GIIS 2008: Day 2

Day two of the Global Information Industry Summit (GIIS) was just as informative as the first day.

The morning keynote speaker was Colin Hughes, Managing Director of The Guardian Professional.  After giving the audience a brief history of the paper, Colin described how “newspapers are simply unprofitable.”

Print is in decline.  As it’s replaced by Internet business, revenue is not expected to reach the levels that it had been in print.  Guardian Professional was created to help fill that gap.

Created in 2006, Guardian Professional brought together capabilities that had been dispersed through out the organization into a focused effort to reach professionals.  The business has grown from 7.5M GBP to 23M GBP and is expected to reach 50-70M GBP in the next five years.  The goal is for Guardian Professional to account for 25% of total Guardian revenue.

The main point of Colin’s presentation was that opportunities to expand are present but they may not be where we’ve traditionally expected them to be.

Following were three panels covering the content markets in India, Eastern Europe, and China.

Amit Mehra from Thomson Reuters described how he was sending weather and price related content in text messages to farmers in India.  This information has been helping them manage their crops and maximize their income.

Rolv Eide from Wolters Kluwer and Joachim Bartels of Intrepid Explorers presented their views of the requirements for doing business in Eastern Europe and China, respectively.

The last panel before lunch entertained the question “What happens when digital natives grow up to be knowledge workers?”

Abhirama Krishna, Global Business Director of the Satyam School of Leadership showed how Satyam has incorporated tools and principles into the curriculum aimed at “the Google generation.”

David Nicholas, Director, School of Library Archive and Information Studies (SLAIS) at University College London presented a study the College had done over the last year on “the digital fingerprints” left behind by digital natives browsing the Internet.

They found that:
•    40% of people visiting a website don’t come back
•    Half of all visitors view only 1-3 pages
•    They flick, scan, and spend little time evaluating information

What was the most interesting finding?

Everyone has these characteristics.  In fact, “the older folk” are getting even better at skimming, bouncing, and viewing than the kids.

As a result of having been naturalized to the digital world, adults have the mind maps and context necessary to evaluate the information they find.

The Monetization of Search and a discussion of Waterfall to Agile development methodologies followed lunch.

Dave Kellogg, CEO of Mark Logic, did an excellent job moderating the agile methodologies panel that included Isaac Sacolick, VP of Technology at BusinessWeek.com and Elizabeth Psihos, VP of Technology at Thomson Reuters.  What struck me was that in very different cultures, Isaac and Elizabeth ran into some of the same adoption issues: flexibility, trust, and changing roles of IT staff.

The day ended with a keynote by Pierre Louette, CEO of Agence France Presse.  I loved how he described the role of the reporter as “the Swiss Knife of journalism” meaning they have to do it all.

All in all it was an informative, productive, and fun time for everyone.

See you next year!

Comments

[Sugiarto Setiabudi]

Newspapers,cybermedia are unprofitable due to misconception of colloborating in news agency.
Collaborating in media just make media no more than advertisement rather than news.

[Dave Kellogg]

Great posts summarizing the show and thanks for the kind words on my panel.

I liked how you found the right level of summarization of detail that I failed to find ... and subsequently ended up not posting about the show myself.

Great work!