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What Now? Making the most of pandemic pilots and pivots
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What Now? Making the most of pandemic pilots and pivots
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Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
STEPHANIE LOVEGROVE
HANSEN: All right.
HANSEN: Hello and welcome, everyone. My name is Stephanie Lovegrove Hansen. I am the senior marketing manager at Silverchair and I want to thank you for joining us for today's event, the first in the 2021 Platform Strategies webinar series. Aka, the first time I've worn a blazer in a very long time. So we're very excited to have you with us today to join us for the discussion between Will Schweitzer and Lauren Kane.
HANSEN: But before I hand it over to them, I'm going to cover just a few housekeeping items. As mentioned, this is the first event in the Platform Strategies webinar series. And we're hoping that when you registered for this event you also registered for the other three events we'll be hosting this year. But if you didn't, it's not too late. You can follow the same registration link to save a seat at those events.
HANSEN: This series is a set of free virtual events and in the past it was held in person and offered a unique forum for thought leaders to discuss their platform, data, and technology strategies with colleagues. So we hope that in addition to hearing from our thoughtful speakers today, that you'll also continue in the tradition of the event and engage in the discussion via the chat and the Q&A features. We will have time for Q&A at the end.
HANSEN: This event is being recorded, and a copy of the recording will be made available on our website afterwards. Finally at the end of the event you'll see a survey requesting your rating of the event, which will help us with future event planning so we appreciate your feedback. And with that, I am happy to introduce Lauren Kane and Will Schweitzer. Lauren Kane is the chief strategy officer of Morressier, providing virtual conference and publishing technology solutions for societies and research organizations.
HANSEN: With 17 years in scholarly communications, she has extensive experience working with societies, research organizations, and publishers to effectively navigate the evolving market landscape. A frequent industry contributor, she also proudly serves as the 2020-2021 SSP president. Joining Lauren in person in our Charlottesville offices is Will Schweitzer. Schweitzer is chief product and customer success officer.
HANSEN: In these roles, he looks after the core Silverchair Platform and Silverchair's growing client community. He guides our product marketing, client services, and customer success teams and he has a deep knowledge of scholarly publishing having worked in the industry for over 18 years in product and publisher roles for leading commercial and society houses. And with that, Will and Lauren, I will hand it over to you.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Thanks Stephanie. This actually feels slightly awkward. As Stephanie mentioned, we're here in person. Lauren and I are both vaccinated, we've been kind of part of each other's extended pod throughout the pandemic but this is my first day back in the Silverchair office. And I have to say, after staring at myself on my screen for 14 months now, we're actually just staring into a camera and can't see ourselves.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And as weird as it was to look at ourselves all the time, now not seeing ourselves that's weird but--
LAUREN KANE: It's a little surreal but it's exciting. This is the official, I think, return to hybrid for the scholarly communications industry is this meeting right here. So I feel honored to be a part of it.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And I just realized just that that sounds a little bit narcissistic. So the topic we're talking about today is kind of getting back to business as usual, how to make the most of pandemic pivots and pilots. And because Lauren and I both work for technology companies and it's part of Silverchair's culture, we had to create an acronym for this. So we're calling this GBTBAU-AF. And the emphasis is on the AF part.
WILL SCHWEITZER: If you need to go to urban dictionary later, please do. It's kind of part of the joke here. But I think it's really important to acknowledge that there is no going back. In the past 14 months, our customers, our employees, our market expectations, all of our needs have changed. This isn't the same world we were in January or February of last year and certainly every aspect of our businesses are going to be different from here on out.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And it's important to realize that our needs have changed too as people who work in our industry who interact with customers. And it's probably important to kind of take stock of what that means for us. So Stephanie is going to put up a quick poll that we would like you all to do. And it is essentially asking, what were your kind of biggest pandemic pivots?
WILL SCHWEITZER: And I think this is thinking from kind of your organization or your business perspective. Mine for one was investing in a lot more hoodies and casual clothes.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. Amen to that.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So while folks are filling out the poll, Lauren, what was kind of your biggest business pivot?
LAUREN KANE: I think for me it was the fact that even though I had long worked remotely, there was a difference between working remotely and traveling really frequently and having those interactions both within your own organization, but with others, say at conferences or in in-person meetings like this. And losing that exchange, it was so difficult. I feel like I get so much energy and so much inspiration from the in-person and that finding out how to navigate that in a virtual environment was definitely something.
LAUREN KANE: It was a challenge.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And then given the time of when you actually joined Morressier, almost all of your on-boarding was remote, wasn't it?
LAUREN KANE: Absolutely. And I think-- I've talked to other people that made job shifts kind of during the pandemic or right as things were starting and I think that's a real challenge because you don't get that early kind of, here's what the culture is, here's how I interact with colleagues, how do I know who to go to work for. And so that certainly can come in time. But it's something to navigate for sure.
LAUREN KANE:
WILL SCHWEITZER: So looking at our survey results, the biggest pandemic pivots for folks who are joining us today has been a shift to moving to digital events and meetings, and of course changing work processes and systems followed then by changing to marketing and sales practices. So what Lauren and I were hoping to do today is to provide a framework for kind of figuring out-- well, figuring out where you are currently with all the changes that you've made and then essentially how to go from here.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So how to make kind of the changes or pivots sustainable for your organization to incorporate it back into your existing products. So we'll be talking a bit today just about some building blocks or things you should invest in. So as we just mentioned, there's no going back, and further change is needed. So all of us are coming out of a 14 month period where budgets and budgeting processes were upended, we've established kind of new policies and practices and procedures or even implemented new technology or new vendors where now we need to start educating kind of our co-workers and our peers about how all those things work.
WILL SCHWEITZER: We may have done some kind of standalone silos or things off to the side that we now need to incorporate into our editorial and production workflows, and of course we're all going to need to shift our strategy and of course rebuild relationships. So as I think about returning to the office here at Silverchair, there are co-workers now that I haven't seen in 14 months. I assure that I've probably talked to some of them on Zoom or in chat but it's actually going to take some time to catch up, build up for all, and kind of reestablish strong bonds that we can work.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. Absolutely.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So Stephanie's going to pop another poll for us. And here we're asking, as we get back to whatever business may be-- I don't want to stop calling it business as usual at some point, what are you all the most anxious?
LAUREN KANE: It's a tough one.
WILL SCHWEITZER: I was joking with Lauren yesterday that it took me about 30 minutes to find my collar stays and my dress belt last evening. And then I had to remember how to use the iron which was actually even more fun.
LAUREN KANE: This is breaking news. You've heard it here first. But it is. It sounds funny, but it's true, kind of getting into the habit of what is it like to go to a meeting, getting your clothes out of your dress closet, it's very different. And this skill's kind of atrophy I think over time. So even though they might seem like silly anxieties, I think a lot of people are facing this, "When I come back out of my cave after this time, what is it going to look like?"
WILL SCHWEITZER: And as you think of kind of reengaging with the industry going to events again or even from your role at Morressier, what are you most anxious about?
LAUREN KANE: I think a lot of things. I think what I am maybe not anxious but hopeful for is that we take all of the positive lessons of the last 16 or so months of all the things that we actually did better in a virtual environment like being more inclusive, and we take that and then we add back in all the things that we're missing, like we were talking about the kind of connecting in person with colleagues, that having those serendipitous connections kind of at events or new ideas and collaborations that seem to kind of take root at 2:00 AM in a bar or somewhere.
LAUREN KANE: So I'm looking forward to again taking the best of what we've learned but then kind of reengaging with what used to be such a strength.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So looking at the poll results, folks are most anxious about kind of making adaptations or pivots permanent and sustainable-- we talked about that last year at some other Silverchair events, and addressing uncertain market conditions. That's one of the things we've heard in the Silverchair community and I'm sure it's true for the broader industry was that folks felt kind of reasonably positive at the end of 2020 headed into 2021 and I think a lot of folks are anticipating some budget pressures and financial pressures, some uncertainty say around revenues in '22 as kind of these things trickle into say library budgets or funding.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. I think that's absolutely true and to remember the cruel nature of what we're in means that for many, 2020 wasn't that bad but 2021-2022 there's a lot of financial uncertainty there. I think we're in good shape as an industry to certainly get through it, especially with some of the innovations and new products we'll talk about today. But certainly it is something that you think, "Well, we got through COVID," but not really.
LAUREN KANE: Some of these challenges are still beginning, unfortunately.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So where to start? Let's get into our framework. So for the getting back to business as usual framework, we just simply wanted to run through a rough outline of things that we may think could be helpful to you or to your organizations. And this all really starts with taking stock of what did you do. So in the past 16 months you've probably made a lot of quick decisions, you've changed a lot of aspects of your business, and kind of in that rush in adapting to working from home we may not have documented all of those things as well as we should.
WILL SCHWEITZER: It may actually be hard to remember decisions or changes that you made 14 months ago. So it's worth kind of taking stock of things that you did. And then this is a great point to just take a pause and define what you want to do now. So, what is your new strategy? I think one of just kind of a business maxim is that long-term success often requires effective and efficient and sustainable processes.
WILL SCHWEITZER: I think we all kind of adapted to COVID and making all those changes with a lot of energy, a lot of determination, we've realized that this was going to be an endurance run and now we have to figure out what can we realistically do for years to come. So as we were thinking about pivoting back to normal, as we were thinking about making all of these changes sustainable, we came down with five things where if you have control of these items you'll be in a better long-term or a better strategic position.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And this actually builds off of great advice that was given to me by John Shaw at Sage probably a decade ago now as we were thinking about the journal platforms and systems. But as a company, you will be kind of in the best position to pivot to change your program again to set a stronger forward strategy if you control your customers and your data. And that's understanding details about your customers, having the data kind of within your control in your systems and making it actionable, knowing what data elements you have and what you can do with.
WILL SCHWEITZER: You're obviously in a better position if you have control of your contents. So that can mean having that content in-house, being able to quickly distribute it or syndicate it elsewhere, and of course knowing how your brands are represented in the marketplace and being able to quickly kind of adapt that presentation as necessary. You'll obviously be in a better position if you're responsible for your demand generation, so kind of driving your marketing and sales efforts, but also your traffic.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And if we think about the technological aspects though that could be actually having control of your domain, understanding your SEO strategy, how customers and users are coming to your sites, where they're going from there, that's all really important data for kind of digital products and what's going to come next for your businesses. And these last two bits I think are actually really important. So as you've done pilots, as you've pivoted, as you've done experiments off to the side and you're thinking about how to incorporate it into your existing or longstanding products, it's really important for you to map out your content and data workflows.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So I think with open access five, six years ago, we had really good about thinking about how author data or funding data flows from manuscript's mission and peer review systems all the way down into your content hosting platforms, how that data needed to be better structured. As we've started thinking about new access control methods and kind of reducing user friction and getting access to products we've been thinking about what user data we capture where and how that data is spread across systems.
