Google and Microsoft: The Complexity Spectrum
February 12, 2009
I talked with a small group yesterday about the “big” Microsoft announcement. SharePoint administrators get an opportunity to merge SharePoint and the Fast Search & Transfer technology. You can get some useful information from ChannelWeb here. Mostly vaporware and roadmaps as of February 2009, SharePoint believers will have some to brush up on their content processing integration skills. I think the learning curve will be steep, so quit reading the addled goose’s Web log and dive into the Fast documentation. Hmm. That might be a problem. We tried to locate documentation online and could not locate the information. I had to return my three ring binders when I disengaged from my poking around inside ESP for a well known organization. Sorry, my lips are sealed on which organization. Think acronyms. Think follow the rules.
What surfaced in our discussion was a somewhat tired metaphor. A spectrum. The idea is that the ends are different. Red light waves at one end; blue light waves at the other. The diagram below shows the type of spectrum that elementary school teachers use to educate the kiddies about “light”.
For the purposes of this Web log post, one end is Google. Color Google blue. The opposite end is red. Color Microsoft red. Both companies have many similarities; for example, each is a software company; each competes in Web search; and each covets the enterprise market. Keep in mind. Search is complex. Within a complex task, the notion of a spectrum of complexity suggests that simple may be better. Less hassle. Lower cost. Easier to troubleshoot–sometimes.
One big difference is the positioning of each companies’ technology in the enterprise sector. I want to focus on the subject of behind the firewall search or what most trophy generation wizards call “enterprise search.” Google sales professionals run the game plan and make it clear that the Google Search Appliance or GSA is simple. The system is easy to deploy. Unpack the shipping container, plug in the gizmo, zoom through the administrative screens, and employees can search the processed content. No muss. No fuss. Let the GOOG do the work.
On the other end of the spectrum is Microsoft’s approach to “enterprise search.” For me, the Microsoft search product line is hard for me to understand. There are a couple of versions of search available for SharePoint. One if free; the other comes with an Office server. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced two or three different “versions” of Fast Search & Transfer information retrieval technology. I thought there was the ESP or enterprise search platform and the orphaned Fast Web search. I may have Microsoft’s reality clouded with what I recall Fast Search professionals telling me in the pre buy out era.
Microsoft Fast: An Integration Roadmap without Google Maps
February 11, 2009
Fast Forward 09’s “big” announcement is history. I have had a couple of calls and a few emails about the bundling of Fast Search & Transfer’s Enterprise Search Platform with SharePoint. You can read Todd Bishop’s review of some of the history or deal and some azure chip consultant market projections here. His article has attracted some comments. I flicked through these and found two of interest.
The first is the article in All about Microsoft here. Mary-Jo Foley’s “Microsoft Updates Its Enterprise Search Roadmap” is well named. The “big” news is not a product that one can use right now. The “big” news is a roadmap. For me the most interesting part of her column was this comment:
Fast’s technology soups up the enterprise search capabilities that are part of SharePoint Server. Fast adds more sophisticated user-interface elements, like thumbnail and preview views; cluster support and more compute-intensive tasks like entity abstraction and the creation of relationships between concepts
In my experience, anyone who asserts that Fast ESP “soups up” enterprise search has not performed two hands on Fast ESP tasks. [1] Installing, tuning, and updating the system with Fast ESP hot fixes. And [2] building out an infrastructure to give Fast ESP sufficient room to breathe. Ms. Foley does a good job of tracking Microsoft, but I am not convinced that her inclusion of the “soups up” reference matches reality. Fast ESP is a collection of components. Some of those identified in the comment above come from third parties and will stretch the expertise of the average SharePoint wizard. The article does not point to several of the well known issues associated with Fast ESP, and those issues help explain how the company ended up in a bit of a financial jam which evolved into the police action on October 16, 2009.
The second is Search Engine Watch’s article “Microsoft Integrates Fast Search with Existing Enterprise Search Offerings” here. The write up is based on this comment from a Microsoft professional:
FAST Search for SharePoint will combine high-end search with the broad portal, collaboration, content management and business intelligence capabilities of SharePoint. And FAST Search for Internet Business will deliver search capabilities tuned to drive more revenue through Web sites.
