Michael Cairns
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As Managing Partner of Information Media Partners, I work with publishing and information companies and private equity groups in a variety of roles on a full-time, consulting or advisory basis. Get in touch if you are interested in discussing a consulting project.
Publishing executive with deep digital publishing experience including strategy definition, product development, business operations and execution of digital strategies to support new and/or migrated (legacy) business models. Business segments where my digital experience has been applied include professional & academic publishing, education publishing and professional services.
Broad experience leading and transforming companies and organizations as a senior executive and/or board adviser both domestically (US) and in international markets.
Experience- Jan 2006 - PresentManaging Partner & Senior Advisor / Information Media Partners, (Publishing and Media Strategy Consulting)
Business advisory, private equity and business performance consulting for information publishing companies. Select consulting clients, advisory and board roles are itemized below.
- Jan 2006 - Apr 2013Strategic Consulting Engagements (Partial) / Management Consulting
AARP (American Association Retired Persons)
Book Data Services
Book Industry Study Group
Edgewater Technologies
ePubDirect.com
Greyhouse Publishing
Hewlett Packard
iUniverse Publishing
Mywire.com
Olive Software
Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)
Open Book Alliance
Suite101 - Jan 1990 - Mar 2013Senior Advisory Relationships / Board Member and/or Advisor
Association of American Publishers (Board)
Book Industry Study Group (Board)
Berlitz/Fixot JV, France (Board)
Berlitz Publishing UK (Board)
Cambridge Information Group (Board)
International ISBN Executive Committee (Chairman) - Nov 2010 - Oct 2011VP, Print & Digital Production (Interim - Reporting to CEO) / Wolters Kluwer Health - Practice and Education (Textbooks)
Interim/consulting role reporting directly to division CEO of $200mm medical and information company. Led print and digital production department and initiated several digital projects including content archiving and workflow solutions. Led staff of 40. Successfully tasked to hire permanent replacement.
- Mar 2008 - Feb 2010Entrepreneur in Residence and Co-Founder Week'sBest / MyWire
Launched news aggregation platform (Week'sBest) to curate content across 1,000 topic areas using topic experts. Hired staff and sought financing as CEO. Funding initially supplied by MyWire.
- Sept 2001 - Jan 2006President & Board Member / R. R. Bowker
Digital provider of business information and services sold via subscription. Completed digital migration - print to web - and realigned business operations to transform profitability and enterprise valuation. Acquired five companies within 18mths. Responsible for 200 personnel working in offices in NJ, UK and Australia.
- May 1999 - Sept 2001VP Production, Product & Business Development / R. R. Bowker
Managed editorial, print and multimedia production, new product development and business development. Managed staff of 90 personnel.
- Mar 1995 - May 1999Principal Consultant / PricewaterhouseCoopers
Managed various projects for publishing and media companies such as Simon & Schuster, Pearson, Thompson (Cengage), Ogilvy & Mather, InterPublic Group, Turner Broadcasting and Bertelsmann. Responsible for billing between $200,000 and $2.5 million per project. Led 3-10 team members per project, establishing deliverables, scheduling, maintaining budget and providing assignments. Senior on-staff publishing expert.
- Apr 1993 - Mar 1995Director, Business Operations: Publishing & Content Licensing / Berlitz International, Inc
Executive management responsibility for direct mail and third party content licensing activities. Established significant new digital revenues and deal-flow with The Learning Company, Sierra On-Line, Prodigy On-Line, Harcourt (INSO) and others.
- Sept 1992 - May 1993Deputy Managing Director / Berlitz International, Inc
Executive management for UK-based trade publishing division. Led staff of 40 and sales operations in 70 countries.
- Oct 1990 - Sept 1992Director, Financial Planning & Analysis / Berlitz International, Inc
Led corporate planning and acquisitions team.
- Mar 1989 - Sept 1990Senior Financial Analyst / Macmillan, Inc.
Managed planning process for ten operating business units of a $2billion publishing company. Special projects.
Education-
1986 - 1988Georgetown University - The McDonough School of Business
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1984 - 1985Boston University
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1981 - 1983Willamette University
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Tweets
- RT @guardiantech: Yahoo poised to buy Tumblr for rumoured $1.1bn http://t.co/hg4Mc311KjMay 19, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Ferguson's 38 Trophies. I should get these for all my friends. http://t.co/sUJoqNkZjtMay 19, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Leg room. Night flight to blighty. http://t.co/qIdW4GG8gx
- RT @Pippatips: #PippaTip: you may think from the name she's a pretty ceramic flooring & wall coverings installer, but Bonnie Tyler is actua…May 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @lorcanD: US Air Force expects to save $50M in fuel etc costs replacing paper manuals with iPad http://t.co/YbEJ2VmNPL via @jjn1May 18, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @RHelmsBooks: Baby names are getting worse--read this article. I can't stop laughing. http://t.co/mjVnHAqOTg (some potty language, warni…May 17, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @denisleary: Toronto mayor caught smoking crack. Huuuge Leafs fan apparently.May 17, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Personanondata: Skip Prichard Named to Succeed Jay Jordan at OCLC http://t.co/tRPEpdXmRD
- Skip Prichard named OCLC President and CEO: http://t.co/yZmyQQz3JY
- @JDJNeicho Happy to. What's the question?
- Catholic church in fatigues? That's what the sex abuse and misconduct in the US military looks like. #muchmoretocomeMay 16, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Fresh questions for Amazon over pittance it pays in tax http://t.co/HhdpD31Owy
- Retro United. Newark @ Gate C75 http://t.co/uvq4jNiqLR
- Hard to believe these days someone can get on the wrong plane and be seated before they realize #twiceintwoflights #united
- BBC News - Associated Press condemns US telephone record seizure http://t.co/2TMpACsIIk
- BBC News - Japan WWII 'comfort women' were 'necessary' - Hashimoto http://t.co/gJvHzibDVz Arigato
- Associated Press: seizure of phone records an unprecedented intrusion http://t.co/dBULHNe9fI via @guardian
- RT @Porter_Anderson: "The 190lb adult male human being nodded his head to indicate satisfaction." Brownish @Telegraph @Personanondata http:…May 13, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @jafurtado: Cengage On the Verge of Chapter 11 Filing? By Michael Cairns (@Personanondata) http://t.co/LP8d7YNtCgMay 13, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
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Posts
- May 17, 13
- May 16, 13
From their press release:
Mr. Prichard has led multi-national organizations that serve libraries across the full spectrum of library services and content needs. Most recently, he was President and CEO of Ingram Content Group Inc., which provides a broad range of physical and digital services to the book industry. Prior to his service at Ingram, he was President and CEO of ProQuest Information and Learning, a respected global publisher and information provider serving library, education, government and corporate markets with offices around the world.
