We have a powerhouse lineup of expert speakers including:

• Evan Sandhaus, Lead Architect, Semantic Platforms at The New York Times Company (Keynote Speaker)
• Rob Beeler, VP of Content & Media, AdMonsters
• Hitesh Chitalia, Director, eBusiness, The McGraw-Hill Companies
• Andy Ellenthal, CEO, Peer39
• Barry Graubart, VP, Customer Development, Crowd Fusion
• Ken Judy, Vice President Engineering, Simon & Schuster
• Anthony Katsur, General Manager, Platform, MediaMath
• Daniel Mayer, Product Marketing Manager, TEMIS,
• Ari Paparo, SVP Product, AppNexus,
• Stewart Wills, Ph.D, Editorial Director, Web & New Media, Science Magazine

After the presentations, participants are invited to discuss what they’ve learned throughout the afternoon over cocktails during our reception. You won’t want to miss out!

EVENT DETAILS

Driving Revenues with Semantics: How Semantic Technologies Boost ROI for Digital Media Companies

Date: Wednesday, June 29

Time: 2:00pm – 6:00 pm ET

Location: McGraw-Hill, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, Room 207, New York, NY

Registration: $50 for SIIA members. $125 for non-members; pre-registration required for all.

Click here for the full Schedule

Fluid Interfaces
Speaker: Pattie Maes, Associate Professor of Media Technology

The Fluid Interfaces research group is radically rethinking the ways we interact with digital information and services. They design interfaces that are more intuitive and intelligent, and better integrated in our daily physical lives. They investigate ways to augment the everyday objects and spaces around us, making them responsive to our attention and actions. The resulting augmented environments offer opportunities for learning and interaction and, ultimately, for enriching our lives.

Software Agents
Speaker: Henry Lieberman, Research Scientist

The Software Agents group investigates a new paradigm for software that acts like an assistant to a user of an interactive interface rather than simply as a tool. Agent software can learn from interaction with the user, and proactively anticipate the user’s needs. They build prototype agent systems in a wide variety of domains, including text and graphic editing, Web browsing, e-commerce, information visualization, and more.

Information Ecology
Speaker: Henry Holtzman, Research Scientist, Chief Knowledge Officer, Co-Director, Digital Life

We have become reliant on digital information for communication, commerce, and entertainment. This information must be readily available, whether stored locally on our computers, on enterprise servers at work, or via third-party services like GMail. Most importantly, we should have choices beyond desktop computers or smartphones to access it. The Information Ecology group explores ways to connect our physical environments with information resources. Through the use of low-cost, ubiquitous technologies such as sensors and consumer electronics, they are creating seamless and pervasive ways to interact with our information-and with each other.

Comparative Media Studies
Speaker: Ian Condry, Associate Professor of Global Media, Director, Social Media Initiative

Using analytical tools and creative production of the social sciences, arts, and humanities to understand the impact of media in society and the ways social practices transform the uses of media technologies. Comparative Media Studies is an interdisciplinary group of faculty exploring the frontiers of media and society. Through international, ethnographic, computational, historical, and artistic methods, we examine how social worlds contextualize and alter the potentials of media. For example, the Social Media Initiative aims to activate the emerging possibilities of the social in media, extending analysis away from technological platforms themselves towards questions of how social innovation emerges through technology’s use in living social networks amid the diversity of human experience.

Lifelong Kindergarten
Speaker: Mitchel Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, Academic Head, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, Co-Director, Center for Future Civic Media

The Lifelong Kindergarten group is sowing the seeds for a more creative society by engaging people in creative, lifelong learning experiences. They develop new technologies that, in the spirit of the blocks and fingerpainting of kindergarten, expand the range of what people design, create, and invent and what they learn in the process. The group’s ultimate goal is a world full of playfully creative people, who are constantly inventing new possibilities for themselves and their communities.

Be prepared to be wowed!

Executive Summary:

It’s an apparent paradox that in this time of seemingly unlimited content availability neither Publishers nor their Audiences are fully satisfied with the current dominant paradigm for managing, distributing, and accessing content. While the former seek to ensure Information Product differentiation and added value, the latter struggle daily with an overwhelming quantity of content of inconsistent relevance.

In the following pages, we invite readers to explore the benefits of Networked Content, an emerging set of technologies and practices that holds the potential not only to transform the way content is managed, distributed and accessed, for the joint benefit of Publishers and their Audiences, but also to profoundly remodel the Information Industry in its next stage of growth.

Link to Full Report

How much influence will be exerted by whoever pays for the news in the years ahead? He reminds us that “Someone always pays for the news, and the support has always spawned debates about who news organizations favor or fear.” As news organizations experiment with hyperlocal coverage at The New Haven Independent or the non-profit business model of The Texas Tribune, we get some perspectives on how that news will get paid for and delivered.

Ken also points out that “News is unlike any other business. It balances profit-making and public service at it score. Citizens across the globe depend on the business of news to find out what’s going on. Who brings us the news matters.” This “follow the money” approach reminds the reader as to how this business works and Doctor does a nice job of providing examples with real numbers to illustrate these points.

