Interview with Ryan Gordon by Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler

Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler

As many of our readers know, I’m a big fan of personalized content delivered on-demand: the right content, to the right people, at the right time, in the right format and language, and on the device of their choosing. Although my interests have been focused on instructional, text-based content augmented with graphics, and increasingly, multimedia, today I find myself more-and-more interested in social networking, rich media, and interactive content. What’s piquing my interest? Several things, actually. The NoSQL movement, the huge growth of social networks like Facebook, the advent of interactivity-enabling mobile touch-screen devices (think: iPad), the move to digital-first content strategies by publishing companies, the tremendous amount of user-generated content finding its way into technical documentation and other customer-facing content, and the popularity of video a la YouTube.

Interview Magazine: Interactive Digital Version For iPad

As content technologies converge and consumers begin expecting rich, mobile, interactive experiences on whatever device they happen to be using at the time, big changes will occur in our choices as content consumers. Today, this convergence is making possible new opportunities in the entertainment industry, where the most popular television shows are reality-based (although, l use that term loosely) and interactive (think: American Idol). When you add a social networking component (think: Facebook for cable tv), things start to get really interesting. This is why I thought my interview with Ryan Gordon, Founder of BLU, an interactive, internet-based television show would be of interest to many of our readers. Gordon understands precision entertainment targeting, interaction design, human psychology, global audience development, and reality television. And, he knows what’s sexy and how to sell it. Read the interview below and leave a comment below to share your feedback with The Content Wrangler readers.


TCW: Ryan, thanks for speaking with me today. For my readers who don’t know who you are or what you do, tell us a little about yourself.


RG: Hello Scott!! We are embarking on a revolutionary journey and I am excited and honored to be able to give your readers a first look at what we are doing before we begin an aggressive media campaign.


About me: Prior to designing BLU, I worked as a fashion photographer for many of the largest modeling agencies in the world. My work has been used by Ford Modeling Agency, Wilhelmina, LA Models, Elite & IMG. My work has been published in quite a few different magazines and publications including work I’m very proud of that was included by Bruno Gmuender in the publication “Visions: Contemporary Male Photography“, which highlighted some of the most talented photographers in the world. Photography was a great introduction to the entertainment world for me, and along that route, I met many veterans in the industry.

Photo by Ryan Gordon, RG Photography.

In the first quarter of 2009, I wanted to take my life on a different path. I was looking for a big change. I have always had a very entrepreneurial mind and found myself looking for new ways to impact the world. At a very young age, I had completed what many took decades to accomplish (my photographic accomplishments) and I felt very fortunate to be at the place I was in, at a mere 31-years-old. I decided that I wanted to branch out into video and film, and using the resources and contacts I made along the way, create BLU.


On a more personal level, I was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and lived there for the majority of my life. I was brought up in a Mormon family with a younger brother and sister. Being raised Mormon and also discovering I was gay took a huge impact on my life, as well as my family. The trials I faced during that time definitely shaped who I am today – someone who has been through quite a bit and has come out on top. I want that message to be a part of BLU – that even though you may face obstacles (or in some cases 100 foot brick walls) — that anything you can imagine is achievable, even when it seems like you are living in the clouds.


TCW: You’ve described BLU, but only touched on it in this interview. What is BLU, exactly?


RG: BLU is the world’s first subscription-based gay and lesbian reality series. Our show is based entirely online, catering to an international audience. BLU launches with an amazing staff of Emmy and Academy award winners, and with film crews that have worked in network reality TV for many years.

BLU: The worlds’s first interactive, online gay and lesbian-themed, subscription-based reality show

At launch, our show will have already signed on 14 different high-end and very recognizable celebrities to interact with our cast and subscribers at our Miami Beach studio house. Every week, one celebrity will issue a dare / challenge to our cast. This is going to be really exciting to see what they come up with and how their ideas will play into the series. Our subscribers will have the opportunity to vote one cast member off per week, to eventually have a grand prize winner taking home $150,000.00 cash.


TCW: What drove you to create BLU?

RG: Coming “out” for me and many of my friends was a very difficult time in life. Speaking for myself, I was always in search of something to cling on to, someone to talk to about my feelings and offer me some sort of support. I searched all over the Internet for support and had a hard time finding anything beneficial. One of the many goals of BLU is to be a source of security for the crowd that is in the space I was in many years ago. By the same token, I feel that our community is viewed in a light that is extremely untrue for the majority. BLU will showcase the more typical side of the average gay person: their lives, their fears and hopes and dreams. We are no different from anyone else, and its time for the world at large to understand that.


Watching the speech by Dustin Lance Black at the Academy Awards is what really did it for me. He and I were raised in a very similar family and shared many of the same fears about our sexuality. He showed so much love, confidence and compassion for our community that I felt I wanted to take part in that same movement. It was the very next day that I sat down at the computer and started to write ideas about my next step in life.





TCW: How do you think will BLU change the way others look at the gay and lesbian community?


RG: “Show not tell” is the motto that has been used quite frequently between the staff and myself. As part of our casting process we have uniformly agreed the best way to convey that message is to use very strong cast and have significant celebrity involvement though guest appearances.


TCW: What type of cast will you have to make that change?

The Crew of BLu is comprised of entertainment industry veterans, including Emmy- and Academy Award Winners

RG: BLU is very fortunate to have staff that comes from years of working in entertainment. I am very pleased to have contracts with Emmy- and Academy Award-winning staff as part of our crew. Our casting director has worked in network TV prior to the launch of the Internet, and has earned multiple awards for assembling casts for other shows that maintained a very large audience. Our cast will come from different facets of life and will have the looks and wit to be able to strike attention on an international level. Our cast will range from ages 22-35 and will be the type of people that you would love to hang out with. I am keeping this one more secretive, but I can assure you that you will not be let down!

Drama is unavoidable in most life situations, especially when you incorporate contestants competing against each other for prize money

TCW: How will you avoid the show becoming just another reality show about dramatic queens? After all, programs without drama and excitement are boring. How will you use the everyday aspects of regular gay men and women to create an interesting story line?


RG: Drama is unavoidable in most life situations, especially when you incorporate contestants competing against each other for prize money. However, one of the ideals for BLU is that it will appeal not only to the gay and lesbian audience, but we hope to develop a strong straight audience following as well.


The cast you will see on BLU will have the same look-and-feel of those that just walked off the pages of a magazine. Not only will these people have the looks, they will also have the brains. The casting director and I have an extremely detailed list of the type of cast we will be going after, to ensure a variety of lifestyles are represented. An example of this would be a very wholesome, down-home country cowboy, a surfer from Hawaii, a club kid from NYC, and an Ivy League medical student. They will all have very different backgrounds, but will share their sexuality in common.


Through a mix of sex appeal, drama, emotion, envy, lust, beneficial content and showing the true normalcy of the gay and lesbian community – our writers and directors will keep our viewers wishing that our show had an episode every night.


TCW: You mentioned that you have quite a bit of celebrity involvement. What will the celebrities be doing, exactly?


RG: BLU will have one high-end celebrity fly to our Miami Beach studio house once a week and will be a major part of our production. Each celebrity will issue a dare / challenge to our cast members that each of them has chosen on their own. This will definitely be a lot of fun!! Their role is crucial to the success of the show. Leveraging celebrities will not only bring a much larger audience, but their support for the show also demonstrates their support for the gay and lesbian community.

The Cast of BLU will compete for $150,000 cash

TCW: So BLU is a contest like American Idol and other prize-based shows?


TCW: Absolutely!! We know our viewers will love following their favorite cast members compete in the celebrity dares / challenges. Not only will our viewers be able to watch all of the drama unfold, but also they will have the ability to vote one person off the show each week. The grand prize for our winning cast member is $150,000 cash. The winner is determined by our viewers.


TCW: How were you able to get Emmy- and Academy Award-winning staff to be a part of your production?


RG: Working in entertainment, fashion and modeling prior to designing BLU opened a lot of doors for me. I attended many different “Red Carpet” events where I was fortunate to meet with and befriend people who had been working in entertainment for years. When I started putting BLU together, I consulted with my friends and associates and told them what I had thought up. Every one of them not only contributed to the show, but also asked to be a part of it.