Mr. Prichard will succeed Jay Jordan, who will retire June 30 after 15 years as OCLC President and CEO. Mr. Prichard will serve as OCLC President-elect, effective June 3, and will officially become President and CEO on July 1.
"Skip Prichard is a proven leader with an outstanding record of accomplishment," said Sandy Yee, Chair, OCLC Board of Trustees, and Dean, Wayne State University Libraries and School of Library and Information Science. "He has guided leading library services organizations through eras of significant change, from print to electronic and from local to global. His experience and commitment to libraries will help us continue our work to move library services and cooperation forward—in the cloud, on mobile devices and through the collaborative work of libraries and partners around the world."
"OCLC has a long tradition of strong leadership and vision, and I consider myself fortunate to have the opportunity to lead the cooperative into what promises to be an exciting and challenging future," said Mr. Prichard. "OCLC and member libraries are using the newest technologies available to move library services to the cloud where they continue to collaboratively build resources and infrastructure to share. I look forward to working with the talented OCLC staff and membership to ensure that we build on that momentum, and provide the resources necessary for libraries and librarians around the world to meet and exceed the increasing expectations of their users." - May 15, 13From their press release and interesting initiative by NetGalley:NetGalley, a service to promote and publicize forthcoming titles to professional readers of influence, has launched the NetGalley Wellness Challenge. The Challenge is specifically aimed to help members of the site improve their individual influence on book recommendations, by modeling best practices in a variety of fun and easy ways.Over 120,000 NetGalley members are invited to join the Challenge at the official kick-off on Monday, May 13th, by pledging to be “NetGalley healthy.” The 9-week program will give members many opportunities to improve their professional reader health through social media, webinars and in-person events at BookExpo America and the adjacent BEA Bloggers conference (which NetGalley is sponsoring). The program ends on July 10th, and participants will be eligible to win prizes.Participants will be awarded a digital badge that they can post to their website or blog, to demonstrate that they’re committed to utilizing NetGalley effectively. The program focuses on improving profile quality, the importance of reviews and feedback, and cleaning up NetGalley “to-be-read” lists. Publishers and key bloggers have already joined the effort to promote the program.Over 200 publishers worldwide use NetGalley to interact with professional readers. Reviewers, bloggers, media, librarians, booksellers and educators can register for free at NetGalley, and request digital galleys from the catalog, or be invited to view a title by a publisher using the NetGalley widget. Once approved by the publisher, NetGalley members can view secure digital galleys on all major reading devices.Read more on the NetGalley Wellness Challenge resource page.
- May 13, 13
Third quarter revenues at Cengage improved to 5% better than last year and adjusted EBITDA was up a healthy 30% but YTD numbers remain off due to a bad first quarter and the real story behind Cengage's numbers is when, rather than if, the company will go into a pre-arranged bankruptcy so to re-negotiate their outstanding loan obligations. Here is CEO Michael Hansen's prepared comments on the issue:
As you know, in March of this year, we retained restructuring, financial and legal advisors
Investor presentation (pdf)
Prepared executive comments (pdf)
Bloomberg
The company also took a goodwill impairment charge and here is CFO Durbin on that one:Second, in connection with the development of our strategic plan we performed a comprehensive revision of our short- and long-term operating projections, including, but not limited to, key assumptions associated with forecasted industry trends and Company-specific forecasted revenue growth rates and operating margins. The revised forecast was completed and approved by our Board of Directors on April 18, 2013. The plan indicated a substantial reduction in projected revenues, operating profit and cash flows. Consequently, we determined that this constituted a trigger event for goodwill impairment purposes, and we initiated the test pursuant to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Given the timing of the revised projections and the complexity of the required impairment test, we have not yet finalized our analysis. However,we recorded a preliminary goodwill impairment estimate of $2.8 billion during the third quarter.We expect to finalize the analysis during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, and any adjustment to the estimated impairment charge will be recorded during that period.
- May 13, 13The Telegraph reviews the new Dan Brown book (in a way):
The Inspector reluctantly passed a laptop to Langdon who could now sit up in bed. Dr d’Angelou smiled.
They over do it by trying the above again in a different section of the paper although this one may be better:(Telegraph)
“I will leave you two gentlemen,” she said, because that was the sort of thing people said in novels.
Langdon pressed a few keys and on the laptop screen was a grey filtrated image of himself walking along a street he did not recognise. Across the road was a little old woman dressed as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, that deeply divisive saint of the Catholic Church and presumably head of the deeply sinister Salvation Army.
With a chill that aspirated his spine, Langdon watched as the diminutive saint beckoned to him across the road.
“What is she saying, laddie?” the Inspector asked.
Langdon shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he lied.
“You don’t know?” the Inspector asked. “Robert Langdon PFC etc etc doesn’t know something? No wonder you’ve gone as white as your sateen sheets.”
But it was the next frame in the CCTV footage that genuinely shocked him. Out of nowhere and without warning a yellow school bus appeared. It was going at least 30mph in a 20mph zone and its windows were crowded with faces cheering and waving, but that is not what caught Langdon’s attention. Down its side was written in large letters the word PEN.
Langdon froze the picture.
“What does PEN mean, do you think?”
Langdon wrote the word pen along one of the fine lines that demarked the sheet of foolscap in his firm yet carefree handwriting.“Thanks, John,” he thanked. Then he put down the telephone and perambulated on foot to the desk behind which he habitually sat on a chair to write his famous books on an Apple iMac MD093B/A computer. New book Inferno, the latest in his celebrated series about fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon, was inspired by top Italian poet Dante. It wouldn’t be the last in the lucrative sequence, either. He had all the sequels mapped out. The Mozart Acrostic. The Michelangelo Wordsearch. The Newton Sudoku.
As the book hits number one all around the world, literary smugness at its finest.
The 190lb adult male human being nodded his head to indicate satisfaction and returned to his bedroom by walking there. Still asleep in the luxurious four-poster bed of the expensive $10 million house was beautiful wife Mrs Brown. Renowned author Dan Brown gazed admiringly at the pulchritudinous brunette’s blonde tresses, flowing from her head like a stream but made from hair instead of water and without any fish in. She was as majestic as the finest sculpture by Caravaggio or the most coveted portrait by Rodin. I like the attractive woman, thought the successful man.
Is good grammar still important? (Observer):The inaugural Bad Grammar award has gone to a group of academics for an open letter in which they criticised education secretary Michael Gove. Are we too hung up on the correct use of language?
Coursera adds Textbook content from Sage, Wiley, Oxford University Press and Macmillan Higher Education in partnership with Chegg (Blog):Now, all classes need some additional learning materials – guides, lecture notes, and of course books. That’s where Chegg steps in. We’re serving as the platform on which Coursera students access their reading materials, all through our eTextbook reader.
