Classes Going all Online? ICE says Foreign Students Must Leave the Country

 

Returning to campus in the fall for many college students is still a movable feast:  Some schools such as CSU came out early to state that students would be online for the fall while many others have had a wait and see attitude.  Today, Harvard announced a mixed offering for students with some on-campus and others having to take their course load online.

This unsettled environment has raised all kinds of questions for students, administrators and faculty and aside from the obvious health issues and risks, there have been very legitimate questions raised by all parties - but particularly students - on the 'value' on on-line learning versus the in-clasUs experience. For example, college and graduate schools are facing pressure over the tuition price differential between the tradition on-campus delivery and the on-line products which many colleges and graduate schools have launched and promoted to address broader constituencies. Pricing for the on-line only programs was lower than the on-campus version and prior to Covid-19 differentiation was easy to define; however, when all courses are delivered online the differences may be scant.

Today the difference between online and in-person education hit another road block: The US Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) modified their Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) to exclude on-line education from their permitted exemptions.  This new guidance was published on the ICE site as follows:

Temporary exemptions for the fall 2020 semester include:

1. Nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States. The U.S. Department of State will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools and/or programs that are fully online for the fall semester nor will U.S. Customs and Border Protection permit these students to enter the United States. Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.
2. Nonimmigrant F-1 students attending schools operating under normal in-person classes are bound by existing federal regulations. Eligible F students may take a maximum of one class or three credit hours online.
3. Nonimmigrant F-1 students attending schools adopting a hybrid model—that is, a mixture of online and in person classes—will be allowed to take more than one class or three credit hours online. These schools must certify to SEVP, through the Form I-20, “Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Student Status,” certifying that the program is not entirely online, that the student is not taking an entirely online course load this semester, and that the student is taking the minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program. The above exemptions do not apply to F-1 students in English language training programs or M-1 students pursing vocational degrees, who are not permitted to enroll in any online courses.

Students attending education institutions under the above visa requirements are required to register withing 10 days if there are any changes in their programs. This set of requirements will likely cause confusion and further possible financial issues for schools already impacted by a decline in profitable foreign student populations.  Whether a campus moves courses online or not will be outside the control of all students but if here on an F-1 visa a student may face dire consequences:

If students find themselves in this situation, they must leave the country or take alternative steps to maintain their nonimmigrant status such as a reduced course load or appropriate medical leave.

Whether this issue impacts decision making on-campus remains to be seen but, with the financial model of many schools under threat, this additional issue is not what they were looking for. Sadly, support from the federal government is in short supply when it comes to extending the global (soft) influence of the US through education or shared work experience.  Hopefully better days may be on the horizon.

Annual Horizon Higher Educational Trends Report

Just released from the executive summary:

What is on the five-year horizon for higher education institutions? Which trends and technology developments will drive educational change? What are the critical challenges and how can we strategize solutions? These questions regarding technology adoption and educational change steered the discussions of 78 experts to produce the NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Higher Education Edition, in partnership with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). This NMC Horizon Report series charts the five-year impact of innovative practices and technologies for higher education across the globe. With more than 15 years of research and publications, the NMC Horizon Project can be regarded as education’s longest-running exploration of emerging technology trends and uptake. Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six developments in educational technology profiled in this report are poised to impact teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in higher education. The three sections of this report constitute a reference and technology planning guide for educators, higher education leaders, administrators, policymakers, and technologists.

Full Report: http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2017-nmc-horizon-report-he-EN.pdf

Past reports 

Traveling this Big Country: 3200 miles in a Honda Element

It is frequently said that the fastest way between two points is a straight line and there's no better argument for that thesis than the route Interstate 40 (i40) takes between Knoxville, Tn and Kingman, Arizona. There's no reason to know this unless, like me, you've driven i40 across the US.

Back in 1988, as I was graduating from Georgetown a fellow student happened to mention that he had no idea how he was going to get his car back to his home in California. On a whim, a friend and I told him we would drive it for him and, long story short, we set of in early May and arrived in Los Angeles about 12 days later. Great trip, good memories but few photos to catalog this adventure. The car - a white Camaro was a disaster but, that aside, I wanted to do the trip again almost immediately.  (You can find images from this trip HERE)

A few years ago, I read about a company which will arrange to move cars from one part of the country to the other. The car can go on a truck - most expensive option - or it can be driven. The company finds a driver to do the grunt work and signing up to do this is actually a lot easier than you might expect. An outfit named autodriveaway (a loose franchise operation) publishes a list of available cars and if you are interested you call the location with the listing. I began checking the list regularly and in late April a pair of cities - pick-up in Alexandria and drop off in San Francisco - looked promising. Once I got in touch with the Alexandria office, I had the whole thing worked out within a few days.

On the morning of Monday May 23rd I took Amtrak to Alexandria, picked up the car and spent the night at my sister-in-laws' place. The next day, I was on the road out of DC by 7am to my first stop in Knoxville. The car was an orange painted Honda Element which I tried to pass off a 'burnt gold' until my sister in law said "that's orange" which settled the matter. I arrived in Knoxville around 5pm which turned out to be a consistent routine for the next week until I arrived in San Francisco six days later.

The country is so vast and so variable that it needs to be experienced to comprehend. Deep green fields and red barns through Virginia, rolling hills through Tennessee, flat farmland in Texas, desert in Arizona and snow capped mountains in California. And i40 is very straight. Often coming over a rise, the road ahead would stretch directly straight to the horizon. It's mesmerizing if you're not used to it as well as being hard to photograph while driving.

Running along side i40 is the old route 66 and I like neon, old store fronts and buildings. There's still a lot of this on route 66. If you are not in a hurry and willing to dart off i40 and (frequently) back-track to something that caught your eye going 80mph this travel can be very distracting. These side trips turned up more than a few curious and interesting sights. In Shamrock, Texas I happened on a car graveyard in a field just off main street. There were more than 30 abandoned, rusted, shot up cars and trucks from the 1930s-60s. I spent a while taking photos and no one bothered me: Things seemed to go slowly in Shamrock. There were Trump yard signs.

I deliberately didn't give myself time to explore the cities where I spent the night: Knoxville, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, Kingman, Mammouth Lakes and I know there is much more to see on this route. For next time. I had to keep to a schedule so I could get in business meetings once I arrived in San Francisco.

The entire trip was fantastic but the penultimate travel day from Kingman, bypassing Las Vegas to Death Valley, and then north to Mammoth Lakes was incredible for the change in scenery, landscape and temperature! When I arrived in Death Valley the temperature was 107 degrees at 120feet below sea level and arriving at Mammoth Lakes it was 52 degrees at 7000 feet. The final day drive through Yosemite via the Tioga pass road was like a roller coaster ride up through mountain passes and then down the other side to San Francisco. Up to (almost) 10,000 ft with snow still on the ground compared to yesterday's 107degress was disorienting. Pushing on through the park, I saw the remnants of charred pine trees from those massive fires several years ago and then golden fields of drought stricken grasses on the Western side of the range.

