Larry Schwartz, President of Newstex

Inertia is a drag. A business reality today is that start-ups have the flexibility to build business models from the ether. No, I’m not talking about bubble-esque vapor based models. I mean the structure of the business itself, down to the infrastructure. Chatting with Larry Schwartz, President of Newstex today, he really got me thinking about the freedom newer content companies have, unshackled from the constraints of Gutenberg-era thinking. I don’t just mean producing physical media via a printing press (frankly, I’m still a big fan of print), I mean physical office space, data storage, enterprise software loaded on all the pcs…

Larry describes his company, Newstex, in an almost shocking way: “We have no employees and no physical assets.” The company uses the cloud for storage, and Larry says it would have cost a fortune to launch its Video on Demand service without this approach. His entire team is virtual; no one commutes anywhere for anything—much less to be walled in by cubicles. Yet they are highly collaborative, which is part (non) corporate culture and part a willingness to experiment with tools like Yammer, designed to make companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: “What are you working on?” Larry describes it as Twitter for business, in which information is shared only among team members. He says, “It is our water cooler.”

Fittingly, at BSeC, Larry’s will present on the topic “The Virtual Content Company How to Operate in the Clouds,” though he emphasizes that the take away from his talk won’t only be applicable to new kids on the content block. “Years ago,” he says, “companies raised $5 million and spent $4 million on infrastructure and technology, now they raise $2m and only spend $50K on infrastructure, so they can spend the rest on the product and marketing.” Major content companies, according to Larry, might feel they have to spend $20K to make a “viral marketing video.” Instead, he suggests they consider the real audience for this type of marketing content and do it for a lot less. He puts his money (if very little of it) where his mouth is: Newstex used a free service, Animoto to create the video on its home page, which Larry says is currently the most popular feature on his site.

In preparation for a briefing with BSeC ‘09 keynoter Lior Arussy next week, I’ve just finished reading his book, Excellence Every Day.

While Information Today, Inc., is the publisher, I like to take pride in my objectiveness as a journalist.  So I kid you not when I say, I found it both timely and  inspirational, with a distinct ring of truth and a message that can only help us emerge from economic crisis better off than we were before.

From Lior’s point of view, excellence is not about a moment of stardom or public acclaim.  Excellence is its own objective and its own reward.  And the potential to achieve excellence exists in every moment, for each of us and every one of our employees.

What is excellence?  It’s stepping outside the processes that make our companies so efficient and allowing our employees to provide that all important human touch in their dealings with customers and each other.

It’s about creating a work environment where our people can achieve their human potential and our companies, their best destinies.

It’s a credo that Lior’s own company, Strativity Group,  lives by.

So far, every encounter I have had with his office has been remarkable. We nailed down  his speaking engagement in a single afternoon, rather than taking days or even weeks, as is so often the case to close these deals.

When Lior couldn’t make a meeting we had scheduled in New York due to a travel delay, his assistant was all over it, and again within minutes we had a rain date.

People who go out of their way . . . small acts that leave a big impression.  How would you like to be treated?

In the book Lior tells a lot of stories to illustrate his point.

My personal favorite is the one about the Virgin Airlines flight attendant who, when the in-flight entertainment system failed, decided on her own to give all passengers a choice of duty-free merchandise or 10,000 frequent flier points:  Service beyond the call of duty.  Service outside the regulation manual.  Service that  delighted customers and took the heat off the complaint desk staff (saving 25 pounds sterling a call).   When excellence prevails, everybody wins.

Wow!

Lior tells us to empower our staff to do the right thing when the moment for truth presents itself.

Though it may be a dark time, Excellence Every Day gave me a lot of hope.  I immediately applied some tips from it in dealing with my staff (my own customers) and I’m now on the look-out for random acts of excellence to encourage and reward.

In addition to hearing how this approach can aid information companies through their current challenges, all those attending BSeC ‘09 will get a copy of Excellence Every Day.  If you can’t make it  to the conference this year  or want to read the work in advance, click here to order.   IMHE, It’s well-worth the read, and I’m not saying that just because we are the publishers.

Robin Neidorf, General Manager, FreePint Ltd.

One thing that is particularly special about the BSeC event is the quality of attendees and the kind of networking that goes on. A favorite part of the program for me are the conversation groups, in which a small group gathers together to discuss a topic of interest to the industry. Unlike listening to event the best presentation, these groups really generate discussion and since the attendees are all industry leaders, real meaningful ideas based on actual experience are exchanged. This year, Robin Neidorf of FreePint Ltd. is leading one that looks like my choice: Flexible Content & Facilitating Reuse. It has never been more important to find incremental revenue and enabling content reuse is a key aspect of this.

