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Seybold San Francisco; The Few The Brave . . .On September 24, Gene Gable, President Seybold Seminars, opened Seybold San Francisco 2001 by reading emails from across the world encouraging him to go on with the conference, business as usual. Of course we all know it is not, and will never again be business as usual. Gable shared his mixed feelings about going on with the show. But in the end, President Bush raising the flag from half-staff and encouraging all Americans to go on with business helped Gable feel that he had made the right decision. Gable spoke to a rather solemn crowd of the faithful, filling about one third of the ballroom for opening keynote presentations. John van Siclen, CEO InterwovenThe first keynote speaker for the conference was John van Siclen, CEO of Interwoven. In his keynote, “The Future of Content in a Cross-Media World,” van Siclen introduced the term contributors as those individuals that build content. He believes that today we must recognize that the makeup of contributors is radically changing. He also defined cross-media as channels of communication, or the variety of ways that customers can receive content. John van Siclen first provided us with an analysis of media and the audience. In 1997, there were three basic kinds of media channels—print, video, and the Internet. At that time there were very separate audiences for each media channel. The media channels in 1997 could literally be viewed as separate “pipes.” Separate staff and separate production cycles fed these separate channels. In 2001, many things have changed. There are clearly many more communication channels to be managed. In addition to print, video and the Internet, the new media channels include PDA’s, voice systems, WAP and more. Perhaps an even more dramatic change is the fact that the audiences are now integrated. That is, it is likely that any one customer will use several different media channels. And even more important is the recognition that the audience expects integrated touch-points. For example if we enter our name and serial number into a voice system, along with a problem report, we would expect that information to be accessible from the Web as well. Quite a challenge! Truly in line with van Siclen's definition of cross-media. John van Siclen then discussed the change in contributors. In 1997 contributors were specialists. They created content for a single media channel. There was little overlap in staff or their skill sets. However in 2001, van Siclen sees the major contributor to be the general business user. Business users have no special skill set to produce content for a particular media. And, in fact, they do not even want to be trained. Yet the business user is critical to building content today! This places us in the position of having an infrastructure revolution. There is a growing complexity in media and media channels. There is a growing urgency for integration of the media channels. Yet the contributor is less technical. The answer, according to van Siclen, requires four ingredients. First is collaboration among contributors. Only with collaboration can business users be choreographed to create content that can be integrated and easily reused. Second is a strategy and technology to manage our assets. Third is intelligence. The key to intelligence is the application of metadata. And finally, we require both a strategy and technology for deployment. In closing, van Siclen urged publishers to simplify the life of their contributors by seeking tools to make content creation transparent. Secondly, publishers should strive to provide tools that enable automated metadata assignment. Stephanie Acker-Moy, GM HP.comThe second keynote presenter was Stephanie Acker-Moy, General Manager of HP.com. Ms. Acker-Moy first indicated that although HP is a printer/software vendor, she is speaking from the perspective of HP meeting the challenges as a global enterprise. Acker-Moy agreed that a business revolution is underway. To her, the major challenges are cost reduction and increasing customer satisfaction. She indicated that while printing is important to her enterprise, digital information delivery is quickly closing in. For her, one of the big winners is print-on-demand. Acker-Moy defined the term enterprise publishing as the ability to use digital assets to feed multiple media types (or cross-media channels). Gone are the days when we can afford to have specialists to code content. User-friendly input mechanisms are a must. POD makes sense because so much of what is printed today is never used. For example 40% of all books printed go unsold and 60% of magazines fall into this same category. Acker-Moy closed by urging each business to analyze their content, how it is created and how it is delivered. Then she urged the audience to take positive steps to optimize the operation in ways that reduce cost and enable better customer service. Michael O’Donnell, CEO Salon.comThe final keynote speaker, one of many excellent replacement speakers that have stepped up to fill speaking position for those who were unable to travel in these difficult times, was Michael O’Donnell, CEO of Salon.com. O’Donnell spoke about the “Value of Content.” According to O’Donnell, content has always been king. For example, in his last two seasons, Jerry Seinfeld made more money that his network! Steven Spielberg and Steven King are two other examples of content providers who are worth more than their respective film studio or publisher. The Internet has only enhanced the value of content. O’Donnell hypothesized that the Internet has made our lives better by providing more timely information, enhancing our ability to exchange content, and enabling new voices such as Cnet, iVillage, and Salon.com to emerge. The Internet has also enabled direct communication between the author and audience. And the Internet is slowly becoming a dominant media channel. According to O’Donnell, 59% of all those 18-24 prefer the Internet to newspapers. Michael O’Donnell continued by highlighting the nw level of community interaction that the Internet has provided. According to O’Donnell, the death of Princess Diana was the first of the monumental global community interaction events on the Internet. This week’s terrorist attack was a similar phenomenon, with traffic increasing from 50-400% during the days following September 11, 2001. People did not want to wait for the 6:00 news and clearly wanted to interact with one another. O’Donnell closed by examining the challenge of placing business value on Internet content. For years we have placed a monetary value on content in print. But because of the roots and evolution of the Internet, many today continue to believe that content on the Internet should be “free.” The dot.com failures of 2001 have actually increased the reliability and quality of online content. Yet publishers continue to struggle to provide a viable business model for content on the Web. Until now, subscription fees for Internet content have been frowned upon. When advertising emerged as an alternate to subscription fees, the public complained bitterly as well. But in order for content to make business sense, one of these models, or a palatable combination must emerge. Salon.com is trying a number of options. Free content with advertising remains. However Salon.com has just introduced an advertisement-free subscription services. And Salon continues to experiment with new types of advertising that are designed to be entertaining and inventive enough to be more easily tolerated by readers and more effective for advertisers. Other Show HighlightsThis year Seybold San Francisco was divided into three conferences. The first was the Cross-Media Conference. The second conference was the Internet Publishing Conference. And the third conference was the Print Publishing Conference. In addition, a number of tutorials and Hot Technology Days were included throughout the week. This year’s hot technology topics included Print on Demand, PDF, Digital Rights Management, Wireless Publishing, Content Management, E-Books and E-Content, and Digital Asset Management. I was honored to be the chairperson for XML in Publishing Day. IDEAlliance was well represented on the Seybold Seminars program, both within conference tracks and within the content of the Hot Technology Days.
Editor, XML Files, Dianne Kennedy |
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