A Constant State of Flux... or noise!

There is a sadly interesting article on Publishers Weekly - In a Constant State of Flux and Frenzy: Digital Solutions in India 2013. This article sums up, in a negative way the historical approach to the off-shore production business promoting what they do for a buck, while appearing to be forward looking and visionary.

OK to be fair this is a machine-gun broadside article trying to live up to the title with a lot of dudes promoting their services and products using any Internet vehicle they can find. I haven't heard of most of them and I am sure they haven't heard of Infogrid Pacific. So this post is probably nothing more than a nice little personal sound byte. 

The PW article seems to be the standard service provider noise machine at work. You do get the idea this article is taking the mickey (Hey! my mother is a Callaghan. I am allowed to use the term mickey), but just in case it isn't...

Here are some of the industry "visionary observations" listed in the article (I am hoping this is fair use) with equally terse summaries and observations...

      

"Publishers are suffering from a bit of technology fatigue..."

A "bit"? What the hell is that. Only publishers who haven't taken the leap to a real digital content strategy are suffering fatigue. The serious ones are dancing on analogue's grave. Academic publishers aren't a bit fatigued. Trade publishers are locked to their InDesign Desktops and probably will be for half-a-decade yet. Wishing it was like yesterday will just drive them out of business while they plod on with their PEPCONs. Education publishers are transitioning to HTML5 so fast you can hardly stand in the wind but service providers don't provide strategies they provide...well... services. That means publisher's have to work out their own path through the irrational market noise. That is not easy.

"Increasingly, publishers are moving toward platform-independent solutions for their digital content needs and demanding more interactivity in e-books..."

Now that is a mixed statement if ever there was one. I guess that means Apps brilliantly crafted by a team of cut-and-paste programmers. However our experience is that they are experimenting with Apps but still looking for real digital content strategies that don't result in publisher IP being tied up in someone elses App IP where an upgrade costs more than the App.

"More educational publishers are also moving away from the “book model” and embracing the concept of learning objects..."

In a blue fit. The talk is there amongst the big guys for sure, but other than some relatively yesterday based experiements they can't see a learning object unless it is on the printed page. Learning objects is just as much a non-statement as a learning doo-dahs. The fact is learning is a narrative and engagement progression and "learning-objects" can enhance the narrative but doesn't replace it. The problem of digital learning content education content is a lot bigger than some doodahs!

"The current focus in the education industry, ... is on providing differentiated instruction to each student..."

As long as there is a teacher in the classroom sure. We did that in 1997 with the Reality Learning engine - Computer as Teacher, Teacher as facilitator. This is a little on the fantasy end of digital content strategies today.

"...with more educational publishers creating e-learning content using EPub 3..."

What! There are only ePub3 reading systems available AZARDI and the rather weak iBooks implementation of ePub3 fixed layout. Sure Ingram has their semi-ready system but they are hardly going to be delivering education content to the world in spite of their corporate dreams.

"There is a major shift from focusing on formats and channels to focusing on content. Print-first digital-next is outdated...."

That is certainly what should be happening, but it is a splutter-spluttter machine at the moment. "Major shift" is probably a little optimistic. The problem publishers have is the noise in the market like the statements above. How the hell do you cut through all of that? Until North American publishers clearly see there are alternative strategies to Apple, Amazon and Apps nothing much will happen in that market. Meanwhile the ROW moves on with new strategies primarily thanks to Samsung and Huawei.

"...there is visible enthusiasm among institutions and universities to convert and, ultimately, monetize their huge repositories of print content—research papers, rare manuscripts, student theses, for instance...."

Yes, but they all want it done at 50p (that means Paise, half a Rupee) a page. They don't understand the OAIS model or the TRAC standards. The fact is Student Theses (Master and PhD) are not worth a buck and are referred to only by themselves. For example with our Digital Libraries for India project we have put millions of pages of this content online, we are now starting Digital Libraries for China and expect millions more of undiscovered, unread pages to be available. Of course the problem in putting vast volumes of theses online is plagiarism. A very real concern. However it is important they are digitized and preserved as a part of the sum of human information, but not the way Indian repositories are created with most of the pages not even readible. They are normally worse than Google books!

"In the near future, a supplier needs to be able to provide unique, interactive, and functional elements that enhance user learning coupled with exceptional visual appeal..."

In developing countries print textbooks are robust well authored and have excellent content. They are not necessarily pretty. Pretty does not define educational content engagement although it does not detract from it.

"...clients, for instance, are asking for simple activity-based apps that can be templated for a whole series in order to keep costs low..."

Low cost tempated Apps. There's an oxymoron.  They may work for some subjects in some areas, but they are not an answer for education content at all. Been there, seen that, picked up the pieces and got things working sensibly.

"The future of education ... will be e-learning, and that will break all geographical boundaries with content that is created once and then localized to meet market-specific needs...."

No it won't. Breaking geographical boundaries with education content is the single most difficult thing to do with digital content. It's up there with world peace and the rights of humans. Geographical boundries carries the luggage of language and social boundaries at the top, and multiple disenfanchised communities at the bottom in dozens, if not hundreds of countries. Paulo Friere's ideas float to the top. The "culture of silence" is something that digital content can address for the first time in history. The socialogical learning needs, methods and differences of cultural and social division divisions can be addressed by education digital content, but it has to be concious. It sure in hell ain't a make once and cut and paste to a country solution.

"But print will remain and co-exist with digital-first products for many more years to come."

This is probably the one correct statement for certain markets, for a time. XY page layout is the mesmerising fixation of publishers and content producers today. It's an evil spell cast by Gutenberg!

And in conclusion

I should have put a comment on the site, but really there probably wasn't space and it would not have been approved.

The source mishmash article pretty much sums up the digital content business in 2013. A lot of suppliers expressing visionary opinions that miss the first principles of digital content strategies and ownership. Get the content right and roll with the changes.

The innovations in digital content production and delivery are not going to come from these commentators who are probably locked into the North American money machine.

Watch the rest of the world with interest. Massive leaps forward in developing countries will not even register in developed countries because of the "it didn't happen here" syndrome. 

     

An Opinion post by Richard Pipe