At the recent SIIA Previews event, which kicks of the annual SIIA Information Industry Summit in NYC, I heard a remarkable presentation by Roger Ehrenberg, Managing Partner of IA Capital Partners, LLC. He gave a lively talk about how to fail successfully, outlining what he learned through his own spectacularly failed start up, Monitor110. Many aspects of his insightful examination resonated with me, but one in particular: The need to stay attuned to the needs of the customer. Sounds obvious, eh? Fact is, through “failure” Ehrenberg exposed a bug that could likely infect many a company whose developers have a “brilliant idea” that they develop in a dark room, away from sales people who have frequent conversations with customers about what ideas would be brilliant to them. 

Another topic of interest to me at Previews was the ribbing I took about our Kindle promotion for BSeC (in which we offered to give Kindles to the first 30 conference registrants). Some took it as a sign of desperate times calling for desperate measures. Others believed that it exposes (through a countdown of how many Kindles remained) how slowly conference attendance was building. These ribbers (you know who you are) have all attended BSeC many times and I know for a fact that a couple of them will be at the show this April. So, they are my customers and yes, I listened.

Regarding desperate times and like measures, at Previews, I heard a whole lot of angst-filled questions, in near-whispered tones: “How are you doing?” “How’s business?” which began to take on an almost absurdist quality—doom as foregone conclusion. Believe me, I’m hunkered down for a difficult year in events and publications, but I don’t plan on being road kill and I attend events like Previews & BSeC to look for the kinds of fresh thinking that are going to see me through.

I also find it interesting to see how event planning and marketing are interpreted by those outside the business. For example, giving away loot to early registrants. Um, we’ve always done it for BSeC—for the past several years, it has been iPods, but difficult times call for creative thinking and giving away something new is certainly a means of getting a promotion noticed (and you noticed!). This sort of marketing tactic doesn’t get me to go to shows. And it certainly isn’t what brings people back to BSeC year after year (like those ribbers above). What it does is generate early registration from “new blood” and guess what: it worked. I’m very happy to say we are ahead of the last four years of our registration numbers at this early date.

Yet our attendees don’t need to know why we market or choose to do so in any particular way. Frankly, I am pleased that these regular customers care enough to pay attention to such things, and to comment, email, and post about it. The level of engagement with the product—in this case, the BSeC conference—demonstrates its value. They are part of a conversation that goes on every year at this event, and I look forward to hearing more.

Thanks to Diane White, one of our panelists at the BSeC Content Buyers’ Forum, for forwarding this information about library demands for better ROI on existing content investments:

http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/icolc-econcrisis-0109.htm

The link points to a recent statement issued by the International Coalition of Library Consortia, which paints a glum picture for library budgets going forward in 2009 and on into 2010.

The statement pleads for “flexible pricing” and notes that buyers will trade features for prices.

It looks like the session Bill Noorlander is organizing  for our Sunday pre-con at BSeC is right on target, since his session will bring together buyers and sellers to discuss these very topics.

After the conference, all registrants at BSeC will get a copy of Bill’s report, in white paper format.

Posted by Dick Kaser

Michael O’Donnell, CEO, iCopyright, Inc.

I had an interesting chat with Michael O’Donnell, Founder & CEO of  iCopyright, Inc. this week. He said the company is in the process of concluding a $100K study on how commercial users interact with digital content. They tested “home grown article tools” as well as iCopyright, Rightslink, Clickability and more, essentially “any way that publishers are currently allowing readers to do something with content, besides read it.” He said one of the things he found most interesting was an editorial notion that, once an article is published, it is over with;” that content makes money on primary publication and that is that.

To the contrary, O’Donnell says iCopyright is “seeing a tremendous opportunity to make money downstream.” He suggests that there are a couple of relatively small things a publisher can do to help navigate these waters: For example, make it easier (and clearer) for users to do the right thing. iCopyright found one prominent newspaper with a wildly popular website that was granting an implied license to do whatever users wanted with its content. How? By providing free “email this” or “print this” features. No, O’Donnell wouldn’t suggest taking away the ability to readily share content, or to print out a copy. He wouldn’t even suggest putting up a wall. Instead, he says: when users click one of these handy features: make copyright clear. “you can still use the honor system, but simply by communicating the limitation that you can, say, print one copy for personal use, many readers will think twice before printing out a couple of hundred copies.” Better, provide an easy way for them to readily order legal reprints which can help “recapture millions of dollars in lost revenue.” I like the sound of that. Join us at BSeC and to hear O’Donnell discuss the complete study results, and how to apply them to the bottom line.