I don’t know what this statement means. I find myself reluctant to believe that the Fast ESP system will “drive more revenue through Web sites.” Maybe this is a reference to the Fast Search publishing technology. Again I think the writer is feeding back marketing lingo without providing any detail.
Let me come at this announcement in a different way:
First, Fast Search was designed a year or two before the Google stomped into the picture. The Fast Search plumbing was Linux and the system did a very good job of indexing Web content quickly. Even after the sale of Fast Search’s Web index (AllTheWeb.com), Fast Search’s indexing of news was more efficient and timely than Google’s news service. (Google has now bypassed Fast Search in news in my opinion.)
Coming to a SharePoint installation if I understand the news announcement at Fast Forward 09 on February 10, 2009. © Fast Search & Transfer 2007. From Enterprise Search Report, 3rd Edition. Used in that study with the permission of Fast Search & Transfer.
Hooking the Fast ESP into SharePoint with or without Dot Net is going to be a bit of an effort.
My take on this “big” announcement. The competitors who offer alternatives to SharePoint search will have many opportunities to make new sales. My hunch is that Google is greatly encouraged by this “big” announcement.
Stephen Arnold, February 11, 2009
Weird Math: Open Source Cost Estimates
February 11, 2009
IT Business Edge ran a story by Ann All called “Want More Openness in Enterprise Search? Open Source May Fill Bill?” If you are an IT person named Bill and you don’t know much about open source search, open source may turn “fill bill” into “kill Bill.” On the surface, open source offers quite a few advantages. First, there are lots of volunteers who maintain the code. The reality is that a few people carry the load and others cheerlead. For Lucene, SOLR, and other open source search systems, that works pretty well. (More about this point in a later paragraph.) Second, the “cost” of open source looks like a deal. Ms. All quotes various experts from the azure chip consulting firms and the trophy generation to buttress her arguments. I am not sure the facts in some enterprise environments line up with the assertions but that’s the nature of folks who disguise deep understanding with buzzword cosmetics. Third, some search systems like the Google Search Appliance cost $30,000. I almost want to insert exclamation points. How outrageous. Open source costs less, specifically $18,000. Like some of the Yahoo math, this number is conceptually aligned with Jello. The license fee is not the fully burdened cost of an enterprise search system. (Keep in mind that this type of search is more appropriately called “behind the firewall search”.)
What’s the Beyond Search view of open source?
In my opinion, open source is fine when certain conditions are met; namely:
- The client is comfortable with scripts and familiar with the conventions of open source. Even the consulting firms supporting open source can be a trifle technical. A call for help yields and engineer who may prefer repeating Unix commands in a monotone. Good if you are on that wave length. Not so good if you are a corporate IT manager who delegates tech stuff to contractors.
- The security and regulatory net thrown over an organization permits open source. Ah, you may think. Open source code is no big deal. Sorry. Open source is a big deal because some organizations have to guarantee that code used for certain projects cannot have backdoors or a murky provenance. Not us, you may think. My suggestion is that you may want to check with your lawyer who presumably has read your contracts with government agencies or the regulations governing certain businesses.
- The top brass understand that some functionality may not be possible until a volunteer codes up what’s needed or until your local computer contractor writes scripts. Then, you need to scurry back to your lawyer to make sure that the code and scripts are really yours. There are some strings attached to open source.
Does open source code work? Absolutely. I have few reservations tapping my pal Otto for SOLR, Charles Hull at Lemur Consulting for FLAX, or Anna Tothfalusi at Tesuji.eu for Lucene. Notice that these folks are not all in the good old US of A, which may be a consideration for some organizations. There are some open source search outfits like Lucid Imagination and specialists at various companies who can make open source search sit up and roll over.
It is just a matter of money.
Now, let’s think about the $18,000 versus the Google Search Appliance. The cost of implementing a search system breaks into some categories. License fees are in one category along with maintenance. You have to do your homework to understand that most of the big gun systems, including Google and others have variable pricing in place. Indexing 500,000 documents is one type of system. Boosting that system to handle 300 million documents is another type of system.