BLU is taking on a market that rarely receives attention, and is being launched in a revolutionary way that has never been done. To ensure the easiest delivery, we will use the exact type of staff from a network and segway it into an internet based production. Coming into a new project with the caliber of staff that we have is amazing. “Look out Network TV!!”

RG Photography

TCW: Do I understand correctly that RG Enterprises is not only a production company, but also will be directing and doing everything that a network would do? In effect, you are the network. Right?


RG: That is correct!! Not only will we be writing and directing the show, we will also produce and edit the content in-house. We have taken the crucial parts of a production crew that a network would use and hired them as our staff. The benefit of doing this is we are able to produce the same high quality content a network would be able to, at a fraction of the cost.


TCW: My readers know that I believe the future of communication is online. But, why did you choose to have the show on the Internet as opposed to a traditional cable television network?


RG: There are so many benefits of having our show on the Internet, the most important being able to attract an international audience. Reality TV is very popular in the US, but still fairly new to those who live in other countries. The Internet reaches all corners of the world, so it is definitely the best way to make sure everyone has the ability to watch our show.

Adam Lambert kisses band member at the American Music Awards

The second benefit is that we are able to decide what our content will be without having to have a board of directors involved that doesn’t have the slightest clue about the gay and lesbian community. History shows us that network TV has always made a spectacle of our community, perhaps because they think that is the only thing that will sell. We firmly disagree! We know the world is very ready to see the true normalcy of the gay and lesbian community.


On that same note, we are able to control our content. I still remember when Adam Lambert performed at the American Music Awards and people threw a fit over his “acts on stage”. Personally, I don’t believe that Adam did anything different from many other artists that cater to the straight community. The decision and uproar after that event was very hypocritical and frustrating.


TCW: So your show will be able to be viewed internationally, will you have subtitles for the episodes for non-English speaking subscribers?


RG: The short answer to this question is YES! We will ensure that our content will be able to be viewed by anyone and will not let a language barrier stand in the way.


TCW: What is “live interaction” in your vision for BLU?


RG: Imagine watching your favorite reality show and after that episode was over, being able to voice your thoughts and suggestions to the actual cast member in real time. Maybe you’d like to compliment them on what they did, or let them know that you think they are a complete douche-bag! Currently this breakthrough is not available to any network show on a real time basis, however BLU will be the very first reality series that will give the viewers this opportunity. Our episodes will be “live” Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week. Tuesday and Thursday will be our “live interaction” segments where our subscribers will be able to chat, face-to-face (virtually speaking), with our cast. We’re confident our subscribers will enjoy this type of interaction.


TCW: What will your show be most similar to?


RG: Without naming names, our show will be most similar to one of the oldest network reality shows in existence. Our 12 cast will all live together in the same house along with our video crew. The dares / challenges of BLU will be a lot of fun to watch, but maybe not as much as the inner workings of everyone’s lives under the same roof


TCW: How do you think the average person will respond to paying a subscription to watch your show?

The price point for BLU will start at $12.95 USD per month

RG: Subscription-based services have been around for quite a while and the majority of our subscribers will be accustom to this type of purchase. The price point for our show will start at $12.95 USD per month, which we have set far below any other online-based service. Our subscribers will be given members-only access to a breathtaking group of cast and their favorite celebrities, so we are confident that they will be excited to be a part of BLU and not see a subscription as an obstacle.


Many other companies are also making a transition into a similar business model. Google and Hulu are great examples, as this year they will be offering new services on a subscription base to watch streaming episodes of network programming. We are taking this one step above and offering HD content as well as downloadable episodes secured by digital rights management (DRM) access protection. This gives our subscribers much higher quality and viewing experience than the previously mentioned companies.


TCW: Will BLU be considered obscene or include soft porn?


RG: Absolutely not!! It is this question in particular that is most bothersome when it comes to the LGBT community. Whenever anyone that is not in our community thinks of a gay or lesbian series, they immediately think it will be about sex.


TCW: Will those who wish to view and interact with BLU be able to do so on any other device besides a computer?

BLU will be available online and accessible via web browser, and via the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch using an app in the Apple App Store

RG: We believe that the majority of our subscribers will watch BLU on their computers, however I have taken things even further. Starting with our first episode, we will give viewers the opportunity to watch our content via their iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch via an app in the Apple App Store. This content will come streaming to them over a 3G or Wi-fi connection and as a result they will be able to watch BLU anywhere they’d like. We are also implementing a way for our subscribers to use their mobile devices to vote for and interact with the cast in the show’s online forums. Of course, all of this will be available on their home computer as well, we are just ensuring that BLU will take advantage of cutting-edge technology.


TCW: So, do you believe that the future of entertainment media will be web-enabled? Is this the beginning of the end of television broadcasting as we know it?

Google has partnered with Intel and Sony to create a TV platform powered by Android

RG: Most anyone that works in entertainment feels the crunch being placed upon them by the Internet. People like convenience, being able to watch whatever they’d like when they want to. People have busy lives and want to be able to do things on their time. The networks are slowly catching on and ABC as example has recently released an app to watch their programming on an iPad. Google is doing something similar with their product “Google TV”. So it’s not necessarily and end to the TV set, I’m not sure that would ever happen, its just expanding the viewing capabilities of the public. Also keep in mind that the Internet is international, so programming can be watched by people that have never before had the opportunity, or in some countries, the privilege.


TCW: What type of viewership do you anticipate?


RG: BLU has massive marketing efforts that will stretch all over the globe. We will be advertising in nearly all magazines with a readership of 75,000 and above that would be conducive to our content. We have also contracts with Clear Channel radio, so live endorsements will be played in nearly every metropolitan city across the United States and in Europe. We also have an abundance of Internet based marketing. We are making sure that everyone knows about BLU!!!


TCW: What will keep the audience watching BLU season after season?


RG: Our content of course! People love to see drama, they love to watch emotion and even more so, love to feel like they are part of the production. We are taking those three cues and incorporating them into every episode. BLU is embarking on a new and different path in the sense that we are catering to an gay and lesbian audience. This has never been done before, yet we are ambitiously excited to take on this challenge. Our goal is to entice the gay and lesbian crowd will tell their straight friends about the show, to eventually leave us with a balanced audience.


TCW: How will your show relate to the mainstream viewer, in specific a straight audience?

RG: BLU’s content will be compelling to watch for everyone. Our casting director will be utilizing a very broad angle during our casting process. Its crucial to me that we have cast that anyone will be able to relate to. Once our viewers build a bond with their favorite cast member, they will watch every episode and feel like they are a part of their lives – in a virtual sense. As I mentioned before, BLU will take a “show not tell” approach to our episodes. It is not our intention to throw the gay and lesbian lifestyle in anyone’s face, but instead show them how similar we all really are!


TCW: If you could name one aspect of your show that you are most excited about, what would it be?


RG: Hmm…this is a tough question!! I would have to say watching everything progress. I am really excited to see what the world at large thinks about what we will offer, and to see changes for our community. In my head, I picture big parties with friends to watch the episodes. I remember when Queer as Folk was really popular, and my roommate and I would put on parties for everyone to come to our house and watch the show. I want this same thing for BLU, and with our plans we know this will happen!


TCW: If any of my readers were interested in being a cast member on BLU, how would they go about doing it?


RG: We will definitely keep you and your readers up to date on that. Our casting director has a game plan for this that I think is brilliant. We will be type casting from all around the US and potentially other countries. As soon as we have more solid information on that, I will let you know!


TCW: You mentioned in our earlier call that you are seeking investment funds for BLU? What are you looking for?


RG: Putting the show together has been one of the most amazing experiences in my life, but it has definitely been a roller coaster. Along this journey I have met and worked with many different types of potential investors, some more earnest than others. We are really looking forward to meeting solid investment sources in the very near future. If any of your readers are interested in learning more about BLU from an investment standpoint, they can contact me at ryan@blurealityshow.com. We have extensive amounts of information that I would love to share. The business model, celebrity involvement and high caliber of staff will set this project apart from anything currently available and is sure to get quite a bit of exposure.


TCW:Thanks, Ryan for making time to help our readers understand BLU.


