Name:
Thinking Holistically About Content: Working Together
Description:
Thinking Holistically About Content: Working Together
Thumbnail URL:
https://cadmoremediastorage.blob.core.windows.net/eb669237-a494-4428-95d0-43251deed99a/videoscrubberimages/Scrubber_1.jpg
Duration:
T00H55M00S
Embed URL:
https://stream.cadmore.media/player/eb669237-a494-4428-95d0-43251deed99a
Content URL:
https://cadmoreoriginalmedia.blob.core.windows.net/eb669237-a494-4428-95d0-43251deed99a/Cadmore_SocStreet2020_edited.mp4?sv=2019-02-02&sr=c&sig=I1slIHsGNeANZ4Idd5GvDToBiz%2B9K7oXFvH%2BH5%2B%2FrXQ%3D&st=2024-09-08T01%3A16%3A21Z&se=2024-09-08T03%3A21%3A21Z&sp=r
Upload Date:
2022-04-28T00:00:00.0000000
Transcript:
Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Society Street's third webinar. So last month's webinar was a conversation about early career researchers and practitioners and how societies can engage more deeply with them. It was a lively session. The recording is available at society.street/webinars. And I think the link will be on the last slide at the end of the webinar, as it is when the recording of this one is going to be as well.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So having had to pivot our conference from in-person to online, we found that there were topics and presentations that we had planned for the day, which didn't make it to the online conference. And this is partly why we wanted to run a webinar series, to cover some of the important topics we didn't have time to do in March. So this is thanks to the continued support of our sponsors that we have been able to offer our online conference and these webinars for free.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So a quick shout out to Advantage, who are sponsoring the session in particular, and the ongoing support of all of our sponsors-- Elsevier and Wiley, our gold sponsors, as well as Silverchair, Consort Strategy, ALS PSE, AGE, Cadmore Media, Atypon, Cactus, and Renew Consultants. So today's session I'm very excited about. It was meant to be one of the sessions for Society Street Live.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Together, we're exploring two things-- how you can make the most of your content across your organization and how practical it is to work across organizations within a society. So one housekeeping issue, we'd like you to bring your questions so we can discuss them. And we invite you to chat as we go along. So if the chat window hasn't opened as the default, you can find the blue Chat button to open the panel.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So in preparing for this session, we can assure you that we have a lot to say for ourselves. But we're really hoping that the shape of the conversation will be driven by you. So please jump on the chat, introduce yourselves, and start asking questions. So that was all for the housekeeping. Now, for a few brief introductions.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I am Violaine Iglesias. I am the CEO and co-founder of a company called Cadmore Media. I typically talk a lot about video, but today I'm not. So I'm very excited to talk to Paul and Julie.
JULIE GILL: Hi. I'm Julie Gill. I am delighted to be with you today. I am the vice president and general manager for AMA Ed Hub, which is our education delivery platform. I've been at the AMA almost 14 years working in my current capacity, but I've also worked in our membership and marketing areas, as well as product development.
PAUL GEE: Hi. I'm Paul Gee. I'm the vice president of product management and development for the JAMA Network and for the AMA Ed Hub, kind of focused around our publishing groups. And I've been at the AMA for eight years. And before that, I came from Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, where I worked in all aspects of journal publishing.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Why don't you tell us a little bit about this project? How it came about, what the origins of it are, and what the impetus was for it.
JULIE GILL: Sure. So AMA's mission is really to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health. And so as we look across the different strategies that we pursue, we see education as a key component and a catalyst for helping clinicians improve outcomes. And several years ago, we were seeing multiple complementary visions and aspirations emerging within the organization for how we could maximize the impact of the content that we have, how we could solve important challenges and issues that we're facing-- physicians in the environment-- and also really address the lifelong learning needs of physicians.
JULIE GILL: And so our CEO at the time really challenged us to think about how we might explore a unified strategy for developing and delivering education. And as part of that challenge, we took a really hard look at our own portfolio of education. And what we saw were that we had great individual products. So from JAMA Network and the clinical research that was coming out of there to education we provided in regard to ethics and dealing with ethical challenges in practice and so on.
JULIE GILL: Great individual products, but there was no way that a user, a learner, could really take full advantage of our portfolio of products, because they were so siloed and disconnected. We also saw that we'd invest in the development of individual products, but we weren't really leveraging that development in a way that would benefit our whole portfolio of education. And so it's with this in mind that we set about developing this unified strategy for delivering education that really underpins what AMA Ed Hub is.