Cengage: A Publisher to Watch
February 9, 2009
I chopped this factoid out of the foul papers for Google: The Digital Gutenberg, my forthcoming study of our pal, Googzilla. More information is here. I was poking around for weaknesses in the traditional educational publishing business model. I came across an interesting document on the Web site of an outfit called Cengage Learning Inc., which is an “indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Cengage Learning Holdings II L.P (formerly known as TL Holdings II L.P. To me it looks as if an outfit called Apax Partners in the UK and the Ontario Municipal Retirement Service in Canada bought the “old” Thomson Learning in 2007 according to the information here.) You can read this document here. One catchphrase for a unit of the company is “A company that delivers highly-customized learning solutions for universities, instructors, students, libraries, government agencies, corporations, and professionals worldwide.”
If you are sensitive to pre-crash ownership methods as I am, the naming of this company is interesting to me. I did a little reading and located one factoid that may or may not be spot on. Here is the segment that caught my attention. Remember. This is the pre-financial crisis environment of June 2008:
On the Closing Date, Cengage Learning entered into an Incremental Amendment to its existing Credit Agreement, with The Royal Bank of Scotland plc, as administrative agent, collateral agent and swing line lender, and the other lenders party thereto, pursuant to which the Company borrowed an additional $625 million to finance the Acquisition. The borrowings were issued at 97.625% of the principal amount thereof and require annual principal payments of 1% with the remaining amount payable on July 3, 2014. Cengage Learning can elect the term of the borrowing period and each respective rollover period, as well as which benchmark interest rate will apply, subject to contractually specified minimum rates, plus a predefined margin. The minimum interest rate on the additional borrowing is 7.5%.
In short, Cengage borrowed to buy a group of properties. Some of these are in the educational publishing business. I did not do a deep dive on this because I located some references to various legal actions and in my opinion legal issues are like sleeping dogs. Let them rest quietly.
An investor conference call is scheduled for February 12, 2009. Source: www.cengage.com
I did some informal and opinionate thinking.
In my opinion, if traditional publishers are struggling and if buy out deals rely on this Cengage-type financing, I wondered who was going to pay the bill for the interest on the loans. Several thoughts crossed my mind as I realized that Cengage owned such online and publishing operations as Gale Research (now Gale Cengage Learning), some of the “old” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, Wadsworth Group, and Macmillan among others. (You can look at the same source I located here.)
SurfRay Round Up: Herd Them Doggies, Pardner
February 5, 2009
I am not contributing any information that I have personally verified. What I want to do in this article is quote from the comments that have flowed into the mine run off pond here in Harrod’s Creek in the last week or so. If you have a beef with one of the quotes, please, navigate to the comments section of the Web log and object or you can use the Blossom search system to locate the person who posted the comment, and you can trade barbs there.
Background
More than five years ago, I did a job for Mondosoft. Even longer ago, I did a job for Speed of Mind. Both of these companies were rolled up into an outfit called SurfRay. SurfRay also got the Ontolica SharePoint fixer upper which came with the Mondosoft purchase. I sort of paid attention to SurfRay, but I was out of the loop when the financial and management pressures made the roll up possible.
What’s Happened?
To make a long and convoluted story short, SurfRay couldn’t generate enough cash to grow. When financial pressures mount, folks get angry. SurfRay followed this well known trajectory, which appeared to have ended with the most recent set of company filings in Sweden. At this point, I am going to excerpt the SurfRay information from the comments to my various SurfRay articles. These were to date:
- August 29, 2008: SurfRay: Has the Company Missed the Search Wave. Nope : Beyond Search here
- October 24, 2008: SurfRay Round Up : Beyond Search here
- December 4, 2008: SurfRay Update : Beyond Search here
- November 23, 2008: SurfRay Update: Beyond Search here
- January 17, 2009: Financial Woes Swamp SurfRay here
- July 6, 2008: SurfRay AB Update here
- December 3, 2008: SurfRay Rumblings and Questions here
- December 9, 2008: Danish Software Excitement here
- January 27, 2009: SurfRay More Change here
Selected Comments Posted to the Beyond Search Articles
Below I am quoting from some of the submitted comments. You will need to verify the information and make your own decision. I am presenting what I received from readers who posted via the comments function on this Web log. If in doubt about how this Web log works, read the About section and its disclaimer and editorial policy. If uncomfortable with this goose pond, flap away now.