A week after I set out, I dropped the car off with the owner, who I had never met and, in one of those odd coincidences, it turned out we had several common business friends. I spent the rest of the week sightseeing in the city and attending my business meetings and then flew back at the end of the week. During the trip I took over 600 photos - all without crashing the car. (They are all here: https://goo.gl/DkfFvh ). I traveled about 3200 miles on total.

Drivers don't get paid for these trips, although I did get a $300 gas credit; for me, the trip would not have been worth it - too expensive - unless I had a better way. So the best thing about this whole trip was that I did it all using airline points. All the hotels, the train and the business class flight back cost me nothing. At least that's something I got out of traveling so much over the past three years.

I look forward to doing this again sometime and I wistfully keep looking at the list of available cars. But with a house literally in ruins it's not likely for a long while.

The Giant List of Publishing Predictions for 2016

Here is a listing of some interesting predictions for 2016 across the publishing and media sector:

Trade and Self-Publishing

Mark Coker from Smashwords provides a comprehensive exploration of trends for 2016 with particular focus on the Amazon subscription model and its impact on traditional publishers.  His post also includes extensive follow-up and comments: 2016 Book Publishing Industry Predictions: Myriad Opportunities amid a Slow Growth Environment

Jonathon Sturgeon as flavorwire suggests "Books by Committee, Self-Published Books by Computers" may be something we need to watch out for during 2016: From Adult Relaxation to Prole Erotica: Book Publishing Predictions for 2016

Blogsite Bookworks presents: 2016 Predictions for the Self-Publishing Industry

Digital Book World asked Tom Chalmers for his 10 Industry Predictions for 2016

Jane Friedman has 5 Industry Issues for Authors to Watch in 2016

Publisher'sWeekly: What Does 2016 Hold for Digital Publishing?

LA Times: 6 book trends for 2016: Look into the future

Academic and Scholarly Publishing

From Publishing Perspectives five predictions for open access academic publishing

From Scholarly Kitchen: Ask The Chefs: What Do You See On The Horizon For Scholarly Publishing In 2016?

General and Digital Media:

Deloitte Media: Telecommunications and Technology predictions for 2016 report

MediaPost: The Mobile Revolution Accelerates

From Talking New Media Five digital publishing predictions from Arazoo Nadir

From Publishing Executive magazine:  2016: The Year Ahead for Publishing in 12 Words

From MediaShift:  VR Heats Up, Publishers Wise Up to Fraud and 10 Predictions for Media Metrics

Techcrunch: Predictions on the future of Digital Media

What's new in publishing: Digital Publishing Predictions for 2016 

From Mequoda: 3 Subscription Website Publishing Predictions for 2016

A Gartner report Top Strategic Predictions for 2016 and Beyond:  The Future Is A Digital Thing. (but requires registration)

Millward Brown: Digital and Media Predictions 2016

equimedia: Digital media predictions for 2016

Fred Wilson: 2016 Predictions

Top Indian publishers predict digital publishing trends for 2016

Newspaper/Journalism:

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, released a new report: Media, Journalism and Technology Predictions 2016. 

From Neiman Labs: Predictions for Journalism in 2016

At Forbes and short set of suggestions: Who Will Win The Publishing Battle In 2016? Early Predictions For What's Next

There's more than enough here to keep anyone busy well into 2016.  For my predictions from years past click on this link to list all of them.

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 53): 2013 Predictions

A round-up of some of the prognostications about publishing in 2013.

From Forbes (Jeremy Greenfield) Three predictions for Book Publishing:

This year, for the second time in a row, I spoke with about a dozen ebook and book-publishing experts to get their predictions on what would happen in book publishing in 2013. I compiled the information and published this: Ten Bold Predictions for Ebooks and Digital Publishing in 2013.

The thing is, while I think these are solid predictions and will probably be more accurate than our predictions from last year (which have turned out to be really accurate — but more on that in the new year), it doesn’t really scratch my personal itch for making predictions. These, of course, are the predictions of experts that I merely filtered and compiled. When do I get to make predictions?

From The Literary Platform:

In a year of dramatic digital publishing developments, we’ve asked publishers, writers, agents, developers, academics, literary organisations and others working in digital publishing here and in the US, to give us their thoughts on the biggest stories and themes to come out of 2012 – and to tell us what they think is on the horizon for 2013.

Contributions from Michael Bhaskar (Profile), Thad McIlroy (Future of Publishing), Richard Nash (Small Demons), Bill Thompson, Peter Collingridge (Safari Books Online), Tim Wright (writer/producer), James Long (Pan Macmillan), Jeff Norton (Awesome), Joanna Ellis (The Literary Platform), Chris Meade (if:book), Helen Bagnall (Salon-London), Dean Johnson (Brandwidth), Patrick Uden (Heuristic), Joshua Cohen (Ganxy), Julian McCrea (Portal Entertainment), Neal Hoskins (Winged Chariot), Stephen Page (Faber & Faber), Jim Thompson (Edinburgh City Libraries)

From Digital Book World 10 Bold Predictions for 2013:

Another exciting year for the publishing industry is in the books, so to speak. The ebook and digital publishing landscape changed drastically yet again. In 2012, Amazon and other retailers gained control over ebook pricing at three major publishers, ebook revenue growth hit an inflection point, and a parade of non-book-publishing companies entered the ebook business.

Nobody saw it coming. Well, almost nobody. A team of publishing experts predicted in late 2011 some of the astounding developments we saw in 2012 for Digital Book World. See their original predictions here.

Seeing as though 2012 is just about over, we’ve gathered more publishing experts to predict what extraordinary events are to come in book publishing in 2013.

— For more insights into the ebook and digital publishing future, attend Digital Book World Conference + Expo in New York, Jan. 15 – 18 —

And from GigaOM their 'Roadmap 2012':

Watch a series of interviews with the leading creators building the technologies, platforms and visually stunning experiences for the connected consumer.