JULIE GILL:
PAUL GEE: From my perspective, Julie's been working on the strategic setup of the education center and exploring different platform options for this challenge for a couple years. And I got pulled in to a meeting where-- what I walked into was basically every IT person in our company pitching to Julie strategies from two or three different LMS consultants. And I watched the meeting and kind of had a ton of questions, because I was jumping in midstream, and trying to figure out, what was the goal and what was the education center supposed to be and to become?
PAUL GEE: And I got a general sense of it and kind of felt like, from a journalist perspective, the platforms that we have do all the things that she was asking IT to deliver as an LMS platform and system. And I saw her face, which we've learned to read each other really well over the last three years, and she wasn't being sold. And I don't think they knew that. And I kind of whispered to her at the end of the meeting, like, why is it that you haven't looked at any of the journal platforms?
PAUL GEE: Specifically, like, we could technically, brand aside, JAMA Network can actually platform and do the things you're trying to do-- different brand, different situation. If we took all the political issues away, wouldn't that be a solution as well that you could look at? And she was totally open to that. And it really changed-- it really took off from there, just the idea that we might be able to think around those normal department walls and brand walls and try to find a better solution.
PAUL GEE: It changed our structure. What we did develop was a lot cheaper. It just took a lot of partnership, time, and developing hurdles-- jumping over hurdles to get there.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So how supportive was your leadership for this project, for this partnership?
JULIE GILL: Our leadership has been incredibly supportive at every level of the organization, including our board of trustees. I think part of it is how closely this ties to our mission. And it is-- it's something that we should have been doing a long time ago. And they're seeing that tie to the mission, but also that it is a strategy that really advances and supports multiple strategies across the AMA and multiple goals, and because it confers that enterprise-wide benefit, that I think has created this sustained commitment that we have.
PAUL GEE: Yeah. I mean, we were [AUDIO OUT] to leverage the investment they had already made in multiple areas again. And any investment we did make would enhance multiple areas. Just to give you a sense, in three months after that meeting, we had a plan, a budget, we had staffing, and the full organization behind it. It was faster than I thought. It was like, did I mean to whisper that to Julie? [LAUGHTER]
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So this isn't something that's very common, this kind of partnership that just grows between different sections of a society. How often does this happen at the AMA? Was this something a bit unusual? Or--
JULIE GILL: You know, I'd say this partnership is completely unusual, and it's new for the organization. We historically have different groups coming together for a finite project and execute against it and disband. Paul and I, our departments work in a really matrixed way. And so my area is focused on the vision and strategy of the partnership, the content that we develop and publish through Ed Hub.
JULIE GILL: And Paul's area is really advancing digital product management and development and service of that strategy. And so I actually have resources that sit on Paul's team that are dedicated, then, to advancing this work. And this structure that we've been able to develop and maintain and grow is one of the reasons we've been really able to accelerate progress.
JULIE GILL: Previously, before Paul had joined the project, I had to beg, borrow, and steal resources from other areas to make incremental progress. And it's really this matrixed structure and these dedicated resources that have made a world of difference.
PAUL GEE: There's a methodology difference. It's inherent, I think, in the way Julie talked about it, too. I'm product-focused in my goals and my orientation within the company. And to me, I've always interpreted that to mean I'm there for the life of the product till it sunsets. And a lot of times, the teams, the initiatives that get sprung up, sometimes the initiatives themselves have a start and an end date.
PAUL GEE: The education center didn't. It was an innovation focus and a grow focus with no end date. So there was a synergy there, where we're in it for the long haul. But the teams that were trying to support Julie initially to set it up were looking for a start date, an end date, and a cap budget-- an in and an out. Most IT projects are like that. They're trying to budget within the calendar year.
PAUL GEE: There's some sort of, we're fully behind you, but tell us exactly how long we have to be that way. This was more like, we're in it until we're not in it anymore. And that's what it took to really counter the hurdles and to get into a spirit of innovation instead of just project-based kind of thinking.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So could you describe the projects? So you described that it took three months between that first meeting and-- it took three months after that first meeting to get a budget, a project plan, et cetera. And then how long did it take? What shape did it take? Did you do this through regular meetings? How did you get the teams to work together? And I assume you worked with vendors as well, so how did that all go?
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS:
JULIE GILL: Paul, do you want to take this from the platform side?
PAUL GEE: Yeah.
JULIE GILL: Because that's kind of the bulk of where the focus was.