From Twitter this week:
“Student needs are evolving so it’s important that they continue to learn in and out of the classroom,” said Dan Rosensweig, President and CEO of Chegg. “It’s vital that we put students first. Digital courses allow the most sought-after classes, taught by the most knowledgeable educators to be accessible, even worldwide, helping students finish college quicker and with less debt. At Chegg, we are thrilled to partner with Coursera to expand and adapt our digital offerings – from textbooks to supplemental content – to enhance the way students are learning today.”
Items from Hemingway's Cuba home go to JFK Library BusinessWeek
Ann Curry reportedly being courted for lucrative tell-all book deal Examiner - Didn't she get $10mm severance? Not enough?
And in Sport, Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson announced his retirement this week and will be leaving the job on a high note: Guardian Supplement - May 10, 13
I think this is gruesome personally but it was a stop on the tourist path in 1969 when we were living there. I believe these farms are still there and, as you can see, the snakes live in a structure that looks like a pool without any water. When Bangkok had some major flooding a number of years ago the flood waters over- flowed these walls, filled up the snake pits and the snakes swam out. That's a worry.
Check out my book on Blurb in print and iPad versions.
If you want to make your own here's a link for $20 off your first book. - May 08, 13
Also the associated slides are located on the Saylor site here. Casey blogs on the influential Inside Higher Ed blog Digital Tweed
via the EdSurge Newsletter. - May 06, 13
Interesting experiment reported in the NYTimes about a performance art project undertaken at NYU:
Regular patrons hardly seemed to notice when the readers turned their books upside down, or ran their fingers in unison under passages in the identical piles of novels in front of them (by José Saramago, Kazuo Ishiguro and Agota Kristof), or flipped through a book of depopulated cityscapes by the photographer Gabriele Basilico, or just stared at a blank page in a spiral-bound notebook.
Is there a relationship between eBook lending and retail book sales? Overdrive and Sourcebooks are embarking on a project to find out (LibraryJournal)
The mental action, however, was far more disorienting and sometimes edged toward violence. Readers turned to passages containing words like “strangulation,” “saboteurs” and “death sentence,” which were subtly altered by a voice reading along, or overwhelmed by a tide of white noise. They were asked to imagine all the books in a huge library cut up into their individual words, then separated into huge drawers reading “knife,” “cloud” or “the.”
At one point, books slammed shut from an uncannily precise location a few feet to the listeners’ left — inside the headphones, or outside in the real-life library? — causing the listener to brace for a librarian’s angry “Shhhhh!”During the 18-day program, data associated with the title, which will also contain a special “Dear Reader” note from Malone (see below), is going to be closely tracked.
Anthony Marx (President NY Public Library) in an OpEd in the NYTimes speaks about eBooks and Libraries (NYT)
Sourcebooks, which has worldwide rights to the book, will chronicle the impact on sales not only for this particular title but also the effect on the other seven books that Malone has published with Sourcebooks. The Amazon rankings will also be monitored (as of today, Four Corners of the Sky had an Amazon Best Sellers Rank of 149,512).
“Steve and I have over the years talked about a lot of different collaborations between Sourcebooks and Overdrive, always focused on expanding the reach of authors,” said Dominique Raccah, the CEO of Sourcebooks. “When Steve called with this idea a few months ago, I was delighted to apply the ‘discovery’ conversation that publishers, authors and retailers are engaged in to libraries.”
“It has always been an assumed ‘given’ that library support helped drive author success, both short- and long-term. Seeing if we can provide data around that assumption is fascinating,” Raccah said.Libraries remain essential repositories of books, periodicals and research collections, but they are also places to check e-mail and browse the Web — a third of New Yorkers lack home broadband — and to learn computer skills, seek jobs and get information about government benefits. At a time of painful austerity and rising inequality, we are raising money to rapidly expand English-language classes, computer training and after-school programs. Along with our counterparts in Brooklyn and Queens, we are supplementing school libraries by delivering print books directly to schools.
Good diagram of the MOOC universe as it currently exists from The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
E-books might not seem like a priority given those daunting tasks — but as the nature of reading changes, access to these books is essential for libraries to remain vital. The New York Public Library helped lead talks with the publishers over e-books. Before today’s breakthrough, we had some false starts. While HarperCollins, in 2003, was the first to provide access, after the downturn, it limited the number of times each e-book could be lent, while Hachette decided to no longer sell new e-books to libraries, and Penguin, which had agreed to do so, said it might back out. To their credit, the publishers have now each come around.
From the Columbia Journalism Review a look at how scholarly publishing failed and journalism encouraged the reporting of the link between autism and vacines (CJR):The consequences of this coverage go beyond squandering journalistic resources on a bogus story. There is evidence that fear of a link between vaccines and autism, stoked by press coverage, caused some parents to either delay vaccinations for their children or decline them altogether. To be sure, more than 90 percent of children in both the US and the UK receive the recommended shots according to schedule, but in 2012, measles infections were at an 18-year high in the UK, reflecting low and bypassed immunization in some areas. In the US, vaccine-preventable diseases reached an all-time low in 2011, but the roughly one in 10 children who get their shots over a different timeframe than the one recommended by the medical establishment, and the less than 1 percent who go entirely unvaccinated, are enough to endanger some communities. And American and British authorities have blamed recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough on decisions to delay or decline vaccination.
From my twitter feed:
Beginning in 2004, Brian Deer, a British investigative journalist, brought a measure of redemption to journalism’s performance on this story, publishing a series of articles about improprieties in Wakefield’s work that culminated with the British General Medical Council stripping Wakefield of his license to practice in 2010, and The Lancet retracting his paper. For most journalists, that should have effectively put an end to the autism story. But those who never bought the vaccine-autism link—in the press and elsewhere—have been waiting for the proverbial nail in the coffin on this story for years, and it never seems to come. In April, for instance, The Independent in London published an op-ed by Wakefield, in which he trotted out his argument about the mmr vaccine in the context of the current measles outbreak in Wales.
Niall Ferguson apologises for anti-gay remarks towards John Maynard Keynes Guardian
Harper Lee sues agent over To Kill a Mockingbird copyright Guardian
A glimpse into Guantánamo Bay's library Guardian
Coursera Brings Online Instruction To Teachers, Taking Its First Steps Into The K-12 Market Flip
Thanks to many, many people for noting this news: Publisher's Weekly
In sport: Manchester United. There is no other. Instagram From Sunday - Apr 28, 13
Short takes from the New Statesman:
Over 150,000 people have signed a petition demanding that the UK government take “decisive action [to] make Amazon pay its fair share of UK corporation tax”. The petition drafted by Frances and Keith Smith, independent booksellers from London, was inspired by Margaret Hodge’s questioning of representatives from Google, Amazon and Starbucks last November.
