Really Strategies Blog

Three Webinars Publishers Should Attend

We are excited to announce the Really Strategies' Wednesday Webinar Series....

How to Make the Business Case for a CMS in Your Organization
February 17, 2010 | 2:00 to 3:00 PM EST
Publishers understand that content management is a pivotal piece in today's publishing environment. Yet budgeting for a CMS initiative can quickly scale to the point where executives question why they should stray from the status quo. In this free webinar, Barry Bealer, CEO of Really Strategies, will lead a panel of publishing professionals who will discuss how they made their business case and got executive buy-in for content management in their organizations.

Panelists include

• Anthony Barrera, Head of Internal Systems Development, Nature Publishing Group
• Allison Risko, VP, Learning Services, Kaplan EduNeering
• Mark Hoeber, Documentation Manager, Unica Corporation

>> Click here to register

DITA for Publishers: How Publishers Can Really Do XML
March 10, 2010 | 2:00 to 3:00 PM EST
DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering information. Publishers are starting to take DITA seriously. And if they aren’t, they should be. This panel session will introduce DITA for publishers, the basic publishing-specific DITA components that are completely generic, and how DITA can really be the tool-set that launches publishers into the XML world.

In this free webinar DITA guru and contributor to the DITA specification, Eliot Kimber, senior solutions architect at Really Strategies, will present DITA for Publishers and provide details about his new community-based, open-source project: DITA For Publishers (dita4publishers.sourceforge.net).
>> Click here to register

How RSuite Helped The MIT Press Transform Its Publishing Operation
April 7, 2010 | 2:00 to 3:00 PM EST
The MIT Press publishes approximately 200 new books a year and over 40 journals. MIT Press has a major publishing presence in fields as diverse as architecture, social theory, economics, cognitive science, and computational science, as well as a long-term commitment to both design excellence and the efficient and creative use of new technologies. To maximize content re-use and to overhaul its entire publishing division, the MIT Press outlined a CMS strategy to lead its books and journals division into the new decade. RSuite along with complementary technologies were selected as the solution at MIT Press.
>> Click here to register

What's your biggest roadblock to purchasing a CMS?

We ran a poll on LinkedIn last week to see what people are reporting as their biggest challenges to purchasing a CMS. The biggest roadblock according to our pollsters, is that their is no quantifiable return on investment. 

I am going to restrain myself from turning this blog post into a sales pitch so I'll just add....interesting. Very interesting. 

Can any readers of this blog report on CMS and ROI?

Waiting in [the virtual] line for your eBook

Simon and Schuster and Hachette recently announced that their eBook offering will only be available after the hardcover book has been on the market but prior to the paperback hitting book stores.  The Wall Street Journal reported on this recently and the article can be found here.

Once again we have a business model that is in direct conflict with what the consumer wants. Do you remember not all that long ago the issues in the music industry around buying a single song versus an entire album on-line?  This smells suspiciously similar and the consumer is the one losing out.

I completely understand the challenges publishers face regarding the price disparity between hardcover and electronic formats, but postponing the inevitable is not a customer focused organization.  Why not embrace the new business model and become the best eBook publisher?  That is easier said than done when an entire industry is setup for publishing and distribution of a physical book.

It remains to be seen the next step in this business model, but for now, get in the virtual line and wait your turn to purchase that eBook.

Liber Novus

The Red Book by Carl Gustav Jung

W.W. Norton just published this legendary text in late October and what an endeavor it was.

Check out the prepress work involved with this publication by clicking here.

SharePoint: When did free begin to cost so much?

I ran across an interesting blog post by Stephen Arnold who is a longtime industry analyst and consultant that spells out the hidden costs of a SharePoint implementation.  The post is here.  While free always looks better than paying for software, I think Stephen hits the spot with his assessment.  A free software framework such as SharePoint is great if you plan to keep requirements very simplistic.  As we all know from our own experiences with implementing content management, that is easier said than done.  If you have more complex requirements, maybe a packaged solution such as RSuite makes sense.  Your company's approach to projects, culture to build versus buy, and several other factors need to be considered before selecting a technology and embarking on a content management project.  Whatever approach you take, just be cognizant of hidden costs as Arnold pointed out.  Free software does not always mean it will be cheap to implement and maintain in the long run.