PAUL GEE: From the platform side-- well, I'll say, from the beginning, we started by clearly identifying accountability areas. And this is one of the things I echoed in my notes when I was looking at the questions that I came back to time and again is, Julie and I made it clear who's accountable for what. And we keep in those lanes, and we work together daily, but we don't necessarily try to do things that are not in our accountability lane.
PAUL GEE: And it's helped in every way. In fact, doing that all the time is a practice, because even our staff can get confused of who to go to. So we're clear-- we're talking about it all the time. But that was the first thing we had to do is figure out who is responsible for what, how do we set up a system so that the people have the right roles and we're not duplicating roles. And most of the pitch to the organization was that we're going to reuse pre-existing relationships wherever possible and do as little custom build as possible, so that we get the most operational benefit for all.
PAUL GEE: So I was working with the same vendors I'd been working with before. We architected a solution that dovetailed with our existing ones and didn't duplicate effort, but that fully was mapped to the strategy of what Julie needed to do. So the initial setup was a lot of architectural work and thinking and planning. I think we started building, though, within six months of that first con-- so three months later we had a budget.
PAUL GEE: Three months later, we were actually building things. We did separate the team. I think that conversation, that meeting where I whispered in Julie's ear, was, like, July. By September, we already had team frameworks and had hired a couple people and were moving ahead.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Great. How about staff? You know, how was it to bring the teams together? Did you have some education to do? Because I'm assuming as journal staff, you don't necessarily know much about the education side of things and vice versa. Or perhaps you have staff who did know both. But I suspect you had some training and some bringing along the teams to do.
JULIE GILL: That's an understatement. [LAUGHTER] We have a tremendous team of really committed, dedicated folks that buy into the vision and are focused on advancing it. They all bring different skill sets and experiences and speak a different language. And so we have to constantly focus in terms of ensuring that we're communicating effectively, that we're aligned, and there was a lot of education.
JULIE GILL: So Paul was on the publishing side, and I wasn't. For me to understand kind of what-- understand more what publishing meant and really applying that in the education space, and then building a team in my area that focused on content workflow operations that were scalable and sustainable, that's been an incredible educational experience.
PAUL GEE: Yeah. Yes. [LAUGHTER]
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I'm wondering because, so-- I'm also saying this because as an organization who works with different parts of societies, sometimes we get into a meeting with publishing folks, and then we speak one language. And sometimes we get into a meeting with meetings folks and sometimes education, and it's definitely-- the hardest is when everybody's in the room. But then you see also some internal translation happening, which is always fun.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So typically, it's the what's a DOI explanation that takes-- takes the better of the time.
JULIE GILL: We do. We beat that one to death. [LAUGHTER]
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: The DOI one, yes. So what were some challenges that you've encountered as you were doing this?
JULIE GILL: I would say, you know, for one of the early things was really getting clear and concrete in terms of the vision and strategy. For a while, in the early stage of this, people would see what they wanted to see in it and would shape it in a way that would align more with the goals that they were pursuing. And so it wasn't until we got a really clear and concrete definition around those strategies and those goals that we were going to pursue that we were really then able to accelerate and get the resources that we need to advance against that.
JULIE GILL: But it took some time. And I would say that was quite a bit of a challenge. And then we talked about this earlier, but around the roles and communication. That's been a challenge and that's a constant focus for us. And I expect it will continue to be a challenge.
PAUL GEE: Yeah, my quick answer is, what wasn't a challenge, you know? But it took a partnership with someone like Julie. And what I learned was, the partner matters. It's people that matter, not the strategy, not the getting the budget. And every single day, especially the first year, every single day, there was something where either our teams or Julie and I had some disagreement, we sit down, and we just countered it.
PAUL GEE: And it's just a checklist. Everyday, go through your checklist, go through mine. We developed a pattern of believing we could always be righter. [CHUCKLES] Everyone's always right, but it could be a little bit righter. And just trying to work with each other in a way where the teams got to see that this melding process was a process and not, like, a just one and done thing.
PAUL GEE: And I couldn't have done it with a better person. And I couldn't have learned more about education from anyone else. So the education center was an educational experience for me. But, you know, everything from DOIs, like, explaining why they needed a DOI for everything, what single-source publishing was, why you need more than one backend system, one for workflow, one for repository, right?
PAUL GEE: We architected everything from the ground up to work like an industry standard publisher so that we could scale once it took off. And we wouldn't have a hurdle where we take off with a really great looking customer-facing face, but couldn't keep pace with scale. We're set up for both. But it took a major investment. And really the investment in time and the questioning, that was the heart-- that was the-- figuring out brand, how is JAMA Network content going to live under an AMA umbrella?
