Kind of a depressing way to look at trends in the future of publishing…but still some interesting if not completely new stuff. Ned May, Director and Analyst at Outsell, discusses trends in B2B publishing (which is also relevant to B2C publishing, I think).
What You Can Do
Develop political will: print advertising on the decline; strong growth in online; net revenue change for electronic +25 billlion worldwide;
Outline your landscape of change: new methods of delivering info (rss, blogs, tagging blah blah);
B2B networks: Professional Networks (LinkedIn, Xing, Ryze, Spoke, Doostang). Doostang is a closed network that is invitation only…is this a good model? Xing is European with country specific, language specific sites.
Expert networks: specific need, specific expertise (UpToDate, intota, Alm Experts, LECG)
Crowdsourcing: Wikipedia, Innocentive, IdeaCONNECTION (where intercaps evolve)
Knowledge sharing: CR4, Sermo, ITtoolbox
Get agile: Learn from user experience (fail faster); adaptable content and technology architecture; acknowledge possibility of staffing changes though maybe retraining is possible if right mindset is there