Speakers include:
Yves Behar, CEO, fuseproject and CCO, Jawbone
Katie Beauchamp, Co-Founder, Birchbox
Perry Chen, CEO, Kickstarter
David Karp, Founder and CEO, Tumblr
Ben Silbermann, Co-Founder and CEO, Pinterest
Kevin Systrom, Founder and CEO, Instagram
George Blankenship, VP, Worldwide Sales and Ownership Experience, Tesla Motors
John Maeda, President, Rhode Island School of Design

BusinessNews Daily: 25 Trends, Tips and Predictions 2013: Not specifically publishing/media but some interesting thoughts in a round-up from a variety of places (BN):

Brands will become publishers — "In 2013, brands will take a (Web) page from publishers' books and start creating 'content' in earnest. Content will help brands get 'found' (via search) and improves brands credibility. How-to guides, quick tips and additional product usage ideas — in the form of blog posts, newsletters and SMS — are starting points for great content. Content also allows brands to start and continue conversations with their target markets — giving them reasons to stay in touch — and opportunities to stay top of mind. Finally, content is a great way to tap into social media marketing: Great content gets shared much more often than static Web pages — for example, a personal quiz gets shared nine times more than a static Web page and customers who engage with brands are more likely to recommend a brand." Seth Lieberman, SnapApp

Finally Mark Coker goes expansive on his thoughts for 2013 (HuffPo):

It's that time of year when book people polish their crystal balls and make predictions for the year ahead. I bring you, my dear reader, my epic predictions for 2013.

I say "epic" tongue in cheek, because I went a bit overboard this year. When I sat down to write this, I was thinking of maybe eight or ten predictions with short narratives. I'm bringing you 21 predictions with expansive narratives. Skim the headlines then read what grabs you.

All of us in this business, from writers to readers and everyone in between, have a vision for where things are going.

Vision is an odd thing. To see something which doesn't exist either makes one a prophetic seer or a delusional nut. At the wonderful Pikes Peak conference in Colorado Springs earlier this year, I had the pleasure to meet Donald Maass, an author and top tier literary agent for whom I have much respect. I attended a surprising session in which he trashed self-publishing. The mood in the room changed from optimism to dejection when he spoke words to the effect of, "If you don't care to reach readers, then by all means self-publish." I was floored by his comment, because it's not what I expected from someone of his smarts. I've met with dozens of literary agents over the last 18 months, and 95% of them see things differently than Donald Maass.

When I saw him later that night at a dinner, I told him I thought he was underestimating the transformative impact self-published authors will have on book publishing. He looked me in the eye, smiled, and said, "and I think you're delusional." Touché! I think it was one of my favorite moments of the year. One of us will come to our senses eventually.

We are all on a journey. None of us know with absolute certainty what happens next. All we can do is position ourselves for the future we prophetically or delusionally imagine. History will judge us all. Those who position correctly will be rewarded. Those who aren't prepared will face the harsh realities of the future marketplace.

Every one of us holds the power to change the course of history by taking actions today that enable the future we desire. Our actions mirror our aspirations, which means the future of publishing will be determined by our collective and sometimes competing aspirations. Readers are our gatekeepers.

Also from PaidContnet (GigaOm):

1. Remaining book publishers will settle with the DOJ in the ebook pricing lawsuit:. HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette have already settled, while Macmillan and Penguin are still fighting. To be clear, I don’t believe publishers and Apple conspired to set ebook prices, as the DOJ alleges. But with Random House and Penguin preparing to merge, a drawn-out trial seems like a drag on moving forward, and Macmillan (smallest of the big-six publishers) doesn’t have the funds for a long trial. I’m not going to try to predict what Apple will do — maybe they’ll keep fighting. (I hope I’m wrong about the settlement because reporting on the trial from court would be extremely interesting.)

2. A well-known author will turn down a seven-figure deal to self-publish: I think 2013 is the year we will see a famous author turn down their long-time traditional publisher and self-publish their new book — even just as an experiment. This author would likely be someone with a very large fan base and social media presence and the ability to reach readers directly across platforms. I don’t believe this person would sign an exclusive deal with Amazon; rather, I see him or her selling directly through a website and other retailers. Authors who would be capable of doing this include Neil Gaiman, Jennifer Weiner, Jodi Picoult and Lee Child.

3. Barnes & Noble will drastically cut back its Nook product line: In 2012, Nook released a new glow-in-the-dark e-reader and two new Nook HD tablets, which means that B&N now sells two e-readers, one super-low-end e-reader/tablet, two low-end tablets, and two HD tablets. Why? Who is buying them? B&N’s share of the ebook market has been stuck around 25 percent for months, and there are plenty of other low-priced tablets on the market. Microsoft has invested $300 million in the Nook business, but that doesn’t have to mean more Nook devices: instead, it should mean developing better Windows 8 reading apps and trying to spread Nook business internationally with the devices it already has.

From Inside Higher Ed:

Around this time of year, we’re inundated with lists of the most significant happenings of the current year (e.g., best books, celebrities we’ve lost) and predictions for the future, and the world of higher education is no exception.

We recently came across an interesting article in Forbes, “5 Ways Technology Will Impact Higher Ed in 2013,” by Chris Proulx, President and CEO of eCornell.

Mike Shatzkin:

Although “digital change in publishing” has a year that lags the calendar year and this year won’t “end” until we have a read on how post-Christmas ebook sales were affected by the new devices consumers got for Christmas, the dropping of the ball in Times Square is the signal most of us respond to when timing our look ahead.

The signals about what to expect when the “digital year” ends are mixed, but not wildly encouraging. There are anecdotal reports of strong sales by US indies selling Kobo devices and Amazon has bragged about their Kindle Fire sales. On the other hand, B&N does not seem to be meeting its targets on the digital side and we’re learning that we don’t get the ebook sales surge from replacement devices that we get when a consumer first switches over from print. Most of the devices being sold now are replacements. And we’re also seeing tablet sales surging past ereaders. Prior analysis has told us that people spend more time reading books on ereaders than they do on tablets.

But quite aside from precisely where Digital Year 2012 ended up, there are five trends I think will be increasingly noticeable and important in trade publishing that are worth keeping an eye on in 2013.

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 21): Internet Commons, Mass 'Professoriat", IP Markets, New ASCAP/BMI Model + More

In The Atlantic, Bill Davidow wonders whether like the sea, the internet will be 'over fished' (The Atlantic)

Free markets are the most efficient and best mechanism for managing most economic activity. But when they operate in arenas in which they can exploit the commons, the logic of the free market dictates that they will destroy it. Virtual retailers, for instance, live off their bricks-and-mortar brethren. They encourage customers to search for clothes that fit properly in retail stores that pay property taxes and other overhead costs, and then to buy them online. In the process, they get fat off the bricks-and-mortar commons.
One of the areas I see being chewed up at an alarming speed is privacy -- a vital aspect of our personal commons. We spend hours filtering out junk email, updating passwords, and worrying about stolen identity.
In the physical world, laws protect our privacy, and the cost of gaining access to us is high. (It costs a lot to send physical mail.) Physical spying is expensive. But in the virtual world, we have few property rights, few laws to protect us, and spying is almost free.