PAUL GEE: And then, but that made us stronger. Because by answering those questions, we're able to explain to our first partner, the ACR, how their brand will shine. And we've actually made the AMA area a really neutral location so that all the partners can shine. It's the same thing we had to say to the editor of JAMA. And it's not disingenuous. We actually meant it.
PAUL GEE: And that's why we've been able to move it ahead. But every little conversation was a lot of conversations, a lot of thinking, a lot of strategic planning, and just trying to figure out, how do we counter this so that we can move ahead?
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So can you just-- if we delve a little bit into the details of this particular project, how would you-- so I think we all know what a journal platform is. How would you describe the Ed Hub and how similar it is and how different it is from the journal platform? And you've just touched a little bit on it, Paul, when you said that some of the processes, the scalability of the journal platform, was what really made it make sense to use it for-- to use the same infrastructure for the Ed Hub.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: But I think if you could just describe how similar and how different the two platforms are and what one brings to the other, it would be helpful. Just describe the Ed Hub, actually, what it does and how it's-- how it's being used.
PAUL GEE: Julie.
JULIE GILL: So Ed Hub brings together all of our education portfolio under one umbrella and enables a user to discover everything that we have to offer. They can discover it by searching on different topics. They can be focused on different products. But it's really about finding the simplest, easiest way for a user or a learner to discover the education that's relevant to them. And so there's a variety of different ways that we enable that to happen.
JULIE GILL: And bringing together what was really a diverse set of education, both in terms of a format, in terms of brand, in terms of business model, we had to create a scalable and flexible platform that would effectively serve the unique differences of those products, but do it in a way that was very simple and consistent and easy for the user, so that the user's time was really spent learning and engaging in the content.
JULIE GILL: They weren't spending their time having to learn and engage and navigate disparate and disconnected experiences. And so we launched the platform at the end of 2018 and brought together AMA's education. And since then, we've been expanding that offering, partnering with other organizations, to bring in education, helping them to reach a broader audience for their content, but at the same time then, serving learners with a deeper breadth and depth of education that can really serve their learning needs.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So you're bringing content from other publishers into the hub as well.
JULIE GILL: Yes. And so we added our first partner last year, the American College of Radiology. And I think this year, we've added three partners already to the platform. And we've got I think another four or five coming this quarter. So really, and Paul can speak more to the platform, but with the investment that we've made in terms of the infrastructure and the capabilities of the platform, we are excited to work with other organizations so they can leverage that investment in a way that also helps to then advance against our mission, which is really to provide clinicians what they need in order to improve outcomes for patients.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: And so there's overlap between your users and their users. I know the term user isn't great. I don't know if you have a better one than that. But so there's overlap, so it's actually good for the user to have access to this content in a centralized place.
JULIE GILL: Absolutely.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So it's good for societies to be able to provide this content, and you leverage your infrastructure, for you to be able to maybe leverage the platform and get a good return on investment, I imagine. And then also for the user.
JULIE GILL: Yep.
PAUL GEE: Mm-hmm.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So Paul, you were going to talk about the platform side of things.
PAUL GEE: Yeah, I'll talk about it more in terms of architecture. And there's different ways to think about it. And I could talk about this for a long time, because this is my geek-out area. When you look at a journal platform-- so when I got here eight years ago, the challenge was to work with the team on reinventing JAMA plus the 10 archives journals into a single network.
PAUL GEE: So everything that I've done here has been to try to build a framework of scalability that, to an end user, lets them feel like they're experiencing content that's in a trusted brand framework that doesn't look different depending on the brand they're going to. Archives of Pediatrics now is JAMA Pediatrics, and that synergization helps the end user just feel like they're getting content. But most customer research says they just want the articles.
PAUL GEE: They want to know there's a trust factor with the brand, but they just want the articles. They don't have to go through all these different hoops and this feeling like you're moving from one platform to another. Especially, if it's in your own publishing portfolio, you shouldn't have that feeling. I understand it if you have to leap from one group to another. But in the JAMA family, it should be the network you're experiencing, not JAMA Pediatrics versus JAMA.
PAUL GEE: We accomplished that by around 2015. And the real key to that is simple organization. Every site-- the network has everything in it. And it has a series of sites below it. And every site is composed of a landing page, an index area, which is what journals refer to as TOCs, and then article pages. And the article page is the most important to the end user overall, and the most important to Google, and the landing page is the most important to editors.