WILL SCHWEITZER: That can be really important for anything that you've done because of those content and data flows are going to be really important for just about anything you can possibly do. And then last, this is part of kind of taking stock of what you did. But you probably entered some new partnerships, you may have worked with a new vendor, understanding both your contracts, the contractual basics and those terms and conditions for those relationships, but also your business requirements.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So if you were working with a partner like Morressier and they are hosting kind of digital conference or meeting materials for you and you say you want to incorporate those in a federated search or if you want to tie that into you're a member SSL, what actually do you have to do? What are your requirements say for your existing IT systems? Understanding all of that is going to make your planning, your pivoting back your sustainability practices.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So we just wanted to go through a couple of these areas and suggest some questions that may help you get started with this framework. So as you think about owning or having control of your customers and data, it's important to ask where is that data captured and where is it stored, who actually owns that data or the relationship with the end user. That can be really important if you've worked with a vendor or a partner who actually supports a lot of publishers.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So it could be the case that you have looser ownership or control over that end user relationship. It could actually be that your vendor or partner technically owns that vendor relationship, which could be very different than as you think about your members or your subscribers or your institutional end users with your traditional products. And then it's also really important to think about the end user expectations and also the terms and conditions that they signed up for when they purchased the product or they're interacting with your content on their sites or on one of your partner sites.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Those are all kind of just really important things to understand, particularly if you want to change those expectations or bring them into an environment with different terms and conditions. For brands and content, it is of course important to know how and where your brand is presented and how talking going back to those content workflows, how the content is created, and how and where is it stored.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So one of the things is I think about pivoting to digital meetings and events posters and things is that we don't have a standards for those content objects like we do for journal articles or books or conference proceedings.
LAUREN KANE: Absolutely.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So bringing those contents back into the fold, bringing it into kind of your permanent content store, there's going to be some sorting out to do. And maybe your friends at NISO can help us out.
LAUREN KANE: I would love that. But it's actually like you say, it's an opportunity too. And it is the Wild West in some cases so that makes it a little bit exciting when there's not standards in place but it gets us a chance to do things right from the beginning, both on an organizational level and as an industry of let's all get together and make sure that we have good integration, good structures, clean metadata. Love to see it.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And as long as you think about your brand and your content and how it's been put out in the world, it's important to understand who owns that content, who has access to it, and who may have rights to it in other formats. And it's important to think about the original work, any derivatives that have been created from it, if you've syndicated content created during the pandemic on other databases or services what rights do they have.
WILL SCHWEITZER: You may not just be able to pull everything back and essentially package it up like an existing journal or say a book series that you have.
LAUREN KANE: And this has certainly been a sticky issue for many organizations in terms of video content from meetings, what it's meant for speakers and authors of conference content and what the reuse rights of that content are for the society. And this is something that's still being navigated I think on an individual basis. But knowing upfront that it's an issue and it's something that needs to be addressed that's the core right there.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Yes. And I also think there's an end user expectation too. It's one of the things we talked about in the Silverchair community last year. As a lot of our publishers took down paywalls and freed up content as end users essentially were off campus, there was a lot of friction to accessing content they were entitled for. And actually there needs to be a careful conversation with your subscribers, with the end user community, about putting paywalls back up or kind of shifting your aspect.
LAUREN KANE: I think that's so important because for some people the pandemic is ending, for others as we said it's still in a very tough shape. And so having those really frank conversations with their community about what their needs still are and kind of keeping that trust I think that people have had throughout the last 18 months is really important.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Right. And In particular, we've had a lot of discussions here in the Silverchair community about corporate subscribers and how there wasn't necessarily the standards or the large scale infrastructure for kind of off campus or out of the office access to resources where there's still some pain points.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So moving on to demand and traffic, it is important to know especially where your products and solutions are hosted, who actually owns the domain or infrastructure, how easy it may be for you to redirect those domains or your web traffic, it's important to figure out how the content or data is monetized or how it could be monetized. And then if you're changing your approach or strategy, what needs to be in place. So if you had made your digital content or your digital meeting content free and now you want to make it a sellable product, you have to start thinking about, "OK, how do we productize that?
WILL SCHWEITZER: Can we support IP authentication? What do I need to do in all of my back-end systems to define it as a product and capture the right data?" There's a lot of kind of dots that need to be connected. And then thinking again about this content and data flows, again from creation on through kind of delivery to the end user, how does that content or product data flow through your systems?
WILL SCHWEITZER: If you're relying on third parties for it, how can you access that data? How is that data stored? Do you essentially need to convert it or transform it to bring it back into your stack or under your control? And then how is the content or data currently structured? And are you going to be able just to incorporate it into your existing product lines, onto your existing platforms, or is there a bit of product development or work that needs to be done?
LAUREN KANE: I think you need to do that poll about anxiety after this presentation to see if people's concerns are raised given the questions.
WILL SCHWEITZER: I will ask some questions about it. And maybe we can get into it in the chat. But I think these details are going to be really important. And a lot of people kind of can get a little anxiety talking about data formats and structures if you're like you need this really deep technical background.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah.
WILL SCHWEITZER: But more often what we actually need is kind of a dictionary or a legend perhaps.
LAUREN KANE: And I think the important thing to remember is if you're hearing this and you are a little anxious like, "Gosh! These are questions that we should be asking at our organization," that's a good thing because what you should be more anxious about is if you're not asking these questions. At least if they're surfaced, at least if these are being discussed, this is, you're ahead of the game.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So on contracts and requirements, thinking of those new vendor relationships, those new partnerships you may have entered, what are the terms of those agreements? What are your kind of business and functional requirements going forward if you're kind of articulating a new strategy? And I think this is a really important one. And we've talked a lot about technical details, about business or contractual details, but what do your stakeholders need or expect.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And we all have a lot of stakeholders. It isn't just our paying customers but it could also be our governance. If we're a society it could be also your vendors are to some extent a stakeholder and you have a lot of dependencies.
LAUREN KANE: I think that's the most important part of this entire framework is that last one right here. And I think it's also recognizing that what your stakeholders expect or need, or needed before the pandemic, is going to probably be very different now and may even be more different in 12 more months and so understanding that this is a spectrum of needs or what's being valued at a given point of time and needing to kind of keep those communications open to recognize what's that.
LAUREN KANE: Because the worst thing is setting strategy or making plans without having that emphasis of why are we doing this, who is this for. And so having that kind of value definition from the beginning I think is just absolutely critical.
WILL SCHWEITZER: You're right. And it's not like we're going to be able to drop a pin and say in October 2021 things will be as they were in January 2020.
LAUREN KANE: Correct.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And we know the expectations folks may have as we begin to reopen, as we return to the office, certainly aren't going to be their expectations in May of 2022. I'm getting my years confused.
LAUREN KANE: Well, anything before what-- kind of the fall of 2019, it's just a blur now.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So if you were to boil kind of the past six slides down, this entire framework comes down to knowing what you did, knowing what you want to do, mapping out kind of your customers, your data, your content, your traffic, your contracts, your requirements, and making a plan and putting that plan down on paper and socializing it and getting a lot of feedback is going to be really important. When making your plan-- and there are just a few other tips here, have proactive conversations with your stakeholders and partners.
WILL SCHWEITZER: We can help. In some cases, you may have had some staffing turnover, as we talked about earlier, in making pivots or quick decisions or you may not have documented things as well as you could. Your partners and vendors are probably having similar conversations with all of their customers. And I think this is really a place, as a kind of an industry, as a collective whole, we can share some lessons learned along the way.
WILL SCHWEITZER: This next point is really important. Consider resource availability and sustainability. We're all coming off an endurance run. We know that productivity levels have changed during the pandemic. They're certainly going to change again as offices reopen. As we rebuild our relationships and return, the pace that we've been working at likely isn't going to be sustainable or we aren't going to be able to hold it for the next six to eight months.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And as Lauren was talking about just a moment ago about kind of understanding the values and what you're driving towards, I think as you create that plan, it is really important to create measurable goals to check your progress along the way and then to consider trade off decisions. And then this last point here is, remember, there is absolutely no business as usual. There isn't.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Let me stop sharing for a moment. And before we open up for a question and answer, since I have Lauren here and in person, I just wanted to take this opportunity to ask Lauren kind of four or five questions about her experience during the pandemic, about opening back up both from a broad industry perspective and from her time at Morressier.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And I guess the best place to start, Lauren, is to ask if you have any thoughts on the framework as a whole or even our catchy acronym.
LAUREN KANE: I was going to say the acronym might need some workshopping. But you're a technology company so we'll let you have that. And I shouldn't talk because most people can't say Morressier, myself included. Our co-founder usually cringes a bit when I say it. So the name is fine. But no I think the framework is really smart and I have an appreciation for anything that is about getting back to basics or looking at building blocks because it's not sexy and exciting but it's so important.
LAUREN KANE: I think often people are trying to get right to this strategy, "This is the product we want to create. This is what we want to do. This is where we want to go." And that's great. And especially at a time like during COVID when things are moving so quickly and there is a pressure to act fast, that can be a good thing. But I think if you are not taking your time and doing the type of assessments that you call for in the framework, you're going to be caught a little flat-footed.
LAUREN KANE: That it is so important to have those kind of basic understanding of what sort of content do you have, what sort of business requirements do you have, what is your existing infrastructure and partners, in the case of a new partnership, how will this kind of work in. You mentioned integrations. We oftentimes have clients who say, "Well, we want to make sure it's all integrated." And then you'll say, "OK.
LAUREN KANE: Well, what do you have in mind, or how?" And it's like, "Well, I don't know." And so I think just taking some extra time-- And all of this is built on communication. Communicating within your organization in different departments, especially if they're kind of siloed, this certainly was a challenge in a virtual environment. But it's also communicating as you brought up with existing partners, with new partners, with your stakeholders, with your members.
LAUREN KANE: That if you do that kind of homework from the beginning, then you're already going to, I think, be more successful than many when you start out on that strategy no matter what that is.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Great point. So when we were preparing for this session, Lauren, you highlighted that the pandemic and kind of pivoting and experimenting surfaced kind of a lot of gaps. And those gaps could be in understanding stakeholder expectations, it could be in understanding what processes, it could be even knowing say how the publications division within a society works with the IT department. Do you have any thoughts on that?
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. I'm kind of reluctant to talk about silver linings when it comes to the pandemic, because obviously there's been huge losses, and those will be sustained losses for some time. But there are some-- let's call them "bright spots" of the past 18 months. And one of the things that I think we really saw that I kind of hope that energy remains going forward is this real energy to solve problems, not just for COVID but for the long-term.
