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Registration Now Open for the 2014 Information Industry Summit (IIS)
Tue, 20 Aug 2013
There is a reason that IIS is called the summit for information industry leaders, IIS explores breakthrough strategies, ideas, case studies and tactics to help them lead their information companies. It draws leaders from media, publishing and information services companies as well as the technology, private equity and other organizations serving them, including:
- CEOs, COOs, Presidents, and Division Heads of global and mid-sized information, publishing and media companies,
- Managing Partners from top private equity firms, and
- CEOs of emerging companies transforming our industry
We just opened up registration and I welcome everyone to reserve their spot now at the Summit. This year will be a bit unique in that NYC will be a LOT busier than usual due to an event on February 2nd in the NYC/NJ area. So, if ever there was a year to reserve your Summit tickets early as well as get your plane tickets hotel room early (while they are still cheap and available) , this is the year to do it! We have already reserved room blocks at TWO separate hotels in anticipation of the lack of Hotel space. And, we have already made reservations for dinners a number of NYC venues for IIS attendees in anticipation of lack of availability that week.
Here are some key links:
- Program
- Registration
- Overview
- Networking Opportunities
- Past Attendees
- PREVIEWS Application
- Sponsorship Information
- Hotel Information
I look forward to seeing you in January.
Kathy Greenler Sexton is Vice President and General Manager for the SIIA Content Division. Follow the Content Division team on Twitter at @SIIAContent
SIPAlert Daily: Industry Outlook Panel Yields Words to Thrive By
Wed, 06 Feb 2013
“How far can companies go before they annoy their users?” asked Esther Dyson, chairman of EDventure Holdings, at last week’s Breakthrough: IIS 2013 Conference in New York. That question came up amid a discussion about information at a session titled Titans of the New Information Order. With Facebook’s new Search Graph, Google’s deeper searches and other initiatives based on user data, will the time come where people say the loss of privacy is not worth the enhanced information they can get?
Of all things, a quote from a hockey player set the tone for the discussion. “A good hockey player plays where the puck is,” Wayne Gretzky once said. “A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”
Michael Perlis, president and CEO of Forbes Media agreed but said, “It is getting harder to follow the puck. Globalization is really important right now; it’s a big, big marketplace. You have to do more than just put your content out there; you have to create content that can carry your brand’s name. We’re doing that, creating high-quality content with a core professional team, digital and print.”
Perlis added that they also developed a contributor model in order to be more cost-effective about creating content (freelancers vs. full-time) and do a better job of getting social comments. Dyson noted that what LinkedIn has started doing is interesting. “They now have a bunch of bloggers,” she said. “Endorsing people, generating traffic.” Perlis said that everyone is trying to “find the right way to do it.”
“There are many different ways you [can] dole out the same content,” said David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect. He said that what distinguishes Apple and Amazon right now is all the credit card information they have. “Amazon has more approaches, [however] and there are problems dealing with Apple. Amazon will be much more flexible.” He credited that to CEO Jeff Bezos. “He runs paranoid more than anyone – he’s unbelievably energetic to avoid the next pitfall.”
How’s that for a compliment? Perlis, on the other hand, kind of liked the idea of heading into the unknown. “There’s no playbook for where we’re going,” he said. “With it comes worry and triumph.” Referrals are driving “an enormous amount of traffic,” from both search and social,” he added. (See the article on how to get referrals in the January Hotline.)
Speaking of searches, technology reared its multifaceted head often in the discussion. “The pace of change today requires every company to think of themselves as a technology company,” Kirkpatrick said. “[You need to] immerse yourself in technology. [I've] seen way too many examples of stasis that was avoidable, fear of technology and fear of getting yourself dirty. The New York Times had research that most companies are not technological enough, and if you aren’t you won’t be here [for long].”
Thomas Glocer, the former CEO of Thomson Reuters, preferred to talk about content. (He also joked that he’s “gone from managing 55,000 employees to 2, and my goal is to have the same cash flow.”) “Content has found varied forms to showcase, but it’s really hard to showcase crap content,” he said.
“High-value content has legs where I sit,” said Kirkpatrick. “[Now] combine that with point of view. That’s what I’m trying to do-using sponsorships.”