Give all the negative public relations that Elsevier has faced recently is a very different model on the horizon?  (The American Interest):

But the thought does occur to one: while it is relatively easy to see how public universities might want to support academic research in the natural sciences and economics, just how much do the taxpayers want to contribute toward the production of research of questionable utility in softer fields? And if the answer is, as I suspect it will increasingly be, that the taxpayers don’t want to shell out for these costs, how many fewer professors will our university systems employ?
It is much more fun to complain about the pirates of Elsevier than it is to think about the future of the mass professoriat, but I suspect that university faculties might soon find it necessary to adjust to a new set of public priorities. Fifteen years ago journalists thought that the internet wasn’t a serious issue for their field; today many of the journalists who once scoffed at the net are now unemployed.

A fascinating look at a new way to 'market' and trade intellectual property (Economist):

All of which makes this a good time to launch a new approach to trading intellectual property, says Gerard Pannekoek, the boss of IPXI, a new financial exchange that lets companies buy, sell and hedge patent rights, just like any other asset. The idea is to offer a patent or group of patents as “unit licence rights” (ULRs), which can be bought and sold like shares. A ULR grants a one-time right to use a particular technology in a single product: a new type of airbag sensor in a car, say. If a company wants to use the technology in 100,000 cars, it buys 100,000 ULRs at the market price. ULRs are also expected to be traded on secondary markets.

Capturing the 'data exhaust' from satellite transmissions to reinvent the way music royalties are made (WSJ):

So in 2009 , he and business partner and composer Chris Woods launched TuneSat, a startup that uses digital technology to monitor satellite TV signals from around the world and keep track of how music is being used in theme songs,  advertisements, background soundtracks and other broadcast situations. Schreer is CEO and Woods is COO of the company. The value of the new Big Data driven part of his business has the potential to eclipse revenue from the core business of composing and producing music.
Beyond that, they say TuneSat may help disrupt the performing rights business, an industry with $2 billion in revenue in U.S. and $9 billion worldwide, by putting powerful algorithms directly in the hands of copyright owners that allow them to scour and analyze the use of their work across the entire national TV market. A web-based application allows subscribers to access TuneSat’s servers and its proprietary analytic tools, in the process allowing them to bypass traditional royalty rights organizations, if they choose.

Stop sending free textbooks complains higher ed faculty (IHEd):

When I arrived at my office door one morning, arms full of books and lunch and workout clothes, and found my path blocked by an unsolicited box of books, the sales rep found my breaking point. I replied with a sharply but politely worded cease-and-desist message, making as clear as possible that I would disqualify unsolicited texts from consideration for adoption in our program because of my concern.

There are probably 50 pounds of never-requested and never-to-be-used textbooks in my office. I’d prefer 50 pounds of just about anything else. Fifty pounds of in-the-shell roasted peanuts to eat in my office; 50 pounds of water balloons to rain down on the heads of students who smoke under my frequently open office window.

From the twitter:

Is the New York Public Library Seizing the Future or Renouncing Its Past? NYTIMES

Amazon consumer book reviews as reliable as media experts Guardian

University of British Columbia opts out of Access Copyright agreement UBC 

Carlos Fuentes' Worldcat Identity page Worldcat

New Media Consortia - Horizon Report - Ten Top Trends in Education

The New Media Consortia has been publishing their annual Horizon report on trends in higher education for ten years. To celebrate that effort NMC brought together 100 thought leaders in education for a three day convocation in Austin.  The group identified 28 megatrends in education and released a press release that documented the most important first 10.  Here from their press release (NMC)

A wide lens was aimed at the world around education, and that lens had a uniquely global focus. What interested the group — which represented 20 countries from six continents — was what trends are truly international? Which are impacting learning and education worldwide, from the most advanced countries to the poorest?  From these discussions, 28 hugely important metatrends were identified. The ten most significant are listed here and will be the focus of the upcoming NMC Horizon Project 10th Anniversary Report:

1. The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative. As more and more companies move to the global marketplace, it is common for work teams to span continents and time zones. Not only are teams geographically diverse, they are also culturally diverse.
2. People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to.
Increasingly, people own more than one device, using a computer, smartphone, tablet, and ereader. People now expect a seamless experience across all their devices.
3. The Internet is becoming a global mobile network — and already is at its edges.
Mobithinking reports there are now more than 6 billion active cell phone accounts. 1.2 billion have mobile broadband as well, and 85% of new devices can access the mobile web.
4. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media. Our current expectation is that the network has almost infinite capacity and is nearly free of cost. One hour of video footage is uploaded every second to YouTube; over 250 million photos are sent to Facebook every day.
5. Openness — concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information — is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world. As authoritative sources lose their importance, there is need for more curation and other forms of validation to generate meaning in information and media.
6. Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society. In anage where so much of our information, records, and digital content are in the cloud, and often clouds in other legal jurisdictions, the very concept of ownership is blurry.
7. Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success. Access to learning in any form is a challenge in too many parts of the world, and efficiency in learning systems and institutions is increasingly an expectation of governments — but the need for solutions that scale often trumps them both. Innovations in these areas are increasingly coming from unexpected parts of the world, including India, China, and central Africa.
8. The Internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy. Institutions must consider the unique value that each adds to a world in which information is everywhere. In such a world, sense-making and the ability to assess the credibility of information and media are paramount.
9. There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training. Traditional authority is increasingly being challenged, not only politically and socially, but also in academia — and worldwide. As a result, credibility, validity, and control are all notions that are no longer givens when so much learning takes place outside school systems.
10. Business models across the education ecosystem are changing. Libraries are deeply
reimagining their missions; colleges and universities are struggling to reduce costs across the board. The educational ecosystem is shifting, and nowhere more so than in the world of publishing, where efforts to reimagine the book are having profound success, with implications that will touch every aspect of the learning enterprise. 

These metatrends are the first of much yet to come in the next year. Watch NMC.org for news and more throughout the Horizon Project’s 10th Anniversary

Borders Trilogy: I'll tell you how it ends.

So Borders capitulates, and thus begins the inevitable transition we have all long anticipated to become smaller, leaner and possibly profitable. The company is now embarking on the third phase of its' existence which has seen it pass through the innovative, entrepreneurial, mercurial phase represented by the founders Tom and Louis Borders to the second kicked off by their IPO and subsequent purchase by K-Mart to this third phase from which they are unlikely to emerge.

The middle or second phase is what got this business in trouble and anyone working with Borders over the past 10-15yrs (as I have) must have seen this was a dead bookseller walking over that time. Make no mistake: This was inevitable. Serial management teams with no real experience intent on "disruption" and "reinvention" which were all "strategies" that hid their inability to understand and address their market effectively. So poor were these teams that even with 'retail' experience they continued a retail expansion plan that's proven so expensive it can't sustain the core business. If that wasn't enough they proved unable to manage inventory and to understand demand in any effective manner. They believed implementing new technology was the key but implemented a set of software tools that not only contributed to their problems it caused even bigger ones.