When we think about Buying and Selling eContent, the value proposition may seem simple: people need quality information to make good decisions. However, demonstrating the value of information to decision makers can be an esoteric proposition. How does one place an ROI on the “good stuff” versus the masses of free content available? Capgemini did a damn good job of it in its report released last year called “The Information Opportunity,” which found that 63 percent of survey respondents faced making crucial business decisions without the correct information on a daily basis.” Yikes. The report recommends that organizations treat information as a strategic corporate asset and invest accordingly.

This week, Economist.com published an article entitled “Knowledge management” that, at first glance, may not seem to help us make the case for increased use of quality information. However, if we consider the author’s premise that “Knowledge [is] seen as the key to the creation not only of business wealth,” we can make a clear case that better informed employees make better decisions. While certainly our “2.0” concept of knowledge is driven by sharing and community, what we share and what informs our interactions builds the foundation for true knowledge. At BSeC, talk will inevitably turn to how to build the value proposition for fee-based knowledge resources in these challenging times. We will, in fact, be kicking off the event with an Enterprise Content Buyer’s Forum on Sunday on “Maximizing the Rules of Engagement and Usage for Cost Optimization and Improved ROI” that should help both buyers and sellers approach this complex equation.

What more appropriate venue to get your Amazon Kindle than the top content industry conference & networking event, Buying & Selling eContent? The hottest mobile content device on the market is on back-order for 9 weeks, but you can get yours FREE by registering for Buying & Selling eContent, April 5-7, 2009, Camelback Inn, A JW Marriott Golf & Spa Resort Hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona*** 

Register now and get a KINDLE (the first 30 attendees to register will receive Kindles).

It’s no surprise that newspapers are in for a rough year—like the rest of us–and then some. It has been a difficult decade for newspapers, from the shift from trusted classified revenue to web-based community style solutions like Craigslist to the steady attrition of local print advertising. Sign of the times: Today, I read that the Seattle P-I will stop publishing if it isn’t sold in the next 60 days.

My long ago college professor, Tom Johnson—who is one of the co-founders of the Institute for Analytic Journalism–sent me a great link last

The article traces the context of the current newspaper media crisis, not the least of which is the need for a revolutionary business model: According to a number of Wharton faculty who have followed the subject, someone will have to come up with a new business model that pays for the sometimes costly work of gathering news while also squeezing a profit out of a readership whose options include the entire world wide web.” The Wharton team suggests some very interesting models that may bring the bucks back.

Undoubtedly, we are all troubled by, as the authors put it: “The problem, from a business point of view, is that few of today’s eager, fickle readers are willing to pay for their online news.” Certainly, in the eContent business, we provide valuable stuff that people pay for, but keeping our eyes focused on the most effective models is what will keep us in business for decades to come—come what may in the way of technology. This Speaker Roster  at this year’s Buying & Selling eContent conference includes some of the leaders in making money from digital content, not the least of whom is my friend, Rafat Ali founder of ContentNext, which was recently acquired by the forward-thinking Guardian Media Group. Join us at the event in which attendee voices bring as much to the conversation as the stellar speakers.

Times like these, content publishers need to be looking for ways to cut costs to whether the storm. I’ll be keeping a lookout for interesting ideas that can help in this regard, like this Q&A over at Publishing Executive, in which United Business Media’s SVP of Manufacturing discusses Her Company’s Cost-Reduction Strategies. Yet we can’t be an industry that solely relies on fat trimming to get by. Frankly, from what I see, this industry wasn’t exactly portly to begin with. In large part, that is because of the ongoing struggle to monetize web-based content in a way that actually supports its creation. Sure user-generated reviews are free, but there are a whole lot of professionals out there who still need vetted, quality content. That said, we have worked incredibly hard to bring you strategies for fresh thinking about digital content, to help your company do more than cut, but to (perhaps cautiously) build upon your strengths and fully leverage the opportunities that “eContent” as to offer. Take a look at this year’s BSeC Program and get a glimpse of the possibilities. Yes, it will be a difficult year, but at the end we want our companies to be more than skeletal remains; we them to be lean, (earning) green, fighting machines.