“Both of you have talked about creating value,” Dyson said. “The most important thing is that you have to be nimble. Fluid, dynamic businesses have to be clever. Implementation counts as much as strategy today. You can control your pricing but you can’t control pricing of competitors.”
“Nimble” was an interesting word to use because David Foster, CEO of SIPA member BVR, had just recently emphasized to me the importance of “technological nimbleness for digital publishers” where solutions are integrated and disparate software work together.
Glocer also took on the subject but preferred to separate B2B from B2C. “The advantage of the professional information world,” he said, “is that it moves more slowly than the consumer world. It’s a slightly slower perch, but ultimately it’s not just content. [You need] to better filter it, have ways of personalizing it, understand the workflow of your clients, and give them tools to make it easier to fit into their workflow. The consumer world is different; it’s hard to know exactly what they’re doing.”
Dyson said that she also sees “two very different businesses: content for consumption and real investigative reporting. The thing that hasn’t been mentioned is getting your people to do whatever it is [that will work], motivating and finding the right people, running a team. Running a business is really hard. In reality, most might have great vision,” but who are the ones doing something about it?
Perlis summed up things nicely. “We’ve all experienced the collapse and the relapse, and now we can’t relax,” he said. “In the next three years, we may never get to a place where we can coast. Relaxation is out unfortunately.”
Ronn Levine began his career covering sports for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering diversity and Newspaper in Education (NIE), before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor.
IIS Breakthrough Recap: Using Big Data to Build Prognostication Capabilities
Wed, 06 Feb 2013
Marie Giangrande, Public Notions
In a back stage interview, Factual Inc. CEO Gil Elbaz and Cortera Inc. CEO Jim Swift discuss the drivers and requirements to build a Big Data capability plan.
By Marie Giangrande, Public Notions
Tracking Behaviors Fuel Big Data
“It’s all about tracking events and behaviors in order to improve the accuracy of your decision making” asserts Cortera CEO Jim Swift. Cortera produces credit worthiness rankings from tracking the purchases and payments that a Company conducts. “When evaluating companies it’s good to hear what they are saying, but most important is to see their actual behaviors; tracking actual payments and purchases, for example will give a more accurate prediction of a company’s credit worthiness” continues Swift. Factual’s CEO, Gil Elbaz, agrees: “People expect and need the context to correctly interpret data… stitching together the facts and illustrating the backdrop is what Big Data is all about.” Factual offers a path for companies to source external data, enrich their own data and incorporate a variety of new data sets.
Prognostication Capabilities – The Next Competitive Battle
Behavioral targeting has been used extensively by online companies to target advertisements. Now, this concept is gaining broader appeal as a long term competitive advantage enabling Information Companies to match their content to their client’s workflow and distribution preferences. Companies can use behavior tracking to build predictions about client preferences, to identify partnerships and to develop value added services.
The pursuit of prognostication capabilities has a tremendous consequence: It redefines the importance of data in an organization. It puts an emphasis on data management capabilities. Can I handle streaming data from Twitter feeds or social media outlets? Is a ‘just in time approach’ to data collection needed? Can I enrich my data in order to monetize it? Is the data accurate and extensible?
The Strategic Information Spine
“A lot of companies are living with inefficient collection and maintenance of data. They ignore missing data and inaccurate data because they do not associate the underlying data to their ability to compete” comments Factual’s CEO, Gil Elbaz.
However, as soon as executives link their ability to compete with the value and accuracy of their data, the ROI presents itself. “It’s like an Information Spine” reflects Cortera’s CEO, Swift.”For information companies, the core stream of data is the spine and off this, hangs all their products and services.” The implication is that a company’s ability to compete will come back to the design, sourcing, accuracy and strategic health ‘of the spine’.
An Asset or Liability?
As firms embrace the use of big data for a competitive advantage, it changes all the questions and answers. It leads companies to develop a more strategic view: they identify data assets and data liabilities around maintenance and accuracy.