Long since abandoned, that experience pales in comparison to their biggest mistake (and in the context of Borders this is saying something) which was to 'invest' in the internet via a deal with Amazon. It would be like American investing in air travel by sending all their customers to Jet Blue. A legion of baffling decisions yet this one has a bizarre coda: At a time when the internet book selling market is essentially lost and their physical retail presence under significant threat the company decided to start a book selling web site and in the process wasted cash and management time and expertise in the process.

Will Borders exit bankruptcy? That's an open question. Certainly the economy is staggering into a recovery which could give investors some encouragement but the book market is migrating rapidly away from physical books and therefore the horizon is very short for any investment to return capital - like three years short in my view. So gone is the 'comfort' that an investor might have that in the worst of circumstances they could sit on the investment for five or so years. That's off the table. Alternatively, Borders could rebuild around digital content; however, we know that's closed off to them to because of (non)decisions made long ago. I expect liquidation is a distinct possibility and then the question becomes what happens to all that stock?

Repost: Book Insurance

Originally posted July 14, 2009.

Few in the book world can see an end to DRM on book content even as glimmers of a new dawn in the music world seem to indicate there may be a different future on the horizon from the one that book publishers are trying so desperately to avoid. Rampant file sharing and ineffectual (even legal) efforts to halt copyright infringement represents the atomic winter that consumer book publishers fear and thus they believe the only way to preclude that future is to do impose severe restrictions on a consumers ability to use the electronic content they have purchased.

It's not news to anyone paying attention that the 'rights' a buyer has when they buy a physical book are proactively eliminated in the eBook world. For example, in the eBook world it becomes difficult to lend my book to someone else to read (friend or family member) or to sell the book on the second hand market. I really don't own it in the traditional sense. Things can become even trickier if I buy from multiple eBook providers or change 'platforms' or even, (strangely) if I loose my credit card since some vendors attribute your purchases to a specific credit card.

In an environment where DRM places limits on interoperability moving from one platform and keeping your library of books becomes difficult. If you liked the SONY but something better comes along you may have to keep the SONY ready to go for years even though you and the technology has moved on. It would be a far better experience for users if the book was the constant not the technology. As long as booksellers and publishers maintain this cabal over DRM there are no easy solutions for buyers who find themselves tethered to the technology and not the content.

Perhaps an unlikely solution would be to provide a type of digital insurance. Some (new) third party would offer this service to content buyers as a type of insurance or escrow policy. On purchasing content, I would register the purchase as part of my profile. Obviously, I would have to provide some proof that I had made the purchase but the transaction would sit in this profile as long as I paid my monthly premiums. The amount paid by the consumer wouldn't have to be a lot because only a small amount of the 'members' would ever make use of the insurance. (It becomes an actuary exercise).

Circumstances arising whereby a user would make use of the insurance could be anything from 'passing your library on to a family member' to simply moving over to a new platform. Depending on how the insurance company was set up (as a pseudo-retailer possibly) they wouldn't host this content but they would allow the consumer to 're-purchase' the content and then submit a 'claim' for the purchase. For each 're-purchase' they would get a refund just like a traditional insurance company. (And maybe the following year your premiums go up also). There maybe other benefits to this solution including the return of the right of first sale: As registered owners maybe we build a secondary market for e-Books.

Yes, even I think this is a pretty wacky idea but with e-Book content still less than 10% of total revenues, with publishers exhibiting apparent limited interest in pushing growth faster and the likelihood of formats and technology remaining fluid for a long time, consumers will increasingly become dissatisfied and disgruntled over the limitations (mistrust as well) that publishers and retailers are imposing on their purchases. There could be a better solution.

Insurance anyone?

Repost: Borders Strategic Plan: What Borders Could Have Said

Since management has changed again at Borders, I thought I would repost an article I originally wrote on March 26, 2007. As the introduction notes, I originally wrote my version of a Borders growth plan in answer to what I thought was a pretty anemic effort by CEO George Jones.

No telling what the new management of Borders has in mind.



Last week George Jones, the recently appointed CEO of Borders Stores, Inc. released his strategic vision for the next three years. There was little in the document to inspire, and it was replete with suggestions that the route to success for Borders was to travel the road already trod by their stronger competitors rather than develop a set of bold new ideas. Coupled with this mediocre set of objectives was a time frame that seems embarrassing given the critical issues Borders and the retail book industry are facing. Borders sales per store and per square foot which lag their competition are declining, they have embarked on a diversification program that continues to draw attention away for the core products and they propose to withdraw from the international market that appears to produce 50% more revenue per store than the domestic business. What then might George Jones have said.....


Dear shareholders,

Borders is a company in transition in an industry in transition. Borders customers now find the products we sell in more non-traditional outlets and at lower prices. Our customers now have more entertainment options limiting the time they spend on reading and the changes in the music and dvd industry is fundamentally changing the way our customers use and purchase these products. It may be only a matter of time before it becomes unprofitable for Borders to sell physical units of music and dvd products.

These are not issues that Borders faces exclusively, but over the past three years, the company has failed to proactively address these marketplace changes. While our in-store experience has grown confused and directionless, miss-steps in our internal operations now limit our ability to support an effective platform for growth. We have to admit that continued investment in our store management and merchandising technology will not produce or enable the rapid changes in operating efficiency that is required to effectively implement our strategic goals.

The Borders brand remains highly valued both domestically and internationally and as we consider our strategic options, we must resist the urge to adopt ‘me-too’ or duplicative retail models that succeed in this crowded marketplace. To that end, we will focus on maintaining a unique value proposition for the Borders brand and retail experience. Our goals over the next three years are to:

• Lead the industry in sales per store, sales per square foot, fill rates and inventory turn while, maintaining growth in new store openings.
• Aggressively eliminate non-core expenses in operations via strategic partnerships across the supply-chain.
• Revamp the Borders retail experience by redesigning our stores, implementing state-of-the-art technology and integrating web retail into the stores.
• We will expand our international retail operations in combination with partners, expand our Seattle’s Best Coffee relationship but devolve our investment in PaperChase.

Over the next three years the company will focus our improvement program in three areas: (1) Store improvement and better merchandising, (2) operational improvement and (3) efficiencies and expanding retail internationally and via the web. Each of these initiatives is addressed as follows:

Improving the In-Store Experience:
We are in the process of simplifying our in-store product mix and plan to temporarily reduce the amount of in-store product by 25-35% over the next six months. At the same time, we are aggressively revising and reassessing how we use our store-level sales data and have established a task force with an aggressive time horizon that will identify an effective management reporting package so that the company can better plan store inventory and product mix. (We also plan technology improvements at the store level discussed below). Once we have better management information, we will begin to experiment with incremental additions and regional additions to store mix that we expect will support store profitability.