Paper Airplanes is a great title for this article about a new body of travel magazines (Independent):
John le Carré has published his 23rd novel: A Delicate Truth. The team behind Skyfall and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy have made a short film to celebrate. Watch it hereAnd yet, as if to counteract this, there is a growing body of beautifully designed, weighty magazines that are very much about digging deep into a place. The geographical place first, but also the happenings, the history, the beauty and the deprivation. They are locally focused, yet global, rather than parochial; and it's not a coincidence that some of the most successful versions are labours of love.
Fixing higher ed should be done faster. Why are they waiting? From Inside Higher Ed:
Boat Magazine is aptly named. The office, run by husband and wife Davey and Erin Spens, is based in London, but it moves to a new city each issue. They gather up the most talented writers and photographers they can find, take them to the city they're featuring, cover their travel, food and living costs in lieu of paying them for their work, and – in Erin's words – "set them loose". They migrate for at least five weeks, and live together while collecting the content for their issue.
When Boat began, it had a strap that read 'the antidote to lazy journalism', but Davey and Erin quickly scrapped that because they didn't want to pit themselves against anything. They just wanted to do more. "Once we talked to more people and [heard] their stories, the cities were so different to how they were portrayed on the news," says Erin. They've had four issues so far – first Sarajevo, then Detroit, London and Athens. They've just had a special-edition newspaper about Derry-Londonderry, this year's UK City of Culture. Next stop: Kyoto, set to be published in May. "It's really fun," she says. "It's manic adrenaline the whole time."Yet we’re slipping. Simply put, our graduation rates are too low, our costs are too high, and too many students are slipping through the cracks. Reformers -- and universities themselves -- grasp these realities and want wholesale changes that will fundamentally alter how we think about higher education.
Library Journal discusses an interesting report into library budgets and serials pricing (LJ)
Those long-term battles are important, even necessary. New innovations in distance learning and nontraditional degrees may provide new pathways for students. But such changes may take decades. In the meantime, we have millions of college students taking on ever-higher debt loads for a long, winding road to a degree. We need to make immediate changes to affirmatively lower costs – not just “increase affordability” – while we raise graduation rates. We need to work within the existing framework to do what we’re already doing, but do it better and cheaper.Meanwhile, sequestration is not going to make state and local funding problems any easier. Historically, the federal government provides about one-quarter of all state revenues, and owing to sequestration, the federal government is now poised to make deep spending cuts. If a significant portion of sequestration is left in place, federal funding for schools and other non-entitlement grants to states are on track to reach their lowest levels in four decades, measured as a share of the economy.
Anyone considering app building needs to consider Amazon as this report from Techcrunch makes clear:
The lack of public funding translated to flat funding in libraries. Data from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) shows that median total expenditures for ARL libraries dropped slightly from 2011 to 2012 ($24,052,161 to $24,000,677). Since the ARL members are a mixture of public and private organizations, increases in expenditures by the private universities helped offset declines in spending from the public universities and the overall result was a slight decrease in expenditures.
There is good economic news out there, but most libraries that rely on public funding have not fully recovered from the recession. Flat budgets and ongoing inflation in costs are forcing libraries to continue to find creative ways to keep current services. In this environment, disproportionate serials prices are thrown into greater relief.Amazon doesn’t share details on how well its Amazon Appstore apps sell, but according to mobile app analytics firm App Annie, the app marketplace is seeing growing traction among developers. The company surveyed over 1,500 developers, and found that 22.5 percent of them were now publishing to the Amazon Appstore, and half of that group (50 percent) cited the game category on the Amazon Appstore as their leading revenue driver. Previous reports have confirm roughly the same thing: that Android developers are turning to Amazon’s Appstore in greater numbers, and are seeing the benefits. Amazon Appstore’s revenue per user tops that of Google Play, or even iOS, in some cases. Last summer, for example, mobile gaming startup TinyCo, was saying that its revenue per user was higher on Amazon than on iTunes or Google Play. However, another report from Flurry said that iTunes was number one, and Amazon was in second place in terms of its revenue generation capabilities. Flurry had found that for every $1 spent on the iOS store, Amazon’s store generated $0.89, and Google Play $0.23.
From my twitter feed this week:
Apple Passes 45B Total Unique App Downloads At A Rate Of 800 Per Second With Over $9B Paid To Devs Techcrunch A $1bill/quarter
Netflix Beats Analyst Estimates, With 29.2 Million US Subscribers And $1 Billion In Q1 Revenue Techcrunch
British Library feels the Arab wrath: Balfour Declaration is going to Israel Al Bawaba - Apr 23, 13
Author Neil Gaiman addressed the crowds at London Book Fair last week and it may not have gone well. "All I remember from the musicians union was that I got these yellow stickers" (YouTube)
From the New York Times on Amazon singles.
Interesting short article on how a small libary consortia is battling declining budgets and circulation: (NJ)Besides luring luminaries like Ms. Orlean, Mr. Blum has tried to maintain the brand’s prestige by tightly limiting the number of offerings. Although the digital bookshelf is infinite, Kindle has posted only 345 Singles since its inception in January 2011, according to the company’s figures. (As of March 20, the company says, about 28 percent of the works have sold more than 10,000 copies, and nearly 8 percent have sold over 50,000 copies.)Evan Ratliff, chief executive and co-founder of Atavist, said one thing his company likes about Singles is that it doesn’t accept every submission. “They actually make a concerted effort to find something great,” he added. “While we might disagree on the specifics of what that is, our overall sensibilities are aligned.”But while remaining choosy, Mr. Blum takes a special pride in nurturing undiscovered authors. A favorite is Mishka Shubaly, a musician and recovered alcoholic who under Mr. Blum’s tutelage has written three best-selling memoirs on Kindle Singles.The township library has launched a smart-phone and tablet application that enables users to get into the electronic catalog, renew borrowed books and place holds on other books. It also connects them to New Jersey’s digital library, where they borrow e-books and scan bookstore ISBN codes to see if Wayne’s collection carries the book before they decide to buy it. The Bergen County Cooperative Library System plans to release a similar app this summer.
From twitter:
"The number of smart-phone users is constantly going up," said Robert White, director of the consortium of 73 local libraries in Bergen and Hudson counties. "We have to do something to meet their needs."
"Although many other U.S. newspapers have shrunk, the Philadelphia Inquirer has suffered more..." Paidcontent
James Joyce's Leopold gets his own book for Bloomsday Guardian
In sports, Manchester United pick up their 20th title with a month to spare Guardian - Apr 19, 13
This would have been one of our first visits to see the sights after we arrived in Bangkok in 1968. That's my brother and I on the plinth. Interesting to see more Thai's in the picture than white tourists. That isn't the case today.
Check out my book on Blurb in print and iPad versions.