LAUREN KANE: And I was really impressed with some very large and perhaps traditionally conservative organizations or perhaps more risk averse organizations that didn't say we want to have, say, a bridge virtual meeting and we'll just do that and then wait, which you could see why someone might do that because there's a lot of unknowns, but instead said this is our opportunity to develop a long-term strategy for what it will mean to be more inclusive, to have more people be able to access conference research, to have a virtual option in five years, not just in 2020.
LAUREN KANE: And so I loved that. And I think that's incredibly impressive that amidst so many other challenges that people are really thinking about this long-term. But I think one of the reasons that happened was, as you said, there was this aha moment that we are being caught flat-footed by the pandemic in a way that we might not have known that COVID specifically was going to happen.
LAUREN KANE: But we should have maybe known that there was going to be a point in time in which access was a problem, in which we needed to provide virtual access to a greater community, that a three to four day meeting of 1,000 people was probably not the best way to reach a global audience. So I think there was a kind of instant highlighting of that these are real gaps in what we do and so let's try to not fix them with bandwidths that aren't going to be solutions that are going to persevere in the future but let's really do something to flip the model for the longer term.
LAUREN KANE: And so I think that's been fantastic. And the other part, I think, on a smaller scale that I've really seen as you said is kind of the gaps that sometimes exist within organizations. And for Morressier, since we kind of work at the nexus of the publishing community and the meetings community, this is often sometimes a challenge in the groups that we work with because especially in the larger organizations these are departments that are fairly siloed that don't typically work together, they don't even necessarily have real great understanding of what each other does.
LAUREN KANE: And so when you are working on a project and you're especially doing it when people are out of the office and now working remotely, that really requires that buy-in from the publications department, from the meetings department, from perhaps the technical department. That can be a challenge. But I also think it's again a real opportunity, because certainly you can see the value beyond a single project of having groups within an organization that are more aligned, that know what each other are doing, that know what the needs are, that know the values that they're trying to determine.
LAUREN KANE: So I had someone at a society that we work with make the comment the other day, "It shouldn't have taken this to know what my colleague in this department is doing." Or what their challenges are, or maybe something that we can do together collaboratively. So we talk a lot about, I think, the insular quality of the industry as a whole and organizations relative to other organizations, but sometimes that's even within an organization there are those silos.
LAUREN KANE: So that's another thing that I think has been a lesson of COVID that I would love to see maintain a kind of post pandemic world is let's collapse those barriers within organizations, let's have a better understanding of what we're doing and how we can kind of help one another. Because I think that will be so helpful as we get back, not to business as usual but to this future that we're coming, let's come back even stronger, more transparent, more communicative.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So Morressier has kind of been on the front lines of folks adapting this strategy for the pandemic, particularly with digital meetings and conferences. And as you reflect on the past 14, 16 months, you probably now have some idea of what are some of the biggest missteps folks should watch out for and some notion for what are characteristics that tend to make organizations or pivots or adaptations more successful.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. I think a big part of it is that kind of like in your framework of going into it not being reactionary and having a good idea of what are you trying to achieve. Because if you are going into it trying to say, "Well, our in-person meeting was canceled and so I want a digital replacement," and you're thinking about it in the exact same way that you did before, you're probably not going to come out with an outcome because a virtual meeting is never going to be an in-person meeting.
LAUREN KANE: They're different animals. But instead if you're thinking about it on an achievement basis, what are my goals? Is it to reach more people, is it to have the research be out there and accessible more broadly, do we want greater participation from across the world, do we want different types of content that perhaps we couldn't host in an in-person meeting that we could do here, do we want better kind of networking engagement features.
LAUREN KANE: It's a prioritization or a value setting that really should kind of predate this, this is what we're going to do. And also I think the groups that have been most successful have had a real clear alignment of this is what we want out of this and it's not replicating exactly what we did in person, it's really thinking how can we make the virtual environment do what virtual does well and make the most of it. And I think to the point of about communications that also kind of best practice has been those that are in organizations where everyone's really aligned on this that it is more of a cross-functional project.
LAUREN KANE: Those tend to be kind of more successful.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And then in terms of where you see missteps or folks stumble along the way, is there kind of like one aspect where if societies looking at digital events really just had a better understanding of their member data, or how they were handling authentication, or what they wanted to do with the content after it was on the platform? Is there kind of one suggestion you would get folks from one area to really hone in on?
LAUREN KANE: Well, I think the biggest thing is making evidence-based decisions. So again saying, I think, not making assumptions about what your stakeholders need or want. For instance, if you're going to invest. I've seen some groups that says, "Well, we definitely want all of these kind of bells and whistles and things like networking and engagement features," and then sometimes a meeting happens and those aren't readily used, whereas people really wished we had a more interactive poster session, or I really wished there was more opportunities for early career researchers.
LAUREN KANE: Or so I think those groups that have either polled their membership or their attendees ahead of time to see what do you want out of a virtual meeting, or how can we really hone in on this experience for you particularly, again they're more successful. So it kind of goes back, like you said, to data. Knowing from the beginning what are the expectations of your stakeholders, what data do you have, what rights do you have.
LAUREN KANE: And then the other big thing is that what do you want the ROI from this to be? Again, that's a big thing where there's absolutely nothing wrong with saying we want this event or in the case of, say, an on demand library, of conference research, the goal of this is to produce a surplus or to be cost neutral or to be a new revenue generation mechanism for the society. And certainly there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
LAUREN KANE: That's mostly what we see because there is a real need in the industry to have this new source especially after a tough financial year. But it's saying up front that's what the goal of this is. Because sometimes that's not the goal. Sometimes the goal is we want a new member benefit, or we want to reach early career researchers more readily, or we want a greater dissemination of more parts of the research workflow.
LAUREN KANE: So again that value definition that we talked about earlier I think is also really important that not only its leadership know that and understand that but that the people that will be operationalizing this are also familiar with this is why we're doing this, is going to be the ultimate outcome. And unless you know that from the beginning, then it's going to be really hard to look at a project and say was this successful.
LAUREN KANE: Because it's on what metrics? On what basis?
WILL SCHWEITZER: Right. And I guess that it really comes back to the importance of kind of going through the framework and making a plan because I think for a lot of publishers, for a lot of societies, continuing to have engagement over the course of the pandemic was the primary goal, and now is really the opportunity to say, "Can this or whatever we did be positioned as a strong member benefit? Can it be positioned as kind of a revenue generating product?" There seems to be that rate inflection.
LAUREN KANE: Absolutely. And certainly this is kind of our position as we've talked a lot about virtual meetings. But Morressier sees this as really just being the starting point. That it really is more about the research at the meeting, the conference content itself. And instead of say having that three to four day event with just a very specific audience, that there's an opportunity for societies who put so much emphasis as you know into this, so much time, so much resource into these meetings and the content produced has a much longer shelf life or should be given greater access and greater visibility than just at that event.
LAUREN KANE: Whether or not that event is digital or is in person, there are just so many ways for greater community benefit, for their researchers, as well as, as you say, for a potential new revenue stream to do some interesting things there. And then when there is the opportunity to integrate it with their other holdings, say their publications or other educational resources, then there's even more value of having this fully integrated network.
WILL SCHWEITZER: That's a really great point. I just had a flashback to like really early in my career going to conferences and then being sent a CD of all the proceedings and posters, that there were posters back then, and how much kind of useful having all the content digitized or created is really kind of at the onset that is. So my last question before we turn over to audience Q&A-- from either your perspective as being part of SSP's leadership or working at Morressier, how are you thinking about kind of hybrid events and then kind of further changes from here on?
LAUREN KANE: That's definitely the million dollar question going forward. And I think look, we are social people, we want to go back to in person, I know I'm super excited to do this today and I cannot wait to go back and see people in meetings in real life. So we will go back I think to on site but I also think that we've seen the tremendous value that that virtual access that digital access provides in terms of being more inclusive, in terms of having content interaction with a greater group of people, more accessibility.
LAUREN KANE: And so I think that the future is squarely hybrid. And I think it will be up to each organization to really decide what does that mean. And I think that it is not really cost effective or feasible for people to run dual meetings of having like a fully virtual meeting and a fully on site meeting. It's just going to be cost prohibitive for most people and doesn't really again, as we said, make sense. Well, what is your strategy there?
LAUREN KANE: Why would you do that? Or I think what we will see-- and this is going to be different for different organizations, is what are those things that thrive best in an in person environment? Is it things like networking, business development, and that sort of kind of more serendipitous exchange, and that that's what we're going to preserve for the kind of on-site meetings.
LAUREN KANE: But then with virtual meetings, what is that content that we want to make sure gets out to everyone? And in my personal feeling I think that's going to be things like keynotes, some technical presentations, and things especially like posters that are I think just so extended in a digital environment versus a crowded post or hall where an early career researcher might get one or two people that comes by to see their printed poster whereas in these digital galleries that their exposure and what that means to their work and their connections that they make with other researchers across the world is just so expanded.
LAUREN KANE: So there are things like that that I think will become the norm whereas maybe a few years ago they were seen as, "Oh, that's a nice to have." But I think given the lessons of the last two years that there are things that will persist. And that we have a real opportunity again to kind of take this to the next level as an industry and to have things be a better, more comprehensive, more holistic solution for all stakeholders.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Great. Thank you. All right. So we'll turn to do questions from the audience. So the first question from an anonymous attendee. When thinking about business as usual and anxiety, it seems like each executive at an organization might select a completely different area. How do you balance those concerns?
WILL SCHWEITZER:
LAUREN KANE: I think that's the question too. But it's that organizations are not homogeneous organizations. They're full of different individuals, different departments, and oftentimes with different views on what the future should hold or what the priorities should be. Certainly this is not something due to COVID. We've seen that for some time. So my personal feeling would just be really helpful, candid strategic planning that brings in a lot of different stakeholders to make sure that people have the opportunity to have their ideas kind of put out there and discussed and that whatever emerges is something that everyone has by and on.
LAUREN KANE: Because I think what you described, that type of siloing of each person with their own agenda, not necessarily helpful for the organization, especially during a time like this where I think there really needs to be strong alignment and vision on this is where we're going. What do you think, Will?