PAUL GEE: And you got to know who your customer is when you're building those. And once you get that framework right, you can apply it to other things, whether it's a book, whether it's an LMS. Ed Hub is an aggregator at the top, and then single sites for every product down below. Every product has a landing page, has index pages, and then has content pages that support different types of content.
PAUL GEE: The biggest-- we used exactly the same processing XML standards to deliver the content. We use the same approaches to methodology. We had to expand the number of content assets we supported for SCORM objects, interactive objects, audio, video, and things like that, that are much more interactive, focused on the education side. But we also started with a journal platform, so full-text HTML for articles and all the things you need for indexing and reference and citations right out of the box.
PAUL GEE: No reinventing that. And we built it on the same architecture. Journals have the luxury of experiencing what a lot of LMSs haven't really adopted as an operational framework, which is being able to service institutions and individuals side by side, IP authentication, and login through single sign-on all through the same database. We just expanded that. We didn't rearchitect it, rebuild it.
PAUL GEE: There was no investment. It was just an expansion. So that type of an investment that we had to make for journals just hit the ground running for education. And it's something that any society can do. Most societies have had to invest in some way in both of these things. Finding a way to see them as the same investment, but keep those brands separate, keep the business model separate, that's been the art of our ongoing three-year talks and projects.
PAUL GEE: And it's been the funnest project I've ever worked on, is trying to figure those things out.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I assume you had to be educated as well, on the AMA side of things.
PAUL GEE: Yeah.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So I actually-- we're being asked if we could show the product. So and this is a little bit going to be on the fly. But at the same time, I've already had camera issues, so I feel like I can go for it. And if it doesn't work, that's OK. So I have the Ed Hub and the JAMA Network and tabs on my browser. And I was going to just pull them up. And perhaps if you could guide me through some of those landing pages that you were talking about, Paul, I think a visual would help.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Is that OK?
PAUL GEE: Yeah.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: All right, so I am going to try to do that. So everybody forgive me for if there are any issues. I think I have to share the application window. And I'm probably-- let me see what's coming up. It's loading, isn't it? I'm being told that it takes a few seconds to load. So we should see ourselves, great. Are you able to see the Ed Hub?
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: OK, so we just took a little bit of time.
PAUL GEE: OK.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: All right. So this is the Ed Hub, and then this is the JAMA Network, isn't it? So we can start with the Ed Hub. And actually, why don't you just guide me, Paul, through maybe some of the pages that could be interesting for our audience.
PAUL GEE: Sure, just to sort of echo back what I was saying, this is the JAMA Network landing page. It's a landing page across all the publications. If you scroll down, you'll see that it features content that's aggregated from across the network. And it features some of our content that has, in the past, been the real heavy-hitters from a traffic and a citation perspective. It also features new things we're launching with JAMA Health Forum.
PAUL GEE: But if you use the hamburger menu down the side, what you'll see is that the publications list down the side, and you can jump into any one of them. So if you jump into JAMA Cardiology, you'll land in a very similar experience. The colors change a little bit, but the user feels acclimated that if they've used one site, they've used them all. The editors feel like they're getting a very consistent product.
PAUL GEE: And so do advertisers, in this case. If you scroll down, we have a single way of identifying-- of mirroring the way we construct print covers through this Just Published widget. And if you're familiar with the print, you see that there's a little bit of an echo there. And once you dive into, like-- just dive into any article-- you'll get an experience that is the article template.
PAUL GEE: And if you were to flip this to any other journal in the portfolio, you'd have exactly the same experience. The JAMA Network is always omnipresent in the upper-left, and there's a link back to the top. It's good for Google, good for the users, to know where they are. The journals are always available in the same area. And the search is always there across the entire network. So just very simple choices that made it so that you can always get what you want.
PAUL GEE: Once you're logged in, there's PDF links in two or three different places. Because no matter how well you create a website, users still just want the PDF to the chagrin of every digital builder out there. But all those concepts are the same. And if you jump over to the Ed Hub, you'll see, at this point, we're meeting the needs of end users and some of the use through the research, we saw that when they landed at an aggregated education area, they wanted to see the content organized by topics.
PAUL GEE: And one of the things that they liked about the Ed Hub was that the Ed Hub had content that was clinical, that was about transforming your practice from a business perspective, and then also professionalism topics. So we've channelized most of the topics that way. And all of the partners have content that can flow into any one of those channels.
PAUL GEE: Each one of these leads to topic collections that grouped together content on that area. What we're seeing here is a landing page that's built for the end user to give them an experience of global education. But if you use the hamburger menu and you scroll down, we have the same list of products down below, if you keep going.
