LLC, gives his write up on the Conference and the content covered. 

About Robertson Advisors:  For 10 years Robertson Advisors has been providing content creators and distributors with strategic and tactical consulting services. Angus can be reached at angusrob@mac.com.

A major theme emerging from SIIA’s Content VIA Platforms conference in San Francisco last week was the impact that mobile is having on the distribution of content.

One lesson from the success of iPad apps is that the simplicity dictated by the format can be a benefit that has relevance to other offerings as well.  The limitations of apps forces greater focus on what is truly important, a lesson that is increasingly being incorporated into web products.

Newstex President Larry Schwartz offered a useful walk through of the process and timeline of developing mobile apps. He stressed the importance of following the Lean Startup model of “Nail it and scale it.”

Dan Bennett, VP of Technology for Thomson Reuters, provided a handy comparison of the pros and cons of native apps versus HTML5 and sounded a note of caution about jumping on the app bandwagon.  Developing and supporting apps for Apple devices always adds to costs but not always to revenue, so it is important to understand what you are trying to do with apps, he said.  He likens apps to puppies: everyone loves them until they get big and tear apart the house.

Barry Graubart, VP Marketing, ReisReports, led an informative Executive Bootcamp on Platforms that included Teri Mendelsohn of Mendelsohn Consulting, Ann Michael of Delta Think, Robin Neidorf of Free Pint and Mark Strohlein of Agile Business Logic.

Some of the key pointers from this session were:

Mobile strategy needs to:

  • embrace the constraints; focus and simplify; and leverage mobile features such as geolocation, but only where they add value.
  • iPads are now outselling PCS, which represent less than 50% of the market.
  • About one in ten new products will be successful.

Security and authentication remains a significant hindrance to going fully mobile in the enterprise market, especially for businesses such as financial institutions. Still,  Free Pint surveys of enterprise users show that mobile is growing strongly in the corporate world. Two years ago Junior Analysts were asking “Why can’t I get this on my iPhone?” Now, senior executives are saying “Get this on my iPad, I don’t care how.”

Peter Marney, VP Content Group, Thomson Financial Research, gave an overview of how Thomson Reuters is handling the issue of fully leveraging the vast amounts of data across the company to support multiple platforms and markets.  His goal is to make news dynamic and interactive across the merged enterprise. “Knowing the value of the connections (between content) is more important than the content itself,” he said, citing the links between companies, people, patents and legal issues.

 

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Filed Under: Content, Content Events, Content VIA Platforms, Events Tagged With: , , , , ,

Business Intelligence in the Cloud: SIIA’s All About the Cloud

May 17, 2012 By

After attending this year’s All About the Cloud, Abdullah Mashuk shared a summary about the Business Intelligence in the Cloud Presentation.

Moderator: Phil Wainewright, Procullux Ventures
Speakers: David Abramson (LogiXML), Eileen Boerger (CorSource Technology Group, Inc.), Vincent Lam (Information Builders), Roman Stanek (GoodData)

Discussion Points:

  • There are benefits to the cloud and there are benefits to on-premise
  • Cloud is not a zero sum game. If you go to cloud you do not have to lose out on-premise
  • Cloud offers a new paradigm and there is an audience for Business Intelligence in the cloud, on the flip side there is an audience for Business Intelligence for on-premise.
  • At the end of the both Cloud and on-premise here to stay. The challenge will be to how to make both cloud and on-premise to work together
  • Roman disagrees with Vincent think it is zero sum game and he build his company with that notion and IT is generally moving in towards the cloud direction.
  • How cloud is different:
  1. Cloud based services can scale better and faster than the on premise services
  2. Additionally cloud services can easily extend to different types of devices (mobile devices, laptops etc)
  3. Enable collaboration
  • Cloud provides real time data and Business Intelligence that was not easily available for on-premise system. For on-premise systems real time BI was available in the form of real time warehouse
  • Cloud enables BI accessible to other members of the organization, not just the Business Analyst. BI is not just for the analyst.
  • Two solutions to cloud BI:
  1. If data is to tell story, it cannot be isolated, it has to be visual and cloud enable that. Standardizations are happening around data visualization so user can easily understand that data at various time spent.
  2. Data should be measurable.
  • Users are becoming data savvy and also consumerization of BI is happening.
  • Important words to related to cloud BI Deployment:
  1. Agility
  2. Adoption
  3. Planning and understanding
  4. Success
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Filed Under: All About the Cloud, Software Events
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