WILL SCHWEITZER: So I think alignment is important. I also think leadership is important and I can recommend kind of a broad based practice. But I can talk about what we've done here at Silverchair which is actually to gather as much data as possible, to have a lot of discussions both kind of at the executive team level with senior managers and with individual teams, and then to kind of make decisions for rolling periods of time. So the decisions we make about how we're going to operate now of course we're following kind of public health best practice and recommendations here but realizing we only have enough data and we only have enough experience to say this is how we intend to operate for the next three months and then at some point before those three months we'll take stock again and figure out how to go from there.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. I think that's a really, really good point about time frames, I think given so many unknowns that may be having this three-year plan, five-year plan right now might not be the most prudent because-- or you at least you can have that plan but to have perhaps more frequent check ins than you might about where are things, has sentiment changed, has financial realities changed, because I do think we're going to go through a period the next 6 to 12 months, especially where there's going to be a lot of fluctuation in the market, in the world in here in scholarly communications and so having those kind of take-in points I think are going to be really important.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And also-- so this is my personal perspective not necessarily Silverchair's, but I think it's important to recognize that everybody is going to have anxiety about opening back up at this point, and executives are going to have anxiety as well as senior leaders and employees. But it's really important to think about the organizational goals. So as we think of asking people to return to the office if we're asking people to return to the office, how does that position your ability to retain or recruit talent and onboard them it may be very different.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And then kind of the flexibilities employees may be expecting, you may find that being a distributed organization works really well for you and it hasn't affected loss. So like my personal bias is actually to allow kind of individual work teams or units to choose what works best for them. And that may not work for every organization. So the next question-- many pilots and pivots so far have been fairly obvious and shared like the ones to accommodate remote workforces or virtual events.
WILL SCHWEITZER: What do you see as the next round of pilots and pivots as we slowly emerge from the pandemic?
LAUREN KANE: Oh, interesting. Well, and that's a question I kind of have for you, Will, of perhaps what you're seeing on the publication side. I wonder what the effect of the pandemic will be on something like open access more broadly. Is this an accelerant? Is this something that because of financial concerns-- So I could really argue it both ways. Because of financial realities that could cause people to kind of put up more paywalls to get that income but it also could be an opportunity because certainly we've seen as you pointed out as people collapsed those paywalls during the pandemic to provide greater access and what that meant to the community, especially those with medical content.
LAUREN KANE: And so it will really be interesting to see what is the legacy of this when it comes to access. What do you think?
WILL SCHWEITZER: So there's like a correlation and causation question here, which is, as we think about open access and content, open access coming off of Plan S and major library sources like kind of renegotiating big deals, established momentum, before we went I think separately from COVID which as we've talked about highlighted some of those access painpoints. So it seems like more members of the Silverchair community and our industry at large are accelerating towards open access.
WILL SCHWEITZER: There's no question about that. And there's no question that we are starting to ask ourselves about kind of the necessity or the friction our current access methods have created. So we've all gotten used to single sign-on environments for work and access emails or our office suite. But getting access to scholarly literature from an institutional entitlement and perspectives is actually way more difficult in that that could get us down a rabbit hole and talking about things like siloed that I don't know that we necessarily want to do.
WILL SCHWEITZER: I would say one of the macro trends we've observed, and I think COVID accelerated this, is we by and large sell and present our products in traditional kind of product boxes or silos today. And we have our journals line that we sold as a collection or as one offs, we had our books that we were selling as a collection or as one offs, we had our conference proceedings which we're now augmenting with videos and additional digital artifacts.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And we're seeing a lot of interest to essentially break down those product silos, to have topical collections across journals, books, and meeting content and sell those and going back to all of the framework points about understanding content and data flows. It can actually create a lot of systems challenges, it can create a lot of sales and marketing and sales process challenges as well.
WILL SCHWEITZER: But I think that's the direction of travel. We're all looking for kind of creative ways to slice and dice content to either make it more useful to our existing customers or to create new revenue opportunities. The next question-- you spoke about KPIs and return on investments on virtual events earlier. What do you think are the most important points in these arenas?
LAUREN KANE: Well, again it really depends on the society or the organization and what is most important to them. And that's not a one size fits all because again for some it's that we absolutely need a new revenue stream or we need to be able to produce a surplus from this strategy. And then for others they say, no, we see this as a mission play. We need a mechanism to get more in touch with our early career researchers or we want to be more inclusive of a global audience.
LAUREN KANE: And so I would say there's not-- the best practice is in this is what your KPIs should be or your value should be the best practices you need to understand and be in alignment within your organization about what that is. And then also then not be shy about making decisions and setting strategy that supports that and not vise versa. I think this is one of the biggest pitfalls I see-- and not just now, I observe this throughout my career, and I think we've talked about this as well is that unfortunately sometimes people set strategy first and then try to produce the data or operationalize the plans to support that strategy and not necessarily vise versa whereas going back again to your lovely framework you need to have those building blocks first.
LAUREN KANE: You need to ask the questions first, you need to see what you have available, what are your resources, what are your content assets, and then make a plan from that. And then you're going to increase your success levels.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So I want to jump off that point about assets. One of the things that I've heard either from being engaged with SSP or ALPSP or members of the Silverchair community is that digital meetings and conferences have reached a much broader audience. Conference registrations have gone up and virtual attendance has been up that has been connecting kind of brands or publishers or societies with way more individuals than they had before.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So when I was at associations before I joined Silverchair I had a reputation for being a pocket square or the business guy. So one of the questions I would be asking about our ROIs or KPIs is, of all those new people you connected with, how many relationships are you maintaining? Are you actually able to convert those folks into something of value for your organization?
WILL SCHWEITZER: And value could be broadly defined. So have those folks gone on to become authors? Have they gone on to become members? Have they gone on to become subscribers? I think there's a lot there.
LAUREN KANE: You're totally right. And it is about-- and this again goes to this new wave of data that is still kind of taking shape about what do we have to learn from these virtual meetings or from the virtual availability of this conference content. And one of those things is what is the expanded reach because you're going from this is being presented, to you're meeting attendees, to a much broader access point, especially in the case of these open access galleries where you could have a single digital poster that perhaps was viewed 1,000 times.
LAUREN KANE: And so there's a data point right there in terms of accesses but then there's much more interesting data points that are somewhat anecdotal but seem to be multiplying of what does that then mean to that researcher who authored that poster especially if that's an early career researcher, which they often are, about what that increased exposure has meant to their career, to the connections that they've made, to their field of study or the discipline more broadly.
LAUREN KANE: And so that type of engagement-- and it's a little fluffier for a KPI but I think we shouldn't lose sight of what does engagement and exposure mean to an organization down the road. As you said, there is both the immediate effect of this but then there's how does this endorse your long-term strategic vision for having kind of more impact in the community.
LAUREN KANE: And I think there's a lot of opportunities there.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So we have two more questions. We may have time to get through both. So this attendee asks, scientific conferences are one thing, book fairs and similar types of meetings are another. Many societies that license their products, including books, rely on book fairs for exposure and sales outreach. Do you think that we are facing a permanent change in how these fairs are organized and how potential buyers and sellers are brought together?
WILL SCHWEITZER: I actually think we have a similar construct for business to business sales kind of in our industry too.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. I think it's a tough question because there are-- Yeah, I think the similar thing as you say is that people who work on the sales side in scholarly communications are looking to get back to those conferences in person as much as anyone because it's very difficult for them to be in, say, a virtual booth of a meeting and get the same kind of exposure of being able to have conversations in a coffee line or pigeonhole people for meetings off site of surrounding an event.
LAUREN KANE: And so the same I think is true of these big book fairs or where you really do need that kind of in-person experience. And so again it's going to be different for every society or every organization but I think those where that was very important before, it will probably still be important. And there's no necessarily reason to replace that. I would say just looking for again how can that be augmented, how can a virtual or digital environment bring additional value to that and not necessarily replace it, if it doesn't make sense to replace.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Sorry. I got distracted thinking about currywurst at the Frankfurt book fair. So when I think about the time that I spent as a publisher in the industry, I think when we started to launch open access journals and products, it required us to collectively up our marketing and especially our digital marketing game. So a lot of us were used to operating within business-to-business frameworks of selling things to libraries or to corporate subscribers and now we had to capture data, define value propositions for, and market to individuals either as an author or to build kind of a community of users.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And I think this shift towards digital events probably away from book fairs and industry meetings that were always large that probably will be as large as they were in the past, I that we actually have to up our digital marketing capabilities yet again. And we have to get better with our value proposition a bit of leveraging things like social media and we know that we have to be capturing kind of user or potential purchaser data and kind of a much better and more actionable strategy.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So the last question-- when thinking of content and organizational brands and data, what do you think about reach versus keeping folks on your platform? Is this a time to spread your brand as far and wide as possible or to emphasize on platform use and getting to know your users as best as possible?
LAUREN KANE: Oh, that's such a good question.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Yeah.
LAUREN KANE: Yes.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So every publisher, every society, I think is going to think about these things in different ways. And I think this is really important where you need to understand your mission, you need to understand your business objectives, and also where you can create the most value. So one of, I think, my eternal talking points around things like ResearchGate or even Sci-Hub is that publishers in some fashion or another have been distributing and syndicating their content for a long time.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And that could be as simple as sending a content stream to an abstract indexing service like Scopus to Web of Science, it could be taking your content and putting your archival content in JSTOR or your medical content in Ovid. And those are a series of business decisions about where can you kind of derive the most value. And I think we need to think about broader content syndication and distribution the same way today.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So value in terms of mission if you're a society and you want to get rich, you're going to have kind of that inclination to spread your content as far as possible. If you are concerned about revenues and commercial value getting a commercial return for that content, you're going to think about distribution and licensing your content and very different. So back to that framework I think it's all back to what do you want to achieve and what is the best way to do it.
WILL SCHWEITZER: I don't think any publisher I know, any society I know today is thinking about pulling content back and bringing in content to their website. I think we're seeing folks differentiate the strategy, which is I can potentially serve my members the best by having a unified platform and experience for them by defining kind of a world that meets all of their needs efficiently and where I can build and deepen a relationship for them.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So I'm going to have this kind of strategy, this presence for my members. But when it comes to my institution and my vendor stakeholders then perhaps content syndication and distribution pursuing things like sharing pilots, pursuing things like research, can be probably more interesting to consider.
LAUREN KANE: Well, I think that's a wonderful place to wrap up but I just want to thank you so much for having me. This is really fun. And to Stephanie as well for putting this together. This was, I think, a great return to the hybrid format that I think we'll see more and more.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Oh, no. Thank you for coming down to Charlottesville and joining us today. So we just put up a slide that shows the next three Platform Strategies events that Stephanie mentioned. And you can register for those right now on silverchair.com/ps21. So thank you all very much for joining us. We'll also put a poll up as soon as the webinar close. We would really appreciate any feedback on the event.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So we're looking forward to seeing you out in the world sometime soon. And in the meantime, well, I guess we'll still chat and email on Zoom.
LAUREN KANE: Thanks so much.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Bye, everyone.
Segment:0 .
