Heidi Allen Digital Strategy

Attending a conference with Nic Lucas (@Webutaries) resulted in an impromptu video interview on how I use Twitter for research.

Medialoper published an excellent article written by Kirk Biglione “Traditional Publishers Crash (and Burn at) SXSW”

It has made me so cross I have changed my blog theme to Red for the duration until I simmer down. Kirk is right in everything he writes – what a wasted opportunity.

To the panel: Well done for displaying your profound love of books. Right. We love books. Yes we’ve got that. We all do. Even those of us who don’t love books. Now what? There is so much to talk about, so many new things going on and you had a roomful of people who were there and had something to say — maybe because of the very fact they do love books. Must this industry persist in bemoaning its state and navel gazing.

Here’s how the session was advertised

It’s about how participatory culture and the online world interact with good olde book publishing…. Audience members are invited to speak up about what they think book publishers could/should be doing to better provide relevant information and content to blogs, websites, and online communities. Come tell old media what you want and how you want it.

Thankfully there were people on twitter covering the sessions — a phrase which I presume came from the panel kept reoccurring in the twitter stream “Publishing has never been in my lifetime in such a powerless state as it is now.”

Rubbish. There is so much opportunity at the moment we’re swimming in it.

Yes, I agree. Completely unfair of me to judge. I wasn’t there. Still doesn’t take away from the fact that I’m Cross.

Please can I have an invite to the panel next time.

Postscript 20th March: check out Linda Moore’s post “New Think For Old Publishing” on this subject

Blog design at the time of writing: Red, two column, Nikynik Red theme

In considering strategies and moves to social learning for want of a better way of saying it, I have become evangelistic in my presentations… “look at what you can learn, see, do, post, share, here, there…”

and then I slow down and hope I can take my audience with me, that they will get to touch the fluidly defined online space I can See. That I’m Part Of.

Enthused, after my second presentation on where we can take learning and content –the response…:

“some of your plans are quite developed” (why thank you)

“some are highly speculative — social networking delivery” (“Not So” I politely rage). This tells me the messenger (me) is not being clear in her message.

The conversation descends into one revolving around online content: what to create, how, writing style, text design, end of chapter questions v testing… which misses the point completely.

Back to the drawing board, and Twitter.

Blog design at the time of writing: blue, three column, CognoBlue theme

Having had a few interesting skirmishes with new software recently, this seemed very apt.

The way I work, research, and meet people has changed radically over the last few months, except that in principle it is the same as I have been doing since I learned to walk. It goes like this: I have some information, I share it, I get some back, I rate it, and depending on whether I like it or not I decide whether the relationship continues. Through this I build my network whether I’m in the school playground or building it on the internet.

In Darwinian terms we want to optimize what we do for the most gain (see an excellent post on this by @Precordialthump, ‘Nothing in Medicine Makes Sense… ) and what we can now do on the web has enabled this to be fast and powerful.

In this case we are optimizing gain by building our social/professional networks (and the boundaries are hard to define) by offering information to our peer group in the hope that what we have to offer is rated, and we get something back, whether friendship, knowledge, or products.

Sites we use to do this provide us with information feeds and sharing facilities — GoogleReader, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Diigo… They allow us to rationalize what we find and importantly enable us to share it. Sites like Twitter give us scope to rapidly pass on information and interact with people — it is the two together that make sites like Twitter a powerful tool. If people like what they read they become more interested in who we are and what we have to say.

It’s Darwin on the Internet.

In my world of health profession publishing, before information sharing sites like GoogleReader, Twitter or Digg were around, people may have become well regarded through publishing their research in books and papers or presenting at conferences. Now you can do the same thing through blogs and make it known through social networking sites. Increased reputation leads to recognition and people wanting what you have to offer (whether knowledge or actual products).

One of the implications for publishing houses is that this circle of networking and sharing information can now be done independently. Making our information inaccessible, or pay per view, or subscription only, immediately locks us out of this information and social network circle. It is like attending a conference as an exhibitor, displaying our wares, but not being allowed into the sessions. We are excluding ourselves by locking up our content.

I love this tweet from Jemima Kiss of the Guardian Newspaper:

“Clicked on link + page asks for subscription = close page + go to another site. Conclusion: Not good business model.”

Simply pushing products does not bring nearly the same return as building a relevant and meaningful network by interacting, connecting and adding to people’s knowledge and there are many ways that we can. Personally I hope that I can continue to learn from and contribute to this circle of knowledge, it is rewarding and fulfilling.

I’ll finish with one of my favourite tweets of the moment by Ves Dimov M.D. (@AllergyNotes)

“Multitasking: Checking Google Reader feeds, posting interesting links on Twitter, listening to Robert Plant on YouTube”

Tweeted 10 January 2009. That’s it in a nutshell.