If you want to make your own here's a link for $20 off your first book. - Apr 17, 13Is the announced acquisition of BetterKnow a sign of innovation in the Follett higher education group? Under new CEO Mary Lee Schneider the company has made few announcements since she moved from the board to the CEO role but this could be an indication that Follett is committed to investing in new technology, services and business models to support their position in the higher ed market.
From the press release:BetterKnow's products, combined with Follett's footprint on more than 1,000 college and university campuses in North America, will provide instructors and students broader, more affordable access to course materials.
Instructors can identify course materials from a wide variety of sources, including traditional textbooks, digital materials, videos and even open source content. Instructors will be able to read reviews, make their adoptions and collaborate with their peers teaching the same subject across institutions all in one place.
Students can go to one place to find and purchase the specific course materials required for their classes. They can compare prices across a variety of content formats and channels, and can choose their preferred option for delivery, either digitally or physically. When done in conjunction with an existing on-campus location, Follett can coordinate purchases with the student's Financial Aid account.
"Providing instructors and students with the tools they need to identify, access and acquire a broad variety of relevant course materials is critical to students' success," said Mary Lee Schneider , President and CEO, Follett Corporation . "Follett's integrated solution will create a simpler, more affordable way to deliver content in both digital and physical formats."
The BetterKnow acquisition will also directly support Follett's ground breaking includED® program, which positions institutions to improve student outcomes by providing course materials as part of tuition or fees. The program, which has been successfully piloted and is ready for rapid expansion this spring, is designed to ensure students can conveniently obtain all of their required course materials.
"BetterKnow's technology will help us more efficiently integrate access to content with Student Information Systems at our partner schools," said Tom Christopher , President of Follett Higher Education Group. "This will help us to further grow our includED program, which ensures every student starts the first day of class with access to the same materials, providing a quick start to their coursework that we believe leads to better class engagement and achievement."
"The products we've designed and built will dramatically accelerate the use of digital course materials as we are able to eliminate key barriers to use," said Isaac Segal , Founder and CEO of BetterKnow. "Our Discovery service will enable faculty to more easily sort through and choose between a myriad of course material options available to them, ensuring that the best material can be found and utilized to meet pedagogical goals. Follett has a deep and direct reach into higher education, enabling us to quickly bring these solutions directly to campuses." - Apr 17, 13
From the Chronicle of Higher Ed a 20 minute interview with Fred Dylla, executive director at the American Institute of Physics, and Brian D. Scanlan, president of Thieme Publishers on the costs of publishing journals.
LINK to the articleAcademic journals don’t happen by magic, and even online editions are expensive to produce in ways that scholars may not realize. That’s the argument by two scholarly publishers, The two give their response to comments by our guest from last month’s show, a scholar who argued that in an online world journals should publish scholarly articles free online.
Download this recording as an MP3 file, or subscribe to Tech Therapy on iTunes. - Apr 15, 13
Fun to experiment - View this in Flipboard: http://flip.it/GoiH1
From the digital minds pre-conference at London Book Fair over the weekend this summary from The Bookseller:Author Neil Gaiman, in a wide-ranging and complex talk, said people in the book business needed to become more like 'dandelions', experimenting by spreading numerous seeds around and accepting that most would fail. "The model for tomorrow is try everything, make mistakes, fail, fail better."
From The New Yorker a view on the Mendeley/Elsevier tie up:
Gaiman took his analogies back to prehistoric days saying that print books could be like sharks, an animal that evolution has never bettered, but that there were still some dinosaurs in the business, for whom digital could be the end. "Books (some) may be sharks", but "home libraries" and "encyclopedias" were not, with both displaced by the web and portable reading devices. He said he recognised that the e-book was here when he daughter started reading off an early version of the Kindle on a trip to Hungary where printed English-language books were not available. For older readers he said the ability to increase font-size was the "killer app".
Gaiman said we were moving from a world where gatekeepers were necessary, to one where guides were essential. Gaiman said he would "sign anything", and said discoverability was best achieved not through a commercial transaction. "We don't normally find the people we love most by buying them, we discover them." Gaiman said he never wanted to go "to war" over this, instead he promoted "word of mouth".Elsevier has two reasons to buy Mendeley. One is to squash it—to destroy or coöpt an open-science icon that threatens its business model. Many critics fear that’s the case. The other reason is to possess the aggregated data that Mendeley’s users generate with all of their searching and sharing. Mendeley is still growing, with two million three hundred thousand users sifting through over a hundred million references. Their use patterns reveal who is reading what, which papers are popular, what lines of research are surging, which disciplines and journals are crucial, and a lot of other extremely valuable information.
And Salon thinks about the data:
No one has that kind of data at the scale of Mendeley. Mendeley had been selling access to segments of that data to publishers and other institutions, including Elsevier, as part of its business model. Now Elsevier owns all of that data. But if it wants users to continue generating streams of data, the company will have to play nice, which leaves it with something like the Facebook model: create software and a huge social network in which people share information that it can profitably harvest, and be just conciliatory enough about privacy, anyway, to repel fewer people than it attracts.One common link is obvious: powerlessness in the face of corporate greed. But there’s another, slightly more subtle connection. When we use online services to gather together and share information, whether it be about our favorite romance novels, or most useful sets of bibliographic citations, we create persistent and accessible agglomerations of data. The more popular such services become, the more valuable that data becomes, and sooner or later, a big fish is going to come around and gobble it up. We personally may have never intended to sell out, but together we managed to create something that was bound to be sold. Inevitably, that data will be used to target us.
Techcrunch reports that Cal State is aggressively expanding their MOOC style offerings:It appears that San Jose edX course is experiencing results similar to when universities switch from boring old lecture-style teaching, to a more interactive form. For instance, one University of California, Los Angeles biochemistry class experiment found a roughly 18% pass rate boost when it ditched lectures [PDF].
In the Guardian John LeCarre speaks about the genesis of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold but thinking who Leamas may have been in today's world:
But, one-off experiments can often seem much more promising than reality, once they are brought to scale. When new-age pilots are broadened to environments with less-than-enthusiastic teachers and students, things can fall apart.The merit of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, then – or its offence, depending where you stood – was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible. The bad dream turned out to be one that a lot of people in the world were sharing, since it asked the same old question that we are asking ourselves 50 years later: how far can we go in the rightful defence of our western values, without abandoning them along the way? My fictional chief of the British Service – I called him Control – had no doubt of the answer:
From my Twitter feed:
"I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?"
Today, the same man, with better teeth and hair and a much smarter suit, can be heard explaining away the catastrophic illegal war in Iraq, or justifying medieval torture techniques as the preferred means of interrogation in the 21st century, or defending the inalienable right of closet psychopaths to bear semi-automatic weapons, and the use of unmanned drones as a risk-free method of assassinating one's perceived enemies and anybody who has the bad luck to be standing near them. Or, as a loyal servant of his corporation, assuring us that smoking is harmless to the health of the third world, and great banks are there to serve the public.
