http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Bill-Pollak-is-excolleague-CEO-3166137.S.82764844?view=&srchtype=discussedNews&gid=3166137&item=82764844&type=member&trk=eml-anet_dig-b_mc-pmr-cn&ut=0u1cJuTXtoHl01

A small part of the discussion actually involves whether Media Briefing is right to use LinkedIn for commenting, or whether it would be better off having comments on its own site.  The question, of course, is whether using LinkedIn as a platform does more to help them than it does to help build Media Briefing's own brand.

It's a relevant question for ALM, where we seem to be aggressively starting new LinkedIn groups around our national and local brands, and marketers and, occasionally, editors are using those groups to encourage dialogue.  My sense is that most readers do not want to have to login to multiple social media sites and remember the rules for each one - that it is simply more convenient to use LinkedIn (or Facebook or Twitter) as a platform for comments rather than have to develop our own.  But it is a big question in the media world as to who really benefits from the transaction.

"Sookie Williams, the DBR's vice president of Miami-Dade legal & court relations, was named a Legal Legend by  HistoryMiami's 11^th Judicial Circuit Historical Society (see attached). In introducing Sookie, the MC said: "Our next honoree has graced the corridors of the  Daily Business Review for let's just say quite some time. She created the newspaper's Court Pages, ensuring up-to-date court directories, emergency judge contact information and bench and bar notices are published daily. She serves as a liaison with the state and federal judiciary and Miami-Dade's state and federal clerks of court and county Bar associations, and more importantly, is the finest ballroom dancer I have ever seen, the incomparable Ms. Sookie Williams.

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2604855193147&saved

Congratulations to Sookie on this well-deserved recognition.

As ALM Media recently announced, I'll be stepping down as President/CEO in the next few months.  Fourteen years is a long time in one position - here are some of the things I've been thinking about as I exit one B2B media business and start looking for my next challenge.

1.        Our major strength in B2B media is the knowledge we have about our audience, and that's where our primary investments need to be.  Smart industry players are investing heavily in their market databases, capturing not just traditional name/title/contact information, but going much deeper into behavioral characteristics (the content an individual customer reads most avidly on our websites, for instance) and purchasing power.  That data will be incredibly valuable in building more and more sophisticated lead generation and "marketing services" offerings for our advertisers.  Internally, it will influence the editing and product development process of those media companies with the sophistication to make good use of that data.  From an investment perspective, the depth and quality of one's market database will become a key asset in valuing a business for potential buyers.  Building that asset takes both upfront investment as well as a commitment to ongoing maintenance.

2.       Content - independently created and trusted by our audiences - is another major asset for most B2B media businesses.  But I wonder if we are investing enough in developing unique, valuable, proprietary content - the kind that differentiates our publications and websites from others in our markets.  And the kind of content that users may actually pay for because it uniquely meets a need or helps them solve a problem.

3.       How do we know if our products meet the needs of our customers or help them solve a problem?  By doing marketing research to find out.  Yes, I know that we hire editors who are supposed to "know" their markets.  And I know that renewal rates and "returning unique visitors" are measures which give some indication of reader satisfaction with our offerings.  But to really make the move to paid content and workflow tools we need to nurture a much deeper understanding about our customers' wants, needs and desires.  We need to know their pain points and how the products we create might address them.  We need to know what our customers were doing 5 minutes before they accessed our product, and what they will be doing 5 minutes after they leave us.  Before we invest money and time in developing new products, we need to invest much more than most of us have in marketing research.

4.       I like the idea of virtual conferences and agree that they have a place in the array of lead generation tools that we should offer our advertisers.  But I am completely convinced that no virtual event will ever replace live, face-to-face conferences and exhibitions.  The networking and rubbing shoulders that goes on among participants at live meetings - during the breaks, in the hallways, at the cocktail receptions - cannot be disintermediated by clever software and virtual environments.

5.       B2B media folks love to talk about the power of our brands.  It is our brands, we argue, that give us the ability to launch new products and provide a bulwark against competitors who might sneak into our territory.  But how many of our companies really invest in Branding - creating campaigns that promote a brand and are not about driving subscriptions or registrations or product sales or conference attendance?  How many of us stop to ask about the nature of our Brand Promises, and then develop campaigns around the idea of promoting those Brand Promises to current and potential audiences, including both readers/users and advertisers?  We lament that our advertisers have pulled back on brand advertising in favor of lead generation or some variant on pay-per-click, but we do much the same.  Maybe it's time for B2B media to invest in our brands.

6.       We now live in a world of Big Data, and most of us are ill-prepared for it.  We are awash in internally generated data from our websites, CRMs and financial systems that can be used to drive pricing, product development, sales force management and other decisions.  And externally, with more-and-more data being captured and made available publicly, there is a real opportunity to create value for our audiences, but only if that data can be organized and packaged.  Unfortunately, our journalists and business analysts are largely untrained in the art and science of building big databases, interpreting web metrics, understanding online subscriber usage models, etc.  And, as recently reported by Chuck Richard at Outsell, it is becoming increasingly difficult to hire and retain data analysts who can help us with all the information now available.  So we can either ignore Big Data (a bad idea) or start training our existing staff in how to use it.  I vote for the latter, and we'd better start soon.