STEPHANIE LOVEGROVE
HANSEN: All right.
HANSEN: Hello and welcome, everyone. My name is Stephanie Lovegrove Hansen. I am the senior marketing manager at Silverchair and I want to thank you for joining us for today's event, the first in the 2021 Platform Strategies webinar series. Aka, the first time I've worn a blazer in a very long time. So we're very excited to have you with us today to join us for the discussion between Will Schweitzer and Lauren Kane.
HANSEN: But before I hand it over to them, I'm going to cover just a few housekeeping items. As mentioned, this is the first event in the Platform Strategies webinar series. And we're hoping that when you registered for this event you also registered for the other three events we'll be hosting this year. But if you didn't, it's not too late. You can follow the same registration link to save a seat at those events.
HANSEN: This series is a set of free virtual events and in the past it was held in person and offered a unique forum for thought leaders to discuss their platform, data, and technology strategies with colleagues. So we hope that in addition to hearing from our thoughtful speakers today, that you'll also continue in the tradition of the event and engage in the discussion via the chat and the Q&A features. We will have time for Q&A at the end.
HANSEN: This event is being recorded, and a copy of the recording will be made available on our website afterwards. Finally at the end of the event you'll see a survey requesting your rating of the event, which will help us with future event planning so we appreciate your feedback. And with that, I am happy to introduce Lauren Kane and Will Schweitzer. Lauren Kane is the chief strategy officer of Morressier, providing virtual conference and publishing technology solutions for societies and research organizations.
HANSEN: With 17 years in scholarly communications, she has extensive experience working with societies, research organizations, and publishers to effectively navigate the evolving market landscape. A frequent industry contributor, she also proudly serves as the 2020-2021 SSP president. Joining Lauren in person in our Charlottesville offices is Will Schweitzer. Schweitzer is chief product and customer success officer.
HANSEN: In these roles, he looks after the core Silverchair Platform and Silverchair's growing client community. He guides our product marketing, client services, and customer success teams and he has a deep knowledge of scholarly publishing having worked in the industry for over 18 years in product and publisher roles for leading commercial and society houses. And with that, Will and Lauren, I will hand it over to you.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Thanks Stephanie. This actually feels slightly awkward. As Stephanie mentioned, we're here in person. Lauren and I are both vaccinated, we've been kind of part of each other's extended pod throughout the pandemic but this is my first day back in the Silverchair office. And I have to say, after staring at myself on my screen for 14 months now, we're actually just staring into a camera and can't see ourselves.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And as weird as it was to look at ourselves all the time, now not seeing ourselves that's weird but--
LAUREN KANE: It's a little surreal but it's exciting. This is the official, I think, return to hybrid for the scholarly communications industry is this meeting right here. So I feel honored to be a part of it.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And I just realized just that that sounds a little bit narcissistic. So the topic we're talking about today is kind of getting back to business as usual, how to make the most of pandemic pivots and pilots. And because Lauren and I both work for technology companies and it's part of Silverchair's culture, we had to create an acronym for this. So we're calling this GBTBAU-AF. And the emphasis is on the AF part.
WILL SCHWEITZER: If you need to go to urban dictionary later, please do. It's kind of part of the joke here. But I think it's really important to acknowledge that there is no going back. In the past 14 months, our customers, our employees, our market expectations, all of our needs have changed. This isn't the same world we were in January or February of last year and certainly every aspect of our businesses are going to be different from here on out.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And it's important to realize that our needs have changed too as people who work in our industry who interact with customers. And it's probably important to kind of take stock of what that means for us. So Stephanie is going to put up a quick poll that we would like you all to do. And it is essentially asking, what were your kind of biggest pandemic pivots?
WILL SCHWEITZER: And I think this is thinking from kind of your organization or your business perspective. Mine for one was investing in a lot more hoodies and casual clothes.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. Amen to that.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So while folks are filling out the poll, Lauren, what was kind of your biggest business pivot?
LAUREN KANE: I think for me it was the fact that even though I had long worked remotely, there was a difference between working remotely and traveling really frequently and having those interactions both within your own organization, but with others, say at conferences or in in-person meetings like this. And losing that exchange, it was so difficult. I feel like I get so much energy and so much inspiration from the in-person and that finding out how to navigate that in a virtual environment was definitely something.
LAUREN KANE: It was a challenge.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And then given the time of when you actually joined Morressier, almost all of your on-boarding was remote, wasn't it?
LAUREN KANE: Absolutely. And I think-- I've talked to other people that made job shifts kind of during the pandemic or right as things were starting and I think that's a real challenge because you don't get that early kind of, here's what the culture is, here's how I interact with colleagues, how do I know who to go to work for. And so that certainly can come in time. But it's something to navigate for sure.
LAUREN KANE:
WILL SCHWEITZER: So looking at our survey results, the biggest pandemic pivots for folks who are joining us today has been a shift to moving to digital events and meetings, and of course changing work processes and systems followed then by changing to marketing and sales practices. So what Lauren and I were hoping to do today is to provide a framework for kind of figuring out-- well, figuring out where you are currently with all the changes that you've made and then essentially how to go from here.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So how to make kind of the changes or pivots sustainable for your organization to incorporate it back into your existing products. So we'll be talking a bit today just about some building blocks or things you should invest in. So as we just mentioned, there's no going back, and further change is needed. So all of us are coming out of a 14 month period where budgets and budgeting processes were upended, we've established kind of new policies and practices and procedures or even implemented new technology or new vendors where now we need to start educating kind of our co-workers and our peers about how all those things work.
WILL SCHWEITZER: We may have done some kind of standalone silos or things off to the side that we now need to incorporate into our editorial and production workflows, and of course we're all going to need to shift our strategy and of course rebuild relationships. So as I think about returning to the office here at Silverchair, there are co-workers now that I haven't seen in 14 months. I assure that I've probably talked to some of them on Zoom or in chat but it's actually going to take some time to catch up, build up for all, and kind of reestablish strong bonds that we can work.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. Absolutely.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So Stephanie's going to pop another poll for us. And here we're asking, as we get back to whatever business may be-- I don't want to stop calling it business as usual at some point, what are you all the most anxious?
LAUREN KANE: It's a tough one.
WILL SCHWEITZER: I was joking with Lauren yesterday that it took me about 30 minutes to find my collar stays and my dress belt last evening. And then I had to remember how to use the iron which was actually even more fun.
LAUREN KANE: This is breaking news. You've heard it here first. But it is. It sounds funny, but it's true, kind of getting into the habit of what is it like to go to a meeting, getting your clothes out of your dress closet, it's very different. And this skill's kind of atrophy I think over time. So even though they might seem like silly anxieties, I think a lot of people are facing this, "When I come back out of my cave after this time, what is it going to look like?"
WILL SCHWEITZER: And as you think of kind of reengaging with the industry going to events again or even from your role at Morressier, what are you most anxious about?
LAUREN KANE: I think a lot of things. I think what I am maybe not anxious but hopeful for is that we take all of the positive lessons of the last 16 or so months of all the things that we actually did better in a virtual environment like being more inclusive, and we take that and then we add back in all the things that we're missing, like we were talking about the kind of connecting in person with colleagues, that having those serendipitous connections kind of at events or new ideas and collaborations that seem to kind of take root at 2:00 AM in a bar or somewhere.
LAUREN KANE: So I'm looking forward to again taking the best of what we've learned but then kind of reengaging with what used to be such a strength.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So looking at the poll results, folks are most anxious about kind of making adaptations or pivots permanent and sustainable-- we talked about that last year at some other Silverchair events, and addressing uncertain market conditions. That's one of the things we've heard in the Silverchair community and I'm sure it's true for the broader industry was that folks felt kind of reasonably positive at the end of 2020 headed into 2021 and I think a lot of folks are anticipating some budget pressures and financial pressures, some uncertainty say around revenues in '22 as kind of these things trickle into say library budgets or funding.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. I think that's absolutely true and to remember the cruel nature of what we're in means that for many, 2020 wasn't that bad but 2021-2022 there's a lot of financial uncertainty there. I think we're in good shape as an industry to certainly get through it, especially with some of the innovations and new products we'll talk about today. But certainly it is something that you think, "Well, we got through COVID," but not really.
LAUREN KANE: Some of these challenges are still beginning, unfortunately.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So where to start? Let's get into our framework. So for the getting back to business as usual framework, we just simply wanted to run through a rough outline of things that we may think could be helpful to you or to your organizations. And this all really starts with taking stock of what did you do. So in the past 16 months you've probably made a lot of quick decisions, you've changed a lot of aspects of your business, and kind of in that rush in adapting to working from home we may not have documented all of those things as well as we should.
WILL SCHWEITZER: It may actually be hard to remember decisions or changes that you made 14 months ago. So it's worth kind of taking stock of things that you did. And then this is a great point to just take a pause and define what you want to do now. So, what is your new strategy? I think one of just kind of a business maxim is that long-term success often requires effective and efficient and sustainable processes.
WILL SCHWEITZER: I think we all kind of adapted to COVID and making all those changes with a lot of energy, a lot of determination, we've realized that this was going to be an endurance run and now we have to figure out what can we realistically do for years to come. So as we were thinking about pivoting back to normal, as we were thinking about making all of these changes sustainable, we came down with five things where if you have control of these items you'll be in a better long-term or a better strategic position.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And this actually builds off of great advice that was given to me by John Shaw at Sage probably a decade ago now as we were thinking about the journal platforms and systems. But as a company, you will be kind of in the best position to pivot to change your program again to set a stronger forward strategy if you control your customers and your data. And that's understanding details about your customers, having the data kind of within your control in your systems and making it actionable, knowing what data elements you have and what you can do with.
WILL SCHWEITZER: You're obviously in a better position if you have control of your contents. So that can mean having that content in-house, being able to quickly distribute it or syndicate it elsewhere, and of course knowing how your brands are represented in the marketplace and being able to quickly kind of adapt that presentation as necessary. You'll obviously be in a better position if you're responsible for your demand generation, so kind of driving your marketing and sales efforts, but also your traffic.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And if we think about the technological aspects though that could be actually having control of your domain, understanding your SEO strategy, how customers and users are coming to your sites, where they're going from there, that's all really important data for kind of digital products and what's going to come next for your businesses. And these last two bits I think are actually really important. So as you've done pilots, as you've pivoted, as you've done experiments off to the side and you're thinking about how to incorporate it into your existing or longstanding products, it's really important for you to map out your content and data workflows.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So I think with open access five, six years ago, we had really good about thinking about how author data or funding data flows from manuscript's mission and peer review systems all the way down into your content hosting platforms, how that data needed to be better structured. As we've started thinking about new access control methods and kind of reducing user friction and getting access to products we've been thinking about what user data we capture where and how that data is spread across systems.
