Digital Discourse / Events / Content VIA Platforms

SIIA Member Spotlight: Crowd Fusion, The Agile Data Model

April 2, 2012 By

I had a chance to talk with Crowd Fusion’s CEO Brian Alvey to learn how Crowd Fusion uses an Agile Data Model to shake up the market and get customer’s sites and apps to market quickly and efficiently. Brian is also speaking at Content VIA Platforms  on May 10 in San Francisco where he will share experiences and war stories gained working on behalf of major publishers interacting with Apple, Facebook, Android and other platforms.

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Kathy: Hi Brian, tell us about your Crowd Fusion, what you do?

Brian Alvey, CEO, Crowd Fusion

Brian: Crowd Fusion is high-end multi-platform publishing software. These days publishers need to do more than ever, but they need to do it with tighter budgets. Crowd Fusion makes it easy to publish the same content to all the latest platforms and devices — all without expanding their production teams.

 

Kathy: Who are your customers?

Brian: Publishers and large brands. Our platform has been used by TMZ, Warner Bros/Telepictures, Myspace, The Daily, Essence and Best Buy’s Tecca.com.

 

Kathy: Tell is what is unique about Crowd Fusion?

Brian: We invented an agile data model that lets us and our customers get sites and apps to market faster and iterate more frequently.

 

Kathy: What are some unique challenges you’ve experienced at Crowd Fusion?

Brian: We work with high-end publishers and big media brands, so we’ve had to solve for 3 kinds of scale: traffic, content and workflow. One of our strengths is that our platform is cloud-native. Not only can you manage content in our CMS, you can also launch new servers and coordinate infrastructure all using a web browser — even on an iPad.

 

Kathy: What do you see as the biggest trends in the industry the next 12-18 months?

Brian: Tablet publishing. Multi-platform publishing. Mobile commerce.

 

Kathy:  What do you hope to get out of your SIIA membership?

Brian: Meeting people who face the same publishing and technology challenges we deal with.

 

Kathy: One thing the industry doesn’t know about you or others in your company?

Brian: We are a completely virtual company. We have no real office space. Our team works from home, Starbucks, customer offices, grandma’s house, wherever. We have 30 people and they are spread out across 18 U.S. states, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Italy.

 

Kathy: Whats the best way to contact you?

Brian: On Twitter: @crowdfusion or @brianalvey for me, Or by email: brian@crowdfusion.com.

Kathy Greenler Sexton is Vice President

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Creating Energized Enterprises: A New SIIA Member Interview with Marc Strohlein of Agile Business Logic

March 29, 2012 By

I had a chance to talk with  new SIIA Member Marc Strohlein of Agile Business Logic and learn how Agile Business Logic is helping create energized enterprises. Marc is on also on the Steering Committee for Content VIA Platforms May 9-10 in San Francisco.

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Marc Strohlein, Agile Business Logic

Kathy: Tell me about your company, what you do.

Marc: At Agile Business Logic we create energized enterprises by helping organizations to optimize strategies, people, processes, and technologies and their interactions. I apply my experience gained as COO, CTO, CIO, and SVP of Operations at companies including Outsell Inc., Classroom Connect/Harcourt, Gartner Group, and Dataquest, to ensure that my clients have the right strategies, talent, organization, and technologies to succeed.

My passion and focus over my career has been in unlocking energy, focus, innovation, and growth in individuals, teams, and organizations—creating energized enterprises that outperform their peers. Now at Agile Business Logic , I work with technology and help with positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategies. Technology marketing is growing increasingly difficult with crowded and noisy markets—it takes highly relevant and well-timed content to get potential buyers attention. I help vendors implement a “buyers journey” approach to content marketing.

 

Kathy: That’s great Marc, and what types of organizations do you typically work with?

Marc: I work with organizations of all types, but especially like working with publishers and information providers. I have been in the information industry much of my career and I have a deep appreciation for the power and value of getting the right information to the right person at the right time to help businesses cope with challenging and volatile business environments. I also like working with associations as I bring ideas and expertise from the for-profit world that are often new to non-profits. And, as I noted, I work with technology vendors, especially those that sell content software technology solutions.

 

Kathy: What is unique about your approach?

Marc:  I focus a lot of attention on the components of an organization and how they interact; in other words, I take a holistic systems view of organizations and create recommendations and solutions based on that viewpoint. I also pay a lot of attention to people, culture, and management styles, even when the problem at hand is purportedly technology related. Most technology-driven initiatives, whether product or enterprise, either succeed or fail based on how well peoples’ needs and behaviors are considered and integrated into solutions.

