BBC
The speaker from the BBC (Simon Delafond I think) is talking about some BBC initiatives – starting with Memory Share which tried to capture the experiences of people at a specific moment in time (http://www.bbc.co.uk/memoryshare/).
The BBC is now working on a new project with the SCA called ‘CenturyShare’ which from what I understood is meant to synthesise content from a vareity of providers – but the talk was so brief I almost missed it!
Ithaka
Itaka is a US (New York) based organisation, which is briefed to promote innovative uses of information technology to advance higher education worldwide. They do this via
- Strategic services, acting as a incubator for projects
- Research
- Shared administrative services for affiliate organizations
Overall, trying to play a similar role to that played by Venture Capitalists in the for-profit sector.
Ithaka observes that many scholarly digital project keep returning to funding agencies for additional grants to support core operations, but this limits the funds available to support new initiatives, so Ithaka wanted to address the question:
How can digital scholarly projects develop sustainability plans that will allow them to thrive over time?
Ithaka has published a paper on this, available at http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/2008/04/10/report-sustainability-and-revenue-models-for-online-academic-resources/ – which they would very much appreciate comments on.
This is very interesting, as it is a common criticism of JISC that the projects its funds never lead to concrete developments or services, and it is something that needs looking at – all too often a project leads to a report, and possible some interesting outcomes, but often this is as far as it goes.
Ithaka believes that we need to:
Engage in rapid cycles of innovation – including business model innovation
For example, the Guardian (guardian.co.uk). Mentioning the difference between the main Guardian office, and the ‘Guardian Professional’ (http://www.guardianprofessional.co.uk/) offices which reflect the difference in culture and approach. A key point is that Guardian Professional was tasked with setting up projects, but with a clear idea that some projects would be axed – and had clear criteria for axing projects. This allowed them to be ahead of the curve.
Seek economies of scale
The example of Time Inc.
Time Inc. decided that with a handful of flagship titles they would not allow magazines to have their own platform/space on the web. Time Inc. believes this has allowed them to capture more audience share, with a single strategy.
This is a big challenge to the academic sector
Understand your unique value to the user
The example of the Economist.com
Libraries are much more likely to say ‘we have this great special collection we’d like to digitise’, rather than ask their ‘customers’ what they want and follow this – don’t tend to do market research.
The Economist found that Economist readers regarded as reading the magazine as a ritual – something that they did each week in a period of time. This is interesting, as it reflects the way I read the Guardian – although it’s available online, I have a ritual with the paper – which order I read, when I read, and at the weekend, this is a household ritual as well as an individual one.
Implement layered revenue
All the media organisations that Ithaka spoke to have layered revenue streams (including the examples above) – there wasn’t enough time to say more about this.
Question
Q: Is the SCA trying to create a ‘cathedral’ rather than a ‘bazaar’ (using the terminology from Eric Raymond’s seminal essay)
A: SCA is focussed on delivering results in a short timescale – the Ithaka report being an example. The questionner came back suggesting SCA needs to engage more with the way users actually work – they don’t care about IPR etc., they just use content as they want. The SCA responded that they are working on two levels – both engaging with the practitioners and at the strategic policy (governmental) level.