RG: Thanks Scott. Your readers can keep up to date with BLU on Facebook, MySpace, and on Twitter.

by Maxwell Hoffmann, Desktop Publishing, Localization, Globalization and Sales Training Veteran

Really, how long can anyone really read long chapters on that tiny screen? The answer is “for hours, and hours and hours”

A few weeks ago I got a Tweet that sent me straight to downloads-ville. A “free” Kindle Reader app for my Blackberry! As a used-book store addicted Baby Boomer who color codes all of his hard copy books with highlighter pens, might I be the perfect guinea pig for this latest content delivery platform? Could an old school guy like me get used to reading literature or technical manuals in chunks smaller than 3×5 cards?

The answer surprised even me.

So I downloaded Kindle reader for both Windows laptop and Blackberry. I was skeptical at first. Really, how long can anyone really read long chapters on that tiny screen? The answer is “for hours, and hours and hours”. Why? Kindle on Blackberry has crisp, readable screen display (with adjustable fonts), bookmarks are created with ease, navigation is fast, and everything from eBook downloads to synching with other platforms is quick and pain-free. As spell out below, I could consume a lot of virtual pages, swiftly. By the end of my first day of I thought the only limitation to this form of digital content consumption was battery power on my Blackberry. Thank heavens for those laptop draining USB cables.

And guess what kids, Amazon’s Kindle Store starts you out in thriftsville with tons of books for FREE, ranging from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf to Miss Mapp by E.F. Benson (later serialized on PBS as “Mapp and Lucia”).

On Blackberry’s tiny screen I read the first 5 chapters in less than 90 minutes. I found myself hitting “P” a lot to reread the previous page again.

On my second day I bit the bullet and actually shelled out more than $9 for a “real” book, The Museum of Innocence by my favorite living author, Orhan Pamuk. If you’ve never been lucky enough to visit Istanbul, reading Pamuk’s sensual text is as close as you’ll ever get. On Blackberry’s tiny screen I read the first 5 chapters in less than 90 minutes. It could have been faster if it were a guide to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture. (Hey, where’s Ann Rockley’s DITA 101 on my Kindle list? Stay tuned.) Some or Pamuk’s passages were so beautiful that I found myself hitting “P” a lot to reread the previous page again.

[FYI – Istanbul by Pamuk will give you great insights into Turkish national character, a good thing to have as Turkey emerges as a global and economic power throughout the rest of this century. Read The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman, which I read in the paperback version purchased at my favorite brick and mortar bookstore. I work in the translation industry, and Turkish is quickly becoming the most popular “new” language for many of our clients, especially in Life Sciences.]

But, I digress. Soon, I hungered for more, and found myself frustrated with the current limitations of most eBooks. Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and YouTube have put most of us in the habit of sharing “samples” of content with others. And PDF files reviewed in Acrobat have put us in the habit of making marginal comments in digital ways. Kindle (and most other eBooks) don’t have copy/paste functionality, there is no highlighter pen, and no way to make a simple annotation. And, if there is, it’s not easy to find and use this functionality, which is a problem. All I wanted to do was extract legally correct, small samples to upload somewhere (isn’t there a “YouRead” community yet?) … and I wanted to mark content in multiple ways. Shucks, I just wanted to “color code” text to find favorite passages based on different needs.

To gain wide acceptance, eBooks and eBook Readers will need to allow us to do things we're accustomed to doing with traditional books, but in more meaningful, interactive and community-based ways.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not expecting eBook Readers to double as a word processor, (or to become the next copy/paste Wikipedia to let college students whip out quickee term papers). I suspect that most users will also miss the ability to put their fingerprints on content like we do nearly everywhere else.

Ironically, the ability to “personalize” content is one of the things that I love the most about real, physical books. We can dog ear (upper or lower corner to code importance); we can underline, circle, or highlight sections of text we want to reference later. (In college I was nicknamed “nerdanada” for the 4 colors of highlighter pens constantly sprouting from my polyester shirt pockets). And of course, real books allow us to make marginal notes. I consider these physical highlights and doodles our “finger prints” on physical content.

My Kindle Read / eBooks Wish List

Digital versions of these old paper-based mark up methods (based on XML, or more specifically, DITA attributes, or course) should create persistent and personal “finger prints” on our personal Kindle or eBook copies that could make the world a better place in several ways:

• We could quickly locate content that mattered to us personally, based on different criteria.
• Amazon (or other providers: think Apple) could track our individual buying habits on an even more granular level. Instead of recommending books based on previously purchased titles, the vendor can use community driven social networks to recommend further eBooks for purchased based on the sections of the book that we related to the most.
• For the first time in history, publishers and authors would know exactly what portions of content turned readers on (or off) the most. (Today the most we can do is post a comment on Amazon, or elsewhere, and rarely do we cite individual pages, paragraphs or passages).
• Imagine the power of having a constant consumer survey occurring, page by digital page, all driven with uploadable “highlighter pen” passages! And imagine the apps that could interpret smart content and metadata embedded by our highlight selections, to graphically display consumer response to specific portions of content! I visualize a sort of daily Dow Jones line chart mapped to the book which has longer lines for chapters or DITA topics that got the most “hits” or reader embedded fingerprints.
  • FYI – although Kindle reader offers a “book mark” feature, it is really only useful for general navigation.
• The ability to track the changing hot spots of readers via “fingerprints” over time would also give sociologists and historians the ability to impact a book’s changing impact over several generations. Would it be great to see how graphical representation of reader response to The Next Hundred Years by Friedman had changed 20, 40 or 60 years from now, as we approach the end of the time that he documents?
• And if there is ever a way to “will” your Amazon/whomever library to someone else, your heirs could not only thumb through static pages, they would see your fingerprints, sense your personality, and know what mattered to you at the time of your reading.
• Consumers commenting and sharing digital eBooks would leave an incredible legacy.

the locked, protected content of eBooks precludes us from sharing with others.

This last point has been one my biggest misgivings about the “one-way” aspect of current digital media: the locked, protected content of eBooks precludes any way for us to share our content-specific comments, annotations, whatever, with others. If I “will” my Kindle library to some designated heir, he/she has no way of knowing what turned me on. On the other hand, I have a shelf full of carefully selected books from my grandmother’s estate that achieve that goal beautifully.

Grammie was a red pencil/underline addict (highlighter pens didn’t exist yet) and her personality is evident on every page of what mattered to her. From marginal “stars”, single/double/triple underlines, little balloons around key words, and, best of all, marginal notes like “you’ve got to be kidding!”, I can literally hear her voice as I read what mattered to her.

After death, eBooks could allow your heirs to not only thumb through static pages, but they could also learn more about you by reading your digital fingerprints, helping them to sense your personality, and know what mattered to you at the time of your reading. Artwork: Secret Diary 18: "Up to speed" (2005) by Angela Moll

She was the woman who more responsible than anyone on the planet for who I am today. (OK! So now you know who to blame!) Incidentally, you can get a glimpse into this remarkable woman through a blog I wrote about the discovery of her 100 year old journals, written last year. I have Linked In contacts from Germany who connected with me after reading about what Grammie wrote in 1912. Now that’s what I call persistent fingerprinted content! These remote Linked In contacts are really connecting with her, through me.

Will my Kindle-driven wish list ever come true?

So, is there any hope that the publishing industry (and copyright lawyers) will smell the coffee and make my wish list of interactive features come true? I attended the Intelligent Content 2010 Conference in Palm Springs, CA where a roster of the “smartest guys/gals” on the subject gave us all a realistic whiff of the future of content. (Hint: DITA DITA DITA).

Dev Ganesan of Aptara (a digital publishing and XML content conversion services firm) gave a highly dynamic presentation on “Reimagining the Book: How Intelligent Technology is Changing the Publishing World”. His depiction of the future of the book far exceeded my Kindle-driven hunger for new features. Dev is actively involved in shaping the evolving EPUB standard, a free and open eBook standard designed for reflowable content, meaning that the text display can be optimized for the particular display device. Dev demonstrated “beyond engaging” DITA-driven intelligent and interactive content that runs on anything from a laptop to a Blackberry, iPhone, or most effectively, on the iPad.

The Q&A session was lively, with much discussion about Kindle being the lone wolf on sticking to its proprietary format, which Tim O’Reilly thinks this is a bad idea. The recently launched iPad is “intelligence” ready for what’s coming down the pike. Many of the questions opened up the whole can of worms regarding how do authors, artists and publishers flexibly copyright their assets without creating an impenetrable “glass box” that drives consumers away. (Follow Scott Abel’s tweets on this issue, he is more on top of this than anyone I know and will soon be presenting to a select group of Alpha Dog investors to clue them in).