”But many companies don’t discriminate between data that is an asset versus data that is more common and can be outsourced.” comments Factual’s Elbaz. “If you can buy the data, it is most likely not a strategic asset to build internally” continues Elbaz. In fact, Data that is missing, inaccurate and difficult to maintain may not only be an opportunity cost, but it can be a liability, especially if not kept fresh.
For non-proprietary data, companies are developing Data Acquisition plans to give them new agility along with a managed cost structure. “Just as IT Managers embraced Open Source code, now Business Managers are embracing Open Sourced Data” Factual CEO Elbaz concludes. Elbaz points to dozens of internal databases that should be deleted and licensed from readily available, external, sources. He asks, “Why allocate internal resources to manage data you don’t have to?”
Finding the Skills
But finding the skills to manage the internal build, the external licensing and the data architecture is hard to find. “The biggest problem is the lack of people and talent needed for companies to bootstrap their efforts” claims Cortera’s Swift. Data architects and data developers are very different from software developers and IT managers. And both CEO’s agree this is not -necessarily- the role of a CTO or CIO.
Who, inside your company, could nurture and expand your newly found Data assets? The first step, it seems, is for us to prognosticate on that.
IIS Breakthrough Recap: Collaboration Fosters Innovation as a News Agency Reinvents Itself
Wed, 06 Feb 2013
Marie Giangrande, Public Notions
Post by Marie Giangrande, Public Notions Once a push oriented news agency, Christian Science Monitor re-invents itself with the concept of “Content Scaping”, a strategic, ongoing effort to collaborate with its readers, distributors and editors.
Known as “The Monitor”, the Christian Science Monitor is an international News Agency covering political world news across 11 countries. Faced with a continuing decline in earnings, the company embarked on a challenge to explore new digital offerings and re-invent itself.
At SIIA’s Information Industry Summit, Donal Toole, Finance and Strategy Director along with John Yemma, Editor, talked about the key actions they took to change the Agency’s direction. Today the Agency is creating premium digital subscriptions, distribution-specific packages and readership-driven content. The earnings are positive and overall growth is up.
The success of this transformation hinged on a change in philosophy and management processes. The agency started to think about their readers and distributors as new assets. And they nurtured collaboration internally and externally to understand readership needs.
The executives outlined the most impactful steps they took:
1) Tear Down the Chinese Wall
In the past, there was a ‘Chinese wall’ between the editors and readers. This was erected to maintain ‘our independent, unbiased views’ explains Donal Toole. But it meant that they did not understand what the readers wanted.
As an example, The Monitor was serving news about global events while their readers wanted ‘an analysis of the impacts’. This led the Agency to offer a premium product for Global Political Risk analysis. The executives maintain that they now see their business as a collaborative effort with their core readers. Today, they encourage readers to ask questions about articles and this is circulated to the Editorial group to help enhance their coverage.
2) Institute ‘ContentScaping’ Assessing Segments and Trialing New Offers
The term ‘ContentScaping’ refers to an internal management process to develop new information products. Executives described this as ‘constant vigilance to assess our assets and identify underserved segments’. The starting point is to use the Editorial teams to evaluate and identify new skills and capabilities. These newly identified assets are then mapped against market opportunities and market segments.
Once they make a decision to ‘super serve’ a segment, they reshape content and enter a trail phase.
“It’s very critical to test and trial every new offer, because not everything works” commented Yemma. One time they found a video interview was gaining undue attention. People were watching because there was an inappropriate joke made by a Political figure. “That was not the content we wanted to serve,” Yemma continued.
This process is on-going and has helped the organization adhere to a data-driven decision matrix while developing new content packages.
3) Build a Multidimensional, Investigative Team
“Of all the changes made, none are as important as the creation of a new Executive Leadership team,” explains Toole and Yemma. This team establishes the roadmap for the company’s products and drives the ‘ContentScaping’ process. Both executives at The Monitor underlined the importance of the multi-dimensional team to bring together varied expertise. At The Monitor, they instituted a Leadership Team across:
- Editorial
- Digital Outlets
- Content Sales and Partnerships, and
- Strategy and Analysis
“Ultimately it’s the people” concludes Toole. And for us in the audience, we can only hope we have catalysts like Toole and Yemma to take us on the path of collaboration and innovation.