WILL SCHWEITZER: That can be really important for anything that you've done because of those content and data flows are going to be really important for just about anything you can possibly do. And then last, this is part of kind of taking stock of what you did. But you probably entered some new partnerships, you may have worked with a new vendor, understanding both your contracts, the contractual basics and those terms and conditions for those relationships, but also your business requirements.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So if you were working with a partner like Morressier and they are hosting kind of digital conference or meeting materials for you and you say you want to incorporate those in a federated search or if you want to tie that into you're a member SSL, what actually do you have to do? What are your requirements say for your existing IT systems? Understanding all of that is going to make your planning, your pivoting back your sustainability practices.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So we just wanted to go through a couple of these areas and suggest some questions that may help you get started with this framework. So as you think about owning or having control of your customers and data, it's important to ask where is that data captured and where is it stored, who actually owns that data or the relationship with the end user. That can be really important if you've worked with a vendor or a partner who actually supports a lot of publishers.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So it could be the case that you have looser ownership or control over that end user relationship. It could actually be that your vendor or partner technically owns that vendor relationship, which could be very different than as you think about your members or your subscribers or your institutional end users with your traditional products. And then it's also really important to think about the end user expectations and also the terms and conditions that they signed up for when they purchased the product or they're interacting with your content on their sites or on one of your partner sites.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Those are all kind of just really important things to understand, particularly if you want to change those expectations or bring them into an environment with different terms and conditions. For brands and content, it is of course important to know how and where your brand is presented and how talking going back to those content workflows, how the content is created, and how and where is it stored.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So one of the things is I think about pivoting to digital meetings and events posters and things is that we don't have a standards for those content objects like we do for journal articles or books or conference proceedings.
LAUREN KANE: Absolutely.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So bringing those contents back into the fold, bringing it into kind of your permanent content store, there's going to be some sorting out to do. And maybe your friends at NISO can help us out.
LAUREN KANE: I would love that. But it's actually like you say, it's an opportunity too. And it is the Wild West in some cases so that makes it a little bit exciting when there's not standards in place but it gets us a chance to do things right from the beginning, both on an organizational level and as an industry of let's all get together and make sure that we have good integration, good structures, clean metadata. Love to see it.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And as long as you think about your brand and your content and how it's been put out in the world, it's important to understand who owns that content, who has access to it, and who may have rights to it in other formats. And it's important to think about the original work, any derivatives that have been created from it, if you've syndicated content created during the pandemic on other databases or services what rights do they have.
WILL SCHWEITZER: You may not just be able to pull everything back and essentially package it up like an existing journal or say a book series that you have.
LAUREN KANE: And this has certainly been a sticky issue for many organizations in terms of video content from meetings, what it's meant for speakers and authors of conference content and what the reuse rights of that content are for the society. And this is something that's still being navigated I think on an individual basis. But knowing upfront that it's an issue and it's something that needs to be addressed that's the core right there.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Yes. And I also think there's an end user expectation too. It's one of the things we talked about in the Silverchair community last year. As a lot of our publishers took down paywalls and freed up content as end users essentially were off campus, there was a lot of friction to accessing content they were entitled for. And actually there needs to be a careful conversation with your subscribers, with the end user community, about putting paywalls back up or kind of shifting your aspect.
LAUREN KANE: I think that's so important because for some people the pandemic is ending, for others as we said it's still in a very tough shape. And so having those really frank conversations with their community about what their needs still are and kind of keeping that trust I think that people have had throughout the last 18 months is really important.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Right. And In particular, we've had a lot of discussions here in the Silverchair community about corporate subscribers and how there wasn't necessarily the standards or the large scale infrastructure for kind of off campus or out of the office access to resources where there's still some pain points.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So moving on to demand and traffic, it is important to know especially where your products and solutions are hosted, who actually owns the domain or infrastructure, how easy it may be for you to redirect those domains or your web traffic, it's important to figure out how the content or data is monetized or how it could be monetized. And then if you're changing your approach or strategy, what needs to be in place. So if you had made your digital content or your digital meeting content free and now you want to make it a sellable product, you have to start thinking about, "OK, how do we productize that?
WILL SCHWEITZER: Can we support IP authentication? What do I need to do in all of my back-end systems to define it as a product and capture the right data?" There's a lot of kind of dots that need to be connected. And then thinking again about this content and data flows, again from creation on through kind of delivery to the end user, how does that content or product data flow through your systems?
WILL SCHWEITZER: If you're relying on third parties for it, how can you access that data? How is that data stored? Do you essentially need to convert it or transform it to bring it back into your stack or under your control? And then how is the content or data currently structured? And are you going to be able just to incorporate it into your existing product lines, onto your existing platforms, or is there a bit of product development or work that needs to be done?
LAUREN KANE: I think you need to do that poll about anxiety after this presentation to see if people's concerns are raised given the questions.
WILL SCHWEITZER: I will ask some questions about it. And maybe we can get into it in the chat. But I think these details are going to be really important. And a lot of people kind of can get a little anxiety talking about data formats and structures if you're like you need this really deep technical background.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah.
WILL SCHWEITZER: But more often what we actually need is kind of a dictionary or a legend perhaps.
LAUREN KANE: And I think the important thing to remember is if you're hearing this and you are a little anxious like, "Gosh! These are questions that we should be asking at our organization," that's a good thing because what you should be more anxious about is if you're not asking these questions. At least if they're surfaced, at least if these are being discussed, this is, you're ahead of the game.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So on contracts and requirements, thinking of those new vendor relationships, those new partnerships you may have entered, what are the terms of those agreements? What are your kind of business and functional requirements going forward if you're kind of articulating a new strategy? And I think this is a really important one. And we've talked a lot about technical details, about business or contractual details, but what do your stakeholders need or expect.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And we all have a lot of stakeholders. It isn't just our paying customers but it could also be our governance. If we're a society it could be also your vendors are to some extent a stakeholder and you have a lot of dependencies.
LAUREN KANE: I think that's the most important part of this entire framework is that last one right here. And I think it's also recognizing that what your stakeholders expect or need, or needed before the pandemic, is going to probably be very different now and may even be more different in 12 more months and so understanding that this is a spectrum of needs or what's being valued at a given point of time and needing to kind of keep those communications open to recognize what's that.
LAUREN KANE: Because the worst thing is setting strategy or making plans without having that emphasis of why are we doing this, who is this for. And so having that kind of value definition from the beginning I think is just absolutely critical.
WILL SCHWEITZER: You're right. And it's not like we're going to be able to drop a pin and say in October 2021 things will be as they were in January 2020.
LAUREN KANE: Correct.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And we know the expectations folks may have as we begin to reopen, as we return to the office, certainly aren't going to be their expectations in May of 2022. I'm getting my years confused.
LAUREN KANE: Well, anything before what-- kind of the fall of 2019, it's just a blur now.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So if you were to boil kind of the past six slides down, this entire framework comes down to knowing what you did, knowing what you want to do, mapping out kind of your customers, your data, your content, your traffic, your contracts, your requirements, and making a plan and putting that plan down on paper and socializing it and getting a lot of feedback is going to be really important. When making your plan-- and there are just a few other tips here, have proactive conversations with your stakeholders and partners.
WILL SCHWEITZER: We can help. In some cases, you may have had some staffing turnover, as we talked about earlier, in making pivots or quick decisions or you may not have documented things as well as you could. Your partners and vendors are probably having similar conversations with all of their customers. And I think this is really a place, as a kind of an industry, as a collective whole, we can share some lessons learned along the way.
WILL SCHWEITZER: This next point is really important. Consider resource availability and sustainability. We're all coming off an endurance run. We know that productivity levels have changed during the pandemic. They're certainly going to change again as offices reopen. As we rebuild our relationships and return, the pace that we've been working at likely isn't going to be sustainable or we aren't going to be able to hold it for the next six to eight months.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And as Lauren was talking about just a moment ago about kind of understanding the values and what you're driving towards, I think as you create that plan, it is really important to create measurable goals to check your progress along the way and then to consider trade off decisions. And then this last point here is, remember, there is absolutely no business as usual. There isn't.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Let me stop sharing for a moment. And before we open up for a question and answer, since I have Lauren here and in person, I just wanted to take this opportunity to ask Lauren kind of four or five questions about her experience during the pandemic, about opening back up both from a broad industry perspective and from her time at Morressier.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And I guess the best place to start, Lauren, is to ask if you have any thoughts on the framework as a whole or even our catchy acronym.
LAUREN KANE: I was going to say the acronym might need some workshopping. But you're a technology company so we'll let you have that. And I shouldn't talk because most people can't say Morressier, myself included. Our co-founder usually cringes a bit when I say it. So the name is fine. But no I think the framework is really smart and I have an appreciation for anything that is about getting back to basics or looking at building blocks because it's not sexy and exciting but it's so important.
LAUREN KANE: I think often people are trying to get right to this strategy, "This is the product we want to create. This is what we want to do. This is where we want to go." And that's great. And especially at a time like during COVID when things are moving so quickly and there is a pressure to act fast, that can be a good thing. But I think if you are not taking your time and doing the type of assessments that you call for in the framework, you're going to be caught a little flat-footed.
LAUREN KANE: That it is so important to have those kind of basic understanding of what sort of content do you have, what sort of business requirements do you have, what is your existing infrastructure and partners, in the case of a new partnership, how will this kind of work in. You mentioned integrations. We oftentimes have clients who say, "Well, we want to make sure it's all integrated." And then you'll say, "OK.
LAUREN KANE: Well, what do you have in mind, or how?" And it's like, "Well, I don't know." And so I think just taking some extra time-- And all of this is built on communication. Communicating within your organization in different departments, especially if they're kind of siloed, this certainly was a challenge in a virtual environment. But it's also communicating as you brought up with existing partners, with new partners, with your stakeholders, with your members.
LAUREN KANE: That if you do that kind of homework from the beginning, then you're already going to, I think, be more successful than many when you start out on that strategy no matter what that is.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Great point. So when we were preparing for this session, Lauren, you highlighted that the pandemic and kind of pivoting and experimenting surfaced kind of a lot of gaps. And those gaps could be in understanding stakeholder expectations, it could be in understanding what processes, it could be even knowing say how the publications division within a society works with the IT department. Do you have any thoughts on that?
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. I'm kind of reluctant to talk about silver linings when it comes to the pandemic, because obviously there's been huge losses, and those will be sustained losses for some time. But there are some-- let's call them "bright spots" of the past 18 months. And one of the things that I think we really saw that I kind of hope that energy remains going forward is this real energy to solve problems, not just for COVID but for the long-term.
