JANUARY 26, 2009

12:30 – 6:30 pm SIIA Previews

3:00 – 5:00 pm Pre-Conference Event: Double Down on Digital, hosted by Nstein Technologies
Unpredictability may be the only certainty in today’s media landscape. Across a backdrop of declining industry trends: falling subscriptions, high costs of production, eroding traditional revenues, coupled with a multiplication of channels, savvy players are doubling down on digital. By building a common infrastructure that allows media companies to move all properties and their assets into a single repository, semantically analyzing and tagging each asset, they have literally created digital content factories — that can output content into a variety of digital channels.  

In this 2-hour executive session, industry experts and leading publishers will explore the high payouts of creating a digital content factory powered by semantic analysis. Learn how one growing portfolio was able to assimilate two new acquisitions — in a mere three weeks from close of sale; and how another increased readers and audience stickiness through semantic analysis.

If you are struggling with how to streamline your operations and optimize for any digital channel using one common, highly agile infrastructure, you won’t want to miss this highly informative session.

JANUARY 27, 2009

7:30 - 8:45 am
Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:45 - 9:00 am
Opening Remarks
Ken Wasch, President, SIIA
Ed Keating, VP, Content Division, SIIA

9:00 - 9:45 am
Opening Keynote
Marjorie Scardino, Chief Executive, Pearson

9:45 - 10:30 am
Sink or Swim? How Can You Grow an Information Company Now?
The information industry is facing challenging times: Companies are continuing to consolidate while some sectors are failing. In addition the next generation of customers has no concern or respect for copyright. Finally, new devices like the Kindle and the iphone require new investments in technology to deliver content to the third screen.

A trio of industry leaders will share their war stories on how they have managed to grow their businesses despite these and other trends. Hear how they have employed acquisitions, organic growth and asset sales to keep their companies swimming, not sinking.

Moderator:
Kevin English, SVP - M&E, Satyam

Panelist:
Oakleigh Thorne, Co-President, Blumenstein/ Thorne Information Partners
Michael Wolff, Founder, Newser; Vanity Fair columnist; CNBC commentator
Bob Merry, President & Editor-in-Chief, Congressional Quarterly
Vivek Shah, Group Digital President, News Business Unit, Time Inc.

10:30 - 11:00 am
Networking Break

11:00 – 11:45 am
Executive FaceTime Interview
Glenn S. Goldberg, President Information & Media, The McGraw-Hill Companies
Interviewed by Hal Espo, President, Contextual Connections, LLC.

11:45 - 12:30 pm
Luncheon Keynote
Mark Walsh, Media & Political Pundit.

12:30 - 1:30 pm
Lunch

1:30- 2:15 pm
Licensing Digital Information – Customer Satisfaction vs. Safeguarding Assets

The past decade has seen an increased focus on licensing practices, with a number of user groups advocating for new permitted uses and simpler explanations of contract terms and conditions.  Over the past year, this movement has taken on new momentum as governments seek to address user demands for access and re-use rights for digital entertainment.  The focus may be on music, movies and games for now, but content providers are already seeing pressure to alter some of their practices in order to satisfy their customers.  

This session will explore some of the changing expectations and behaviors among information content users today and explore how they may well affect the expectations of tomorrow’s knowledge workers.  Representatives from the publishing sector and important user groups will discuss trends and responses to provide insight on how this important aspect of serving customer needs may change the way content providers structure and operate their digital businesses.

Moderator:
Dan Duncan, Director, Government Affairs, The McGraw-Hill Companies

Panelists:
Ed Colleran, Senior Director, International Relations, Copyright Clearance Center
Dominic Young Director of Group Publishing, News International
Caitlin Grusauskas, 3rd year student, Columbia University School of Law
Mindy Pennington, Manager, External Content, Library Services, Pfizer Global Research & Development

2:15 - 2:45 pm

Frictionless Information: Adding Value in the Age of Google
As more and more of the world of information is indexed online, Google has become the on stop shopping site for an ever increasing set of people’s information needs.  But with huge repositories of valuable content still being generated and controlled by traditional publishers, the question is what can these publishers provide their clients that Google can not already provide for free?
Many publishers have tried to address this problem by going head to head with Google's indexing and retrieval services, attempting to improve performance using decades of work in semantics and ontological research.  Of course, this track is aimed at going against Google's greatest strength.  In this talk, I look at an alternative, in which publishers can provide value at exactly the point at which Google is weakest; integrating with task, context and work flow.  I will present a broad platform for this approach as well as specific examples of systems that are in place today.

Kristian J. Hammond, Co-Director, Intelligent Information Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Northwestern University

2:45 - 3:15 pm
Networking Break

3:15 – 4:00 pm
What’s the Value of Value-Add?
In an era of content commoditization, information companies face serious challenges in differentiating their products and services. Facing new disruptive technology, information companies may find traditional editorial approaches to creating valuable content to be inefficient and/or ineffective.