What will it take to get the ePubs world to “wake up” and create the fingerprint and sharing tools we all crave?

If a dead chocolate icon can make individual “topic level” content available for a modest purchase price, why can’t newspapers, eBooks and other media creators who are quaking over broken copyright laws?

Scott Abel (The Content Wrangler) had the answer during the Q&A session for his closing presentation Intelligent Content 2010. “When the lawyers finally realize that publishers can parse book content down to the chapter, or DITA topic level, and sell that content for pennies, and as with iTunes, do this millions and millions of times, then it will happen.” In other words, Amazon and other eBook publishers are sitting on a content gold mine. But they are trying to sell you the entire glass display of See’s Candies when you only want to buy a Marzipan Honey almond paste, a Light Chocolate Truffle and a Dark Bordeaux. (If your itchy fingers clicked on the link in the previous sentence, you will see that even old lady See has wised up and lets you do exactly that!) If a dead chocolate icon can make individual “topic level” content available for a modest purchase price, why can’t newspapers, eBooks and other media creators who are quaking over broken copyright laws?

In the closing conference session, Scott also revealed a future Trival Pursuit question. Name the most popular app on the iPhone right now? Kindle reader and other eBook readers. The future is here. All we need is the intelligently structured content to go with it. And I will think of my grandmother’s red underlines every time I highlight eBook sections and upload it to some future eBook community site. Grammie would have loved this stuff.

‘And this affects me how?’, you ask

So how does any of this affect you? If you are creating content that must be published in multiple formats (including formats that don’t exist yet), get on the DITA wagon and start structuring your content now. Find out what intelligent content is and how to embed it usefully in what you produce. Closely follow webinars, tweets and especially blogs from Ann Rockley, Scott Abel, Joe Gollner and the crew of visionaries that presented at the Intelligent Content conference.

Why? Because the projected pixels displayed at the posh Parker Meridian resort in Palm Springs this week portend the world that we will all soon be living in. The old adage for college professors used to be “publish or perish”. Perhaps the new adage should be “embed intelligence in your structured content, or watch it evaporate.”

*** About the Author

Successful Global Content Management (Webinar) February 18, 2010: 7-8:30pm CET; 6-7:30pm GMT; 1-2:30pm EST; 10-11:30am PST

As products move beyond borders the need for global content increases and with that comes the critical requirement for global content management. Global content management allows you to ensure brand consistency, implement a global content strategy, and manage content on a global basis.


Management of a single site is a sometimes complex task, but management of multiple global sites is even more complex and requires a well thought out plan, appropriate technology and clear processes.


Join The Content Wrangler February 18, 2010 for “Successful Global Content Management”, our free, 90-minute webinar in which content management guru Ann Rockley, The Rockley Group, will share with you the ten steps necessary to launch a successful global content management initiative. You’ll also hear from the CEO of e-Spirit, Joern Bodemann, why content management system usability is a “must have”, not an option.


Register tody!

The Making of a Mashup: Aurally Volume 1 – By Scott Abel, The Audio Wrangler

By Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, aka The Audio Wrangler

What do you get when you cross Pink Floyd with Christina Aquilera? How about a little Elvis with your Public Enemy? Or some Cher on top of This Mortal Coil? Although it may sound a little frightening, pairing musical groups and vocalists together in unorthodox ways can yield some pretty incredible audio sensations.

Known commonly as mashups (or bastards), these bootleg musical creations are user-generated derivative works created by blending two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental version of another. This technique makes it possible to create a new music product by combining, for instance, the a cappella version of “Hurt” by Christina Aquilera with the instrumental “Is there anybody out there?” by Pink Floyd. The result, when done well, yields a beautiful new audio product – in this example, a mashup entitled “Is There Anybody Hurt There?” by the mashup artist Okiokinl.

I use music mashups in conference presentations, workshops, and during consulting assignments, to teach my clients (organizations struggling to get a grip on the documents, web pages, marketing brochures, and other information products they produce) about content reuse, XML authoring, component content management, and content personalization. I use music mashups as an example because it’s the easiest way to help people understand these concepts and it’s something most — if not all — humans have experience with in one way or another.

How do you make a music mashup?

There are various ways to make a music mashup based on two songs. They can be created digitally on a personal computer using software designed to facilitate the mixing of music files together such as Apple Garage Band, which allows user to mix and record music from multiple sources. Music mixing software — of which there are many varieties at varying price points — provides a granular level of control that is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain using traditional music mixing methods.

Numark iDJ2 iPod Mixing Board

Mashups can also be created using a more traditional remixing approach. This method requires two turntables (or two CD players), a dj mixing board (a type of audio control panel that provides the dj control of what music is being played, its volume, bass, treble, midrange, as well as its tempo, calculated in beats per minute or bpm), headphones, and a recording device like a CD burner. Inexpensive modern mixing boards like the Numark iDJ2 provide an iPod interface, allowing you to mix music directly from your iPod (without the need for CD players, turntables or other music inputs) onto the recording device.

More complex mashups may involve a hybrid approach that utilizes a variety of approaches and may even incorporate other techniques including live vocals, music, and spoken voice.

How I created my mashup compilation

Aurally Volume 1 – A bouillabaisse of sound, jam-packed with songs you may recognize, but in new and unexpected ways. A downtempo mashup continuous mix by DJ Scott Abel.

Aurally Volume 1 is a mashup compilation – a series of mashups (created by other artists) that I weaved together using the Numark iDJ2 mixing board, a home stereo system (amplifier, CD recorder, speakers), a video iPod, a MacBook Pro, and a series of carefully selected mp3 files (the mashups).

The art of selecting, sequencing and mixing the tracks together to create the final product is what I enjoy when making a compilation. It’s an art form that relies on timing, feelings and emotions, as much as musical knowledge and technical ability. It’s not something everyone can do well. In fact, the mashup databases are littered with good examples of bad mashups. Here’s an example. It’s called “Bringing Back Sexy Knights” (Justin Timberlake vs Knight Rider Theme Remixed) by DJ Skip .

To create my compilation, I first determined the theme (or flavor) of the mix. I decided to deviate from my comfort zone. Usually, I tend to create hiNRG, continuously mixed dance compilations, which involve a technique known as beat-matching. But this time around I decided on a downtempo vibe — a collection of mellow songs, with the occasional uptempo track included for good measure. The goal of a downtempo mix is to create a listening experience by weaving the tracks together in a way that is both interesting and musically pleasing.

To create my continuous mashup mix compilation, I performed the following tasks:

1. Scanned online mashup databases for mashups
2. Listened to each mashup and downloaded those that were candidates for inclusion in the compilation into iTunes
3. Recorded metadata about each mashup I planned to use. (Note: I recorded this metadata in iTunes, but you could do it in a spreadsheet or on a piece of paper). Metadata included:
   • Name of mashup artist/dj who created the mashup
   • Name of mashup (usually a combination of the original song titles repurposed to create a new mashed up title)
   • Titles of the original songs and artists included in the mashup
   • The total length of the mashup in minutes and seconds
4. Created a draft line-up (the order in which each mashup would be included in the mix); I use a piece of paper for this, but you could use a spreadsheet or a text document to accomplish the same goal
5. Played each mashup, paying special attention to the beginning and ending of each mashup in order to identify places where the mashup had a natural break, or a change of tempo, that might make a good place to introduce the next mashup in the mix — aka seque
6. Recorded the exact time (in minutes and seconds) of the seque on my draft line-up
7. Fired up the mixing board and my iPod
8. Rehearsed the mashup following the draft line-up, making changes to the segues and switching the order of the mashups in the line-up until I was happy with the final product
9. Created the final line-up
10. Recorded the final mashup compilation mix (as documented in the final line-up) onto compact disc
11. Copied the compilation file (an .mp4 file) to iTunes
12. Listened to the entire compilation
13. Satisfied with the end result, I used iTunes to convert the .mp4 file to .mp3

Finding mashups

Finding the mashups to include on a compilation is a time-consuming process. I searched music libraries, peer-to-peer networks, music industry blogs, Facebook and MySpace pages, and websites dedicated to cataloging and writing about mashups. I downloaded hundreds of mashups – a more difficult and time-consuming task than you might imagine. Some sites provide an ability for you to download a mashup with one click. Others require you to right-click, then select a destination for the file. And still others trick you into thinking you’re going to download the file with a single click, but they really are trying to get you to register for (and often purchase) a service. To add to the frustration, many sites are advertising-based. They display a series of never-ending pop up ads, some of which start off by playing bandwidth hogging video that sometimes causes your browser to crash, forcing you to start all over again.