By interviewing lots of people I know and respect like Patrick Spain of Newser, Rafat Ali of PaidContent and Larry Schwartz at Newstex, Ken gives a balanced perspective on what we should expect in the future. At the end of the book he points out that “just as we pay for cable programming and broadband Internet and support all kinds of community and global organization, we can support news and information. As a representative of many paid content companies– I could not agree more.

1) Nobody cares about your products (except you)
2) No coercion required
3) Lose control
4) Put down roots
5) Create triggers that encourage people to share
6) Point the word to your (virtual) doorstep

In the following chapters he shares some powerful examples of how PR, marketing and product professionals took advantage of these ideas to raise awareness. My favorite story was how Cindy Gordon, VP of new media at Universal Orlando Resort, hyped the upcoming Harry Potter attraction by telling just seven people. These seven were so influential that eventually 350 million people heard about the attraction.

He also weaves some best practices like creating buyer personas to understand who you are trying to reach and tactics like using negative titles (Do Not Read This Blog Post).

I also appreciated his admonitions about what not to do like creating “lead bait” or tracking leads and press clippings as a measure of effectiveness.

World Wide Rave is a great kick start for people who need to get their message out so people will beat a virtual path to your doorstep.

The cost of books ought to plummet once they are distributed and consumed electronically. Consider that a hardcover book retails for $30 and wholesales for $16. Out of that sum, $6 goes into manufacturing (paper, printing, etc) to say nothing of shipping, inventory costs and publisher’s overhead. Editorial expenses are a mere $.67, and the author’s royalty is $4. Publisher’s pretax profits is $1.

E-distribution could radically lower the cost of publishing – and the barriers to entry in the publishing business.

I was reminded of this article (subscription required) recently when I read about Scribner’s decision to delay the e-book release of Stephen King’s newest title “Under the Dome” for about six weeks. The cited rationale was to “preserve the value of the hardcover edition”. King supported this strategy as a way to help the independent bookstores and the national bookstore chains sell the hardcover edition. Adam Rothberg, a spokesman for Simon & Schuster rightly pointed out that “Publishers have long issued different formats of a book at different times… and that this is an opportunity to see what happens when we issue the e-book at a different time in the publication sequence”.

In business school I learned that this was called inter-temporal pricing and it is market segmentation based on time of need. In the case of books the manufacturing costs for a paperback and a hardcover are about the same so the hard cover reader agrees to pay a premium for first access. Movie studios have also experimented with the timing of releases, although one of the drivers for that seems to be about piracy and most recently some have issued all formats at once. One of my favorite examples of this used to be how the New York Times would sell the paper at once price in the morning, and then drop it if you purchased a copy after 2 pm.

In looking at the Stephen King example, the only people who might be miffed are Kindle owners that happen to be Stephen King fans. The WSJ shared that this same release strategy will be in place for Sarah Palin’s upcoming book as well as for Ted Kennedy’s memoir. However as e-reader adoption grows, we’ll undoubtedly see more experimentation here.

I have found Content Nation to be an informative read on several levels. I like how the author shared a variety of rules and guidelines including Seven Secrets of Social Media, Content Nation Marketing Rules, Content Nation Enterprise Rules etc. The benefit of these distillations is that they can help the practitioner evaluate their current and future social media strategies using these tools as guidelines. Moreover, each of these is illustrated by case studies and examples that help explain the concept. I learned about many new companies and brands as a result of reading Content Nation. I also found it useful that the author shared both the positive and negatives of this phenomenon and provided cautionary tales for people who might seek to deceive the marketplace. Blossom has created a very useful tome that puts scholarly rigor to a part of the publishing industry that is still considered the Wild, Wild West by some– long live Content Nation!

The fact that users are submitting this kind of info to the web is not new. Rate My Space, which was constructed by SIIA Member Neighborhood America does this for living spaces, and I’m certain that Car & Driver, Road & Track, as well as Hemmings Motor News are doing this for cars. What impressed me was that the venerable NY Times was trying to build such a niche audience.

I dont’ know how successful this venture has been, but I’m sure that many readers of the NYT have the disposable income to buy collectible cars. By creating a way to draw users together, bestow awards, and curate content, the NYT is employing some of the tactics they’ll need to survive in an online world.

In looking at some of the people I follow on Twitter, I’m impressed and intrigued by the number of followers they have accumulated.  Then it dawned on me that perhaps there’s a way to make some money by selling access to your twitterati.  Suppose you wanted to gain some insight into what David Meerman Scott’s followers had on a PR or Marketing idea you had.  For a price and maybe a $ on the hash tag you would be permissioned to survey his list.  Same could go for someone who wants to know what David Pogue’s followers have to say about a new gadget or device.

Is anyone doing this now?  Do you think it is similar to the panel business that market research firms have built?

Big surprise that the espresso was lousy, the scone was stale, and the yogurt tasted like strawberry frosting.

In the information industry we’ve talked about the phenomenon of “just good enough” replacing premium services. As in the breakfast example above, you get what you pay for and next time I’ll get up earlier for the premium service. I also think that most of the professionals served by our industry that are making market moving, life saving and critical strategic decisions will continue to rely on the premium services that we have to offer.