My story SurfRay: Has the Company Missed the Search Wave. Nope, August 29, 2008:
Bill Cobbs, then SurfRay CEO, wrote on August 29, 2008
I can assure both our clients and our partners that SurfRay is alive and well. It’s unfortunate that a minor phone glitch would lead to speculation regarding the viability of the company.
SurfRay is continuing our mission of providing cutting edge search technology to help our clients drive business results. Moving forward we are focusing on working with our clients to specifically identify business opportunities where they can create competitive advantage. We intend to provide search based solutions that have a very focused impact on driving bottom line results in both revenue generation and cost containment.
SurfRay is alive and well and launching the next wave of Search technology.
My story SurfRay Round Up on October 24, 2009
From Lars Petersen, wrote on October 30, 2008:
Related to the speed index I fully understand that this is an indexing engine, but the question was WHY haven’t SurfRay used this overfull hyperoptimising index instead of just relying on the slow index engine in SharePoint. And by not integrating and improve a little on the SharePoint search why do any organization need to buy it and why buy it from SurfRay (small company who may or may not provide service) when it can be bought from a must bigger company like BA-insight???
The attached roadmap for 2009 also gives me a bad feeling as I can see that Reporting now is postponed another 6-9 month!!! And at the same time SurfRay state that Ontolica has first priority on R&D resources??!! Can someone explain this for me….
Torben explained that second priority is Mondosoft Site Search, which I personally liked and it was also what my company used until bad service from the new owner got us to change search engine, but again later he state no plans yet to upgrade or replace the Enterprise Search offering. Could anyone at SurfRay please tell me again WHY we should go back to your Site Search when we have Omniture Site Search from a NASDAQ company providing more key functionality – Better relevancy etc, than Mondosoft’s 2 year old site search and the cost is a 1/10 of what SurfRay offers?
I have been a loyal fan of Mondosoft’s search and the support and maintenance back in 2006-7 unfortunately nothing on this site has proven to me that SurfRay is on the right track and it doesn’t make me “want to come home”.
Anyway Bill stated “Let me say unequivocally that I am now the CEO of SurfRay”, and you properly are Bill, but on surfray’s Web site under executive team, Martin Veise is mentioned first in a very long line of Member of the GROUP MANAGEMENT?! Is it normal that Chairman of the board is heading Group Management or ?
Mysteries of Online 4: The Bits Are Bits Fallacy
February 5, 2009
In a meeting last week, a young wizard said, “Bits are bits.” The context for this statement was a meeting to move an organization’s databased information and unstructured text online. The idea was that the task was trivial.
In fact, the task was a mixture of trivial and non-trivial sub tasks. So, bits are not the same because a zero and one may not behave like grains of salt. The ones and zeros may look the same, but one of the mysteries of online is that many factors bedevil the would be online entrepreneur. Google, for example, wants out of its AOL deal. Obviously the bit wizards at Google know that AOL bits are not Google bits here. But the GOOG dumped some serious coinage into the online company direct mail spam made famous.
Bits are bits just like penguins.
Here’s my list of factors, which is not complete and represents my thoughts to myself:
- Digital objects have stages. The source may be transformed, indexed, tokenized, and manipulated by two or more sub sub systems. Get these processes wrong, and weird behaviors become apparent. What’s wrong? Who knows. A person or persons have to figure it out, find a fix, and implement it. As this process goes forward, it becomes apparent that the bits are a tad mischievous
- A fancy search system cannot locate a document or other object. Indexing systems may skip malformed documents, indexes may not update, and other issues annoy users. What went wrong? Who knows. A person or persons have to figure it out, find a fix, and implement it.
- A document returns a 404 or file not found error. The document used to exist because it is in the index. Now the document has gone walkabout. What’s wrong? Who knows. A person or persons have to figure it out, find a fix, and implement it.
Causes
I wish I had a fool proof way to prevent errors caused by this “bits are bits” fallacy. Much of he frustration generated by search, content management, and business intelligence systems have their roots wrapped tightly around the facile assumption that electronic information is no big deal. Electronic information is a big deal and for many organizations electronic information may be their undoing. The reason? Many assume that once a file is in electronic form, the rest is easy.