That also applies to the vendor side of my practice—the challenge for vendors is to get inside the heads of their prospects and I use my years of experience as a CIO and CTO buying and managing technology, as COO and business executive leveraging technology, and as an industry analyst studying and writing about technology to help them solve that challenge.

 

Kathy: Thanks Marc, is there any new or recent news you would like to share?

Marc: I’m three chapters into writing a book on Energized Enterprises for publication later this year.

 

Kathy: Very exciting!  Tell me more about what the book will cover.

Marc: Sure–the book is about tapping hidden or latent energy in organizations. It’s for managers and executives that have made investments in talent, technology, and consulting and training, but still find their teams or organizations unable to perform effectively. The book contains frameworks and tools to help tap the latent energy and create “energized enterprises.”

 

Kathy: We’ll keep our eye out for updates on the book. What do you see as the biggest trends in the industry the next 12-18 months?

Marc: Tablets, HTML5, cloud computing, mobile and big data are the most obvious technology trends, but I like to study disruptive forces and their interactions and have found that the most potent disruptive forces come from the confluence of multiple trends. For example, while the rise of cloud computing, big data, localized computing, semantic technology, and social media are all important trends on their own, collectively they are going to enable massively scalable hyper-personalized content and advertising—that is beyond the 18 month horizon, but the early strands are starting to become visible. This is a classic “skate to where the puck is going” opportunity for publishers.

 

Kathy: So what is the best way for people contact you?

Marc: Email me at mstrohlein@agilebusinesslogic.com or call me: 650.766.1067

 

Kathy: Thanks Marc, we’ll also make sure to look for book and business updates via twitter @mstrohlein!

Kathy Greenler Sexton is Vice President and General Manager for the SIIA Content Division.

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SIIA Survey: Publishers Prioritizing Multiple Platforms as they Develop Content Distribution Strategies

March 20, 2012 By

SIIA’s Content Division today announced results from a survey that shows the challenges and opportunities content creators have in aligning their organizations to keep up with fast-evolving platforms.

Most of the 85 publishing executives surveyed said their companies are thinking about how to publish their content across multiple platforms.When respondents were asked to name the “high priority” platforms they plan to focus on during 2012, the answers were extremely varied.

According to the results of the SIIA Content Platforms survey:

• About 60 percent of respondents classify tablet publishing, mobile publishing and/or launching new web-based products as a high priority;
• Forty-two percent prioritize licensing and syndication; • Nineteen percent prioritize video;
• Business-to-business (B2B) companies tend to prioritize new web-based products slightly above mobile and tablet publishing, whereas business-to-consumer (B2C) companies prioritize tablet publishing above all else;
• B2B companies are twice as likely to prioritize licensing and syndication versus their B2C counterparts;
• 50 percent of director-level individuals prioritize tablet publishing, versus 69 percent of C- and VP-level managers and their manager-level counterparts;
• Only 25 percent of individuals in sales roles prioritize tablet publishing, versus 70 percent of their marketing counterparts;
• 75 percent of individuals in sales roles prioritize web-based publishing—the highest of any group—versus 50 percent of their marketing counterparts.

The content platforms on which companies are currently publishing also vary. Overall, and by a fairly wide margin, companies are leveraging Apple platforms – the iPad and the iPhone. The survey found that 68 percent are currently publishing on the iPad and 58 percent on the iPhone. Meanwhile, 38 percent are publishing on Android-based phones, and 35 percent are publishing on Android-based tablets. Just 17 percent are leveraging Facebook (Open Graph), and 16 percent are publishing on the Kindle.

Large enterprise information and digital content companies are deploying more products and services on Apple, Android, Kindle and even Facebook than their SMB counterparts. And when it comes to developing apps for mobile and other platforms, B2C companies and large enterprise content companies are more likely to outsource than their B2B and SMB counterparts.

We conducted the survey to gain a greater understanding of publishers’ needs in advance of Content VIA Platforms, an all-new conference to help publishing, media and information companies design effective distribution strategies for mobile, social and other content distribution platforms. Full results of the survey will be released at Content Via Platforms, held May 9-10 in San Francisco.

Kathy Greenler Sexton is Vice President and General Manager for the SIIA Content Division.

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Focus on Platforms: On Demand Webcast

March 1, 2012 By

In case you missed it the FOCUS ON: Content Platforms webcast is now available on demand.

During the webcast Ann Michael, President, Delta Think, and Barry Graubart, VP Customer Development, Crowd Fusion helped participants understand the key challenge of getting content effectively published and distributed in real-time across multiple content distribution platforms.

