Report from the Semantico Digital Publishing Symposium on Publishing and the Social Web – Part Two
Disruption is happening unevenly across publishing. Where the commercial threat is most intense is also where we see the greatest ferment of evolutionary change in online business models. Winners and losers are not always easy to spot yet among the general fallout, but a clear message emerges: innovate or die.
This was one of the key findings of the second Semantico Symposium, held recently in London to discuss the impact of social media on publishers and information providers. An invited audience of publishing industry leaders debated the issues under Chatham House rules, covering the following three themes:
- Trends and drivers
- Disruptive effects
- Strategy options
It was a stimulating event with a high calibre guest list, delegates attending from organisations including Bloomsbury, CABI, CourseSmart, Harper Collins, Informa, ITHAKA and the Royal Society of Chemistry. To do justice to the discussion, we’re reporting it over three blog posts. This post is on the theme of
disruptive effects.
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As the leading developer of access management systems for digital publishing, we were naturally intrigued by IBM’s prediction before Christmas: ‘You will never need a password again‘. This is one of the five predictions IBM made about ‘innovations that will change the way we live, work and play in the next five years’. Biometric data, it seems, will not only tighten up security online but also massively simplify the business of authenticating your identity, something we all have to do wearyingly often nowadays.
‘Over the next five years, your unique biological identity and biometric data – facial definitions, iris scans, voice files, even your DNA – will become the key to safeguarding your personal identity and information and replace the current user ID and password system.’
Five years really isn’t all that long a time. So, should we at Semantico retool all our client sites for the coming change and rewrite our software accordingly? It may surprise you to learn that we didn’t hire in some extra developers to start working on the task over Christmas.
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On Mount Kyllini the Publishing Gods were in filthy moods. Sales were down, bookshops were closing and worse, they’d been called together to consider a membership application.
‘What’s the applicant’s name?’ asked the God of Hardback, unable to hide his boredom.
The Goddess of Paperback leaned back in her chair, causing her spine to crack noisily. ‘The form says eBook.’