LJNDawson

Data Points And Spaces

In my resolution-keeping, I’ve been doing some data collection. As I mentioned, I’m using a program called “Perfect Diet Tracker” – ugh, how I hate the name, but the app is really good – to track what I consume and what I expend. I actually have “numbers time” every day where I also do Quicken – tracking is tracking, after all.

What has struck me, in all this extremely incremental data entry, is that any single data point is not all that valuable. What’s valuable is the relationship of multiple data points to one another. It’s a lesson I keep learning. And it’s a good thing to keep in mind as new sites launch before gathering a meaningful data set. To a certain degree, metadata’s a commodity. The relationship of one set of metadata to another is the product or service.

Of course, this is why I feel so strongly about the semantic web. It’s in its infancy – and toddlerhood is not much prettier – but over time it will prove meaningful. Helpful, even.

But what’s even more fascinating, in a way, is what’s NOT there. Yet. We can only gather data that’s been recorded. So much hasn’t. And when we finally do amass a corpus of data that we can blend with our existing data, the results can be surprising – even gratifying to some.

A Helpful Glossary of Identifiers in the Information Supply Chain

ISBN – International Standard Book Number. This identifies a separately tradable product in the book supply chain.

ISTC – International Standard Text Code. This identifies a piece of text. It does not identify tradable products.

ISNI – International Standard Name Identifier. This identifies a name – of a person or an organization.

SAN – Standard Address Number. This identifies a specific address of an organization in (or served by) the publishing industry.

DOI – Digital Object Identifier. By which is meant “digital identifier of objects”. This identifies a place on the web where a thing can be found. It is like a web-based SAN.

ISRC – International Standard Recording Code. This identifies sound recordings, and music video recordings. It is similar in many ways to the ISBN.

ISSN – International Standard Serial Number. This identifies serial publications – journals and magazines, primarily.

ISMN – International Standard Music Number. This identifies printed music products in the same way an ISBN identifies book products.

ISAN – International Standard Audiovisual Number. This identifies audiovisual products in the same way an ISBN identifies book products.

ISWC – International Standard Musical Work Code. This identifies musical works. It is similar to the ISTC in that it doesn’t identify tradable products.

ISCI – International Standard Collection Identifier. This identifies library collections.

What Darth Vader is Really For

Rick Smith, who (a) manages the MyIdentifiers and other platforms at Bowker (b) works next to me (c) is the other person in my foxhole…put this on the wall between our desks.

Because of this sign at my desk:

Check your kittens.

Control

Brian O’Leary had a fantastic post yesterday about book piracy and the ongoing insistence that it’s a categorically bad thing. The fact is, no one has any idea whether or not it’s a bad thing because only one publishing company in the history of publishing or companies has ever agreed to empirically test that assertion.

One is not a statistical sample.

Brian’s post was based on coverage of a session at DBW last week. One of the comments to that coverage came from Marion Gropen, a consultant to authors looking to “profit from your publishing.” Gropen says,

And the discussion about whether or not it hurts sales is utterly not the point. You can’t take anything else I own even if you think it would be in my best interest. The issue is control, not results.

I think Gropen has hit upon something absolutely critical when she says, “The issue is control.”

Traditionally, modern publishing has been tightly controlled for most of its existence. Publishers contracted with authors (with the help of agents), packaged manuscripts into books, and distributed those books to many disparate retailers. Publishers rarely interacted with their ultimate audience – they were strictly B2B.

The web has disrupted this significantly. The means of production and distribution are now in the hands of…anybody who cares to learn how they work. Tim Berners-Lee, on the stand a year ago in a patent trial in Texas, had the following exchange with Jennifer Doan, an attorney representing defendants Yahoo and Amazon:

After describing how Berners-Lee worked at CERN in Switzerland back in the 1980s, Doan moved on to the web. When Berners-Lee invented the web, did he apply for a patent on it, Doan asked.

“No,” said Berners-Lee.

“Why not?” asked Doan.

“The internet was already around. I was taking hypertext, and it was around a long time too. I was taking stuff we knew how to do…. All I was doing was putting together bits that had been around for years in a particular combination to meet the needs that I have.”

Doan: “And who owns the web?”

Berners-Lee: “We do.”

We do. Just as Berners-Lee tweeted (on a Next cube, the machine on which he invented the Web) during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics, “This is for everyone.”

Which is an absolutely terrifying thought if you are a traditional publisher. If anyone can say anything about anything, everyone will. What’s “authoritative” or “curated” loses its place. And distribution of content can happen at ANY point in the publishing process – the bulk of illegal distribution to P2P sites seems to happen in the manuscript or production phase of publishing. In other words, the leak is coming from inside the house.

If traditional publishers can’t even control that much, they will never be able to control the larger issues of P2P sharing and even content creation. The web is, because of its textual nature, probably the single most disruptive force on traditional publishing. Already the voice of the critic has dissipated into the audience itself.

And the concept of “control” as we’ve always known it is shifting dramatically.

Adventures in Product Management

The thing I like best about product management is that it requires you to be a generalist. And I really like knowing something about everything.

But today it was brought home to me that managing product development in this day and age is very different than it was even six years ago.

In this instance, we’re scoping towards a moving target. An emerging standard, which hasn’t yet been adopted by anyone, the efficacy of which is dependent on how much data is in the system. The more data that pours in, the better (and faster) the results are. Which makes sense, but it is very hard to program logic around this, particularly transactional logic.

With standards, too, you are mostly working in a non-commercial environment. Revenue upside is difficult to predict.

I’m pretty comfortable with uncertainty, personally, but of course business doesn’t operate that way. I find myself in the position not of reassuring the team – that would be pointless, since there’s no reassurance to be had – but of helping everybody understand that we’re all feeling our way together. That requirements may well change on the fly, as we find out more.

Disrupting comfort zones is hard work; and we’re only going to have more of that as time goes on.