Publishers May Pay To Preserve Saturday Delivery http://ow.ly/jXB2I
Google Death: A Tool to Take Care of Your Gmail When You're Gone - Rebecca J. Rosen - The Atlantic TheAtlantic
Massive Volunteer Collective Proofreads 25,000 Public-Domain Books http://flip.it/bSV69
BBC News - 'Pompeii of north' being unearthed in London BBC
MOOCs and Libraries: Introduction,by Merrilee Proffitt /HangingTogether HangingTogether - Apr 27, 13
It was dusk and getting dark and I couldn't hold the camera still enough. The busker (and his mates - one with a double base) is captured in full action as a result of camera shake but it works.
In those days children, the American mall atmosphere of today's Covent Garden was but a wishful hope of some government functionary or two.
Check out my book on Blurb in print and iPad versions.
If you want to make your own here's a link for $20 off your first book. - Apr 11, 13
Eric Hellman over at the eponymously named Go To Hellman has an interesting idea that chips away at one of the last foundations of big publishing; the 'investment banking' attribute that big publishing brings to the industry. Here's a snip from his blog post this week:
There's nothing intrinsic about crowd-funding that restricts this sort of fund-raising to unknown authors looking for a first advance. The JOBS act restricts the amount raised from "unqualified investors" to $1,000,000, so the really big name authors would have to tap the "qualified investor" funding market. (An individual with more than a million dollars in assets excluding home and vehicles is considered "qualified")
Read the whole thing.
Once equity crowd-funding becomes established for books (and it WILL happen!), incumbent publishing houses will have lost, at a stroke, their oligopoly on books as investment vehicles. Already, publishers are outsourcing their design, editorial, production, distribution and sales functions; providing capital is their last bastion of essential function. They will have to participate in the new markets or they will dissipate into irrelevancy. - Apr 10, 13
From OCLC a selection of links to some of the sessions at last months Washington meeting on MOOCs and libraries:
MOOCs and Libraries event videos now available
The “MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge?” event took place 18–19 March at the University of Pennsylvania and was broadcast live online. Hosted by OCLC Research and University of Pennsylvania Libraries, the event featured thoughtful and provocative presentations about how libraries are already getting involved with MOOCs, and engaged attendees in discussions about strategic opportunities and challenges going forward. More than 500 people participated in this event: 125 attended in person and more than 400 attended remotely online.Links to the 11 individual videos and a MOOCs and Libraries video playlist that comprises all of these videos are available on the MOOCs and Libraries event page and on the OCLC Research YouTube Channel. Links to the presenters’ slides, the next steps document and the #mooclib archived tweets from this event also are available on the MOOCs and Libraries event page. Look to the OCLC Research blog, HangingTogether, for a short series of postings that recap presentation highlights and summarize outcomes from this event. - Apr 07, 13Confessions of a window cleaner now back in print and coming from Harpercollins. (Independent):
While the films quickly ran out of steam, the books that inspired them didn't. Written by a former advertising executive called Christopher Wood under the pseudonym Timothy Lea, they ran to 19 titles, and Wood penned a further eight under the name of Rosie Dixon. They were overwhelmingly of their time (and there can be no better excuse), but it seems they are about to have their time again. Over the next 18 months, HarperCollins imprint The Friday Project will reissue all of them as e-books.
In the not really news category - The Observer notes the success of Museum stores that are popping up everywhere selling all kinds of things. (Observer):
Good god, but why?
...
The cast of that film might well wish to quickly forget their involvement in it, much as many associated with the Confessions… films do today. Tony Booth, who played Timothy Lea's brother-in-law, declined an interview (much, you suspect, to his daughter Cherie Blair's relief); likewise Lynda Bellingham and Jill Gascoine, both presumably reluctant to revisit their early, naked screen appearances. Robin Askwith, for whom Confessions… proved a career high point, was prepared to give us an interview, but offered us just 20 minutes of his time in exchange for £500 – a figure greater than he would ever have received for cleaning windows.
There is, however, somebody happy to talk, for free – and that is the author himself. I meet Christopher Wood on a cold Thursday morning in a chic London restaurant. Now 77, Wood, elegant in his tweed jacket and wispy white beard, is terribly well spoken (he pronounces "off" as "orf"), and emits the kind of carefree air so common in older people and so envied by younger ones.Some of the more creative items appear to have been thought up in several eureka moments. St Paul's Cathedral harvested some of the rubble from recent refurbishments and set it into cufflinks. For £210 owners can now decorate their shirt cuffs with marble from the starburst under its famous dome.
At The Atlantic Jordan Weissmann opines why he thinks Goodreads is so valuable to Amazon.
Over at the National Theatre shop, the success of Warhorse – turned into a film directed by Steven Spielberg – led to the offer of a £2,500 half-size replica of the geese puppets used in the stage show, created by the puppeteers who made the originals.
At the Science Museum, shoppers can buy vases shaped as Thomas Edison's iconic light bulb, made from recycled incandescent bulbs. The museum has asked its inventor in residence, Mark Champkins, to create more unique items for it to sell.
However, perhaps leading the way in terms of creativity is the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden. To celebrate London Underground's 150th anniversary, the creative heads there have salvaged luggage racks from old Metropolitan line trains – selling them for £250.So Amazon has just bought the ecosystem where many of America's most influential readers choose their books. How exactly they'll use it isn't entirely clear yet. Some have suggested they'll integrate Goodreads into the Kindle experience. Others think that, given the problems Amazon has had with writers buying friendly reviews, they might use the site as an a big cache of trustworthy opinions. As David Vinjamuri put it at Forbes, "Goodreads offers Amazon the ability to transmit the recommendations of prolific readers to the average reader." In any event, there's plenty of value for Amazon to unlock. Assuming, of course, they don't do anything to muck up their new purchase.
The Economist as a quick look at news organizations and concludes:Where is the good news? Last year local TV stations, especially those in swing states like Florida and Ohio, got a welcome boost from the $3 billion spent on TV advertising during the election. And newspapers are now starting in large numbers to demand payment for their digital content. Pew reckons that around a third of America’s 1,380 dailies have started (or will soon launch) paywalls, inspired by the success of the New York Times, where 640,000 subscribers get the digital edition and circulation now accounts for a larger portion of revenues than advertising.
From my Twitter Feed this week.
Boosting circulation revenue will help stem losses from print advertising, since it has become clear that digital advertising will not be enough. For every $16 lost in print advertising last year, newspapers made only around $1 from digital ads. The bulk of the $37.3 billion spent on digital advertising in 2012 went to five firms: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and AOL. Not much Gandhian equality there.
Scholarly Publishing: Project Muse and Highwire Press Announce Partnership PressRelease
In digital age, library finds difficulty attaching numbers to its value. Topeka CapitalJournal (They buried the lead).