2009 RSuite User Conference: In the books

By all accounts the 2009 RSuite User Conference held last week in Philly was a success. We were fortunate to have over 125 guests attend this year which included three tracks (business, technical, and DocZone).

Opening Keynote (After You Implement a CMS). Howard Ratner, CTO Nature Publishing Group is a great keynote speaker. Not only does he provoke thought around content management, but he definitely challenges the status quo. Many thanks to Howard for starting the day with a stimulating presentation.

Technically Speaking. The RSuite technical track highlighted the open architecture, workflow, transformation utilities, user interface extensions, reports, and custom searches. I’m sure by the end of the day the folks in the technical track were raising their hands saying “can I leave now, my brain if full!” The engineering team mixed up the presentations with live demonstrations which I think helped solidify the concepts being presented.

Honest Client Presentations. Presentations that puff up vendors drive me crazy. I am happy to report that the client presentations in the business track were straight forward and did not beat around the bush. Some of our RSuite projects were hard, very hard, but we successfully completed them and our clients would not be in front of the audience if they did not believe in the product or our company. Many thanks to Cengage Learning, Kaplan Eduneering, MIT Press, CQ Press, and The American Society for Training & Development for sharing their success stories.

So much to see, so little time. I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of people jump between different client case studies, technical sessions and DocZone sessions.

DocZone’s First Meeting. Our DocZone team pulled off a great first user conference meeting. The client case studies from Unica Corporation, Kyocera, and Epson were very well received, and the roundtable discussion on DocZone DITA provided a look under the hood of how DocZone manages content.

Closing Keynote (The New Speed of Publishing). Jason Monberg, VP of Product Management for Mark Logic provided the audience with one large dilemma: The gap between content contributor and content consumer is shrinking very fast – so what are you going to do as a publisher? Talk about feeling the pressure? Jason was spot on with his presentation and I think provided some good topics for the cocktail hour. A big thank you to Jason.

Thanks to all of those who attended and we’ll see everyone in 2010!

For those of us with indigestion

Check out Daniel Gross' (from Slate) commentary about the closing of Gourmet [link]:

The media investment bank Veronis Suhler forecasts that magazine ad revenues will stabilize in 2013 at $9.8 billion. That's about 25 percent below the 2008 level, but it should be enough to sustain lots of magazines. If I'm wrong, I may have to eat my words. And I'll be doubly sad because I won't have Gourmet to tell me what wine goes best with them.

Also, Gawker created a collage of dead magazines. I'm still unsettled that Gourmet is among them (and just before the Thanksgiving issue too!).

Content management is not a project

Although many good and insightful comments were made yesterday at the RSuite User Conference, one comment really stood out for me.  Lisa Bos made the statement that content management is not a project.  It is how you do business.

The point here is that it is a mistake to approach installing a content management system as another project with a beginning and end date on your project plan. Although obviously there is an effort to get a system installed and up and running, it really shouldn’t “end.”  Your business grows.  Your business changes.  And since your business is content, the systems that support it need to change and adapt.

Birthing Books

Even when I was in the thick of it as a production, developmental, and managing editor, I always thought that 9 months (or longer) to produce a book was simply too long. Yes, I do understand the work involved but when one considers that human gestation and book production are about the same, it seems like an outrageously long time for a book. Don't you agree?

Thus, it will be interesting to watch Tina Brown's latest venture: Beast Books.

"In a joint venture with Perseus Books Group, The Daily Beast is forming a new imprint, Beast Books, that will focus on publishing timely titles by Daily Beast writers — first as e-books, and then as paperbacks on a much shorter schedule than traditional books."

Read the whole story here.

Jason Monberg, VP, Product Management from Mark Logic to give closing keynote at RSuite User Conference

Jason Monberg, Vice President of Product Management, from Mark Logic will be the closing keynote speaker at our upcoming RSuite User Conference on Tuesday, October 6^th in Philadelphia.  Jason is well known in the software industry as an innovator and strategic thinker.  The title of his presentation is The New Speed of Publishing - description here.  I think Jason’s topic is timely in our current climate and he will definitely stimulate conversation going into the cocktail reception.  I hope you can join us and enjoy Jason's presentation.  To register, go here.