Themes and trends in 2006/2007

On an ongoing basis, we at Really Strategies do our best to stay on top of trends and themes in the publishing industry.  We are fortunate enough to have exposure to a wide variety of publishers, not only through our client list, but also to those we talk with at conferences, in industry groups, and other settings.

But in addition to that ongoing work, at the end of every year, we find it a good time to reflect on the types of projects we have done during the past year and what we should be preparing for in the coming year.

We always do a good amount of content analysis, requirements, workflow re-engineering, technology assessments/recommendations, strategic thinking and project management work.  That is the type of stuff that everyone needs regardless of specific subjects.

But there are a few topics and themes of specific interest we saw in the past year and expect to see more in 2007.  I thought they would be interesting to share.

• Back at the end of 2005 we started to get involved in K4 integrations, especially with the K4 XML Exporter.  In 2006 we worked on projects involving the selection of editorial and production systems, K4 integrations, and the configuration and implementation of the K4 XML Exporter. We set up K4 XML implementations for around 20 publications with varying types of output (HTML, NITF, NewsML, text) and we've created some of our own baseline configuration files to implement the out-of-the box exporter.  Based on this and what our friends at MEI are seeing, we expect the trend towards the migration to and the use of Adobe tools (InCopy and InDesign) and Adobe-based editorial and production systems (such as K4) to continue heavily in 2007.


• Another trend in 2006 that we expect to continue and grow in 2007 is the integration of print and web publishing tools, operations, and workflows.  Many publishers are analyzing or experimenting with media-agnostic and/or multi-channel publishing improvements. The Adobe and K4 tools are sometimes a piece of that puzzle.


• The use of MS Word in publishing workflows is always an area of interest and that won't stop in 2007.  Mark Jacobson recently presented as part of a panel at XML 2006 and his slides are worth reading for a quick history or where we are and where we are going.  Mark also raises an important question that more publishers will need to face as both MS Word and XML Editing tools get better: will it be better to customize Word to make it a better XML editor or customize an XML editor to make it more user-friendly like Word?


• Like MS Word, the use of metadata is nothing new.  But more and more publishers are getting more serious about its use and management. Metadata holds the key for content re-use, monetization, and all those other buzzwords that have revenue associated with them.  I recently mentioned that during a presentation at XML 2006, when I asked the people in the room who has a metadata plan/strategy in place only a few hands went up.  However, when asked how many are currently working on a metadata strategy, most of the hands shot up.  Hopefully those plans will be realized in 2007.


• Unfortunately we often hear more talk about taxonomies than metadata.  I would argue that taxonomies should be one part of an overall metadata strategy.   But the term "taxonomy" is such a buzzword heavyweight that it often drowns out the bigger picture.  But even though  many publishers have created taxonomies, it appears that they are not working in a practical setting or they spent a lot of money creating one but are not using it.  We may see a trend in the re-evaluation of the taxonomy.


• Really Strategies launched RSuite in October of 2006.  More and more publishers are seeing a benefit in native XML management and the use of XQuery.  Some of them use MarkLogic Content Server for this and we know many of them have asked how they can use MarkLogic for specific content management applications.  That is what RSuite does.  Even before the product was launched, we had a great deal of interest in what is the only commercial CMS package built on top of MarkLogic Content Server.  We expect the interest in using a native XML repository and XQuery for content management to continue.  And more broadly speaking, more and more publishers will do more work with XQuery.

Note, I am not calling these "predictions" as they are really more of a reflection on what types of projects and themes we saw in the past year and what themes we expect to continue to grow in the new.  If you do want some predictions, look here or here or here.