PAUL GEE: We have a little bit more menu infrastructure here. But you'll see, you can jump into JN Learning, for instance. This is a landing page that's built just for JN Learning. It has a lot of the same components. It's exactly the same technology as the umbrella landing page. And every site has one like these that's customized to the experience of and the needs of that editorial group and that brand.
PAUL GEE: When you scroll, the JN Learning icon is what sticks. The Ed Hub slides away. So you really feel, as an editor-- like I said, the editors on these pages, they feel ownership, they feel control, and the users feel like they're in the brand that they came to. If you jump into any of the content from one of these pages, all those same branding features follow you.
PAUL GEE: And without going too deeply, if you explore the formats of every site, whether you're going to articles, video, SCORM objects at any site in any level, you get the same experience, the same controls, the same feeling, regardless of what type of content you're going to. You have the same paywall rules. A lot of the content on Ed Hub is free. But that's only because the business owners chose to make it free.
PAUL GEE: If they wanted to sell it, the paywall works like a journal paywall. The rules and everything you're experiencing can allow you to craft business models for membership, for individuals, for institutions, in any mix up. And we did that without having to reinvent the wheel. But just by using the wheel for a different-- to me, it's just a different set of home pages, tables of contents, and content pages.
PAUL GEE: It's all architecturally the same from my perspective as a platform person.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So from your standpoint, the benefits of using the same underlying platform for this is, again, the scalability, is the fact that you didn't have to reinvent the wheel. But you're also saying is that it's, from a user standpoint, being familiar with a similar structure across the AMA website also has benefits?
PAUL GEE: From a user's perspective and from the societies that their brand is being listened to. And from a user's perspective, that the user experiences comment. When they go to an article, they get the full article. They don't get, like, a PDF link, like some LMS options, or just an abstract. They don't get linked out to a different site. They get the article.
PAUL GEE: And then when they go to a SCORM object, we have integrations with SCORM cloud, so you're getting the full SCORM experience. And we have two or three different SCORM presentations-- full screen, that's more like a responsive site, and then the normal, like, player. And we have video and audio that's ported from wherever it's hosted by the society or the publisher.
PAUL GEE: So you don't have to move your content. It just gets featured within the context and ascribed to any type of, I don't know, 13 or 14 different types of accreditation values we support.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I think we've lost Julie.
PAUL GEE: I know.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Hopefully, she can come back. [CHUCKLES] How-- I wonder if this is a question for her more than for you, so just stop me. But how much overlap is there between the users of the two platforms?
PAUL GEE: I don't know the total overlap. Our user base is the same. Everyone who uses it logs in with an AMA login. The traffic patterns are definitely different site by site by site. There's a lot of students using Health Systems Science. There's a lot of residents using our residency program. And not all of those use the JAMA Network. It's just-- it depends. But once you have a login, there's a lot of crossover.
PAUL GEE: I think she's coming back on.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: OK, I think she's coming back. Hopefully we can actually see her and not just see the little dots.
PAUL GEE: She doesn't want to hear the platform talk anymore.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: She doesn't want to hear the platform talk. I would love to hear her perspective, though, on the user experience across the platform. And, no, I don't think she's able to come back right this minute. So what other-- what would you recommend to others about doing something like this? So it feels to me that this is both a great project, but at the same time, you have a lot of means at the AMA. So you have very strong developer teams.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: You also have a longstanding platform, longstanding relationship with your platform vendor. So how do you think other societies could take on similar projects?
PAUL GEE: Well, let's just say that with all the means of the AMA, Julie had presented a plan where instead of working from a common platforming perspective, she was just going to take absolutely everything that we had at journals and replicate it so that there was full control for the education and there was a separation of church and state. That would not have been given a green light in three months, right? Like, maybe, after some time, it could have.
PAUL GEE: There could have been some element, like, that's worth it. But I think at any society, regardless of where you're starting from, there's always going to be favorable upper-management eyes looking on you if you're able to reuse the preexisting investment to do two things instead of just one. And if you can use that to actually help others along the way, which that became one of the intentions, they get more and more value for that existing investment, and it's easier.
PAUL GEE: And once you demonstrate that it works and that there's success, there's not a lot of stress about trying to figure out how to grow it. In fact, you get a lot of momentum behind you. And then the pressure is just to keep the faith, keep it moving, and don't break the faith. I mean, the biggest thing I recommend is a partner like Julie, who I wish could be here to talk.
