{"id":787,"date":"2010-06-08T12:32:03","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T11:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/?p=787"},"modified":"2010-06-08T12:56:33","modified_gmt":"2010-06-08T11:56:33","slug":"sort-session-3-if-you-love-your-content-set-it-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2010\/06\/sort-session-3-if-you-love-your-content-set-it-free\/","title":{"rendered":"SORT Session 3 &#8211; If you love your content, set it free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This session by Mike Ellis from Eduserv. Know&#8217;s nothing about libraries and archives, but worked in Museums. Slides will be on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/dmje\">http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/dmje<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mike going to try to get through lots of slides&#8230; (this is going to be a challenge then!)<\/p>\n<p>Mike starts with 3 thoughts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What value and free mean in a web world<\/li>\n<li>how the network has changed us<\/li>\n<li>what to do about it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What does &#8216;value&#8217; mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In this particular context value equates to scarcity &#8211; the more scarce something is, the more valuable it is &#8211; although we need to consider context (diamonds not valuable when you are dying from thirst)<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Theory of Marginal Utility&#8217; &#8211; any particular unit becomes worth less as the availability increases<\/p>\n<p>Scarcity is OK until content arrives on the web when you get:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>radically less cost for distribution &#8211; e.g. newspapers, music<\/li>\n<li>nearly ubiquitous piracy opportunities &#8211; so easy it becomes invisible (even to those doing it) &#8211; The scarcity model starts to fail &#8211; issue becomes one of usability rather than scarcity.<\/li>\n<li>Users with hugely different expectations. move away from &#8216;ownership&#8217; to define ourselves &#8211; more about emotional attachment (see piece by Martin Weller).\u00a0&#8216;Users&#8217; are changing &#8211; lazy, fickle, mobile, search-focused and expecting free<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>These 3 things are relatively well understood but very radical.<\/p>\n<p>What should we do?<\/p>\n<p>1. recognise that this isn&#8217;t just a &#8216;blip&#8217; &#8211; this is not going away. Many old business models and practices simply don&#8217;t work any more &#8211; and will never work again. Others may work, but will need to change to fit into the new world.<\/p>\n<p>2. notice that &#8216;value&#8217; hasn&#8217;t disappeared, but just shifted somewhere else. Examples of Paulo Coelho and Lady Gaga &#8211; both saying they are happy to see people using their content for free &#8211; Paulo Coelho was essentially about marketing leading to increased sales. For Lady Gaga touring is where the money is [my comment &#8211; not sure that this reflects the experience of most musicians? &#8211; perhaps there just isn&#8217;t money in being an artist?]<\/p>\n<p>For example &#8211; Chegg.com &#8211; textbook rentals via the web<\/p>\n<p>3. things that can&#8217;t be copied are things that get value<\/p>\n<p>Things like trust, authenticity, immediacy is where value lies. e.g. you can give away software but sell support\/expertise<\/p>\n<p>4. your content is like a teenager<\/p>\n<p>If your content is on the web, it is out of your control. The only thing you can do is trust that it will return in the morning \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>5. If you can&#8217;t re-use it, you&#8217;ve wasted it<\/p>\n<p>Possible to increase value by enabling re-use &#8211; it costs you to produce this data, so why not get best value. And once it is on the web, people will scrape it &#8211; you just make this more difficult<\/p>\n<p>6. this is about content and user experience &#8211; not about technology<\/p>\n<p>HE institutions are simply not close to being user-centric enough<\/p>\n<p>7. the future is uncertain &#8211; open stuff helps with uncertainty. We can focus on content not on how it is held or building restrictive distribution systems<\/p>\n<p>8. it doesn&#8217;t really matter how you do it (make data open)<\/p>\n<p>Do what you can &#8211; dont&#8217; worry about how &#8211; as long as done in loosely copuple way<\/p>\n<p>9. recognise it is about eyeballs<\/p>\n<p>The web is only one mechanism for access &#8211; 75% of traffic to twitter is via API &#8211; this means people are accessing through a huge variety of ways &#8211; widgets, iPhone apps, clients etc.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Losers wish for scarcity. Winners leverage scale&#8221; &#8211; Ian Rogers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This session by Mike Ellis from Eduserv. Know&#8217;s nothing about libraries and archives, but worked in Museums. Slides will be on http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/dmje Mike going to try to get through lots of slides&#8230; (this is going to be a challenge then!) Mike starts with 3 thoughts: What value and free mean in a web world how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-sort2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":793,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions\/793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}