Mysteries of Online 3: Free versus Fee Information
February 3, 2009
I have been thinking about Chris Anderson’s article “The Economics of Giving It Away” here in the Wall Street Journal, Saturday, January 31, 2009. I spoke with a couple of people and read the thoughtful posts that are plentiful. A useful one is Staci Kramer’s “‘Long Tail’ Author Anderson: Free Doesn’t Work As A Standalone Business Model” here.
Mr. Anderson is a clever wordsmith and he’s pretty good with numbers. I don’t disagree too much with his analysis. I have encountered similar arguments over the years, and now I understand where the mind set that generates these interesting analyses.
I come from a different mental space, and I think the free – fee duality has several twists that keep the economists thinking and the pundits punditing. Economists and pundits have quite a track record in financial matters in the last nine months.
I want to capture some of the ideas that have not been developed in my previous monographs that touch upon this subject. Relevant information appeared in Publishing on the Internet: A New Medium for a New Millennium (Infonortics, 1996) and in New Trajectories of the Internet: Umbrellas, Traction, Lift, and Other Phenomena (Infonortics, 2001). Both of these publications are out of print. These two specialist monographs were written years ago and may have been among the first to address some of the free – fee issues. I will not repeat that information, confining my comments to the information I have in my notes and not in my for fee work. While not an idea approach from the point of view of today’s reader, I am keeping within the guidelines I set for this Web log as a combination of recycled ideas and some new thoughts I don’t want to let slip away.
Feel free to challenge these ideas. I am still struggling with them.
When a Person Will Pay
In the free – fee arena, I want to give an example of when you, gentle reader, will probably pay anything for specific information. A commercial database, now owned by Thomson (a dead tree publishing working hard to keep up revenues as it tries to reinvent itself), is Poisondex. The idea is that when you know what poison in a person’s system, you can consult the database and get pointers for saving the person’s life. Poisondex is a pay to use database. It is not free. There are situations in which you personally could access the database, but I will comment on those in a moment. Back to the main point.
Your three year old child is dying. You think she ate a household substance. The doctor tells you that he has to consult Poisondex before taking steps to save your child’s life. The nature of poison is such that it is possible to accelerate its effects unless the doc has the specific information at hand. The doctor tells you that you have to pay to save your child’s life. Let’s say that the cost of the three minute database search is $1,000.
Image source: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_C-gWvTLiIH0/RwMDlffvMpI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/FnFMzGrWOys/s320/Death-Creative-Life.jpg
Will you agree to pay?
In my experience, most Americans, even trophy kids or azure chip consultants with progeny, will say, “Yes. Get the data.”
I have asked focus groups about this situation over the years, and the answers range from “I will pay anything” to “Are you crazy? Of course, my wife and I will pay.” Okay, so now we have established that you will pay for information, and most people don’t ask, “How much?”
The reasons are:
- Your child’s life to you is priceless. You will literally pay anything. This is the reason why bad guys can get people to do almost anything by threatening a child. So much for security unless the victims have had special training.
- You assume that the source is going to be accurate. You “trust” the doctor. You don’t know enough about Poisondex to “trust” its data, but the doctor “certifies” that the information is what’s needed to save your child’s life. In fancy Dan talk, this is provenance of information. You have to know yourself as a subject matter expert or via a proxy that Poisondex will not include information that will increase the likelihood that your child will die.
- Your decision process is necessarily constrained. In short, you don’t have the luxury of time. You don’t negotiate. You don’t call around and get information from contacts whom you think “know” something useful to you at this decision point.
We have, therefore, established with some certainty that information has “value”; in this case, $1,000. How much more will you pay right now? You perceive that your child’s life is worth more to you than any “cost” the doctor or the database imposes on you to save your child’s life. We also know that time is limited, so you can’t stand around and think about searching Google or calling your roomie from your days at Yale University.
You decide. You pay. You wait to see if the child lives.
For certain information, therefore, a market exists. If information is “free” but does not have the provenance to allow you to make a decision quickly, you will almost always go with the information for which a proxy or your own perception says, “This for fee information is probably better than this free information.” You don’t know whether the information in Poisondex is right. You don’t know if the information in Yahoo’s results list is right. You go with your perception.
Mysteries of Online 2: Business Process Logic
January 30, 2009
I have been jotting notes to myself as I put the finishing touches on Google: The Digital Gutenberg, my forthcoming monograph about Google and integrated information manufacturing system. One of the notecards, which I am converting to this narrative Web log reminder, had the phrase “business processes built on faulty logic” circled in red.
