Back in the office now after this year’s visit to Berlin for the Online Educa conference and exhibition. Now it its 14^th year this conference has become the largest and most comprehensive global e-learning conference for the corporate, education and public service sectors.

I like this event a lot. The quality and diversity of the presentations, subjects and speakers is very high and it’s a great place to catch up with people I don’t otherwise get the chance to catch up with.

This year I was invited to speak on the subject of ‘Web 2.0 and Work Based Learning’. Basically this was a piece on the mapping of appropriate web 2.0 designs/socialised learning designs on top of existing work based learning programmes. Ensuring that your audience is ready for the introduction of such a technology was one caveat, along with the need to allow users/learners to ‘on-board’ their use of Web 2.0 in the workplace as their mastery and confidence increases.

It’s a more sober piece than one I may have done even a year ago I think. Pragmatism and the realisation that adoption of Web 2.0 in the work place won’t happen just ‘cos I say it’s great, have caused me to temper some of the evangelism of recent years. I’m not sure that this approach is in the long term useful to anyone but it feels time to slow down a little I think and reflect on the last year or so worth of development.

I enjoyed delivering my presentation, and the chair, Phillipe, did a great job in managing the session. However, being in the main hall has its drawbacks. It’s a very large room and I think Q&A can be a little intimidating for the audience. This is a shame because it’s the best and most valuable part of any session I think. I’d like to see non-plenary sessions kept in smaller, more intimate conference rooms that do allow for Q&A, better for everyone.

Reflecting on the past few days and on some of the sessions I was able to attend a few strands has emerged:

• Web 2.0 is no longer the novelty it has been for the past 2 or 3 years – more cases and reflections on use of Web 2.0 but with more maturity and some criticism too.
• Second Life. There was a substantial SL presence and it appeared in the sessions too. This just isn’t going away and the Bavarian Library had a very good demonstration of their SL presence which I found intriguing. For me the jury is still out on SL, but perhaps it’s time to revisit SL?
• OER. Open Educational Resources. For me this seems to have come out of the blue in the last 12 months. A lot of time was given over to OER and I attended quite a few OER sessions. Sorry, but this is all smoke and mirrors and the premise deeply flawed. I congratulate Arturo Dyro of Young Digital Planet for his defense of publishing in an OER world the Day 2 plenary on ‘OER – Unstoppable or Unsustainable?’.
• Engaging with Gen Y, Millenials and Next Generation Learners. Lots of airtime on why the upcoming generation is different to the last and why current structures are ill-suited to meeting their particular needs. Ton Ziljstra talked about this too at the end of Day 1. Quite interesting.

On Day 2 I listened to the ELIG panel and session on Publishing Meets eLearning. I was invited to take part in this panel but unfortunately OEB policy dictated that I could not since I had presented on Day 1. The talks were given by Stephen Bradley (Elsevier), Diana Childress (Blackboard) and Eric Baber (Cambridge University Press). These were honest and realistic appraisals of the role of the publisher in an eLearning context and posed more questions than answers. There was (is) much confusion over the value add and the position in the value chain of the publisher in delivering, developing and commissioning elearning (assuming one has defined elearning in any meaningful way). Some slightly opposing views from the floor and the panel regarding statements like ‘Content is no longer King’ added to the general sense of wooliness, but I think that is to be expected in what is a traditional, and very successful business. Experimentation with content and business models, formats and modalities is to be encouraged but I don’t believe anyone knows what success will look like in a Publisher/eLearning world.

Overall this was a successful Online Educa 2008. I’m looking forward to following up on some very interesting propositions and developing Emerald thinking in new and innovative ways as a result.

Last week, I asked whether publishers are anti-publishing.
Perhaps a better question would have been why US and/or scholarly
publishers are giving up on the subscription model. A recent post from Samir Husni’s Mr. Magazine.com talks about the “mass suicide” magazine publishers are committing by giving up on the subscription model. The same morning I saw this, I received an email from Amazon.com offering me $5 off magazine subscriptions that are already ridiculously cheap (Wired drops from $10 to $5, New York drops to $14.95, etc.).

As Husni writes in his blog entry:

I say we live in desperate times when it comes to the
American magazine scene. Just days after returning from an overseas
trip where I enjoyed seeing and buying magazines and newspapers that
charge real prices for their content, I received an e mail from Hearst Magazines
inviting me (being the valued subscriber who paid less than $7 to
subscribe to all their magazines just a few months ago) to take
advantage of “incredible savings” on all my favorite magazines. . . .
It is time to CHANGE our ways of doing business. It is time to change
our method of pricing and selling magazines. Maybe, for a change, we
can start saying Yes We Can and start thinking of the readers as a good
source of revenue.

Logically, the subscription model makes incredible sense — readers
paying editors and publishers to work for them and provide valuable
content or risk cancellation. It makes more sense than the advertising
model, which is about an indirect relationship and about extrinsic
economic realities more than intrinsic value economics.

From a business and editorial perspective, the annuity model at the
heart of subscriptions allows for institutions that can endure the
viscitudes of politics, economics, and taste, establishing important
cultural landmarks and sustainable employment and revenues. Having a
direct income stream from readers spreads the risk of the business, and
puts it where it belongs.

Yet even some publishing people celebrate the low subscription prices, as if these prices are the salvation of print. They are not. Low prices devalue expensive finished goods. As James Gleick put recently in a New York Times Op-Ed:

Forget about cost-cutting and the mass market. Don’t aim
for instant blockbuster successes. You won’t win on quick distribution,
and you won’t win on price. Cyberspace has that covered. Go back to an
old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper,
acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you
can. People want to cherish it.

In a world of cheap magazines (and books, in Gleick’s essay),
editorial work is devalued, layout and art direction are devalued,
photography is devalued, superb printing is devalued — in fact, with
advertising as the de facto business model when subscription
prices drop below the cost of fulfillment, the only thing of value
remaining is the distribution. And for publications to compete on
distribution in the age of the Internet is truly suicidal.

Print publications can exist and thrive even amongst online
competitors. But as undervalued commodities selling audience to
advertisers instead of content to readers, their fates are sealed.