LAUREN KANE: And I was really impressed with some very large and perhaps traditionally conservative organizations or perhaps more risk averse organizations that didn't say we want to have, say, a bridge virtual meeting and we'll just do that and then wait, which you could see why someone might do that because there's a lot of unknowns, but instead said this is our opportunity to develop a long-term strategy for what it will mean to be more inclusive, to have more people be able to access conference research, to have a virtual option in five years, not just in 2020.
LAUREN KANE: And so I loved that. And I think that's incredibly impressive that amidst so many other challenges that people are really thinking about this long-term. But I think one of the reasons that happened was, as you said, there was this aha moment that we are being caught flat-footed by the pandemic in a way that we might not have known that COVID specifically was going to happen.
LAUREN KANE: But we should have maybe known that there was going to be a point in time in which access was a problem, in which we needed to provide virtual access to a greater community, that a three to four day meeting of 1,000 people was probably not the best way to reach a global audience. So I think there was a kind of instant highlighting of that these are real gaps in what we do and so let's try to not fix them with bandwidths that aren't going to be solutions that are going to persevere in the future but let's really do something to flip the model for the longer term.
LAUREN KANE: And so I think that's been fantastic. And the other part, I think, on a smaller scale that I've really seen as you said is kind of the gaps that sometimes exist within organizations. And for Morressier, since we kind of work at the nexus of the publishing community and the meetings community, this is often sometimes a challenge in the groups that we work with because especially in the larger organizations these are departments that are fairly siloed that don't typically work together, they don't even necessarily have real great understanding of what each other does.
LAUREN KANE: And so when you are working on a project and you're especially doing it when people are out of the office and now working remotely, that really requires that buy-in from the publications department, from the meetings department, from perhaps the technical department. That can be a challenge. But I also think it's again a real opportunity, because certainly you can see the value beyond a single project of having groups within an organization that are more aligned, that know what each other are doing, that know what the needs are, that know the values that they're trying to determine.
LAUREN KANE: So I had someone at a society that we work with make the comment the other day, "It shouldn't have taken this to know what my colleague in this department is doing." Or what their challenges are, or maybe something that we can do together collaboratively. So we talk a lot about, I think, the insular quality of the industry as a whole and organizations relative to other organizations, but sometimes that's even within an organization there are those silos.
LAUREN KANE: So that's another thing that I think has been a lesson of COVID that I would love to see maintain a kind of post pandemic world is let's collapse those barriers within organizations, let's have a better understanding of what we're doing and how we can kind of help one another. Because I think that will be so helpful as we get back, not to business as usual but to this future that we're coming, let's come back even stronger, more transparent, more communicative.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So Morressier has kind of been on the front lines of folks adapting this strategy for the pandemic, particularly with digital meetings and conferences. And as you reflect on the past 14, 16 months, you probably now have some idea of what are some of the biggest missteps folks should watch out for and some notion for what are characteristics that tend to make organizations or pivots or adaptations more successful.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. I think a big part of it is that kind of like in your framework of going into it not being reactionary and having a good idea of what are you trying to achieve. Because if you are going into it trying to say, "Well, our in-person meeting was canceled and so I want a digital replacement," and you're thinking about it in the exact same way that you did before, you're probably not going to come out with an outcome because a virtual meeting is never going to be an in-person meeting.
LAUREN KANE: They're different animals. But instead if you're thinking about it on an achievement basis, what are my goals? Is it to reach more people, is it to have the research be out there and accessible more broadly, do we want greater participation from across the world, do we want different types of content that perhaps we couldn't host in an in-person meeting that we could do here, do we want better kind of networking engagement features.
LAUREN KANE: It's a prioritization or a value setting that really should kind of predate this, this is what we're going to do. And also I think the groups that have been most successful have had a real clear alignment of this is what we want out of this and it's not replicating exactly what we did in person, it's really thinking how can we make the virtual environment do what virtual does well and make the most of it. And I think to the point of about communications that also kind of best practice has been those that are in organizations where everyone's really aligned on this that it is more of a cross-functional project.
LAUREN KANE: Those tend to be kind of more successful.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And then in terms of where you see missteps or folks stumble along the way, is there kind of like one aspect where if societies looking at digital events really just had a better understanding of their member data, or how they were handling authentication, or what they wanted to do with the content after it was on the platform? Is there kind of one suggestion you would get folks from one area to really hone in on?
LAUREN KANE: Well, I think the biggest thing is making evidence-based decisions. So again saying, I think, not making assumptions about what your stakeholders need or want. For instance, if you're going to invest. I've seen some groups that says, "Well, we definitely want all of these kind of bells and whistles and things like networking and engagement features," and then sometimes a meeting happens and those aren't readily used, whereas people really wished we had a more interactive poster session, or I really wished there was more opportunities for early career researchers.
LAUREN KANE: Or so I think those groups that have either polled their membership or their attendees ahead of time to see what do you want out of a virtual meeting, or how can we really hone in on this experience for you particularly, again they're more successful. So it kind of goes back, like you said, to data. Knowing from the beginning what are the expectations of your stakeholders, what data do you have, what rights do you have.
LAUREN KANE: And then the other big thing is that what do you want the ROI from this to be? Again, that's a big thing where there's absolutely nothing wrong with saying we want this event or in the case of, say, an on demand library, of conference research, the goal of this is to produce a surplus or to be cost neutral or to be a new revenue generation mechanism for the society. And certainly there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
LAUREN KANE: That's mostly what we see because there is a real need in the industry to have this new source especially after a tough financial year. But it's saying up front that's what the goal of this is. Because sometimes that's not the goal. Sometimes the goal is we want a new member benefit, or we want to reach early career researchers more readily, or we want a greater dissemination of more parts of the research workflow.
LAUREN KANE: So again that value definition that we talked about earlier I think is also really important that not only its leadership know that and understand that but that the people that will be operationalizing this are also familiar with this is why we're doing this, is going to be the ultimate outcome. And unless you know that from the beginning, then it's going to be really hard to look at a project and say was this successful.
LAUREN KANE: Because it's on what metrics? On what basis?
WILL SCHWEITZER: Right. And I guess that it really comes back to the importance of kind of going through the framework and making a plan because I think for a lot of publishers, for a lot of societies, continuing to have engagement over the course of the pandemic was the primary goal, and now is really the opportunity to say, "Can this or whatever we did be positioned as a strong member benefit? Can it be positioned as kind of a revenue generating product?" There seems to be that rate inflection.
LAUREN KANE: Absolutely. And certainly this is kind of our position as we've talked a lot about virtual meetings. But Morressier sees this as really just being the starting point. That it really is more about the research at the meeting, the conference content itself. And instead of say having that three to four day event with just a very specific audience, that there's an opportunity for societies who put so much emphasis as you know into this, so much time, so much resource into these meetings and the content produced has a much longer shelf life or should be given greater access and greater visibility than just at that event.
LAUREN KANE: Whether or not that event is digital or is in person, there are just so many ways for greater community benefit, for their researchers, as well as, as you say, for a potential new revenue stream to do some interesting things there. And then when there is the opportunity to integrate it with their other holdings, say their publications or other educational resources, then there's even more value of having this fully integrated network.
WILL SCHWEITZER: That's a really great point. I just had a flashback to like really early in my career going to conferences and then being sent a CD of all the proceedings and posters, that there were posters back then, and how much kind of useful having all the content digitized or created is really kind of at the onset that is. So my last question before we turn over to audience Q&A-- from either your perspective as being part of SSP's leadership or working at Morressier, how are you thinking about kind of hybrid events and then kind of further changes from here on?
LAUREN KANE: That's definitely the million dollar question going forward. And I think look, we are social people, we want to go back to in person, I know I'm super excited to do this today and I cannot wait to go back and see people in meetings in real life. So we will go back I think to on site but I also think that we've seen the tremendous value that that virtual access that digital access provides in terms of being more inclusive, in terms of having content interaction with a greater group of people, more accessibility.
LAUREN KANE: And so I think that the future is squarely hybrid. And I think it will be up to each organization to really decide what does that mean. And I think that it is not really cost effective or feasible for people to run dual meetings of having like a fully virtual meeting and a fully on site meeting. It's just going to be cost prohibitive for most people and doesn't really again, as we said, make sense. Well, what is your strategy there?
LAUREN KANE: Why would you do that? Or I think what we will see-- and this is going to be different for different organizations, is what are those things that thrive best in an in person environment? Is it things like networking, business development, and that sort of kind of more serendipitous exchange, and that that's what we're going to preserve for the kind of on-site meetings.
LAUREN KANE: But then with virtual meetings, what is that content that we want to make sure gets out to everyone? And in my personal feeling I think that's going to be things like keynotes, some technical presentations, and things especially like posters that are I think just so extended in a digital environment versus a crowded post or hall where an early career researcher might get one or two people that comes by to see their printed poster whereas in these digital galleries that their exposure and what that means to their work and their connections that they make with other researchers across the world is just so expanded.
LAUREN KANE: So there are things like that that I think will become the norm whereas maybe a few years ago they were seen as, "Oh, that's a nice to have." But I think given the lessons of the last two years that there are things that will persist. And that we have a real opportunity again to kind of take this to the next level as an industry and to have things be a better, more comprehensive, more holistic solution for all stakeholders.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Great. Thank you. All right. So we'll turn to do questions from the audience. So the first question from an anonymous attendee. When thinking about business as usual and anxiety, it seems like each executive at an organization might select a completely different area. How do you balance those concerns?
WILL SCHWEITZER:
LAUREN KANE: I think that's the question too. But it's that organizations are not homogeneous organizations. They're full of different individuals, different departments, and oftentimes with different views on what the future should hold or what the priorities should be. Certainly this is not something due to COVID. We've seen that for some time. So my personal feeling would just be really helpful, candid strategic planning that brings in a lot of different stakeholders to make sure that people have the opportunity to have their ideas kind of put out there and discussed and that whatever emerges is something that everyone has by and on.
LAUREN KANE: Because I think what you described, that type of siloing of each person with their own agenda, not necessarily helpful for the organization, especially during a time like this where I think there really needs to be strong alignment and vision on this is where we're going. What do you think, Will?