• How can information companies protect and grow their businesses?
• Is “value-add" a cliché or a foundation for viable competitive strategies?
• How can information companies increase their value to customers?
• What are the financial costs - and returns - of investing in value-add?

Information companies are taking a variety of approaches to this dilemma, including providing additional content, enriching content with metadata, providing better search tools, and integrating content into their users’ workflows. Is there a clear signal that the market perceives the "value-added" initiatives in a meaningful way?

This session will present case studies of information companies that have succeeded by adding value to their core content, and will explore what "value-add" means today and how it may change in the future.

Panelist:
Karen Abramson, President & CEO, Wolters Kluwer Health Medical Research
Tom Brown, VP, Financial Services, LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group
Lou Eccleston, Executive Managing Director, Standard & Poor's
Joe Jaksha, Vice President of New Product Development, Thomson West

4:00 – 5:00 pm
CEOs Outlook: Thriving on Chaos - Profiting from the New, New Era of Political, Economic and Technology Change
January 2009 inaugurates a new administration, more economic uncertainty, new geopolitical perils, and accelerated shifts in technology. Change always opens chinks in the armor of entrenched competitors and invites new predators. Whether it’s the shift from client server to web services, the rush from print to interactive media, or the switch from paid to “free” business models.

• How do you benefit from these forces, contain short term threats, and gain from the sea of changes?
• What’s in store in technology and market policies from the new White House?
• What are the newest tech forces to bet on? For whom does the bell toll in endangered species of media? Bargains or boondoggles?

A panel of industry experts, from the worlds of new media, traditional media, technology, finance and journalism tackle the key issues.

Moderator:
Jim Kollegger, CEO, Genesys Partners, Inc.

Panelists:
Dan'l Lewin, Corporate VP, Strategic & Emerging Business Development, Microsoft
Neal Lipschutz, SVP and Managing Editor, Dow Jones Newswires
Steve Lohr, Senior Writer and Technology Reporter, The New York Times
Jon Miller, Founding Partner, Velocity Interactive Group, former CEO, AOL

5:00 pm
Reception

JANUARY 28, 2009

7:30 - 8:30 am
Registration

8:30 - 9:15 am
Opening Keynote
Henry Blodget, CEO, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, Silicon Alley Insider Inc.

9:15 - 10:00 am
Profiting from Video

We've all been reading for a long while now about the video advertising boom -- or perhaps explosion would better describe it -- that is just around the corner. But that corner seems to be getting further and further away.  How can it be that YouTube can command nearly half of all video traffic, yet monetize less than 5% of its streams?  Three-fourths of all internet users watch video each month so the eyeballs are there.  Where are the dollars?  Is anybody making real money from online (non-adult) video?
And more importantly, how?  Our panelists will discuss whether there is a secret sauce for profiting from video online, and perhaps reveal some of the ingredients that go into that sauce.

Moderator:
Nicholas Ascheim, VP of Product Management, NYTimes.com

Panelists:
Sandy Malcolm, Executive Producer, CNN.com Video
Andy Plesser, Executive Producer and Founder, Beet.TV
Kathy Yates, CEO, AllBusiness.com

10:00 - 10:30 am
Networking Break

10:30 - 11:15 am
Social Media - Solving the Problem of User-Generated Content and How to Monetize It
Publishers have shifted from being wary of social media to embracing the concepts of community and user-generated content, but confusion still rules the day when it comes to a prioritization and deployment plan. This panel will explore how publishers have successfully utilized social media to attract new users and will focus on answering the following questions:

• At what point do I need to introduce social media tools on my site?
• To what degree should we be participating on the key external social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, OpenSocial, etc)?

11:15 - 12:00 pm
CTO to the Stars
Information providers and publishers are faced with the hype and hope of new technologies that have the power to transform businesses ... or not.  While a few CEO’s have the luxury of working with in-house CTO’s to help them understand and translate the business potential of these technologies, most do not. This panel, comprised of CTO’s who have excelled and translated technology into successful business tools and revenue generators, will help executives understand the key trends and technologies they should think about incorporating into their business…and those that are hype.

Specifically, this panel will explore:

• Separating the hype from the hope
• Top 10 technology trends for the coming year
• Assessing the level of business impact technology will have over the next 12-24 months

Moderator:
Patrick J. Spain, CEO, Newser
Panelists:
Michael Angle, Co-founder, President and CTO, Alacra, Inc.
Christos Moschovitis, CEO, tmg-emedia.com

12:00 - 1:00 pm
Lunch

1:00 - 1:45 pm
Luncheon Keynote
Stephanie George, Executive Vice President, Time Inc.

2:00 pm
Conference Concludes