Content Matters

Since we were livetwitting NetGain, I didn't live-blog it. Here are some of my thoughts post-conference.

NetGain was the first effort by the SIIA to bring together its Software and Content divisions. The SIIA was formed through the merger of the Software Publisher's Association and the Information Industry Association in 1999. So, it was about time to actually let the members of both divisions come together for an event.

The dual audience made for some challenges but clearly benefited the conference as a whole. One key challenge was how to level-set the audience for a given topic. For example, in the Platforms panel which I sat on, we knew that the software division members would have a strong understanding of platforms, while many from the content division would not. We decided to target our discussion at the content side, though at times the discussion clearly veered too far to the technical.

The major themes of the conference were centered around SaaS, Platforms and cloud computing. One interesting twist was that while the tech companies are typically ahead of content businesses in adoption of technology, on the business model side, SaaS may be new to software, but the ASP subscription model is old hat to the publishers. Of course, what's new to that model is the use of open APIs, as opposed to the walled garden ASP models of the traditional publishing market.

The other change to the program this year was the inclusion of Previews, an event that has run as part of the Information Industry Summit the past two years. The Previews event showcased ten emerging content and technology companies. While the New York previews was held as a stand-alone half-day event, at NetGain, Previews sessions were interspersed through the main program. I found that I prefer the dedicated Previews event, but integrating it into the main program provided stronger attendance.

I thought that the best speakers over the two days were Matt Glotzbatch, Product Management Director for Google Enterprise, Sphere CEO Tony Conrad and Webb Shaw of JJ Keller. Barry Bealer ran a compelling session on emerging business models. Clay Shirky was entertaining, though for people who are close to the Web 2.0 world, there was not a lot of new ground covered.

Among the Previews companies, I thought the stars were SlideRocket, which provide a SaaS presentation tool that supports rich media and community, Zuora, a SaaS billing and entitlement solution for complex subscription models, founded by ex-Salesforce.com execs, and ReachForce, a lead generation data service.

Tuesday night wrapped up with the 23rd annual CODiE Awards. For the first time, this year, the SIIA included a CODiE showcase where about a third of the nominated companies presented their capabilities. Congratulations to all of the CODiE Award winners (including Alacra Book).

Were you at NetGain? What did you think? Please put your thoughts in the comments.

PS - Regarding our efforts at LiveTwitting, I think the results were mixed. You can view all of the tweets here. The Newstex team was kind enough to stitch the tweets together into a single RSS feed here. It's clear that the short-form communications are good for sharing quick snippets or quotes but, as John Blossom pointed out, the instant nature of twitter makes it hard to distill your thoughts into a comprehensive analysis. Pithy is good for some things but not all.

Am at SIIA NetGain.
Rather than live-blogging it, we're trying to livetwit it.
As with any new technology, some hiccups, particularly as we learn that it seems to be case-sensitive.

Can follow the posts at http://livetwitting.com/events.html

For more info, take a look at this earlier post.