Selling books, music and movies is our strength. Music and DVDs are important but the long-term viability for these product segments is suspect as on-demand, downloading and other direct to consumer distribution patterns become predominant. Frankly, we are not a music and DVD destination store and we recognize we sell these items as add-ons to book purchases which do improve average revenue per customer, but selling the products in their current form is not a long term strategy. Borders will continue to experiment with different mechanisms for selling music and movie content that will enable these segments to remain important revenue sources for us.

We also recognize that our in-store layout and retailing environment has grown stale and boring. As previously mentioned, we are in the process of redesigning the in-store concept and this is a matter of significant importance for the company. We expect to launch the new store concept no later than the fourth quarter 2007. In this important initiative, we do not expect a ‘me-too’ design or to simply replicate the store features of our competitors; rather, our objective will be to develop a unique approach to book retailing that combines an increased awareness of the correct product mix for our stores, market research and marketing statistics to determine the store features that resonate with our customers. Initial research suggests our current stores are bland and confusing to customers, who often leave our stores without finding the books they seek.

As previously disclosed, the company will reduce the number, and revamp the product mix, of our Walden Books mall stores. Critical to this effort is effective management reporting metrics enabling correct executive management decisions to close or significantly revise specific Walden stores. We expect to close 25% of our Walden stores over the next 18mths. While our small mall retailing business has declined, we still believe that mall-based retail outlets represent legitimate opportunities for Borders to retail our products. Along-side our Walden rationalization plan, we plan to test and launch a ‘mini-POD’ bookstore concept. These small stores will be located in high-traffic areas such as medium-to-small sized mall spaces, public spaces, high-traffic retail space and potentially within other retailers spaces. These ‘mini-POD’ stores will sell less than 200 titles (all best sellers based on our store POS data) be staffed by one clerk and cover less than 200 sq/ft; they can be either permanent or temporary fixtures, dependent on context. If the tests prove successful, we expect to have over 1000 of these mini-POD stores in place by the end of 2008.

Our airport store growth and re-branding effort has been resoundingly successful and we will continue to expand this program in the North American market. As part of our international expansion, we will consider opportunities to extend the model into the developing air transport markets of Asia.

The PaperChase acquisition has been an interesting experiment and the company stores continue to do well under Borders management. Regardless, the company’s future is in the sale of entertainment products and PaperChase will be carved off as a separate business and eventually sold to its management. We believe there is a future for this line of business but the synergy with entertainment products, our internal processes and between our vendors and those of Paperchase is tenuous at best. We believe we can generate higher sales/sq/ft from our traditional produce mix and Seattle’s Best Coffee.

Operations Review:
Borders must rationalize our internal operations so that we can focus on our core expertise. We are not proficient at software development, distribution, fulfillment or logistics, and over the years these areas have diverted too much management time, resources and money away from merchandising, retailing and brand development. It is our goal to seek strategic partners to further outsource our warehouse, fulfillment and distribution operations and to seek efficiencies in our logistics operations – particularly store fulfillment. Lastly, under discussion is the possibility of outsourcing our management information systems that support our store level point of sale systems and which connect these store systems to our merchandising systems. We believe the only way Borders can achieve the state-of-the-art technology critical to our success is to partner with a provider(s) who is simply better at implementation and IT management than we are. Discussions are advanced in these areas.

Coupled with this operations review, we will work with our vendors to implement Radio Frequency Identification throughout our supply chain. We believe this initiative will have particular value at the store level. Experience in other businesses indicates that this will be an expensive initiative but will lead to the following material benefits:

• RFID on all book product and in all stores within 18mths (on 85% of in-store products and 100% by end 2009)
• 100% location data for all products in store: ability to locate any item
• Virtually eliminate theft
• Increase in-store fill rates: Expect incremental sales increases between 5-10% of current store revenue ($250-500,000/store annually).
• Reduce out of stocks by 10-20%
• Reduce to 10% the current amount of time to stock new stores (to two days from 2 weeks)
• Remove/reallocate slow-moving stock: Rapid/immediate understanding of stock mix versus sales
• Daily inventory count: Eliminate need for physical inventory
• Speed product receipt and returns process

We expect to lead the book industry in this initiative and we also expect the initiative to pay for itself in increased sales, better merchandising and higher customer loyalty within a 36-month period. Complementary store-level technology enhancements will also enable wireless couponing, self-check out and cross- and up-selling opportunities. These are the types of critical success factors that will lead to the industry-leading revenues per store and per square foot to which we aspire.

Expanding Our Retail Outlets:
Finally, the company has questioned the continued development of our international operations, but we remain committed to expanding this business via merger with a leading non-US retailer. Together, we will aggressively expand the super-store concept to Asia and ME particularly China, India and South and Eastern Africa. Additionally, we will seek a similar partnership arrangement in South and Central American where we believe the super-store market for books, music and DVDs is largely untapped. The development of these markets is expected to take place through a combination of franchising and store-owned operations. We expect to announce our first Borders stores in Buenos Aires and Santiago by the end of the year. The UK book retail market is currently in turmoil and we will seek to take aggressive advantage of this and leverage our strong market position in that market with assertive merchandising and product discounting to drive traffic to our stores. We will close underperforming stores and expand the superstore concept in the UK and Ireland as results dictate. All told, we expect our international operations to grow to over 300 stores by the end of 2012 and believe our continued success internationally will derive from our steep investment in our US store operations.

Lastly, we commenced development of a Borders.com web retailing site which we believe will tap a missing link between Borders and its customers. We will use this site as a marketing and customer service solution to strengthen the bond between Borders and our customer base (particularly the 17,000 members of the Borders awards program). There will be a close coordination between the redesign of this program and the development of the web site. The success of this site will be determined by the strength of the connection we can make between the physical stores and the web experience. We expect to make the Borders web-site a destination site that will enable social networking, user tagging and customer retailing options similar to those available on auction sites.

We recognize this strategic plan represents a series of ambitious but attainable goals. Importantly, across our business we will focus on our core competency in selling entertainment products in a conducive retail environment supported by strong merchandising and management information. Supporting this development will be an aggressive efficiency program that will support the above objectives by realigning our operations to reduce time and expense spent on activities we are not good at and investing in technology solutions that will support our long term goals.

Many of these initiatives are in process and we look forward to bringing you up to date with them in the next three months.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 1): Libraries, EBSCO, EBrary, UBM, Prognostications

Martin Amis is profiled in the Observer this morning (Link):

And last year, Amis drew criticism when he noted of the public interest in Katie Price that "all we are really worshipping is two bags of silicone" – though it probably says more about the dislocation of feminism than about Amis that mocking the cult of Jordan is deemed worthy of rebuke.