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About Marie Giangrande, Public Notions
Public Notions provides Thought Leadership Programs for Information Companies
McGraw- Hill Financial: Market Expansion Opportunities & Challenges
Tue, 05 Feb 2013
Written by Michael Thieberg, Consultant, Arche Value Management
2013 promises to be anything but business-as-usual for McGraw-Hill. Over the past few years, the conglomerate has undergone a complete transformation, from a traditional information publisher serving a variety of constituents to a more strategically focused, pure-play, B2B information and analytics provider centered on the capital and commodities markets. The culmination of this process of reinvention, following recent divestitures of its consumer assets, is the recently announced sale of its McGraw-Hill Education (MHE) business to financial sponsor Apollo Global Management for $2.5 billion, which is expected to close early this year. With organizational alignment around its core competencies in benchmarks and credit assessments to assess default risks, the newly renamed McGraw-Hill Financial (MHF) is poised to become a high-margin data and analytics provider with strong cash flow and faster growth potential.
Glenn Goldberg, President of MHF’s Commodities and Commercial Markets Division, delivered a keynote speech at the SIIA Summit that discussed the challenges and opportunities to expand the Company’s businesses and gain market share. Goldberg acknowledged that quality content, in and of itself, is not sustainable, but rather must be combined with technological innovation, and continuously improved upon to maintain relevancy in a changing environment. Breakthroughs and innovation, tied not just to technology but by also linking disparate data sets and customization, will enable MHF to better serve their customers and increase share of wallet.
McGraw-Hill’s strategic objectives will be achieved through a blend of organic growth, focused on content data analytics as well as bolt-on acquisitions. Organic growth initiatives include building new capabilities through product development, further penetrating existing markets and entering adjacent new markets, leveraging the McGraw-Hill brand beyond its core benchmarks, says Goldberg. By accelerating investments in technology to improve customer performance and outcomes, MHF will have the infrastructure to drive shareholder value.
Achieving MHF’s growth objectives will not come without its challenges, however, many of them regulatory. Goldberg urged all B2B content providers to closely pay attention to intellectual property and copyright protection, customer piracy legislation and foreign trade barriers. New government imposed proposals to restrict the gathering and use of customer data could hamper MHF’s ability to provide market intelligence services to its B2B customers. As a global enterprise, any restrictions on foreign trade would also impede the Company’s ability compete effectively on a global basis. And while the integration of social media and mobile delivery platforms is needed enhance customer engagement, Goldberg ceded, at this point in time, there is no clear path to make money and enter the workflow of the customer though these channels.
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Michael Thieberg
Michael Thieberg is a independent consultant at Arche Value Management (AVM), a corporate finance advisory firm. Mr. Thieberg has over 15 years of strategic financial management experience in corporate development, investment banking and private equity investing with industry expertise in the B2B information and marketing services sectors.
IIS Breakthrough Recap: 2013 Capital Markets Outlook for the Information Industry
Tue, 05 Feb 2013
Michael Thieberg, Consultant, Arche Value Management, Inc.
Written by Michael Thieberg, Consultant, Arche Value Management
Why does “smart” capital lag behind innovations in technology? This was the first question posed by Kevin Worth, CEO of The Deal, who moderated a panel of capital markets experts – research analysts, venture capitalists, private equity investors and M&A advisors to solicit their views on asset valuations and the financial outlook for the information services sector. Tolman Geffs, Co-President The Jordan, Edmiston Group acknowledged that while capital is smart in the long-term, it is not smart in the short-term. As the late 90s speculative dot-com bubble has taught us, advents in technology don’t necessarily manifest themselves into proven business models.
Consequently, although there are pockets of froth (e.g., Salesforce.com’s $689M acquisition of social media marketing platform Buddy Media), we’re in a buyer’s market with larger information publishers remaining fairly conservative in their M&A activities, says Geffs. This sentiment was further exemplified by RRE Ventures Co-Founder, Jim Robinson, who cited the buzz around Big Data, which has yet to materialize as a working business model, as a big idea in the sector that has yet to earn the faith of the capital markets.