Once I accumulated a large selection of mashup files, I began the screening process. This is perhaps the most time-consuming part of making a solid compilation as it requires you to listen to each track and determine if you have an interest in keeping it, or whether you should delete it. If you’re like me, you can get wrapped up in the music and lose track of time, so it’s best to try and stay focused on the task at hand.

The Ingredients in Aurally: Volume 1

Here’s a listing of the mashups I included in my compilation (including the metadata described above):

1. “Strictly Safe From Rock-n-Roll” by Apollo Zero
   • Ingredients: Bent “Strictly Bongo”, Britney Spears “I Love Rock-n-Roll”, Christina Aquilera “Beautiful”, Paris Hilton “Nothing in this World”, Simple Minds “Belfast Child”, Massive Attack “Safe From Harm”, K-Tel Records “Dance Lesson Intro”.
2. “Turn Up The Club Ghetto” by Okiokinl
   • Ingredients: Elvis Presley “The Ghetto”, Public Enemy “Bring the Noise/Terminator X”, and DJ Rob “Clubbed to Death”.
3. “Is There Anybody Hurt There?” by Okiokinl
   • Ingredients: Christina Aquilera ”Hurt” and Pink Floyd “Is There Anybody Out There?”.
4. “Safari Love” by Loo & Placido
   • Ingredients: The Beatles “Because the World is Round”, Aretha Franklin “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?”, The Pixies “Where is My Mind?” and Elton John “I Want Love”.
5. “You Won’t See You’re All That I Need” by DJ Nite
   • Ingredients: Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel “You’re All I Need to Get By” and The Beatles “You Won’t See Me”.
6. “If This Isn’t Numb” by Ministry of Mashed Sound
   • Ingredients: The Pet Shop Boys “Numb” and Jennifer Hudson “If This Isn’t Love”.
7. “Apologize Life” by Winkar Lopez
   • Ingredients: One Republic featuring Timbaland “Apologize” and Julie McKnight “Diamond Life”.
8. “Jude’ll Fix It” by Phil Retrospector
   • Ingredients: The Beatles “With a Little Help From My Friends”, Jim Sturgess “Hey Jude” and Coldplay “Fix You”.
9. “Walk on By ‘Cuz I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone” by Matt Bland
   • Ingredients: Dione Warwick “Walk on By” and Duffy “Stepping Stone”.
10. “Sunshine on My Foolish Ocean” by Apollo Zero
    • Ingredients: John Denver “Sunshine on My Shoulder”, This Mortal Coil “Song to the Siren”, Sheena Easton “Foolish Heart”, Cyndi Lauper “Come on Home”, Dolly Parton “God’s Coloring Book
11. “Funk That Shit: Believe in Glorybox” by Funk That Shit Productions
    • Ingredients: Cher ”Believe” and Portishead “Glory Box”.
12. “Bootiful Prudence” by Autopilot
    • Ingredients: The Beatles “Dear Prudence” and Christina Aquilera “Beautiful”.
13. “Nancy Gets Banged” by Phil Retrospector
    • Ingredients: Nancy Sinatra “Bang Bang” and Ryuichi Sakamoto “Railroad Man”.

Selecting the mashups to go on a compilation generally means finding a dozen or so songs that go well together. This is the tricky part. It involves understanding the emotional and dramatic impact of music, it’s tone, tempo, style, vibe, and flavor. These are not things you can easily learn. I think, like being able to sing, paint, sculpt or draw, it’s something you either have inside you — or you don’t. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn the techniques used by djs, mashup artists and remixers. They can come in handy for a variety for purposes.

Elapsed time to create this compilation…well, we won’t go into that. Let’s just say, it was days, not hours. Your mileage may vary. It’s a creative endeavor that involves lots of emotional judgements that are hard to describe. Suffice it to say that artists can’t be rushed when they are practicing their craft. Sometimes it comes to you quickly and other times, it’s a painful process — a trial and error experiment.

Aurally: Volume 1

Here’s the final product. Give it a listen. Then, let me know what you think by leaving a comment at the end of this article. If you like what you hear, join my DJ Scott Abel (The Audio Wrangler) fan page on Facebook where you can listen to and download my other mashup mixes.

In future articles, I’ll discuss how to make an original mashup, how to use social networks to promote your mashups (and get to the top of the charts), and I’ll interview some of the most famous mashup artists. Until then, enjoy the music.

Interview with Joe Gollner by Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler

The Content Wrangler: Joe, thanks for agreeing to chat with us today. Tell us a little about yourself and your experience in the content industry.

Joe Gollner, Content Philospher

Joe Gollner: I began tinkering with content, using open markup technologies, in 1987 while still a grad student at University of Oxford. The tinkering has never stopped. Tapping on another side of my background, the military side, I was deeply embroiled in the CALS initiative – where we applied open markup technologies to the most complex documentation scenarios imaginable -– within the NATO defense community. I was even given the delightful, as well as official, title of “CALS Philosopher”.

Over the years, I have been entangled in a bizarrely large number of projects and in sectors as far afield as aerospace and education, health care and telecommunications, academic publishing and oil engineering. I formed an XML solution integration company in 1998; sold that company to Stilo International in 2004; and chaired, for many years, the XML World series of conferences. So you could say I have been immersed in the content business for a long time –- so long that perhaps it is time to change my title again, this time to the “Content Philosopher”.

The Content Wrangler: Tell us a little about your firm, the markets you serve, and the products and services you offer.

Joe Gollner: Currently, I am assuming new responsibilities for Stilo International as the Chief Solutions Architect (Intelligent Content Technologies) and my specific role is to initiate and lead solutions projects for customers who need to elevate the IQ of their content and the associated content processes and information products. These efforts dovetail naturally with the technology products side of Stilo, with the venerable OmniMark content processing platform being the foundational offering. Go to almost any large scale content environment that you would be tempted to identify as an example of intelligent content at work and there is a better than even chance you will find OmniMark at work as well. Specifically, OmniMark is used to build conversion, enrichment, validation and publishing processes that bring intelligence to the vast stores of content. OmniMark is used to put in place publishing processes that make something of that new found intelligence.

At Stilo, we use this technology to build highly sophisticated content management and publishing environments. It turns out that we can also build new services that organizations will be increasingly able to access “in the cloud” (or in their environments, if they so choose) – with these being cases where these customers can leverage the power of OmniMark without necessarily jumping in with both feet and mastering what is admittedly a highly specialized field.

For the last couple of years, we have been working on an on-demand conversion portal, known as Migrate, and after collaborating with a number of organizations a new release is fast approaching.

New for 2010, I am also dedicating a larger portion of my time to research and publishing, with a book in the works that focuses, resolutely, on the subject of “intelligent content”. Under my research and publishing agenda, I am approaching the question of “intelligent content” from a number of angles and identifying design patterns that have, over the many projects in my history, seemed to produce the best results. These efforts will lead to a book, as mentioned, but I also expect it will produce some new methodological tools, learning resources, and even, looking further downstream, technology components. These activities are being organized under Gnostyx Research. Most recently on the publishing front, I contributed a chapter to a forthcoming book on Information Management Best Practices which I see is getting some good press at KMWorld.

The Content Wrangler: Intelligent Content is a hot topic today, but many people don’t understand what it is or why it matters. From your perspective, what is intelligent content? What makes it so smart? And, why do organizations need it?

Joe Gollner: I might be the last person you want to ask that question. Not because I don’t have an answer – but because I have too many answers. In fact I have been circling the question of “what is intelligent content” on my blog including a recent post that resurrected some of the memories from Intelligent Content 2009 (very positive memories) and that looks forward to this year’s event.