CourseSmart Analytics Is a Bad idea | Inside Higher Ed InsideHigherEd
Amazon Takes on Dropbox With New Desktop File Syncing Wired
Rosetta Stone acquires Livemocha for $8.5m (Nick Summers/The Next Web) TNW
BBC News - Judge rules digital music cannot be sold 'second hand' BBC - Apr 27, 13
In the old days you used to be able to walk out onto these roof gardens as part of the tour of Rock Center - at least I assume so since I have a photo from this set of Mrs PND senior standing on the grass down there. Now you can get something of a view of them if you go to the top floor of SAKs which I did a few years ago but I would like to go out to one of these gardens just once. I've guessed that this image was taken mid morning on a weekday and, assuming that, it is interesting to see how much less traffic there is both on the roads and on the sidewalks.
Check out my book on Blurb in print and iPad versions.
If you want to make your own here's a link for $20 off your first book. - Apr 04, 13
Buying content is way too cumbersome. I don't mean the Amazon 1click buy but rather the individual article or chapter you might want to read. We are seeing how video and audio (Netflix On Demand and iTunes for example) are morphing into single transaction type activities and this should happen for print. Eliminating all impediments to the efficient sale or transaction of content should be the objective of any content owner yet with all the investment in online retail, publishing processes and efficient supply chains, the media industry has simply transferred the old models to the online world. Outside of complete books, content is still very hard to transact on.
But there is a simple fix: I've long thought that content should carry with it a 'cash register' which would allow immediate purchase, rent or access (based on user rights). I'll admit that metadata is not the industry's strong point but part of the reason metadata in media is generally so abysmal is that there is too much distance between the metadata owner and the transaction. Tighten that space to where there's no difference and you'll see metadata improve fast.
Let's say a publisher wants to make a book chapter salable. "Content Cashier" (TM pending) will provide the prospective buyer with a price for the type of transaction they want such as buy, rent, etc. If they have a profile with "Content Cashier" this transaction will occur in the background with a simple acknowledgement (yes/no) that the customer wants to continue. If not, the user will be able to pay via some other method (Paypal, Amazon) in less than 60seconds.
Publishers would attach their terms of use and pricing within a very simple framework - little different than if you were in a physical bookstore. The bookstore experience assumes many things notably if you buy a book you are going to transact at the register and walk out with it. "Content Cashier" will also take certain assumptions for granted about the transaction and the customer to simplify the pricing and the transaction itself. In our model the publisher will pick up more than 95% of the value of the transaction (we haven't decided yet), but there is no reason why standard retailer discounts, commissions and other fees should apply when we've eliminated all the inefficiencies in the supply chain to shorten the gap between content and the buyer.
Other tools will allow a publisher to create collections and retail 'pop-up' storefronts that maximize their opportunities to reach out directly to customers. The real benefit however will be that "Content Cashier" travels with the content so that at any time - meaning when the content is out of the control of the publisher - a transaction can be executed. Pass a link via email, find the article in a database, or list the item on a course outline or LMS, no problem; "Content Cashier" will let the user pay for that content instantly. When this type of instant transaction can be facilitated at the point of need publishers will begin to improve their metadata, simplify their pricing and engage in experiments with their customers to maximize their revenues.
Providing "Content Cashier" information on your content is likely to enable new business opportunities for new market entrants who want to use content as a component of a product with many more unique additional features and services they have developed. Enabling these new models becomes far easier when a set of simple terms and conditions travels along with the content. There are any number of new platforms, store ideas, collaborations, services and tools and these increase by the day. Many are spurious, some are stupid but occasionally a really new idea will come along. Since many of these new ideas fight for your attention and time why not make it easy for them, stop the guessing game and start to manage your retail opportunities in at proactive way. That's what "Content Cashier" is all about. - Apr 15, 13An homage to Uncle Monty who died this week. Also known as Henry from Pie in the Sky. New Statesman.
A long The Nation article discussing several books about London. How distinct, original and independent is London or has it all just been "Made in America"?The arrival of new sensibilities in pop, couture and conceptual art coincided with the arrival of youngish, self-consciously forward-looking, extravagantly promise-making politicians who sought to persuade American journalists and not a few other people that London was the home of a distinct contemporary set of ideals. (Though in a way, this was nothing new: in 1966, Time magazine had identified London as “the swinging city”—with people saying ever since that London swung for about thirty people for maybe half an hour—while in the mid-1990s, the “Cool Britannia” moment was announced by Newsweek and duly covered in Vanity Fair.) It was a time of jubilation, partly about what was happening, but mostly about what was going to emerge: a post-Thatcher, post-Major utopia populated by politicized guitarists and guitar-playing politicians. It lasted until late 1997, with—depending on where you were standing—the release of Oasis’s bloated album Be Here Now or the revelation that the new prime minister, Tony Blair, part of the generation pledging to end political “sleaze” (the word appeared in national newspapers 3,479 times in 1994–95), had exempted the Formula One racing empire, run by the Labour donor Bernie Ecclestone, from the government ban on tobacco sponsorship. It turned out that, despite what people believed, Oasis wasn’t infallible and, as many people suspected, Blair was a cynic. Blair’s friend Peter Mandelson later assured a Silicon Valley audience that New Labour was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” (“intensely relaxed” doubling as an uncannily accurate description of Blair’s persona).
James Grimmelmann writing in Publisher's Weekly about the Kirtsaeng copyright case the Wiley lost last week.Justice Breyer, writing for himself and five colleauges, disagreed. "Lawfully made," he explained, refers only to infringing versus noninfringing copies; it does not make geographic distinctions. First sale applies to copies made anywhere in the world "as long as their manufacture met the requirements of American copyright law." Since the textbooks Kirtsaeng was importing were printed with the permission of the copyright holders, they were legal, and so were his imports. Game, set, match.
Columbia Journalism Review is one of the best media industry journals going and I've linked to their articles many times. Here in brief they jump on some link bait set by BusinessWeek about the Amazon Goodreads deal:
Breyer's opinion gives particular weight to concerns suggested by the American Library Association and other groups who submitted amicus briefs. If copies made abroad aren't subject to first sale, there goes the lending right for imported books; art galleries couldn't safely display foreign paintings; and don't even think about trying to sell your imported car, which contains copyrighted software. Indeed, one might ask, why wouldn't publishers shift all their priting overseas, to be rid of first sale once and for all? Breyer's opinion for the Court denies this parade of horribles a permit.
Justice Ginsburg's forceful dissent, however, points out the serious consequences the decision will have for publishers. If Kirtsaeng can import international editions, so can Amazon, or anyone. The price differential between the two will collapse. Publishers will be reluctant to create inexpensive editions for those in less affluent countries who can't afford the eye-watering prices (some) Americans can. That's bad for readers around the world, and could make it infeasible to publish some books at all.