I don’t know where or who used this phrase, but I found it suggestive this cold morning. The plunging temperatures have frozen the acid runoff stream and my pond. This addled goose, therefore, must sit in his nest contemplating the mysteries of online. Too keep my web feet frost bite free, some observations.
Business Processes: Formed by Chance, Trial and Error, and What Clients Demand
I remember an interview I conducted with a guru from Thomson, the French electronics firm, in the late 1970s. I had to jog my memory, but I looked at my 1979 copy of the “Managing Innovation” study, which my boss William P. Sommers sold to an innovation-challenged Fortune 50 company. I was one intellectual ditch digger on that project. The French PhD who answered my questions about innovation said something to the effect: “Who knows. We just do what’s been done around the lab here for years.” Whatever works, I suppose.
Search, content management and business intelligence–all in one modern package. Image source; http://www.pr.gov.br/batebyte/edicoes/2003/bb137/imagens/torto2.gif
Tradition
The notion of tradition and business processes is deeply rooted in most of the organizations with which I am familiar. In the older companies, the methods are captured customized machines like the “Joe Herman machine” to make nails in the Keystone nail mill. Today MBAs use Excel to whip up financial methods. (We know how well that works.) Tangible machine or intangible method, once these constructs are in place, change becomes difficult.
Use What You Got
Using what “you got” is a phrase that I heard in the steel mill when I was 17, and I heard it last week in a meeting with an entrepreneur building a services Web site for professionals. “Use what you got” means the learnings, instincts, and tools available here and now. When creativity flashes, a business method is developed. If the method works even sort of works, the company is good to go.
Mysteries of Online 1: Cannibalization
January 29, 2009
Big news. Visits to newspapers’ Web sites rose in the last few months. You can read read the Associated Press story here. Sorry. I won’t quote from the write up because I don’t need the AP’s dead tree inspired, legal eagles occluding the sun in Harrods Creek. The guts of the AP story is that some dead tree — aka traditional — publishers with Web sites are getting more traffic. More traffic is good, right? More traffic equals more revenue, right? The AP seems blissfully unaware that at the same time click fraud, which is consistently under estimated, is increasing, said TechCrunch here. But there’s a bigger problem with Web centric online services offered by some traditional newspaper publishers.
The good news, bad news dynamic underscores the paradoxical nature of online information. For every upbeat innovation, there may be one or more downbeats. Paraphrasing Jacques Ellul, it takes technology to tame technology. The consequences are more technology and unexpected consequences. One consequence is trouble controlling costs and another is a net shortfall in revenue. The online revenue was supposed to be additive. In fact, the online revenue is lower than forecast and traditional revenues sources continue to slump, often faster with the online service than without it.
That’s the core of the cannibalization issue.
Cannibalism
Cannibalism as I use the term means eating another snail. I am using my first hand knowledge of South Africa’s cannibal snail as my inspiration in this Web log post. The cannibal snail works up an appetite. Looks around for food that is close. If there is nothing tasty, the cannibal snail eats any other cannibal snails even if the other snail is a relatives. Really close relatives.
As applied to online, most people who use this term mean that one product may suck customers, money, and attention from some other product. The cannibal part refers to eating money from one member of the product family to fatten another member.
Here’s how this works. A company publishes a big fat encyclopedia with inclusions (meaty ad inserts). The publisher gets the great idea to break up the big directory into smaller chunks; for example, split out the research firms from the drug distribution companies or maybe the descriptions of the Microsoft products. A price is slapped on these spin outs which can be offered online if the big book is a print only product. I am going to use examples that are about 25 years old because the examples are useful and relevant even in 2009.
A cannibal snail. Newspapers and other print media are slow moving and end up eating their own revenues. Source: http://www.johnrobertmarlow.com/g_africa–cannibal%20snail%20(side).jpg
The cannibalization angle is that most spin out or derived products don’t earn as much money as the daddy product.