7.       Finally, when it comes to transforming print businesses into digital ones, or launching user paid information or workflow products, or any other kind of transformation that most B2B executives know they need to make, success rests almost exclusively on the people we put in charge of making change happen.  We can have great strategic plans and bankable financial forecasts, but in the end our success rests with those we recruit and empower to turn our ideas into reality.  Yes, technology is important.  But on its own technology cannot transform our businesses.  Only the people we put in charge can do that.

Last week, Texas Lawyer reporter Angela Morris reported on Sean Pevsner, who recently passed the Texas bar exam. Sean is a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy who uses interpreters to communicate.

 As you can see from Angela's piece pasted below, Sean is truly inspirational -- so much so that Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson read part of Angela's article out loud at the Nov. 14 Austin swearing-in ceremony for new lawyers. Sean received a standing ovation from the entire audience, which you can see on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQiA-5LS-WQ&feature=youtu.be

In addition to being a great honor for Sean, it was an honor for Angela and Texas Lawyer to be mentioned by the chief justice in front of all of these new attorneys. I just wanted to pass it on.

Colleen 

 An Inspiring New Texas Lawyer

By Angela Morris

Texas Lawyer

11-14-2011

 Like every law graduate, Sean Pevsner was elated to learn on Nov. 3 that he passed the Texas bar exam. But the new lawyer and University of Texas School of Law graduate already has shown his tenacity when accomplishing difficult tasks: Pevsner is a quadriplegic who uses a wheelchair maneuvered by head movements. He says through an interpreter that he has "severe" cerebral palsy; he uses interpreters or a specialized computer to communicate.

 In 1998, he earned his bachelor's degree in Greek and Latin from the University of Texas at Austin. At the UT law school, assistants helped him prepare for classes and interpreted his questions, he writes in an email. He had additional time to complete exams, and his friend and interpreter traveled to Austin from Chicago to take dictation for his exams, Pevsner writes.

 Pevsner writes that he took the bar exam before but he didn't have "the accommodations and resources in place to prepare for and take the bar exam effectively." In July, however, he successfully took the exam over eight days while using three interpreters.

 Pevsner will be sworn in Nov. 14. He writes that he plans to open a solo practice in Austin to represent disabled people with educational- and employment-related matters.

 "People did not believe I could even make it through the bar exam, much less pass it," Pevsner says. "I hope that my passing the bar sends the message to others that they can do anything they set their minds to."

By the way, I noticed that one of the news reports about my decision to leave characterized it as a "retirement" -- hah!  Believe me, I have every intention of rejoining the workforce -- although boosting the "# of days spent on ski slopes per winter" metric is very high on my priority list.  If you need me in February, just check the snow report for ski areas located west of the Mississippi. I'll be at one of them.

In the meantime, there are plenty of issues bubbling around ALM and the media generally, and I'll use my transition time to address as many as I can.  I've been sitting on a list of topics -- from what it means to be in the era of "Big Data" to the trajectory of health care insurance coverage -- so I think there will be plenty to share.

I started this blog as a way to communicate internally -- to help make ALM's management a little bit more transparent.  I hoped, as well, that it would create space for more back-and-forth dialogue among ALM staffers, a dream not quite realized as people tend to be shy about commenting, particularly when they need to do so without being anonymous.  That's okay, I think it was still worth doing.  I notice that Jeff Whittle, our CTO, has just started an internal blog for the IT and Digital Media Group staff -- I hope he has more success generating dialogue and discussion among his audience.

No goodbyes yet.  Plenty to do.  And an exciting future to start planning for.

Obviously, the single thing we can all do to keep our insurance cost down is to live healthier lives.  We know we need insurance for catatrosphic events -- that's what its for.  But doing things which reduce the chances of our getting cancer or heart disease or diabetes -- diseases which in many cases directly relate to our lifestyle choices -- would also cut down on healthcare costs for all of us.

Amidst the changes announced yesterday, the one I'm most pleased with is our decision to begin offering discounts to non-smokers.  The evidence that healthy living leads to lower healthcare costs is pretty compelling, and so rewarding employees (and their covered family members) who engage in healthier activities makes a lot of sense.  We'll be stepping up our support for smoking-cessation classes, so those who do smoke and want to save a lot of money (including not just the extra insurance cost but also the cost of buying those tobacco products) will have a chance to do so.  I hope all the smokers out there take full advantage of the offer.

I should note that we considered other potential discounts for activities which promote good health, but decided that we weren't quite ready yet for those.  Among those considered, probably the most important relates to weight control -- since studies show that being overweight contributes to a variety of chronic diseases including those related to high blood pressure and diabetes.  At some point in the future we may devise a system which provides a weight-control insurance discount -- in the meantime, we'll continue to offer contests and prizes outside the insurance program for those who want to voluntarily participate in walking programs and the like.

"Congratulations to Texas Lawyer Austin reporter Angela Morris who won a Dallas Bar Association Philbin Award today in the Electronic Media Category for her online article titled "E-mails Reveal Wrangling in TYLA Election."