PAUL GEE: It's a partner like Julie, that you can really work with. I can't tell you how many hard moments we've had, that if we weren't in clear communication with a dedication to just resolve the hurdle, like, whatever it is, get to the other side of it and just move on and go home and get a drink, whatever it is, it's made it so much easier. It's never personal.
PAUL GEE: It's never, like, a big issue. Everything's a big issue, and we're able to get to the other side. And it's made it so we feel really supported by each other.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Julie, are you actually on the audio? No, she says she can hear. I think she's-- unfortunately, she's locked out. So how about, I have been an advocate for societies to really look at what scholarly publishing has to bring. It feels like, in some cases, publications within societies is not necessarily considered a strategic partner, in the sense that, yes, there's a lot of money that comes out of journals, but it's not-- it still feels like a separate department in lots of cases.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Part of this is probably because a lot of societies have outsourced their publications to third-party-- hello, Julie. Can you hear us?
JULIE GILL: Hi, there. I'm back.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: That's OK. We'll go back to the questions that I wanted to ask. It's one of those days. So yes, so I was saying that I was generally a big proponent of looking at scholarly publishing best practices and applying that across all of the content that is published by societies. So in some cases, we think that, OK, publishing content is journals and maybe books, but the rest of the content that is produced by the societies isn't necessarily treated the same way.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So as Paul, you were saying, things like DOIs and scalability and just a sound architecture that allows you to be more flexible with how you present the content online. So what do you think-- it's kind of two questions-- is what do you think those scholarly best practices have brought to this project? But also, what do you think those scholarly publishing best practices, and especially the way that you've applied them, what do you think that they can bring to the industry generally?
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: What are some lessons that can be learned from this project and maybe applied by others? That was two questions. I'm going to say the first one again. So what were the best practices from scholarly publishing that really helped make this product better?
PAUL GEE: So from that perspective, and one of the things that I brought from LWW to the AMA general, was an attention to scale. And that also-- like, we went through a huge process at LWW to optimize our quality and keep scale. And we had a lot of success there during the last couple years when we went through some of the efforts we went through. Using that to be able to apply at the AMA has been helpful with JAMA, and then helpful with the Ed Hub.
PAUL GEE: And the ability to believe you can get to scale from something where if you're only producing 100 things a year, like, that you believe you can-- what can we do to get to 1,000? I mean, we had to counter that at the big publisher level, and I was used to that and the techniques and the ways that you have to work. That application back to smaller societies opens ideas up that you may not necessarily have had.
PAUL GEE: And it definitely helps with, here's why you need a DOI. [CHUCKLES] You know? There's a lot of reasons why just a single DOI creates that scale optimization. I don't know. Julie, how would you--
JULIE GILL: I agree with everything you said. And I think when we looked at applying really, kind of, this publishing approach to the delivery of education, really it was finding ways to facilitate discovery of content that was previously pretty darn undiscoverable from the learner. And I think when we talk with other organizations, we find there's a lot of commonality in terms of the challenges that they're grappling with in terms of disconnected portfolios.
JULIE GILL: And when they look at their education portfolio, there's a lot that have kind of that more traditional view in leveraging that LMS approach. And talking about applying this publishing approach has been something that they've been really excited about tapping into.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: How about the other way around? Do you feel, Paul, that learning more about the education side of things is going to drive changes in the publishing space?
PAUL GEE: Yes. [CHUCKLES] I mean, so one of the things that the education side has focused on first is getting interactive experiences online quickly and in a way where you can have really complicated integrations with those experiences so that you can accredidate what's going on there. I had to learn all about, at some level-- I have a really good person who really takes the lead on that-- but learn all about all the complexity there.
PAUL GEE: And my attempts to simplify it, I really try to simplify everything and question every complication detail. So I learned a lot about the complication you do need. And that's helped us with some of the ways we've crafted a strategy for where we're going with JAMA Network towards more interactive first experiences before the article, which is something that will take a journal a long time to get to.
PAUL GEE: But you can see that there is-- just giving certain tools to the teams and fighting to make sure the editorial teams has certain things at their disposal and they're staffed in a certain way, they open up and do things all on their own that's innovative. And I think that it's helped. Even if I don't-- like, it's a good question, because even if it's not conscious, it helps in some way, because you start to bring those things to the other side.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So speaking of silos more generally, what do you think this type of partnership can-- how do you think this type of partnership can inform breaking other silos? So breaking a silo with the conference team, for example, or other departments that you may not be working closely with?
JULIE GILL: I think for me it comes back to having a clear vision and strategy about what you're trying to achieve. And when you're talking with other areas, whether it's internal or external, it's finding some commonality in terms of those goals and in terms of how the capabilities, the resources, can work together in a way that can complement, accelerate, fill gaps, all of those good things.
JULIE GILL: But it comes down to kind of having that foundational understanding and an alignment, and I would say commitment then, to plowing ahead to meet those goals. Because it's not going to be easy because of all the challenges we talked about previously. And so it's really important to have those things there.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Did you go back to-- go ahead, Paul.
PAUL GEE: No, no, no, no.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: No, I was wondering, if you went to go back to the mission and maybe to your members and users and just saying, OK, what it is that they need and how can we look across the different departments, membership, conferences, et cetera, do you have to look through-- do you have to kind of go back and refocus on the initial mission of the organization?
JULIE GILL: So when we finally kind of crystallized the vision and strategy, we created this model that has been a guiding post for bringing, really, Ed Hub to life. But that model is-- it provides guidance. But we have the flexibility to-- as the macro environment changes, as new opportunities and challenges come up, we have the place to be able to extend and expand and move down different paths that we need to go.
JULIE GILL: It still, all of it, connects to what our vision and goals are. And it all ties back to that. But there's different paths that we can take to achieve that goal. And some of it is things that we do kind of to test and learn and see if it's going to work. But we've kept the North Star. And so the North Star really hasn't changed. It's provide education that is going to help physicians take better care of patients.
JULIE GILL: And so I don't see that piece of it changing.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Have you heard anything back from users?
JULIE GILL: We have gotten tremendous feedback from them. I would say in our first year of operations in 2019, we had double-digit percentage growth in terms of digital engagement with our education. This year, it's closer to triple-digit increases in terms of sessions and course completions and all those things. And yes, it's a terrific platform. But COVID and providing education that is helping clinicians deal with that has been a large part of the engagement that we've seen.
JULIE GILL: But if anything, the environment that we're in today, it's showed us that the foundation that we built with Ed Hub is excellent and that it's accelerated in terms of our roadmap for the future. And as we look to moving from live to virtual events, as we look to try to innovate in format and things like that, we're on a good path.
JULIE GILL: And so I'd say, Paul, anything you'd add?
PAUL GEE: No, no.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: I was going to ask if you have any final thoughts, because we're getting to the end of the hour. But those actually seem like-- it seems like you've had good success with the project. How long has it been live?
JULIE GILL: We launched at the end of 2018.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Right, so you've had a little time to collect feedback.
JULIE GILL: Yes, definitely.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: OK. As I said, any final thoughts? Any final recommendations? Any surprises that you want to share?
JULIE GILL: One, just thank you for the opportunity to share with you a little bit about our journey. The two things I would take away from this is, one, as we looked both internally and externally, recognizing that things are not a zero-sum game. That there's ways for us to come together both internally and externally to solve, I would say, really important issues that face our community.
JULIE GILL: And the other thing I would say, when we look at the education space, the opportunities seem endless. And so when we look at our long-term strategy, it may be, you know, five years out. It's a little fuzzy. We know a direction-- where we're headed. But one of the things that we really focus on, though, is making sure that, over the short-term, we have a really clear and concrete roadmap that guides our entire team and enables us to make progress toward that longer-term, more aspirational vision that we have.
JULIE GILL:
PAUL GEE: Yeah, I think that a key takeaway-- there was a couple key takeaways I would kind of summarize. One is, if you're going to look for an investment, feel-- work with a team that feels like it's OK to question why things couldn't be reused across the organization. I think that people just learn the behavior of believing that, like, that one's for that group, that one's for that group.
PAUL GEE: And they give them really weird names behind the scenes that make you think they're completely different. But when you look under the hood, if you're curious enough and bored enough, or just annoying enough, you'll find that they do exactly the same thing with different words wrapped around them. And you can usually synergize that.
PAUL GEE: That just gives you a whole lot of momentum with upper management. And it also gives you the ability to create single experiences that people recognize, both internally and externally. I don't know how to say it differently. I just always feel like using the same thing more than once is really helpful and has a number of different dimensions.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Great. Well, I think this wraps it up. Thank you very much, Julie and Paul. And I believe I've got-- there you go. The slides magically appear. [CHUCKLES] So this was the last slide I was supposed to show you with the URL with this recording of this webinar can be found. And also information about which next webinars are going to be organized by Society Street.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: So thank you very much for your time today, and see you next time.
PAUL GEE: Thank you. Thanks, Violaine.
JULIE GILL: Thank you.
VIOLAINE IGLESIAS: Bye.
PAUL GEE: Bye.