Inelasticity: Just Charge a Lot and Forget Spin Outs
Even more surprising, based on my tests with the Pharmaceutical News Index, between 1981 and 1986 is that for certain products, a high price or a low price has little impact on the number of information products sold. I learned you can pump up the price of an information product and some customers will pay for the product regardless of the cost. The surprise came when I left the price unchanged and created child products. Revenue declined. The people who wanted a segment were happy to pay less. The market for the information was not growing. Therefore, I got bitten by one of cannibalism’s fangs. Spinning out child products directly hurt sales of the big daddy product. Cannibalization, in short, left me hungry for revenues.
Aggregation Versus Local News Web Site
A newspaper has a tough time competing with aggregated news outside of a newspaper’s core market. Ric Manning, I, and a number of other Courier Journal professionals created Business Dateline. In the database’s first year of existence, the product generated hefty online revenues and turned a profit, tough to do in the Stone Age of online. The Courier Journal shared that revenue with the 50 or so participating business news organizations. The database did not cannibalize the revenues of any one news partner. We selected only certain stories and packaged them with other stories that had a local angle but addressed a broader business issue; for example, labor management, site selection, marketing tactics, etc. The local angle provided an anchor, but the business message was broader. Local news Web sites don’t blend big picture and microscopic view.
A Shadow Falls on Search Related Conferences
January 27, 2009
I had a couple of conversations yesterday with conference organizers telling me that I was completely wrong in my opinion piece “Conference Spam or Conference Prime Rib” here. I enjoy a lively debate. I like intense discussions even more when I have no interest whatsoever in the trials and tribulations of conference organizers. My point remains valid; that is, in a lousy economy conferences that don’t deliver value will be big losers. Forget the monetary side of the show.
With conferences struggling to survive and some big outfits allegedly cutting back in fuzzy-wuzzy business sectors like content management, the caption “When your best just isn’t good enough” is apt in my opinion. Image source: http://aviationweek.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/05/21/failure.gif
I received this thoughtful post as well:
I’m also curious how my own touting of the SIGIR Industry Track fares vis a vis your spam filter. I’m personally excited to be involved with an event that is not beholden to any vendor or analyst, but rather to the world’s most reputable organization in the area of information retrieval: the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR).
More details about the event are forthcoming, but let me share an important one: none of the speakers or their employers are paying to be on the agenda. Rather, the agenda consists of invited talks and panels, vetted by the SIGIR Organizing Committee (http://www.sigir2009.org/about/organizers). The model for the event is last year’s CIKM Industry Event (http://www.cikm2008.org/industry_event.php), but I’ll be so bold as to say we’re stepping it up a notch.
This isn’t a vendor user conference like Endeca Discover or FASTForward, nor is it a “vendor-neutral” conference in name only where vendors, analysts, and consultants are paying for air time. And, while it won’t be free, it is being run by a non-profit organization whose goal is to serve the community, not to line its pockets.I hope that you and others will support this welcome change.
When people run conferences that don’t have magnetism, the real losers are the attendees who spend money and invest time to hear lousy speakers or sales pitches advertised as original, substantive talks. The other losers are exhibitors who can spend $10,000 on a minimal exhibit and get zero sales leads. In fact, there are negatives to lousy shows; to wit:
- Attendees don’t learn anything useful or attendees hear speakers who simply don’t know of what they speak. That’s okay when the presenter is a luminary like Steve Ballmer or Werner Vogels. But for a session on “Tips to Reduce the Cost of Enterprise Search” and the solution is a rehash of how “easy” and “economical” a Google Search Appliance is, I leave the session. It’s baloney. Attendees don’t learn anything from these talks, but there is often desperation among the organizing committee to find someone who will show up and do a basic talk. The notion of “quality” is often secondary to thoughts about the speaker’s turning up on the podium.
- Exhibitors don’t make sales. Enough said.
- Exhibitors find themselves either [a] talking to competitors because there’s no traffic in the exhibit hall or [b] watching their employees talk with other companies’ senior management and maybe landing a new job. Either of these situations is one that will make a vendor pull out of a trade show.
- Media who actually show up and attend a session don’t find a story. The trade show is, therefore, a media non event. I can name one big, confused show in Boston that suffers this ignominy. What began as a show about microfilm now tries to embrace everything from photocopying to enterprise content management to business intelligence. Crazy. No one knows what the show is about so the media avoid it. Heck, I avoid it.
What must conferences do to avoid this problem?
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