With regard to asset valuations, there was an air of optimism amongst this group. According to Piper Jaffray & Co. Research Analyst Peter Appert, established publicly-traded information services companies will trade at a premium to the market due to attractive business model characteristics including top line visibility and predictability (due in part to subscription-based revenue models), operating leverage from scalable, data-rich platforms, strong cash flow generation and low capital intensity. With regard to debt financing, companies with least $10M of EBITDA, leverage equal to 3.5x -4.0x EBITDA is highly achievable says Geffs.
Ongoing access to capital and financing, strengthened balance sheets and divestiture activity will continue to fuel deal activity in 2013. M&A and strategic investments in emerging marketing automation companies is one area in particular which will be a focus for the information sector. There are definitely B2B opportunities for fee-based, curated, moderated social media, says Wayne Cooper of Greenhaven Partners, a private equity firm that invests in emerging information-based companies. Furthermore, social media will continue to impact on the sector in 2013. There isn’t a credible large organization that isn’t struggling with its social media strategy, says RRE’s Jim Robinson. Companies will be spending a lot of money on social media technologies and platforms to better understand the buying behavior of their constituents.
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Michael Thieberg
Michael Thieberg is a independent consultant at Arche Value Management (AVM), a corporate finance advisory firm. Mr. Thieberg has over 15 years of strategic financial management experience in corporate development, investment banking and private equity investing with industry expertise in the B2B information and marketing services sectors.
IIS Breakthrough Recap: Forrester Research Predicts Technology Thunderstorms at the 2013 SIIA Summit
Tue, 05 Feb 2013
Written by Michael Thieberg, Consultant, Arche Value Management, Inc.
Michael Thieberg, Consultant, Arche Value Management, Inc.
George Colony, Chairman & CEO, Forrester Research, kicked off the 2013 SIIA Summit by prognosticating three “technology thunderstorms” social, business and demographic changes fueled by emerging technologies that will change the information industry in the near future. The occurrence of tectonic shifts is due to the fact that societal factors (e.g., capital markets, culture, talent) lag the growth rate of technology innovation. Every 7- 10 years, a new computing wave comes along personal computing (1980s), desktop internet computing (1990s), mobile internet computing (2000s) causing digestion issues when mass adoption finally catches up to technology. In order to survive these technology-led thunderstorms companies will need to evolve or risk becoming disrupted.
Thunderstorm #1: Death of the Web
Colony predicts the Web’s demise, becoming the “AM radio of digital” as performance improvement in processing power and storage capacity outpaces the growth rate in network speed. As a result, there has been an emergence in portable peripheral devices around the cloud (e.g., smartphones, tablets) that leverage the Internet and Apps, defining a new platform Forrester has coined the “App-Internet”, being led by Apple, Google and Amazon.
Thunderstorm #2: Enterprise Social
As the customer audience is changing, along with the workforce, large companies will need to embrace social media to enable better interaction and solve for that common denominator. Each generation show very different media consumption habits from its predecessor, but brands don’t understand the unique requirements of the younger age group (e.g., Generation Y: ages 18-28) including their preference for “multichannel” experiences including instant messaging, social networks and gamification. More importantly, senior management has little affinity with this demographic, as the average age of CEOs at the top 100 global companies is 59, according to Colony. So, instead of blocking social media in the workplace, companies need to espouse it, if they want to hire and retain a workforce that is predominantly Gen Y.
Thunderstorm #3: Mobile Engagement
The proliferation of mobile devices will to continue to grow in terms of processing power and sensors and is poised to become the de facto system of engagement for customers, partners and employees. To remain vital, enterprises’ current systems of record will need to be upgraded to become systems of engagement. Consumer behavior data will be captured by adaptive learning technologies and used for predictive analytics in “context-aware” apps to provide real-time insight on what the customer is going to need. Instead of launching applications, in the future, users preferred apps would alert them and make recommendations based on explicit preferences and past activities.
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Michael Thieberg
Michael Thieberg is a independent consultant at Arche Value Management (AVM), a corporate finance advisory firm. Mr. Thieberg has over 15 years of strategic financial management experience in corporate development, investment banking and private equity investing with industry expertise in the B2B information and marketing services sectors.
