Manage To Change

SSP: Are you IN?

Why haven't I been blogging regularly?

One big reason is the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) IN Meeting.

Richard Newman, from the American Medical Society, and I are the co-chairs of the SSP IN meeting.

SSP IN will take over the entire Hotel Providence from September 23rd - 25th. I could tell you all about IN here, but everything you need to know is on the SSP website:

IN is a different kind of conference. It is part symposium, part seminar, and part un-conference. Most of all, it's an opportunity to learn from your colleagues by participating in small groups lead by industry innovators like Kent Anderson (Massachusetts Medical Society, New England Journal of Medicine), Chris Beckett (Atypon Systems), Alex Frost, Thane Kerner (SilverChair), Howard Ratner (Nature Publishing Group), and John Sack (HighWire Press). During IN you'll be the student, the collaborator, and the instructor!

IN was created to address the unprecedented change taking place in today's scholarly publishing industry. Disruptive technologies and business models are changing the market at the same time the global economy presents the most challenging fiscal climate in nearly a century. IN is designed to help you formulate strategies and tactics to take advantage of the opportunities and successfully negotiate the challenges of today's publishing landscape.

If your interested in a highly interactive program and you care about the future of publishing and media, think about coming to IN!!!

reBlog from Kent Anderson under: The Scholarly Kitchen

Image via CrunchBase

I found this fascinating quote today:

Earlier this week, I wrote about the management trap that occurs in industries undergoing disruptive innovation. David Smith from CABI forwarded this presentation from Netflix to me. It’s excellent, and deserves to be shared widely.Kent Anderson under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Aug 2009

Culture

View more presentations from Reed Hastings.

SIIA: New Rules for Licensing, Building & Aggregating Information

Earlier in the spring, while attending the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) NetGain conference, I was asked to answer a question as part of a series for the SIIA Content Division. 

As the result of sheer coincidence, Chris Anderson was a keynote at the conference and was also asked the same question.

Several people were interviewed and the SIIA has posted all of the interviews as well as all of the sessions from NetGain.

The question?

What are the new rules for licensing, building and aggregating information?

Chris' answer was brief and pointed to Freemium as the new model.

My answer was a little longer and is included here just for fun!

Anderson, Gladwell, and Godin - Oh My!

Image via CrunchBase

As many of you know, there has been an interesting and spirited debate going on around Chris Anderson's (pictured) new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Malcolm Gladwell's review of that book, and Seth Godin's rebuttal to Gladwell's review.

Those arguments speak for themselves and you can see them on this Squidoo lens started by Seth Godin.

What I find interesting are that the tactics being used and the roles being assumed look very much like those employed during a change management effort within an organization.

There are people advocating, recognizing, and interpreting change (Anderson and Godin) and there are those seemingly resisting change or debating its impact (Gladwell).

Those that bring up alternatives or poke holes at the new direction are regarded by the "change visionaries" as resistant, threatened, or sometimes, simply ignorant.  Often, while some are truly resistant to change, many are simply raising issues and perspectives that haven't been fully considered by the change management effort.

On the other side, change visionaries are often resistant to considering anything contrary to their position. Adaptation or adjustment of the change being implemented is viewed as selling out or lacking faith.

It's the healthy debate between these groups, and the shades of gray between them, that allows the organization to find its way and avoid some costly mistakes in the process.

As General George S. Patton said, "If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."

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Boring Technology & Convening Supporters

Kent Anderson from the Scholarly Kitchen linked to this Clay Shirky video filmed at the State Department by TED.

It's 17:03 minutes of insight!

"What matters here isn't technological capital, it's social capital.  These tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring...when everybody is able to take them for granted."

"They had understood that their role with my.barackobama.com was to convene their supporters, but not to control their supporters."

Online Education: Tastes Great or Less Filling?

Whether to provide a more vibrant and relevant educational experience or to save money on text books, it looks like online education is making some headway. 

Connecticut District Tosses Algebra Textbooks and Goes Online, that's what I read last week in the New York Times .  Connecticut teachers were frustrated by rushing students "through their Algebra I textbooks only to spend the first few months of Algebra II relearning everything they forgot or failed to grasp the first time."

They rewrote the curriculum to focus on fewer topics at greater depth in Algebra I, thus better preparing students for the more advanced concepts and eliminating much of the review time in Algebra II (which could now be spent learning concepts that were cut from Algebra I).

The results?

"...school officials say their less-is-more approach has already resulted in less review in math classes, higher standardized test scores and more students taking advanced math classes."

The costs?

...they spent about $70,000 to develop the new math curriculum...[and] the district will soon save at least $25,000 a year on textbooks.

That's interesting.

Not only did they seem to come up with a more effective approach to learning, but they're going to save money.

Two days ago, BBC News published the article, Online Push in California Schools.

"From the beginning of the next school year in August, math and science students in California's high schools will have access to online texts that have passed an academic standards review."