In one way or another, Amis's subject has always been sex, particularly the male view of sex, and therefore of women. At the same time, his method has remained extravagantly and grotesquely comic. In novels like Money, he pioneered a baroque-pornographic style to depict the sexualisation of the contemporary world. It was one of the aspects of Amis writing that his father, Kingsley, found unappealing.

"Sex is a fascinating area," Amis senior once explained, "but it's harder than he thinks. Nobody says that fiction should be able to discuss everything; he thinks he can do it, but I wonder if he can."

New blogger Dan D'Agostino (no known connection) at Teleread takes a look at why libraries may be ill advised to buy eBooks: No one will read them (Link):

With a vigorous, searchable Google Books on the horizon, could academic libraries suddenly find themselves and their e-book collections completely bypassed by their students and faculty? The New Year finds both academic libraries and the big commercial publishers that serve the academic community in a state of paralysis, on the one hand knowing that their onscreen e-books are not reaching potential readers and on the other unable to embrace the exploding popularity of e-readers and smart phones as platforms for their content.

How did it come to this? In order to explain it’s first necessary to understand that the world of academic publishing and academic libraries, probably the single biggest sector of the current e-book market, is a strange parallel universe in relation to the rest of the e-book world. And in this strange universe, two fundamental laws currently govern all activities.

NPR looks at How To Work Your Social Network To Find Jobs (Link)

Some burgeoning social networks not only target specific professions but also authenticate people's real-life identities to create secure networks that aren't searchable on the Web. The goal is to let people be comfortable sharing information and get advice without all of the information coming up the next time someone runs a Google search.

A case in point is Martindale-Hubbell Connected from LexisNexis. Michael Walsh, the chief executive officer for LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets, describes it as "a combination of LinkedIn and Facebook for the legal community."

The service, which has about 24,000 members, provides a way for attorneys to search for future business, get legal advice and find a job. One feature allows users to cross-reference contacts they may already have established on LinkedIn. Each profile shows the law school a person attended and any articles they might have written. Users also can connect with Martindale-Hubbell's career center.

Walsh says LexisNexis' research found that 70 percent of lawyers use social networking tools. He says this number is extraordinary given how busy lawyers are and the extent to which they often keep information close to the vest.

EBSCO announced the launch of an enhanced version of their federated search tool EBSCO Discovery Service (link):

EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) provides much deeper indexing than any other discovery solution, as well as access to all of the library’s full-text content (both electronic and print resources)—an integrated one-stop search experience for a library’s journals, magazines, books, special collections, OPAC and more.

In addition to the most comprehensive and robust collection of metadata from the best content sources, EDS also provides full indexing from EBSCOhost database subscriptions, as well as many non-EBSCOhost partners, including: NewsBank, Readex, LexisNexis, Alexander Street Press and more. Superior relationships & licenses with academic publishers make EDS the most comprehensive service for searching the complete full text of journal articles and other sources. Nearly every major academic publisher is included in EDS.

Ebrary is doing market research into patron driven acquisitions (Link):

“As usage plays a key role in determining the value of electronic products and services, patron driven acquisition is quickly evolving as a model of choice,” said Leslie Lees, ebrary’s Vice President, Content Development. “We are proud to report an outstanding response to the first phase of our PDA pilot, and look forward to gaining even more invaluable input that will help shape our final product.”

ebrary’s PDA pilot participants are given access to a selection of approximately 100,000 e-books and other authoritative titles from the world’s leading publishers such as Wiley, Elsevier, and McGraw-Hill. Purchases are automatically triggered based on usage measured by page views, copies, and prints.

Titles purchased through the PDA pilot, integrate with other ebrary products and services including Academic Complete, ebrary’s flagship subscription product that provides cost-effective, multi-user access to a growing selection of more than 45,100 titles. Additionally, all ebrary titles include rich functionality for quickly and easily discovering and managing information online such as InfoTools, which turns every word into a portal to other online resources of the library’s choice; highlighting and annotating; multiple search options; and personal bookshelves.

Bowker has licensed the print versions of their Books In Print line to Grey House. (Press Release). The agreement is effective January 1, 2010 and I understand both companies are very happy with the agreement.

Other news items posted on the twitter last week: Interview w/ David Levin at United Business Media. Acquisitions get the attention but "divestitures are very important" http://bit.ly/6GdiXq The FT looks at Informa and the possible frustrations of the company's CEO Peter Rigby: How can Informa grow and provide shareholders with a decent return? http://bit.ly/7as6lF The Dallas Morning News looks at Textbook rental programs. These articles are often amusing and informative for the questions. Students often don't hold back. (DMN) All the prognoticators prognostications - and a big thanks for George for putting this schedule together. (Link)

• Also: David Worlock: Ten Things That Won’t Happen In 2010 http://bit.ly/8ZZLgf

The Bookseller tells us that the Administrator working on the Borders UK wind down has been able to sell the Books Etc brand which will in turn be revived, but only online. (LINK) As an aside it was quite depressing to see the Borders store on Charring Cross Road completely gutted as of December 24th. If I remember correctly that used to be an old Books Etc location. More on the opportunities for media investment in China. http://bit.ly/4Sqqrh and a related item on China publishing: http://bit.ly/4VJE9N Financial information companies are seeing significant expansion in the Gulf. http://bit.ly/7C7YFz. Over the next few years, this growth is likely to cover the softness in the European and North American marketplace. Christ, is it 2010 already...? I just got over Y2K. Speaking of which Gary A is now on the back nine as of this week.

Horizon Report on Education

Last week at the SIIA conference, Marjorie Scardino mentioned a recent report from Horizon about technology trends to watch in education. Here is a summary of the technolgies to watch:

• Mobiles. Already considered as another component of the network on many campuses, mobiles continue to evolve rapidly. New interfaces, the ability to run third-party applications, and location-awareness have all come to the mobile device in the past year, making it an ever more versatile tool that can be easily adapted to a host of tasks for learning, productivity, and social networking. For many users, broadband mobile devices like the iPhone have already begun to assume many tasks that were once the exclusive province of portable computers.

• Cloud Computing. The emergence of large-scale “data farms” — large clusters of networked servers — is bringing huge quantities of processing power and storage capacity within easy reach. Inexpensive, simple solutions to offsite storage, multi-user application scaling, hosting, and multi-processor computing are opening the door to wholly different ways of thinking about computers, software, and files.

• Geo-Everything. Geocoded data has many applications, but until very recently, it was time-consuming and difficult for non-specialists to determine the physical coordinates of a place or object, and options for using that data were limited. Now, many common devices can automatically determine and record their own precise location and can save that data along with captured media (like photographs) or can transmit it to web-based applications for a host of uses. The full implications of geo-tagging are still unfolding, but the impact in research has already been profound.