In essence, the definition I put forward last year in my whitepaper, The Emergence of Intelligent Content, still holds water, I believe:

“Intelligence refers to the ability to acquire and apply knowledge (normally a quality attributed to people but not exclusively), or to a collection of information of value in a particular context (OED). Content can be considered intelligent when it expresses, in an open way, the full meaning underlying a communication such that the data, information and knowledge being expressed can be easily accessed and effectively leveraged by both people and the software applications that support them.”

There is quite a bit packed into this definition. In practical terms, intelligent content is about upping our game in the content business – identifying the content that is the most important to a given business, ensuring that this content is created, managed and leveraged in the smartest way possible, and putting in place the mechanisms whereby these high-value assets and services can evolve in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Chef Gordon Ramsay sees that the right dish is delivered to each customer — prepared, just they way they asked for it.

OK, I should be able to make this more tangible than that. Picture intelligent content is an array of ingredients that can be used to satisfy every customer request as they make their way to your counter. One says, “I want a beautiful reproducible PDF that I can send to my print media supplier.” The next one says, “I want ePub output that is tuned to each of the main eBook viewing platforms.” Then one shows up and says, “I need dynamic help, that is filtered on-the-fly for an almost unlimited number of configuration scenarios.” Finally one says, “I need to glean the best morsels of this content for marketing material which will be arrayed across a number of media channels and delivered individually to each of our customers and prospects.” The purveyor of intelligent content is like Chef Ramsay, who with a few well-timed barks, sees that the right dish is delivered to each customer — prepared, just they way they asked for it.

At Intelligent Content 2010, I will be speaking about Intelligent Content Management. I explain how this content kitchen needs to be organized and how it needs to work. In an effort to make the subject both accessible and entertaining, I am leveraging the motif of a famous spaghetti western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, to address the three sides to intelligent content and the management demands that arise around each and, more importantly, around their integration. I am now thinking that there maybe a little Chef Ramsay involved as well.

The Content Wrangler: Creating intelligent content certainly seems like a good idea. Can you share with us a few examples of how intelligent content can help an organization to be faster, leaner, make more money, reduce expenses, reduce risk, or serve its clients better?

Joe Gollner: On the subject of examples, I could go on forever. I will touch on a couple. Before I do, I want to stress that creating intelligent content and integrating it into business processes and offerings of an organization can be very hard work. I am bald for a reason. I mention this not to put anyone off but only to remind people to start small and evolve their “intelligent content capabilities” incrementally. For reasons that I will go into in Palm Springs, where intelligent content is involved the “big leap forward” might well be your last.

In the chapter I contributed to “Information Management Best Practices: Volume 1″, I recount a case study where we dug deeply and greedily into the various benefits that intelligent content can deliver. And this was done on a relatively large scale so what benefits were realized translated to some very big numbers. Perhaps the most important benefit, at least in terms of returning concrete financial savings and fundamentally improving the quality of the information services being provided, was the dramatic reduction of content redundancy.

Content in most organizations exists in a state of unbridled redundancy. If there is one version of a warning statement being managed and translated there will likely be a hundred. In this case, there were often thousands of identical components being managed and translated in parallel. Eliminating this redundancy, making it leaner, saved over a $100 million dollars a year in this one example. And the dollars saved were not the only story. By eliminating the content redundancy the number of documentation errors was dramatically reduced. By eliminating the content redundancy and raising the intelligence of the managed content components, a fundamental change could be introduced that would see content processes fully integrated with the system engineering processes that were continually modifying the equipment platforms the documentation needed to describe.

My favorite anecdote from this case study pertains to the publication of a large parts manual which historically took 18 months to republish. This manual, in being managed the old not-so-intelligent way, was, as you can imagine, almost completely useless because it was always a couple of years out-of-date. When questions arose, the mechanics would typically phone headquarters to ask the equipment lifecycle management office about what parts they should use or order. Once the content was rendered “intelligent”, the republishing of this manual went from taking 18 months to 18 minutes. And the people responsible for providing up-to-date parts information to the field units joked that the 18 minutes coincided with the amount of time they spent on coffee break, because their process produced an online reference tool that was “continually up-to-date” automatically. That’s intelligent content in action.

The Content Wrangler: Are there any examples you can point to of intelligent content on the web?

Joe Gollner: As another example of intelligent content in action, and this one being accessible online, I would point to HP printer products division and the support resources they supply to customers. My good friend, Rahel Bailie, president of Intentional Design, gave a great talk last year where she explicitly used HP support environment as an interactive illustration of several things being done well. As usual, I acted up in the presentation – this time blushing, fanning myself and getting all misty because she was showcasing one of my customers.

A couple of years ago my team had done a substantial amount of work for HP renovating the intelligent content infrastructure that underlies these online support services. Now our work was made infinitely easier by two factors – one was that HP really did have their proverbial act together and the other was that the previous integrator who had designed the initial system (many years before) had done a spectacularly good job. How often does that happen? And, how often does one integrator say that of another’s work?

The Content Wrangler: Do you know of any useful online resources you think our readers might find useful in understanding intelligent content?

Joe Gollner: In terms of where to look for more information, I would first point readers to the Intelligent Content 2010 conference. Somewhat unabashedly I would point people to my blog posts on this topic and specifically those falling under the xContent category. I also contend that my whitepaper on this topic remains a pretty good place to start.

The Content Wrangler: Thanks for taking time out of your hectic schedule to chat with us about intelligent content. We really appreciate it.

Joe Gollner: I am looking forward to seeing everyone in Palm Springs at Intelligent Content 2010. I am especially looking forward to any debates that might break out –- as they did last year.

By Alex de Campi

Valentine: An original supernatural thriller set during Napoleon’s retreat from Russia

Imagine a graphic novel series, released every month simultaneously in 14 languages and across all major wireless platforms (Kindle, EPUB, Android, iPhone), hopefully soon via the web and, eventually, in collected print editions. Every month, you pay 99 cents and get 70-75 screens of action, adventure and suspense. In its first fortnight after launch, in the difficult final weeks of December and with no marketing and without all our distributors yet on stream, the first episode had 5,000 downloads — of which English was in the minority. (There were over 100 downloads in Irish, which some call a “dead” language! And Latin is next…seriously.)

So, what is this publication and what innovative publishing house is behind it, you might ask? It’s Valentine­ — an original supernatural thriller set during Napoleon’s retreat from Russia that I am co-writing with artist Christine Larsen — and, at the moment, none. It’s just two American girls who got in over their heads.

Valentine became what it is today as a result of philosophizing about future models of publishing, and our real-life needs to have the book start paying for itself quickly. This was one of the reasons for choosing wireless distribution: it’s easier to sell downloads on phones and eReaders than charge for content on a website.

We are a Creative Commons work, which means that we acknowledge that there will be what some people may refer to as “stealing” but honestly, we’d prefer folks just enjoy the story rather than be demonized for how they obtained it. Hey, their sins may be scarlet, but at least our book is read. We’re also deliberately setting our price point very low (99 cents, versus $3.99 for a US comic book of similar length/content) to entice purchasers.

The creators of Valentine deliberately set the price point at 99 cents — versus $3.99 for a US comic book of similar length/content — to entice purchasers.

To my mind, the three most interesting aspects of how we are publishing Valentine are: the translations, the multiplicity of distributors per format, and the flexibility/scalability of the model, which allows us to dovetail nicely with the traditional publishing model.

The translations came about because in my other life as a filmmaker, I am always complaining about how not releasing films simultaneously in all geographies and all formats is basically what causes “piracy,” — a corporate term for “people wanting to see a film but having no other affordable way of doing so other than torrenting it.”

So if you’re going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk, right? I also have a lot of friends around the world with whom I like to talk comics, and having written for French comics publishers and being a devotee of Japanese comics (to name but two markets) I am very aware of how comparatively tiny the English-language comics market is. Hell, there are individual French bandes dessinée and individual tankubon that regularly outsell per volume the entire annual output of the US comic book industry.

To find our translators, I put messages up on Twitter and Facebook. It really was that simple. Our first six or so translators were friends of mine; the next seven ranged from friends of friends to complete strangers. Most have professional translating experience. The translators receive 50% of the net sales of the book in their language, which gives them an incentive to blog, tweet and otherwise market the hell out of Valentine. Everyone has been warned though that 50% of our net sales for the first nine months or thereabouts is unlikely to earn them more than enough to buy a cup of coffee.