WILL SCHWEITZER: So I think alignment is important. I also think leadership is important and I can recommend kind of a broad based practice. But I can talk about what we've done here at Silverchair which is actually to gather as much data as possible, to have a lot of discussions both kind of at the executive team level with senior managers and with individual teams, and then to kind of make decisions for rolling periods of time. So the decisions we make about how we're going to operate now of course we're following kind of public health best practice and recommendations here but realizing we only have enough data and we only have enough experience to say this is how we intend to operate for the next three months and then at some point before those three months we'll take stock again and figure out how to go from there.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. I think that's a really, really good point about time frames, I think given so many unknowns that may be having this three-year plan, five-year plan right now might not be the most prudent because-- or you at least you can have that plan but to have perhaps more frequent check ins than you might about where are things, has sentiment changed, has financial realities changed, because I do think we're going to go through a period the next 6 to 12 months, especially where there's going to be a lot of fluctuation in the market, in the world in here in scholarly communications and so having those kind of take-in points I think are going to be really important.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And also-- so this is my personal perspective not necessarily Silverchair's, but I think it's important to recognize that everybody is going to have anxiety about opening back up at this point, and executives are going to have anxiety as well as senior leaders and employees. But it's really important to think about the organizational goals. So as we think of asking people to return to the office if we're asking people to return to the office, how does that position your ability to retain or recruit talent and onboard them it may be very different.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And then kind of the flexibilities employees may be expecting, you may find that being a distributed organization works really well for you and it hasn't affected loss. So like my personal bias is actually to allow kind of individual work teams or units to choose what works best for them. And that may not work for every organization. So the next question-- many pilots and pivots so far have been fairly obvious and shared like the ones to accommodate remote workforces or virtual events.
WILL SCHWEITZER: What do you see as the next round of pilots and pivots as we slowly emerge from the pandemic?
LAUREN KANE: Oh, interesting. Well, and that's a question I kind of have for you, Will, of perhaps what you're seeing on the publication side. I wonder what the effect of the pandemic will be on something like open access more broadly. Is this an accelerant? Is this something that because of financial concerns-- So I could really argue it both ways. Because of financial realities that could cause people to kind of put up more paywalls to get that income but it also could be an opportunity because certainly we've seen as you pointed out as people collapsed those paywalls during the pandemic to provide greater access and what that meant to the community, especially those with medical content.
LAUREN KANE: And so it will really be interesting to see what is the legacy of this when it comes to access. What do you think?
WILL SCHWEITZER: So there's like a correlation and causation question here, which is, as we think about open access and content, open access coming off of Plan S and major library sources like kind of renegotiating big deals, established momentum, before we went I think separately from COVID which as we've talked about highlighted some of those access painpoints. So it seems like more members of the Silverchair community and our industry at large are accelerating towards open access.
WILL SCHWEITZER: There's no question about that. And there's no question that we are starting to ask ourselves about kind of the necessity or the friction our current access methods have created. So we've all gotten used to single sign-on environments for work and access emails or our office suite. But getting access to scholarly literature from an institutional entitlement and perspectives is actually way more difficult in that that could get us down a rabbit hole and talking about things like siloed that I don't know that we necessarily want to do.
WILL SCHWEITZER: I would say one of the macro trends we've observed, and I think COVID accelerated this, is we by and large sell and present our products in traditional kind of product boxes or silos today. And we have our journals line that we sold as a collection or as one offs, we had our books that we were selling as a collection or as one offs, we had our conference proceedings which we're now augmenting with videos and additional digital artifacts.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And we're seeing a lot of interest to essentially break down those product silos, to have topical collections across journals, books, and meeting content and sell those and going back to all of the framework points about understanding content and data flows. It can actually create a lot of systems challenges, it can create a lot of sales and marketing and sales process challenges as well.
WILL SCHWEITZER: But I think that's the direction of travel. We're all looking for kind of creative ways to slice and dice content to either make it more useful to our existing customers or to create new revenue opportunities. The next question-- you spoke about KPIs and return on investments on virtual events earlier. What do you think are the most important points in these arenas?
LAUREN KANE: Well, again it really depends on the society or the organization and what is most important to them. And that's not a one size fits all because again for some it's that we absolutely need a new revenue stream or we need to be able to produce a surplus from this strategy. And then for others they say, no, we see this as a mission play. We need a mechanism to get more in touch with our early career researchers or we want to be more inclusive of a global audience.
LAUREN KANE: And so I would say there's not-- the best practice is in this is what your KPIs should be or your value should be the best practices you need to understand and be in alignment within your organization about what that is. And then also then not be shy about making decisions and setting strategy that supports that and not vise versa. I think this is one of the biggest pitfalls I see-- and not just now, I observe this throughout my career, and I think we've talked about this as well is that unfortunately sometimes people set strategy first and then try to produce the data or operationalize the plans to support that strategy and not necessarily vise versa whereas going back again to your lovely framework you need to have those building blocks first.
LAUREN KANE: You need to ask the questions first, you need to see what you have available, what are your resources, what are your content assets, and then make a plan from that. And then you're going to increase your success levels.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So I want to jump off that point about assets. One of the things that I've heard either from being engaged with SSP or ALPSP or members of the Silverchair community is that digital meetings and conferences have reached a much broader audience. Conference registrations have gone up and virtual attendance has been up that has been connecting kind of brands or publishers or societies with way more individuals than they had before.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So when I was at associations before I joined Silverchair I had a reputation for being a pocket square or the business guy. So one of the questions I would be asking about our ROIs or KPIs is, of all those new people you connected with, how many relationships are you maintaining? Are you actually able to convert those folks into something of value for your organization?
WILL SCHWEITZER: And value could be broadly defined. So have those folks gone on to become authors? Have they gone on to become members? Have they gone on to become subscribers? I think there's a lot there.
LAUREN KANE: You're totally right. And it is about-- and this again goes to this new wave of data that is still kind of taking shape about what do we have to learn from these virtual meetings or from the virtual availability of this conference content. And one of those things is what is the expanded reach because you're going from this is being presented, to you're meeting attendees, to a much broader access point, especially in the case of these open access galleries where you could have a single digital poster that perhaps was viewed 1,000 times.
LAUREN KANE: And so there's a data point right there in terms of accesses but then there's much more interesting data points that are somewhat anecdotal but seem to be multiplying of what does that then mean to that researcher who authored that poster especially if that's an early career researcher, which they often are, about what that increased exposure has meant to their career, to the connections that they've made, to their field of study or the discipline more broadly.
LAUREN KANE: And so that type of engagement-- and it's a little fluffier for a KPI but I think we shouldn't lose sight of what does engagement and exposure mean to an organization down the road. As you said, there is both the immediate effect of this but then there's how does this endorse your long-term strategic vision for having kind of more impact in the community.
LAUREN KANE: And I think there's a lot of opportunities there.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So we have two more questions. We may have time to get through both. So this attendee asks, scientific conferences are one thing, book fairs and similar types of meetings are another. Many societies that license their products, including books, rely on book fairs for exposure and sales outreach. Do you think that we are facing a permanent change in how these fairs are organized and how potential buyers and sellers are brought together?
WILL SCHWEITZER: I actually think we have a similar construct for business to business sales kind of in our industry too.
LAUREN KANE: Yeah. I think it's a tough question because there are-- Yeah, I think the similar thing as you say is that people who work on the sales side in scholarly communications are looking to get back to those conferences in person as much as anyone because it's very difficult for them to be in, say, a virtual booth of a meeting and get the same kind of exposure of being able to have conversations in a coffee line or pigeonhole people for meetings off site of surrounding an event.
LAUREN KANE: And so the same I think is true of these big book fairs or where you really do need that kind of in-person experience. And so again it's going to be different for every society or every organization but I think those where that was very important before, it will probably still be important. And there's no necessarily reason to replace that. I would say just looking for again how can that be augmented, how can a virtual or digital environment bring additional value to that and not necessarily replace it, if it doesn't make sense to replace.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Sorry. I got distracted thinking about currywurst at the Frankfurt book fair. So when I think about the time that I spent as a publisher in the industry, I think when we started to launch open access journals and products, it required us to collectively up our marketing and especially our digital marketing game. So a lot of us were used to operating within business-to-business frameworks of selling things to libraries or to corporate subscribers and now we had to capture data, define value propositions for, and market to individuals either as an author or to build kind of a community of users.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And I think this shift towards digital events probably away from book fairs and industry meetings that were always large that probably will be as large as they were in the past, I that we actually have to up our digital marketing capabilities yet again. And we have to get better with our value proposition a bit of leveraging things like social media and we know that we have to be capturing kind of user or potential purchaser data and kind of a much better and more actionable strategy.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So the last question-- when thinking of content and organizational brands and data, what do you think about reach versus keeping folks on your platform? Is this a time to spread your brand as far and wide as possible or to emphasize on platform use and getting to know your users as best as possible?
LAUREN KANE: Oh, that's such a good question.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Yeah.
LAUREN KANE: Yes.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So every publisher, every society, I think is going to think about these things in different ways. And I think this is really important where you need to understand your mission, you need to understand your business objectives, and also where you can create the most value. So one of, I think, my eternal talking points around things like ResearchGate or even Sci-Hub is that publishers in some fashion or another have been distributing and syndicating their content for a long time.
WILL SCHWEITZER: And that could be as simple as sending a content stream to an abstract indexing service like Scopus to Web of Science, it could be taking your content and putting your archival content in JSTOR or your medical content in Ovid. And those are a series of business decisions about where can you kind of derive the most value. And I think we need to think about broader content syndication and distribution the same way today.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So value in terms of mission if you're a society and you want to get rich, you're going to have kind of that inclination to spread your content as far as possible. If you are concerned about revenues and commercial value getting a commercial return for that content, you're going to think about distribution and licensing your content and very different. So back to that framework I think it's all back to what do you want to achieve and what is the best way to do it.
WILL SCHWEITZER: I don't think any publisher I know, any society I know today is thinking about pulling content back and bringing in content to their website. I think we're seeing folks differentiate the strategy, which is I can potentially serve my members the best by having a unified platform and experience for them by defining kind of a world that meets all of their needs efficiently and where I can build and deepen a relationship for them.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So I'm going to have this kind of strategy, this presence for my members. But when it comes to my institution and my vendor stakeholders then perhaps content syndication and distribution pursuing things like sharing pilots, pursuing things like research, can be probably more interesting to consider.
LAUREN KANE: Well, I think that's a wonderful place to wrap up but I just want to thank you so much for having me. This is really fun. And to Stephanie as well for putting this together. This was, I think, a great return to the hybrid format that I think we'll see more and more.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Oh, no. Thank you for coming down to Charlottesville and joining us today. So we just put up a slide that shows the next three Platform Strategies events that Stephanie mentioned. And you can register for those right now on silverchair.com/ps21. So thank you all very much for joining us. We'll also put a poll up as soon as the webinar close. We would really appreciate any feedback on the event.
WILL SCHWEITZER: So we're looking forward to seeing you out in the world sometime soon. And in the meantime, well, I guess we'll still chat and email on Zoom.
LAUREN KANE: Thanks so much.
WILL SCHWEITZER: Bye, everyone.
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