SIIA Content Forum: Day One

This two-day conference started off a little slow but ended strong today. I’d say there are 90-100 attendees with fairly diverse backgrounds. My first reaction when walking in the meeting room was “yikes, where is the younger crowd?” I worry that there are too many gatherings like this where it’s too much of the old guard talking to the old guard; meanwhile, the next generation is off finding their content everywhere but in print. The day was saved however when the last session featured perspectives from a few people under the age of 40 (more on that in a moment).

There was a fair amount of talk about blogs, RSS feeds and how they can be used to help distribute content. I guess I’m spoiled because my group publishes on technology topics, so nothing here was all that revolutionary.

CJ Rayhill of O’Reilly Media had some very nice contributions to a session entitled The Birth of a Content Product: Choosing a Path for Product Development. Here are a few of her quotes from the session:

As publishers, we need to experiment with more business models, especially ones where the community is directly involved.

2-3 years ago, the typical tech title had a retail shelf life of 15-18 months; now it’s about 5 months.

Don’t blow all your funding on phase one of a new development project. Phase two will usually have a better outcome.

I don’t feel the average shelf life has dropped quite as far as CJ suggests, but she may not be too far off. Regarding SafariU, O’Reilly’s platform for custom learning resources, she noted “the hardest part is getting the instructors to switch from their old solutions to something new.”

Since I’m not a huge fan of focus groups, I nodded in agreement when Matthew Roche, CEO of Offermatica said, “focus groups can often tell you what option won, but they rarely tell you why.”

One of my favorite sessions of the day was called Rapid Deployment of Your Content Assets. Jonathan Clark, EVP of Technology at Elsevier talked about how they converted a 3,000-page, two-volume set on pathology into a truly dynamic online product. The key to their success was a series of user studies where they focused on the details of pathologist workflow and how this reference set comes into play. They conducted extensive interviews with several pathologists and used an agile development process to leverage iterative releases and show users how the product looked at each stage. They found that diagnosis is the key and they wound up going from a product focus to a customer focus. He talked about how pathologists would have to put their fingers in several different books to compare various illustrations. The online product was a complete departure from the presentation method featured in the books – they utilized the dynamic capabilities of an e-product to make it a much better solution. This is very much in line with the content layering model I’ve been kicking around. One of his final points summed things up quite nicely: As you look at moving from print to online, think about how your customers work, not how they use your book.

During the afternoon sessions I was able to hook up with David Meerman Scott, author of Cashing in with Content. David’s Web Ink Now blog is one of my favorites. I’m only about a third of the way through Cashing in with Content but I like what I’ve read so far.

The last session of the day was by far the best. In fact, I think the SIIA folks ought to consider splitting this last one into several sessions next year. When the panelists entered the room they brought the average age down by at least 5 years. How is this for a lineup: Kevin Rose, founder of digg.com, Joshua Schachter, founder of del.icio.us, Bret Taylor, Product Manager at Google, Marissa Levinson, Director of Business Development at Six Apart and Ben Elowitz, CEO of wetpaint.com.

Marissa mentioned how at Six Apart they’re seeing a lot of companies leverage their blogging platform as a lightweight content management system. Bret showed a variety of mashups, most featuring Google Maps. I had a blast listening to Kevin Rose of digg though. The guy is obviously extremely bright and bursting with cool ideas. He mentioned that digg serves up about 9 million pages per day and that there’s a completely new version of the site launching in the next couple of months.

Tomorrow’s agenda looks quite promising. They kick things off with a keynote from Geoffrey Moore, author of several books including Crossing the Chasm. Advertising and licensing sessions are also featured as well as David Meerman Scott’s Search Workshop for Publishers.