IIS Breakthrough Recap: Titans of the New Information Order Chasing Each Other
Tue, 05 Feb 2013
Written by Deborah Richman, Consultant, Zions Bank
Deborah Richman, Consultant, Zions Bank
What do titans like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and possibly Twitter have in common? Of course, they offer platforms where users access and share content. As titans, they also aspire to become each other – while currently delivering different value from their platforms.
During the Information Industry Summit, key publisher and digital leaders offered clear-eyed views of these companies and their intrinsic rather than market value. “There are more interesting things than making a ton of money in the last quarter,” declared Esther Dyson, EDVentures principal.
The titans were not getting judged by form factors, such as the computing, mobile or operating systems. While that’s important to the companies and shareholders, the IIS leaders focused on how titans should improve their connections to users.
Sell people a mirror
Most of the titans know they should personalize their offerings and “show you what you didn’t know you wanted to know,” said David Kirkpatrick, Senior Technology & Internet Editor at Fortune. It comes down to algorithms based on their platforms.
Of course, Facebook leads in capturing social connections and friend links. Google is trying to keep up through its own G+ social circle. Yet they are challenged by defining relevant content. Friend or content sources may be throttled or controlled through personalized Facebook feeds or Google search results.
Will the titans succeed in selling mirrors? Will these mirrors show relevant content and connections? Esther Dyson wondered “how far these companies can go before they start annoying their customers.”
Use commercial insights
Google, Apple and Amazon bring powerful, highly-scaled advantages due to their search, shopping and/or buying functions. Google’s search and online advertising hegemony not only creates value for consumers and businesses, but also keeps those shopping behaviors tight to its vest.
Meanwhile, Apple and Amazon bring their own online retailing powers. Apple makes so-called razor sales, offering media and other apps through its operating system. Amazon makes money from its blade sales, along with enterprise efforts. It will be interesting to see how these titans take further advantage of their “big data” capabilities regarding buyers, products and services, and credit cards.
Future of the titans
All the titans grew with their founders at the helm. While some, like Apple and Microsoft, have next generations in charge, Amazon, Facebook and Google are run by their founder entrepreneurs.
Dyson voiced her concerns about the titans’ abilities, explaining “they’re all really badly managed inside.” By contrast, Forbes CEO Michael Perlis felt the titans would continue “making each other better. They all have aspirations to [become] each other.”
Thomas Glocer, ex-Thomson Reuters, wasn’t sure how the titans would work together or with other content providers in the future. He asked, “who’s in front, behind, the Trojan horse?”
Impact on publishers
Perlis, from Forbes, explained that consumers aren’t that interested in who wins. As a publisher, he has different content distribution or advertising relationships with all the titans. “We have experienced collapse, avoided relapse [and] don’t relax. You can’t just coast,” he cautioned.
Glocer shared his concern about living “in a world at multiple speeds including repressive regimes, and platforms. I do worry about the lowest common denominator where the platforms [have] content geared for wherever.”
“Everyone will have to constantly re-evaluate paths,” said Fortune’s Kirkpatrick. “The pace of change requires every [publishing] company to think of themselves like a software company. Be unbelievably curious and not afraid.”
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Debby Richman spent her formative years at D&B, leading the reference business from print to online and web offerings. She has since held digital leadership roles at Overstock, About.com, Looksmart, Starz, Collarity and Zions Bank.
IIS Breakthrough Recap: Content Dethroned By Technology
Tue, 05 Feb 2013
Deborah Richman, Consultant, Zions Bank
Written by Deborah Richman, Consultant, Zions Bank
At the Information Industry Summit’s crossfire session, experts agreed on one thing: content is no longer king. Gone are the days when business information was controlled by a few, stable, necessary sources delivering to ever-loyal customers. Here’s how the experts view technology’s destabilizing force:
- “Technology is extremely critical, and content is what you have to have,” said Andy Prozes, senior advisor at Warburg Pincus.
- John Hartig, CEO of Sports Information Group believes the industry’s in “hand-to-hand combat” between offering relevant data and leveraging technology.
