All My Eye

(This posting reviews a presentation entitled "Key issues in the development of publishing: the age of information services and solutions" given by David Worlock, Outsell's Chief Research Fellow, at the Publishing Technology Trends event held in London in December 2007).

| View | Upload your own

The history of the web can be viewed as three ages:

“web transfer” – the early 1990s, when early adopters hastily and perhaps clumsily posted everything we could online
“web synthesis” – the late 90s and early 00s; we tried to build on the web’s capabilities by making new things work
“web catalyst” – the age we are now entering; a networked society reinventing the online experience from the bottom up

Larger publishers have been slow to come on board with the catalyst age because they are generally too distant from their users. Nonetheless, during the last year, a lot of activity has been stimulated by:

workflow and the desire to enhance productivity for our users
compliance issues as the industry becomes more standardised
growing familiarity with users as we monitor what they do before and after visiting our site
building brands in the networked environment
helping perplexed users to filter the wealth of content with which they are inundated.

2008, David suggests, may be the year in which we:

break the schackles of the network operators; Asia and Europe are driving change in this area, though the US is still attached to inappropriate and old-fashioned standards
embrace vertical search for the authority it can bestow upon subject-specific content
use tag clouds to monitor rapidly changing user requirements
create competitive advantage by positioning organisations within social and enterprise networks to support growth of sector-based communities
capitalise on consumer power with innovative marketing and product development
recognise the value of bundling and syndicating content to grow revenues

David's slides list the companies that he thinks will perform best (or most interestingly) in 2008, along with his top ten "issues that matter". He closed with "the agility imperative", which is spot-on I shall reiterate it here:

insist on agile mindset, organisation and processes
be clear on value proposition
adopt new channels
experiment with new revenue models
look for cost reduction through reinvention
assess readiness
drive speedier time to market
watch valuations and drive cash flow.

Labels: "publishing technology", compliance, ingenta, publishing, trends, users, workflow

Publishing Technology Trends: key issues in the development of publishing

Contributors