• The Personal Web. Springing from the desire to reorganize online content rather than simply viewing it, the personal web is part of a trend that has been fueled by tools to aggregate the flow of content in customizable ways and expanded by an increasing collection of widgets that manage online content. The term personal web was coined to represent a collection of technologies that are used to configure and manage the ways in which one views and uses the Internet. Using a growing set of free and simple tools and applications, it is easy to create a customized, personal web-based environment — a personal web — that explicitly supports one’s social, professional, learning, and other activities.

• Semantic-Aware Applications. New applications are emerging that are bringing the promise of the semantic web into practice without the need to add additional layers of tags, identifiers, or other top-down methods of defining context. Tools that can simply gather the context in which information is couched, and that use that context to extract embedded meaning are providing rich new ways of finding and aggregating content. At the same time, other tools are allowing context to be easily modified, shaped, and redefined as information flows are combined.
  

• Smart Objects. Sometimes described as the “Internet of things,” smart objects describe a set of technologies that is imbuing ordinary objects with the ability to recognize their physical location and respond appropriately, or to connect with other objects or information. A smart object “knows” something about itself — where and how it was made, what it is for, where it should be, or who owns it, for example — and something about its environment. While the underlying technologies that make this possible — RFID, QR codes, smartcards, touch and motion sensors, and the like — are not new, we are now seeing new forms of sensors, identifiers, and applications with a much more generalizable set of functionalities.

SIIA Conference: Marjorie Scardino

Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson spoke at this weeks Software Information Industry Association meeting and here are my notes from that presentation.

Skills and capabilities that new generations are going to need to be successful in the 21st Century include: the ability to be imaginative, capable of or exhibit group working skills and the ability to solve increasingly complex business and social problems.

As educators we also need to think about hard skills: Math and Science.

Embedded in the development of hard skills is the development of the ability to connect disparate information and to be able to evaluate the veracity of information and information sources. It is not a unique skill to be able to do a simple ‘barely defined’ Google search. Anyone can do this; however, students are not being taught the skills necessary to dig deeper, form arguments and determine back-up or be able to present their research.

On new technology. She cites/refers to a digital youth study: How the young interact with new technology. (Horizon Report).

There are five new technologies (and she adds a sixth).

1. Mobile devices: language,
2. Smart objects: sensors
3. Ubiquitous computing semantic enabled software:
4. Geo tagging: to all media.
5. Storage and access: cloud computing.
6. Electro foretic (sp) pages.

In her opinion, (and this follows how Pearson is expanding) companies have to take a long term view: change the way teachers teach, the way readers interact with news, information and content. Additionally, the long term view or approach to investment has to be consistent. She says, sustained investment is difficult in a public company.

The key to success is to involve your customers. Release your software early and enable a culture that allows ‘do-overs’ assuming they are corrected or improved rapidly. Other comments:

1. Need to try everything: New companies have inclusive cultures that generate new ideas from all levels. This is important and the culture needs to be adopted by old line companies as no company can get it right if idea generation is concentrated at the top of an organization.
2. Content and technology are inextricable bound together.
3. Need to use technology that enables use of more of our intellect, allows us to reflect as well as analyze.

Discussing revenue models, Scardino spoke about a ‘the Ralph Lauren’ model of charging a lot for something and assuming people will pay for it. She seemed to be saying that if something were priced high then people would assume it had value and was worth the price. She then brought up an anecdote about her time as a newbie attorney in Savannah. When she moved there, she was one of many (but few women) attorneys charging $200/hr. She decided to charge $300 on the basis that people would come to her thinking she must be worth the extra (premium).

More recently she indicated that they have been able to raise the price of the FT and consumers have come with them on the price hike. She also noted The Economist’s revenues are 50% subscription versus advertising. A central component of their content strategy is to overlay the content with tools and analytics that extend the value of the underlying content. She says they as a company long ago realized that content was becoming a commodity in news and other segments like education. “There is only a few ways to describe photosynthesis” or describe history. Technology however can be a differentiator if used in an appropriate manner so the company attempts to understand how the reader interacts with the content. This approach is used in news, where there is more attention paid to analysis than news reporting, and also in education.

Amazon: What Do We Do Next?

Someone emailed me today and asked what publishers should do in light of Amazon throwing their weight around and others posing threats to the industry.

My response,

Indeed, I agree that publishers don’t seem to be taking the threat seriously and I really don’t understand why. I really don’t know what the answer is (I wish I were that smart) but it should be the case that any interaction with Google, Amazon and Microsoft should be guarded. In addition, the publishers should be offering some type of counter policy – whether it is alternative options to access to their content (new pricing/subscription models, distribution/retail) – so that consumers have more options. For example, publishers have hesitated historically to mess with the retail channel and I recall in the early days of the internet there was a lot of discussion about publishers creating channel conflict with existing retailers if the publisher set up their own store front. In the past 10 years the retail channel has become far more concentrated and could become even more concentrated as more content becomes electronic.

Perhaps it is time for publishers to be more aggressive in becoming retailers as well as content producers. If so, it’s not as simple as setting up a store front that looks like a mini-version of the Amazon bookstore (obviously) since no one would switch. However, publishers do have the direct relationship with the author and can use this exclusivity to build a more robust presentation of the content. On Amazon you get the Buick version but on the Publisher site you get the Cadillac. None of the added or supplemental content would be made available elsewhere. What that extra content would be I don’t know. Maybe every author is twinned with an additional writer and site designer that builds/creates websites focused on the authors work but with far more expansive material about the works, process, background details, audio, video etc., any of which could be purchased by a consumer. This becomes the new marketing and promotions approach or the way to spend money that is traditionally allocated to print advertising, book tours and launch parties.

That’s a quick thought. Trade faces challenges. Education and Information are/have morphed into new beasts but it is less clear where trade will end up.

Later on in the day, I came across this news story about musicians and acts setting up their own social networking sites. The reasoning is simple: The artist has decided they don't have to have an intermediary between themselves and their fans. Their actions don't mean they forgo any of the other outlets such as Myspace or Facebook but they are understanding that they can insert themselves into the value chain at their choosing. Reuters:

"The thing that separates Thisis50 from MySpace is we control the e-mail database," says Chris "Broadway" Romero, director for new media at G-Unit Records, which handles Thisis50. "We can e-mail members if we want to." Thisis50 isn't meant to be a fan club, but rather a platform for 50 Cent to showcase his music and music he likes, and comment on news and user profile pages. Ludacris' WeMix.com, on the other hand, is more of a hub for aspiring artists to upload their music.

Publishers can do the same kind of thing to distinguish themselves and their authors in the minds of consumers while also establishing more balance in the relationship between producer and retailer. Change is certainly on the horizon but whether publishers move fast enough is the question.