Questioning the true motivation for the change, the BBC News article noted that "Last year California spent $350m on textbooks and can no longer afford it."

Today David Worlock, Chief Research Fellow at Outsell, published The Online Cost of Education is "Cheaper" (Insights subscription required).

As David observes, "School infrastructure in the developed world has now reached the point where the implementation of a fully digital curriculum is very possible...even if the real underlying reasons have more to do with budget cuts than education." 

Could technological advances, changing learning habits, the growing irrelevance of current curriculum, and financial woes finally add up to a wholesale movement of education toward more online learning options?

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Publishing, Nautilus, and Networks

Image by mindseyeimagery via Flickr

The other day I got a LinkedIn group alert from Andrew Spong linking to an article in The Journal of Electronic Publishing entitled Open Access 2.0: Access to Scholarly Publications Moves to a New Phase, by Joseph J. Esposito.

His "Nautilus Model of Scholarly Communications" was a brilliant way to provide a foundation for discussion.  The model is illustrated in the article cited above, but he introduced it in Open Access 2.0 published in The Scientist.

At the "innermost spiral of the shell of a nautilus, where a particular researcher wishes to communicate with a handful of intimates and researchers working in precisely the same area" is where he proposes Open Access is most viable.   He goes on to posit that at "each step away from the center, the role of the publisher grows and the merits of open access diminish."

At the core of the model is the degree to which the participants in the particular ring of the spiral are known to each other.  At the center, they know each other quite well.  As we move out, they do not and "...the publisher's brand is a form of insurance" to the consumer, insurance against wasting time (and, potentially, money).  

Thinking about the widening rings of the nautilus shell as decreasing degrees of familiarity, it seems as though this model is useful to consider more broadly.

• What kinds of products are valuable to [small] networks whose members are very familiar with one another?
• What kinds of products are valuable to networks whose members are NOT familiar with one another?
• What kinds of supporting services are needed in each type of network?

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The Evolution of Content

Take a look at this video created by Mark Logic.

It's a fabulous summary of where we've been and the challenges and opportunities facing us in media and publishing.

Twitter: Unintended Consequences

Image via CrunchBase

A couple of months ago, someone to whom I'm connected on Facebook mentioned that I over ran their home page with Twitter updates the last time I was at a conference.

I tend to take conference notes on Twitter.   When I had Twitter feed Facebook updates, my status was being updated every couple of minutes.  It had never occurred to me that I was monopolizing my friends' Facebook home pages!

When I started to look for a way to selectively update Facebook, but still use Twitter the way I wanted to use it, I consulted several of my Twitter connections.

Most of them weren't aware of a solution. 

What really surprised me was that they also said not to worry about it.

I learned two things from this:

1. Experimentation with new things often has unintended consequences.  They may be good or bad, but we should be looking for them.
2. If we're not careful our advocacy of a product, feature, platform (fill in the blank) will actually turn people off, rather than stimulate their interest.  Ignoring feedback is never a good idea.
   

If you're having the same issue I was with updates, there is an application that enables selective Twitter updates to Facebook.  I started using it during Web 2.0 Expo and it works perfectly for me.

PS Someone else (not the source of the original feedback) recently thanked me for updating Facebook more judiciously.

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Look out Rosetta, I’m Hooked on LiveMocha!

I’ve wanted to learn Spanish most of my life, but I’ve never gotten passed a couple of classes in high school and college.

I tried again a few years ago.  Even after spending a few hundred dollars on Rosetta Stone, I stopped using it after a couple of weeks.

That’s about to change thanks to LiveMocha, a social networking site focused on language learning. 

LiveMocha offers me something I was missing, community.  

 

Taking Lessons
Every lesson has four required sections (Learn, Review, Write, Speak) and optional exercises.

The software grades the Learn and Review sections and the optional exercises. The community evaluates the Write and Speak sections.

 

Feedback
One of the most satisfying features of Live Mocha is helping others in the community learn English.  Reviewing submissions is addictive!

In offering feedback, members of the community can type comments and record responses.  The recorded responses are terrific.  They allow the learner to hear the nuances of native pronunciation and sentence formation, much like what we’d hear in a public setting.

As you review exercises and others review your submissions, you start build your personal network. 

I’ve found myself committed to certain connections.  As soon as I see an email (delivered both to my LiveMocha and external email inboxes), I attempt to offer feedback as soon as possible. 

Why It Might Work

• A human connection.
• A large and growing community.  Even without connections, submissions are reviewed relatively quickly.
• Mutual benefit.  Many of my connections are native Spanish speakers learning English. 
• Notifications to external email. Having emails delivered to my inbox has helped me stay engaged.  This is especially true because the emails are from people that need their work reviewed, not marketing copy from a faceless company.
• Free and paid options. There are tutors, exportable content, and other options available to premium subscribers.

It's been almost four weeks now. 

I may not be as far as I’d like, but I’m still engaged.

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