ENTRIES TAGGED "experimentation"
"Being wrong is a feature, not a bug"
A thoughtful piece from Michael Nielsen on the disruption of the scientific publishing industry includes a lot that's very relevant to other publishers and media companies. For example: In conversations with editors I repeatedly encounter the same pattern: "But idea X won't work / shouldn't be allowed / is bad because of Y." Well, okay. So what? If you're…
One-Question Interview at BookNet Canada Tech Forum
Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the 2009 BookNet Canada Technology Forum in Toronto (motto: Even colder than you expected!), and Mark Bertils caught up with me on my way out for a quick video interview: Two follow ups on what I said, now that I have my del.icio.us feed handy: The Peter Drucker reference is from…
Photos from New York Times R&D Lab
Nick Bilton was a hit yesterday at the TOC Conference, and during his keynote he talked about what they’re working on with content at the NYT R&D Lab. Nick was kind enough to give a few of us a private tour earlier this week, and here’s some photos from the trip:…
Good Company Culture Comes in Small Packages
Small publishers' culture of experimentation-by-necessity gives them a leg up on the large publishing "dinosaurs."
New Project Examines Close Reading and Web Collaboration
On Nov. 10, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook will be read and discussed by seven readers in a new experiment that explores "close reading" and the mechanisms of online conversation. The project is the brainchild of Bob Stein, founder of Institute for the Future of the Book. Stein outlined the project's goals in an email announcement: Fundamentally this is…
Overestimating the Home Page
Brett Crosby from Google Analytics says a home page is often mistaken as the most important part of a Web site. From TechRadar: Where are your visitors landing, bouncing, and viewing? It's often assumed user experience begins on the homepage, and this misconception drives many an ecommerce site to waste hours of design work in the wrong place. Search engines…
Calling Out Risk-Averse Publishers
Bloomsbury Academic is testing the theory that increased awareness from free distribution boosts book sales. The recently-launched imprint is releasing all of its titles online under a Creative Commons license while also selling print-on-demand editions. Discussing the rationale with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Bloomsbury's Frances Pinter cites the unnecessary chasm between envelope-pushers and conservative publishers: "I'm tired of the…
Target, Serve and Adapt: A Simple Model for Audience Development
Shifting audiences have pushed publishing into a perpetual beta, but trailblazing companies have found a way to adapt.
Audible CEO: Publishing Has History of Tech Ambivalence
In an interview with Fast Company, Audible CEO Donald Katz discusses the publishing industry's history of slow technological acceptance: Publishing is an industry pursuing a noble cultural calling. But publishing has always had an ambivalent relationship to technology-driven change. In fact, the music publishing business spent a whole lot of time trying to kill off the phonograph. The publishing…
How Hackers Show it's Not All Bad News at the New York Times
The hacking-friendly culture within the New York Times just may save the organization.