- Our business is now about “peaks and troughs and rapid cycles of developments,” explained Stephen Ryden-Lloyd, SVP at Innodata.
- Denzil Rankine, executive chairman at AMR International, declared “you have to have a CEO who gets it and understands technology.”
- “Is technology endlessly complicating the business model?” asked Dan McCarthy, a DeSilva+Phillips partner. Yes, indeed.
The “new normal” challenges
Depending on your marketplace and customers, there are different ways to integrated content, commerce and technology. Still, these “new normal” challenges need to be addressed.
Technical DNA here: Perhaps the largest challenge relates to having or injecting technical DNA in the company. If your company began life as pure-content business, then new executives will need to help evolve the business and culture. Companies must be willing to invest in technology, functionality and people.
Continuous product cycles: It’s not possible to roll out a product and sit back for a year or two anymore. You must understand road maps and agile releases, to be responsive to the market. You also must stay abreast of technology platforms, with the right partners. And whether you “make or buy,” remember to budget for R&D and development.
To workflow or not workflow: Information will get distributed through multiple workflow systems used by your customers. You could work closely with customers to integrate into their workflows or develop more standard applications familiar to them. If appropriate, you might be able to focus on outcomes rather than workflows.
The information industry will thrive
The information industry is still growing and attracting new entrants and sources. It is still undergoing a massive transition, due to game-changing digital technologies accessible to publishers and customers.
“This will remain an attractive market,” explained AMR’s Denzil Rankine. “A trend is that it is a tougher to be alone, as a sole supplier to the market. More entrants, providers will have a downward pressure on margin.”
Innodata’s Stephen Ryden-Llloyd observed the competitive pressures: “Authority can come from multiple places today. Also from social networks or wisdom of the crowds. There’s a huge degree of cleverness, opportunity” in the marketplace.
“But if you build new tech, the growth rates are there,” declared Warburg’s Andy Prozes.
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Debby Richman spent her formative years at D&B, leading the reference business from print to online and web offerings. She has since held digital leadership roles at Overstock, About.com, Looksmart, Starz, Collarity and Zions Bank.
IIS Breakthrough Recap: Now That Is Big Data
Tue, 05 Feb 2013
Written by Deborah Richman, Consultant, Zions Bank
Deborah Richman, Consultant, Zions Bank
“We just had our 10 petabyte party,” declared Brewster Kahle, to Information Industry Summit attendees this week. Universal access to all knowledge may sound like a pipe dream, yet Kahle and his Internet Archive team have been doggedly pursuing this goal and using up petabytes to collect, digitize and share content.
The Internet Archive is best known for creating the de-facto web historical repository. Since 1996, Kahle’s team has visited “every page on every web site, every two weeks.” There are more than 240 billion URLs in the archive today. For better or worse, anyone may access them at the WayBack Machine.
Fortunately web tools and sources have improved, and Kahle also relies on others to help. At this point, there are some 1,700 curated collections from 200 places included in the archives. “Personal digital archives are next,” says Kahle. “But our stuff is all over the place. And things are gone.”
It’s more than websites
The archive.org team, comprised of 150 staffers, has been making books, audio, video and TV news available at a dizzying rate. Kahle reported on archival progress for SIIA members:
- Books: 3mm e-books, 500k for blind and 300k modern e-books.
- Audio: 1mm items in 100 collections, including 100k concerts from 5k bands.
- Video: 2 – 3k movies, plus industrial, educational, other specialty films.
- TV news: 20 channels collected since 2000, and TV news for three years.
The Internet Archive sidesteps copyright issues by behaving like a library consortium. Libraries and individuals are free to make their multimedia collections available online. Then patrons, aka site visitors, are able to view unrestricted materials or check out others from the holdings.
No modern-day industry titans, like Andrew Carnegie, have come forth and made this digital access dream come true. Instead, a non-profit organization filled with dreamers and technologists have been knocking down access barriers to digitized content for two decades. It’s pretty sweet.
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Debby Richman spent her formative years at D&B, leading the reference business from print to online and web offerings. She has since held digital leadership roles at Overstock, About.com, Looksmart, Starz, Collarity and Zions Bank.