The Kirtsaeng opinion seriously undermines the viability of English-language territorial rights in this age of global e-commerce and cheap shipping. All English-language editions will be competing against each other, which means licensing a U.S. edition and a Canadian edition and an Indian edition is inviting the three publishers to compete against each other on price.Bloomberg BusinessWeek makes itself look silly today, running a speculative piece on how much Amazon paid for its latest acquisition, Goodreads.
Philip Pullman on bacon (More Intelligent Life):
Here’s the headline: Amazon likely paid $1 billion for GoodreadsFrying bacon: is there any smell that prompts the saliva glands to gush more freely? Roasting coffee is almost as good, perhaps, but bacon is the king. And it has to be fried. Grilling the stuff makes it self-conscious and prim. Grilled bacon is for people who are too polite for sensuousness, let alone sensuality. The rashers have to wallow in a blackened frying pan, curling up with delight, spitting with glee, letting the fat molecules, as they rise in excitement from the stove, carry the news of the ongoing savoury-umami-salty-Maillard orgy to every corner of the house. And what sort of fat? The bacon will generously supply some of its own, but if it needs supplementing, the best of all is lard. No olive oil here, thank you.
In a way you have to feel sorry for Matt Lauer over at the Today show although the irony is lost on everyone at this point. (NY Mag)The irony of the current situation is that almost no one with an eye for live television thought that Curry, all things being equal, was a natural for Today’s couch. Curry was a television pro—her emotionally charged reporting on Darfur and Haiti won awards and performed well in the ratings—but that’s a very different skill than making small talk about salad dressing and bantering with Matt Lauer. Wide-eyed and breathless with empathy while interviewing people touched by tragedy, Curry could be awkward and mercurial in the morning happy-talk milieu, her real feelings bursting forth at odd moments. She was considered intensely earnest and somewhat fragile, despite her hard-news chops. In the past, Couric would sometimes tease her about her clothes, remarks that Curry took badly. When Lauer and Today producers tried to “punk” the rest of the cast one morning in 2011—sending them to a fake magazine photo shoot where the photographer had a meltdown and started firing all his assistants—Curry was infuriated with Lauer and retreated to her dressing room. Roker, her longtime friend, was sent to comfort her.
From my twitter feed:
BBC News - Your Week in Pictures BBC Check out the seventh photo!
Launch Pad Finalists Announced for SLOAN-C Conference on Emerging Technologies. Edsurge - Mar 29, 13
In many of the countries we visited once the plane had settled into its' parking space somewhere out on the tarmac they would roll over the stairs to the plane and everyone would descend to be transported to the terminal in a bus. At some airports - Karachi, Tehran, Beirut - before the cabin doors where opened they would send out guards to watch over the plane. At one airport I remember a ring of soldiers facing outwards and spaced a few feet apart entirely circling the plane. For a kid, that seems exciting but I am sure to some of the adults coming down the stairs from one of these Jumbos seeing that type of welcome was possibly unsettling. This guy seems a little more relaxed and isn't typical of what I recall about some of the guards I saw in other locations. I think PND Senior probably took this image because officers with guns mingling with civies was for us still unusual. Times have changed.
This is a great full page spread in the Blurb book I am always mentioning. - Mar 28, 13
A presentation from Project Tomorrow on the uses of and implications for technology in education. More information about the Project Tomorrow is located here:
The vision of Project Tomorrow is ensure that today’s students are well prepared to be tomorrow’s innovators, leaders and engaged citizens of the world. We believe that by supporting the innovative uses of science, math and technology resources in our K-12 schools and communities, students will develop the critical thinking, problem solving and creativity skills needed to compete and thrive in the 21st century. We approach our mission through national research projects, the replication of model excellence projects in schools and communities, online tools and resources for students, teachers and parents, and national and regional advocacy efforts. In September 2005, NetDay, a national education technology nonprofit group, merged with a regional science education nonprofit to create the new Project Tomorrow.
Enabled, Engaged, Empowered: The New Student Vision for Digital Learning from Julie Evans
What can the "Speak Up" findings tell us about the future of technology in education:- Students serve as a 'digital advance team'
- Students regularly adopt and adapt technology for education
- Students frustrations focus on the unsophisticated use of technology in education
- Persistent digital disconnect between students and adults
- Exacerbation of lack of relevance in current education
- Students want a more personalized learning environment
- Mar 25, 13The fun never stops in education publishing these days. The Dallas based education content and technology company Cambium Learning Group announced senior level executive changes last week with their CEO and CFO leaving the company. Cambium comprises three businesses: Voyager, a comprehensive intervention business; Sopris, a supplemental solutions business; and Cambium Learning Technologies, which includes ExploreLearning, IntelliTools, Kurzweil and Learning A-Z. Cambium will have been negatively impacted by the general slow down (some say collapse) of the US K-12 market over the past three years.
Last week the company announced the resignations of CEO Ron Klausner and CFO Brad Almond. In both cases internal candidates were designated as replacements and both resigned their board positions as did board member Vernon Johnson. John Campbell who had been SVP and President of the Cambium Learning Technologies unit was named CEO. Barbara Benson, currently the Controller and Principal Accounting Officer of the Company was named CFO. Johnson's position on the board was taken by Joe Walsh who was also named Chairman of the Board. Walsh has clearly been brought in as an executive chairman and in a change management role. There is more on the changes in the following 8K: SEC.GOV (8K Statement)
Over the past several years revenues have been up and down at Cambium but 2012 was clearly a painful year for the company as this summary indicates:
Cambium Learning Group, Inc 10K
Voyager was purchased by Veronis in 2009 - Mar 25, 13From the Orlando Sentinel:
"The library's e-book service is great because I don't have to park, walk to the library, find the book and check it out," said the accountant [Krantz]. "The only complaint I have is that I have to wait longer than usual for an e-book because the library seems to stock few digital copies of the titles I want."
Krantz represents a growing number of Central Florida readers depending on their public libraries to fuel their consumption of e-books, downloadable audiobooks and other digital media. At the same time, librarians across the Orlando area are scrambling to meet that increasing demand while facing rising e-book costs and budget cuts.
"The growing expense of e-books is something we're up against as a profession," Pepo said. Tate explains that the library's two e-book copies of "Guilt," a bestselling thriller by Jonathan Kellerman, cost the Seminole County PublicLibrary about $84 each. But each of the 20 copies of the same title in print cost $28."That really chips into your budget as you try to provide patrons e-books," Tate said.
Publishing houses say e-book prices are high because they don't ever wear out, are borrowed more frequently than print books and are convenient: Users don't have to go to a library to check them out.
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Blurb Books
- http://www.blurb.com/user/store/Personanondata
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