The webcast is a lead up to Content VIA Platforms and the Platforms Bootcamp scheduled May 9-10 in San Francisco.

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New Content VIA Platforms Conference will Address the Demands of Publishing in a Multiplatform World

February 23, 2012 By

SIIA’s Content Division announced today an all-new conference for content creators who publish across multiple platforms. Called Content VIA Platforms, this new event will help publishing, media, and information companies get content effectively published and distributed across multiple  platforms such as mobile, social and even aggregation platforms.

Content VIA Platforms will be held May 9-10 in San Francisco. SIIA will preview the event during a free, one-hour webinar next week, on March 1 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern/10:30 a.m. Pacific. Members of the media are invited to attend the conference and participate in the webinar.

One of the key challenges many publishers, new and information providers face today is publishing and distributing content in real-time across multiple content platforms. These content distribution platforms include everything from mobile, tablets, aggregation to even scholarly platforms. We launched Content VIA Platforms to help publishers to make smart product and strategy platform decisions in order to help them maximize their audiences, customer base and revenue-without breaking the budget.

The Content VIA Platforms conference will feature a number of mobile, publishing and technology thought leaders and key executives from the information industry. Panels and presentations will focus on equipping participants with tools and strategies to successfully utilize a variety of different platforms, monetization strategies, devices and app distribution models, and more.

The Content VIA Platforms webinar, which will be held next week on March 1, will provide an introductory overview of key content platforms and discuss strategies for harnessing these platforms to drive visibility. The basic tools introduced during the webinar will be covered in more depth at the Content VIA Platforms conference in May. Next week’s preview will be led by two top digital content strategists-Ann Michael, President of Delta Think, and Barry Graubart, Vice President for Customer Development at Crowd Fusion and SIIA Member Chair of Content VIA Platforms.

Kathy Greenler Sexton is Vice President and General Manager for the SIIA Content Division.

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SIIA Names Kathy Greenler Sexton to Lead Content Division

February 2, 2012 By

Kathy Greenler SextonSIIA today named Kathy Greenler Sexton as Vice President and General Manager of the Content Division. Sexton will lead SIIA’s efforts to shape and support leading information and media companies by providing leadership, advocacy, critical market information, and business development opportunities.

“Kathy is a dynamic, strategic and hands-on executive with deep experience serving information, Internet and media companies,” said Ken Wasch, President of SIIA. “Using her deep digital content experience, Kathy will support our member companies—which provide the content, software and other enabling technologies that drive the content industry—helping them identify business and partnership opportunities, understand disruptive technologies, maximize their monetization models, connect emerging companies with capital, and educate them on the fast-changing policy initiatives in Washington that could impact their bottom-lines. I look forward to working with Kathy to enhance both the leading and emerging media and information companies that are part of our membership.”

“The information market is in the middle of a transformation unleashed by the internet, digital, mobile technology and the proliferation of data,” said Sexton. “These changes are impacting everything from business models to service delivery and operations, and they represent both disruptions and opportunities for our member companies. I am honored to lead the SIIA Content Division, and I look forward to helping our members successfully navigate these market challenges.”

Sexton has had a history of continued success in the digital content industry. After working in broadcast television and international marketing roles, Sexton was a founding member, lead marketer and publisher for the web-based search engine pioneer AltaVista. She established the company one of the top five globally trafficked sites. She also grew Individual.com into a top online news property, successfully selling to Office.com/Winstar, a leading brand and number one e-commerce site for small business. Sexton also launched HighBeam Research, dramatically growing revenue, traffic and subscribers and positioned it for sale to Gale/Cengage. She also successfully transitioned BLR from traditional publisher to a streamlined online information provider and re-launched ZoomInfo, establishing it as a leader in the competitive B2B information market. Sexton earned a BA in communications from Boston College.

Laura Greenback is Communications Director at SIIA.

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Going Native: Deciding between HTML5 and Native Apps (Contributed by Content Matters)

January 30, 2012 By

Author: Barry Graubart – VP of Customer Development at CrowdFusion

Almost every publisher I speak with these days is in the midst of developing, implementing or revising their mobile and tablet strategy. With technology changes coming faster than most can keep up, the mobile strategy you developed six months ago (post iPad 2 but pre-Kindle Fire) is most likely out of date.

And with the news that there were more iPads than desktop computers sold in the fourth quarter of 2011, it’s no surprise that mobile strategy is on the top of everyone’s mind…

(continued at)

http://www.contentmatters.info/content_matters/2012/01/going-native-deciding-between-html5-and-native-apps.html
 

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