Way to go, Angela!

What's true in baseball is also true at ALM.  I do see an almost daily movement toward gathering and using more sophisticated data to run our business.  For example, just in the last 12 months we have invested in an improved web metrics package (Omniture's Site Catalyst) to give us both wide and deep information about the users of our web sites and subscribers to our paid digital products.  And we have started using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to track and measure our advertising and product sales activities.  Recently, we began an investment in upgrading our Atex billing system which, among other things, will  provide more financial information about our advertisers.  Those are three pretty big systems (and pretty big investments) to make more data available to us as we manage our businesses.  A portion of our success in the future will depend on how well we are able to use that data to improve our financial performance and gain a competitive edge.

Chuck Richard, a senior analyst at Outsell, recently wrote about the problems being experienced at Demand Media, one of the so-called "content farms" which developed an expertise in using Google analytical data to figure out what topics were most in demand, and then paid freelancers relatively low wages to create content around those topics.  Demand's business model seems to be breaking down -- the content created by those freelancers was of relatively low quality and left many readers feeling frustrated.  Google has reacted by changing it's algorithm to push "content farm" content further down on the search list and that, in turn, has hurt Demand's ability to sell advertising against the traffic it had been generating.

Anyway, Chuck's conclusion from this story is that it takes a combination of three things to be successful on the web, and that publishers are in a good position to thrive if they get these things right:

1.  High Quality Editorial Content

2.  Powerful Relationship With Their Audience

3.  Expertise in Web Analytics

Simply being an expert in web analytics isn't enough, as Demand Media is finding -- but, at the same time, creating great content and having strong audience relationships aren't enough either.  Expertise in web analytics is necessary in order to make the most of that content and to provide one's audience with the content and services they want.

Professor James Heskitt of Harvard Business School recently published a brief article on the the movement to more data-driven business strategies, "How Will the 'Moneyball' Generation Influence Management?".  It's worth a read.  Among other things, I think it points to the skills of those we may need to employ in the future -- people who are comfortable with using the data we collect about our readers, advertisers, users, etc. in order to make decisions about product development, pricing, marketing and the like.

"State AGs Likely To Go After More Mortgage Servicers"

This is not the first time that Chris has embarked on a great adventure in order to support a worthwhile charity.  As he related recently in the AmLaw Daily, a few years ago he rapelled down the side of Hogan Lovells' London headquarters in order to benefit an organization that works to treat and prevent blindness in developing countries.  Chris is obviously a guy who takes charity work very seriously.

Normally, I don't use this blog in order to support the great charitable work by members of our staff.  But this seemed like a worthy exception.  More information about Chris's bike ride can be found here.

The Technology organization has evolved from Digital Media and IT to four groups: Digital Media, Enterprise Systems, Customer Products, and Architecture / Infrastructure.  The people leading these groups are:

·         Jill Windwer - VP, Digital Media Group

·         Jeff Whittle - acting lead, Customer Products

·         Gene Bishop - VP, Enterprise Systems

·         Shirley Chang - VP, Architecture / Infrastructure

Jill's role is essentially unchanged but she has also picked up some projects that fit into Customer Products, such as CLE.  She continues to lead the development and maintenance of all web sites and web related efforts, such as our NYLJ.com re-design, Site Catalyst implementation, Law Catalog redesign and mobile strategy.

Although we have many customer-facing products, I am focused on just one product, Smart Litigator, with a new platform and a new Agile approach for delivering customer products.  Other customer products are being overseen by Gene Bishop or Jill Windwer, so in effect we are jointly managing the Customer Product area.

Gene's role has morphed to allow him to focus more on the systems that we rely on to run our company, and one very large project, the new Atex advertising management system.  Gene is responsible for systems such as CRM on Demand, the Market Database (MDB), MultiPub, Sunbelt, K4 for publication process support, Adobe Creative Suite (CS) and more as well as applications that support them, such as dbReg, Fatwire, and MarkLogic.   Some of these, such as K4 and Adobe CS, are being upgraded in the next year which is also a significant effort.  Many of these systems have interfaces to each other and provide support for the things Digital Media and Customer Products create.  Gene will also continue leading our  Capital Expenditure planning.

To allow Gene to focus on our enterprise systems and coordination with other groups, infrastructure now reports to Shirley Chang, who joined ALM this past month.  We have improvements we need or want to make to our infrastructure that must happen concurrently with some significant changes in enterprise systems, and this requires more management than one person can do. 

Shirley's role is to progress us towards an infrastructure that will have up time of 99.999%.  In the next year we are redesigning and re-structuring our telecommunications network to ensure it is cost effective and meets our disaster recovery and business continuity needs.  We will define a high-availability architecture which includes data replication, hardware and software server failover, disaster recovery, and business continuity based on business requirements.   Shirley's responsibility for architecture means she is also responsible for the technical intersection of Digital Media, Enterprise Systems, and Customer Products with our infrastructure.

Should you have any questions about responsibilities within Technology, please contact me.

-          Jeff