Translators of Valentine receive 50% of the net sales of the book (in the languages into which they translate) which gives translators an incentive to market the book.

I can’t say enough good things about the translation team; they are amazing individuals (they range from an Anglo-Italian pop starlet and a Serbian artist to one of Rolling Stone’s Brazilian correspondents) and, for something organized via Twitter, there has been absolutely zero drama or flake factor. (Actually, that’s a lie. My first Spanish translator went AWOL, but a good friend, the artist Felipe Sobreiro in Colombia, stepped in at short notice.) The translations come in on time, perfectly done; clarification is often asked for and given — a loose network of individuals acting to an extremely high, professional standard.

Another exciting thing about Valentine is the relative frictionlessness of wireless distribution. We have two “publishers” for iPhone: Comixology and Robot Comics. We could add more if desired; there is no exclusivity. I always say this is like having your comic book published by DC and Marvel at the same time — or Glenat and Casterman, or Kodansha and Shogakukan. As we really start hitting the eReader stores we will have the same distribution reach (though not the same marketing muscle) as any major publisher. In today’s publishing world, you have to be everywhere people look.

Valentine is available from the iTunes Store

And that also means, eventually, landing our product on store bookshelves. I love printed books. Part of the thinking behind Valentine was how to achieve three things: an immersive, high-quality reader experience specific to small-screen devices such as the iPhone; a true right-to-left reading experience for our Japanese, Hebrew, and (eventually) Arabic readers as well as our native left-to-right; and an equally good reader experience in our eventual printed collections. The idea of publishing Valentine as a paper book was embedded in our plans from the very start.

Each “screen” is a stand-alone comics panel. There are no “pages” of multiple panels, just infinitely flexible single panels which act as building blocks, shown singly on iPhone screens or rearranged to a traditional comics page for a book. Episode 01 opens with a five-panel panorama of a battlefield that not only creates a wonderful feeling of movement and space when reading on the iPhone, it raises the quality of the print version, where that five-panel spread will become nearly ten digest-sized splash pages.

Though there is no animation or “motion comics” in Valentine, because we are basically dealing with panels of all the same size and orientation — panels shaped like a cinema screen — we have created a very cinematic experience for the reader, in our expression of space and time.

I am beyond excited for when we reach the first major “break” in the Valentine story, at the end of Episode 08, when we will have the first volume of the story complete and ready to look for a publisher — or indeed publishers, as I doubt one will be able to handle all our language editions. (We already have interest in the US edition, but are actively looking for overseas publishers…write me.) The story is set to run to 24 episodes, which in book terms will equate to three volumes of 250-300 page full-color digest size graphic novels.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s difficult. I work four days a week at a bottom-level job to pay my rent, and I could really use those days to improve the Valentine website, work on our marketing, and write my next series. We make mistakes. We are very much learning as we go along. But sometimes I pause and look back over what we’ve accomplished so far, and it strikes me just what a giant thing a small, informal group of people has achieved. And we have so many exciting places still to go! Episode 04 of Valentine is out on February 17th for iPhone, Kindle, Android, and eReader.

[Note] This article reprinted with permission of the author. It originally appeared in Publishing Perspectives magazine.

Interview with Gabor Fari, Microsoft Life Sciences by Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler

The Content Wrangler: Hello, Gabor. Tell us a little about yourself and your experience in the content industry.

Gabor: I am a Chemical Engineer by training. I became fascinated with software a little over 10 years into my career, before I made the switch to the software industry. To me, building software solutions is still pretty much engineering, and my approach is to build solutions block by block.

Gabor Fari, Microsoft Life Sciences

I have been working in the enterprise content management industry for over 10 years. I am constantly thinking about how to remove the road blocks to effective content management. Part of the challenges are technology issues, and many of the rest have to do with managing people and change. I am a contributing member of the Document and Records Management SIAC at DIA (Drug Information Association) and the OASIS DITA Pharmaceutical Content Sub-Committee.

The Content Wrangler: Where do you work? Tell us a little about your firm, the markets you serve, and the products and services you offer.


Gabor: I work for Microsoft on our Life Sciences team. I am the driver behind the Intelligent Content Framework (ICF) initiative. The idea is to implement a people-ready approach to structured content authoring and dynamic publishing, using the Microsoft tools that many people use everyday, i.e. Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office.


The Content Wrangler: Intelligent Content is a hot topic today, but many people don’t understand what it is or why it matters. From your perspective, what is intelligent content? What makes it so smart? And, why do organizations need it?


Gabor: That is a great question. I have read a lot of definitions about Intelligent Content. I think Ann Rockley and Joe Gollner have the best definition of Intelligent Content, and it would be redundant to quote them here. Another way to look at it: Intelligent Content is where we need to move to, in the Era of Dumb Content.


[Editor's note: See "What is Intelligent Content?" by Ann Rockley and "The Emergence of Intelligent Content" by Joe Gollner.]


The Content Wrangler: Creating intelligent content certainly seems like a good idea. Can you share with us a few examples of how intelligent content can help an organization to be faster, leaner, make more money, reduce expenses, reduce risk, or serve it’s clients better?

Intelligent Content Practices and Technologies can help new drugs get to market faster and save lives, Fari says.

Gabor: The best example I can think of is in my domain: what if a pharmaceutical company could complete all the documentation necessary to finish a submission to regulatory authorities (a New Drug Application, for example) 6 months faster than they do today using ‘Dumb Content’ approaches. Most importantly, medication could reach the population so much faster. And secondly, consider the competitive advantage a pharmaceutical company would gain by getting to market faster.


The Content Wrangler: Are there any examples you can point to of intelligent content on the web?


Gabor: I am mostly focused on Intranet applications at the moment, but I have seen a number of ‘Citizen Self-service Portals’ that are applying Intelligent Content approaches to Content-Centric applications such as dynamically generating permits, tax statements etc.


The Content Wrangler: Do you know of any useful online resources you think our readers might find useful in understanding intelligent content?


Gabor: I would recommend “The Emergence of Intelligent Content” by Joe Gollner and Document Engineering by Robert Glushko and Tim McGrath.


The Content Wrangler: Many of our readers might not be that familiar with your products and services, do you have any knowledge resources you’d like them to know about?


Gabor: You can keep track of my efforts working with the Microsoft Intelligent Content Framework here. You can also find me on Twitter.


Gabor Fari will be presenting a keynote address, Intelligent Content: An Emerging Trend in Enterprise Content Management, at Intelligent Content 2010, February 25-26 in Palm Springs, CA.

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By Alan J. Porter

Alan J Porter

[This post is the first in a planned series of articles that examine how the traditional book industry could benefit from adopting XML.]

Yesterday I posted on Twitter a couple of figures from the Association of American Publishers report of November 2009 book sales. The good news was that sales overall had in fact increased by 10.9%, but what really stood out was that in November of last year the sales of eBooks exploded showing a 199.9% increase and that they now account for about 2.5% of the revenue generated by book publishing. When you consider that most eBooks are cheaper than their paper equivalents, then the market share based on actual sales numbers is going to be even higher.

Sales of the electronic version have out paced hard copy sales 4:1

I’m not sure why I was surprised as the industry figures in some way reflect my own recent experience. Back in September of last year I took the step of offering my biography of the Beatles’ teenage years, “Before They Were Beatles”, as an electronic book on the Kindle. As I no longer had to worry about covering print costs, carrying inventory, processing orders or shipping, I posted the book at a greatly reduced price. Sales of the electronic version have been growing each month, and on average in the last five months sales of the electronic version have out paced hard copy sales by a factor of 4:1.

All this sounds great doesn’t it? – On the surface it is, BUT it could be so much more.

When I look at my book on the Kindle, or on my iPhone, I am frankly disappointed in it. The reason? eBooks and eBook readers today are little more than simple electronic page turners.

eBooks and eBook readers today are little more than simple electronic page turners.

But it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think what they could be like. My book references lots of early recordings of various incarnations of the group that would become The Beatles – wouldn’t it be great to click on a link and actually hear those recordings, or even compare early versions with later versions recorded at the height of their fame. How about when I mention their encounters with other musicians? It would be cool to be able to click on a name and get a snapshot biography, links to books about them and access their music catalog. How about accessing photographs of 1950s Liverpool street scenes, or being able to tour the Fab Four’s childhood homes?

