Nov
21
Tales of the Joseon
Filed Under B2B, Big Data, Blog, data analytics, Education, eLearning, Industry Analysis, internet, mobile content, Publishing, Search, semantic web, Uncategorized, Workflow | Leave a Comment
I have always felt that the further East you travel the more wisdom you encounter, and the prejudice was sharply confirmed earlier this week in a conversation with Dr Myungdae Cho, Director of the Linked Data Centre at the AICT (Advanced Institute for Convergent Technologies) at the Seoul National University. We had met to discuss the state of linked data in our two very different countries. But all of a sudden the conversation soared away over the skyscrapers of modern Seoul and we found ourselves debating some of the fundamentals of human understanding and communication. As well as a computer scientist my interlocutor is a historian, and his project has been interlinking the documentation of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty And which other civilizations can boast a 500 year dynasty? So then, take all of that documentation, and all the scholarly work associated with it, and begin to work on advanced taxonomies, on inference rules and on semantic analysis until an ontological framework begins to emerge. This then becomes the focus for a development which allows scholars to survey the period from a higher hill, with an additional dimension. Then add the art, the images, the objects from the Internet of Things and a platform of study emerges which opens up analytical perspectives which previous scholars simply could never have grasped. Yes, says my companion, it really is easier to view the future when you are looking backwards.
So why, I wonder, has it taken so long to get the Berners Lee vision of semantic analysis, now the linked data movement off the ground. Unsurprisingly, the answer was that timelines are a poor guide to progress in these matters. So we discussed instead the great change points in communication. First the origins of natural language as a descriptive code for communicating shared experiences. Then pictograms, writing and the source of the alphabet, of which Korea can proudly claim it’s Hangruel as a very early example. Then printing, where Korea and China come much earlier than Europe. What do we make of the fact that these elements, each of which represents not just a step forward but also a radical change in the type and style of communication, seem to happen in similar ways in societies with little or no contact with each other? And is what is happening now, supported by the promise of linked data, a further radical forward motion in the type and style of communication comparable to printing or writing? And anyway, he said, we had been inept in explaining the concepts – and even in naming them. Were expressions like “triple stores” readily understandable? Especially when they were “quadruples”, as his often were? And who named RDF? Even calling it the Resource Definition Framework did not help. He thought and spoke about it as the “logical glue” which kept the elements in place. If we had such difficulty in describing things how could we communicate them?
The essential point is perhaps that we do not know, and cannot tell. But every time Samsung produces a voice agent that sends your messages as texts or emails we must begin to wonder. And while some technology in Korea seems to be heading into a cul de sac (the hotel industry pre-occupation with heated toilet seats could be an example) here is a society which, when it already had 300 kph trains (UK please note) concentrated its infrastructure development on 40 mgb wifi nationally. And much of it is free, certainly in every hotel encountered this trip. Another milestone change from my last visit, in 1981!
So I decided to test the thinking of Myungdae Cho on a young student encountered on the fast train to Busan. Did he think we were facing a revolution in human communication? He was 26, had just finished his national military service and was on his way to visit his parents, after months away from home. But while Myungdae Cho looks back to Loughborough as an alma mater, this young man was a product of Illinois at Champlain-Urbana. Yes, he certainly believed in the internet as the place to do business. His plan was to return to Seattle or Portland, where he felt the spirit of Silicon Valley culture now lived, and build his own business. He already had elements of a team and the beginnings of a plan. Now the next struggle was to persuade his cardiac surgeon father that this was a good plan too! Did he think the internet was the frontier? Of course, but it also enabled you to build your own business quickly. This was almost a definition of freedom. And what was the opposite? Going to work for Samsung, having a “career”.
A few conversations mean little in the great sum of things. But I suspect that even if Korea is a less entrepreneurial society than it once was, it remains a place where the big patterns can be appreciated. I think that Myungdae Cho’s faith in the development of knowledge structures is not misplaced, and that however those forces move through global society Korea will be an early adopter and remain an important player. And when he has made his fortune on the West Coast I am certain that my young friend will return to Busan. After all, where else do you get wonderful spas, sandy beaches and kimchi!
Nov
18
The Digital Event Revolution
Filed Under B2B, Big Data, Blog, data analytics, data protection, Industry Analysis, internet, mobile content, online advertising, Search, social media, Uncategorized, Workflow | 2 Comments
Nothing has higher value in the world of B2B than events. Markets and valuations all reflect this. In a world of digital transformation events have a comforting certainty along with high margins. Attendance at some shows may have fallen during the recession, as well as exhibitors, but this is an industry well used to the economic cycle and generally unconcerned by temporary shifts which always seem to right themselves. I was present this week in Seoul at the 80th Congress of the UFI, the Paris-based trade association which represents both conference and exhibition organizers, and venue owners and managers. I found it hard to work out what was strangest: re-visiting one of the largest cities in the world after an absence of over 30 years, or speaking of things digital to a wonderful audience (at an appropriately well managed conference) who either thought that what I feared would never happen, or that, since people would always want to meet face to face, it was mostly irrelevant.
Which is exactly where the interesting arguments begin. It appears that for many in this industry the challenges are elsewhere. How can the event be made more compelling? Do we do it IKEA-style and force everyone to march past every booth? Will China’s vast plans for another great conference and exhibition centre in Shanghai de-stabilize the world market and drive down floor prices in Hanover and Frankfurt, traditional heartlands of the Great Trade Shows? Will the US cease to be self-contained as a market and compete on the global stage? How can more value be added for the user (one speaker talked of concentrating on attendees after two decades of concentrating on exhibitors)? Yet in all this discussion it was hard to keep on reminding people that a Great Event – a CeBIT, a Frankfurt Book Fair, a CES, etc – is above all a mighty data engine. I came away thinking not how impregnable these market tenancies are, but how easy it would be to compete with them. And they reminded me strongly of the newspapers and magazines of yesteryear when they dwelt on the importance of their brands and the trust and authority vested in them by generations of visitors. Does no one recall anywhere that the Google brand was built in the network in five years without effective monetization – or a single page of display advertising?
My plea here was really to shift the underlying base of the business to a wholly digital operation. Instead of creating data around users and exhibitors as a part of the organizational workflow of the event, build that data out through web analysis to the point where data on both gives real indications of where the event lies in the entire workflow of these populations. Then one can begin to do analysis that supports ideas of what people would like to see, what input they need to have, and how their valuable time and scarce attention is best used. This data needs to have the depth and quality to suggest and create introductions and meetings, support those connections through the year to the next event, create localized satellite meetings or virtual conferences where necessary, and develop in sophistication alongside the needs of users. In other words, the event needs to re-characterize itself in two data-driven ways – both as an encapsulation of the community (or communities) present at the event, and as a vital part of the workflow of participants.
Well, my kindly friends said, with understanding expressions of sympathy tinged with pity on their faces, what if we do none of this? We have these good margins, these strong brands, no competitors, our valuations soar: what could be better. One delegate took me aside and told me that the key topic was trust: you needed to meet the people you traded with in order to know who to trust. When I responded that trust is created in networks by people recording their trading experiences of each other, and that events organizers might be working with credit rating agencies as data partners, he shook his head in disbelief that someone so innocent should be allowed out alone. This must be one of the last marketplaces on earth where it is necessary to say that around 1993, as far as I can now see, a door closed in History The birth of the internet marked changes, slight at first but now gathering force, which generation by generation change the way mankind communicates, and expects to be communicated with. The media industry in the last decade has been in the Tom and Jerry situation – over the cliff and pedaling pure air while realization dawns that the terrain beneath our feet has altered entirely.
In this world turned upside down the events businesses will draw the competition of – everyone. Its started already – just the other day the Huffington Post announced a conference. Meetings and exhibitions do not present high barriers to entry and can, in skills terms, be readily outsourced Big digital market brands – Alibaba around these parts, for example – would find these an easy option. They may not succeed entirely but they could ruin some existing brand positions. And they would be much better organized for digital marketing, using social media effectively and creating community that few real world events seem to have in depth.
But by embracing the data driven world that I tried to describe, the event brand could become a leader in advising the exhibitor on his market penetration and positioning; telling the visitor who wants to meet company X that other visitors with similar interests also met y amd z; enabling the visitor to plan 3 hours to do what formerly took 3 days, and positioning the exhibitor in four different places to catch visitors looking at clustered specialisms rather than relying on a super-stand where the sub-specializations were lost. So data gathering becomes a part of adding fresh value to the existing world, and then part of launching into things entirely new. I have never been more convinced that the virtual conference and exhibition will have their day than this week. Not at first, not to the exclusion of all other things, but importantly and commercially invaluably as one of the tools in the sector armory. We are in the foothills here, but the old lesson of the web is that you have to fail before we succeed.
The UFI organization distributed a splendid App for the event, detailing speakers, schedules and vital information. A perfect information gathering tool, I thought. And once serious data around participants in these shows is assembled, think of the data analytics, the visualization, the predictive analytics that will result. I enjoyed being with the events people and I look forward to meeting them again – in the world of data.
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