And it’s not only non-fiction where I see these sort of enhancements, imagine reading your favorite novelist, and when a character mentions a location being able to click through to the Google street view, or when they eat at a nice restaurant being able to access the recipe. Ever wanted to know exactly how to make the type of vodka martini that is best served shaken, not stirred? It could be just a click away.

There is no technical reason why this sort of interactive book couldn’t be done today.

As well as being an author of books on various aspects of pop-culture that are published in the traditional model, I’ve also been active in the technical publishing industry for more years than I care to count.

Where eBooks and platforms like the Kindle, the Nook, etc. are now is where the technical documentation industry was 15 years ago – simple electronic page turners.

But take a look at what large engineering companies, the military, and others are doing with their technical documentation today – they are delivering IETMS (Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals), books with links in the text that can jump you to the related part on an illustration, call up part numbers (even do the automatic ordering of that part for you), or call up animations, video and a whole plethora of supporting information.

Technical publications, training, and service departments have been using XML technologies for years to streamline content production processes and to create multiple information products from a single source of content.

How is that achieved? Through the use of mark-up languages, and XML (eXtensible Markup Language) in particular. Using XML allows us to tag the content in such a way that the display devices can create links, or so information can be extracted and passed from one system to another.

With XML you can not only format the text to look how you want, without having to rewrite or reformat the source each time, but you can use it to automatically generate navigation aids like table of contents, lists of items in the content, indexes, plus all the hyperlinking that adds real value.

Over the last few years I’ve offered to write a few books using XML markup, but the publishers have always politely declined, preferring to stick to a system they know. A process that has changed little since the days of the typewriter – yes the tools have changed, but the process is still fundamentally the same; largely because traditional publishers still see the physical book as the product, and not the content.

But today content is king, and we need to make that content available across all platforms, and to be able to add value to it, and that means mark-up.

[In the next post I’ll compare the differences in the workflow between traditional publishing and technical publishing and look at how the cost of moving to XML is a lot less than most publishers believe.]

About the Author

Alan J. Porter a 20 year veteran of the corporate communications industry is founder of 4Js Group LLC a consulting and services company that specializes in combining creative talent with business expertise to help companies tell their story. He is also the regular writer of the monthly Disney*Pixar “World of CARS” comic book series.

His latest book, “WIKI: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit” will be published by XML Press in May 2010.

Blog: THE CONTENT POOL http://4jsgroup.blogspot.com
Email: ajp@4jsgroup.com
Phone: 512-968-7362
Twitter: @4jsgroup

By Dev Ganesan, President and CEO of Aptara

Dev Ganesan, President and CEO, Aptara

Today’s content consumers are voracious digital omnivores, desiring to feed on all types of electronic content — from Twitter tweets to YouTube videos, from iPhone apps to Facebook updates, from mp3s to eBooks. Yet traditional publishers, particularly trade book publishers, are not prepared to serve digitally savvy audiences the variety of electronic products they demand. That’s because their production processes are traditionally rooted in outdated print publishing practices that are severely inadequate for tackling today’s publishing challenges.


In order to profit – literally – from the new digital markets, publishers must rethink the way they create, manage, publish, and deliver content. They must re-engineer their processes to create more flexibility and guarantee a sustainable and certain future. They must re-imagine a production process that frees their content to be transformed — on-demand — into whatever new formats, devices, and uses consumers require, now and for the future.


Continuing to retrofit existing print-based content workflows is not only impractical, overly expensive, error-prone, and unnecessarily complicated, it’s also not an efficient, flexible, or sustainable business practice. Fred Ciporen, former publisher of Publishers Weekly, recently echoed similar sentiments to an industry group preparing for the American Library Association Mid-Winter Conference.


To become lean and robust, publishers have to recognize the shortcomings of undertaking each new publishing challenge from scratch. For example, considering eBook creation as a project at the end of the print publishing lifecycle artificially and exponentially increases production costs. Continuing such practices misses the essential benefits of digitization. It condemns the company to the past, forgoing the future while ignoring consumer demand.


Freeing content from formatting and making it possible to easily deliver content to any device on any platform in any format—print, web, or mobile—is not a new idea. Organizations have been doing it for years through leveraging the power of XML.

“It’s both surprising and ironic that trade publishers, in particular, have yet to adopt XML-first or XML-centric workflows,” said Fred Ciporen.

It’s time for traditional publishers to follow suit − with a content-centered XML-first publishing approach. Getting there is not the difficult or disruptive process that many publishing executives have assumed. For instance, innovative new authoring tools enable content to be created in XML using interfaces indistinguishable from Microsoft Word. (XML is an open content standard that drastically reduces the effort required of publishing houses to create eBooks — and every other type of content. XML is designed to help publishers break the dependency of content on proprietary formats and specific devices. XML content can be easily repurposed, reused, shared, sorted, aggregated with other content, and automatically processed, published, and delivered, often on-demand.)


“Fortune 1000 companies have been adopting XML publishing not because it’s cool and trendy, but because doing so saves them millions of dollars and provides measurable benefits,” says content management guru Ann Rockley. “It’s seen as a competitive advantage; an approach designed to help publishers respond quickly to both new business opportunities and threats from competitors.”


Note: See Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy by Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur and Steve Manning (New Riders Publishing) for details on how to plan for and implement a content-first strategy.


Technical communications departments in the aerospace, automotive, manufacturing, life sciences, financial, and publishing industries use a content-first XML publishing approach to create, publish, and deliver their own version of books: product-specific user guides, product manuals, support Web sites, and online help systems from a single repository of content, thanks to XML. Corporate training departments and universities use the same methods to create role-specific XML-based training and eLearning content. Some publishers may be surprised to learn that their own organizations are already using this approach to create in-house documentation and training materials.


Though there are few examples of Trade publishers adopting XML-first workflows, below are two examples of Educational publishing houses that are thinking creatively and benefiting:


John Wiley & Sons has re-engineered their approach to publishing with the advent of Wiley Custom Select, an online portal that provides educators with the ability to create their own custom text books. Teachers select content they desire from any of the products in the Wiley library, arrange it in the order they desire, upload their own content (should they desire to do so), and, with a few clicks, automatically format, publish, and deliver the content into a custom eBook. All of this is made possible using XML.





O’Reilly Media and the Pearson Technology Group joined forces to create Safari Books Online. The premise was simple: compile the best technology books from the leading authors and publishers into an on-demand digital library that technology, digital media, and creative professionals could quickly and easily search for reliable, definitive answers to mission-critical questions. Content downloaded from Safari Books Online is optimized for mobile devices, computers, or other reading devices, and many titles are available as eBooks. All of this is also made possible through XML.





“It’s both surprising and ironic that trade publishers, in particular, have yet to adopt XML-first or XML-centric workflows,” said Fred Ciporen. “Surprising, because they have the most to gain from re-engineering their publishing approaches, and ironic because their titles and products are more ideally suited for such workflows than most other types of publications.” The benefits to the publisher — and the reader — are many, including:

• Faster time-to-market
• Indefinite extension of products’ shelf-life
• Greater and more nimble responsiveness to competitive threats and new business opportunities
• Cost savings through more efficient utilization of human and financial resources
• Ability to automatically combine and deliver various types of content on-demand
• Flexibility in preparing content in new formats (Web, mobile, social media, eBook) for inclusion in fast-growing third party eBook distribution networks like Amazon.com, iTunes, app stores
• Ability to quickly develop enhanced and engaging interactive reading experiences that are not possible with print-based products

Regardless of publisher type, there’s no avoiding today’s bottom line: in order to compete in the digital age, publishers must design a process that allows them to sustainably profit from digital content distribution.


Although eBook challenges may be new, thankfully their solution already exists. The Trade industry is well armed with proven multi-channel, content-centered publishing approaches that deliver sizable, real cost savings and increased margins.


It’s time for Trade publishers to take a fresh look at XML-first workflows. It is the best and only content strategy designed for the present and the future – while establishing a solid foundation on which to profitably operate a publishing business in the digital economy.


[This article was originally published by TeleRead, and is reprinted with permission of the author.]


About the Author
Dev Ganesan is the President and CEO of Aptara, a digital e-book conversion and digital publishing company headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia.