An Honor to Present Education Awards to Industry Veterans

May 16, 2012 By Karen Billings Leave a Comment

Presenting this year’s education awards during the recent Ed Tech Industry Summit in San Francisco was very special for me personally. It was great to be up on stage with two very key people in our industry as we honored them with SIIA’s education awards. We presented Charles Blaschke with the Ed Tech Impact Award, an honor we started just four years ago. We then presented Dr. Patrick Suppes with a Lifetime Achievement Award, the first time this award has been given at the Summit.

Each of these awards were given after reviewing quite a list of candidates. Our education technology industry has a growing number of veterans who have contributed ideas, products, and services for some decades– and some for over 50 years!

Our Ed Tech Impact Award went to Charles Blaschke, Founder and President of Education TURNKEY Systems, Inc., an education industry veteran whose work goes back over four decades. He is president of his Washington D.C.-based firm, where he provides data and analysis about Federal funding policies and K-12 technology spending, including Title I, IDEA/Special Ed, the new ARRA stimulus funding, and other related Federal programs.

Many of those in the audience raised their hands when he asked if any were or had been his clients. I raised my hand, remembering how I would get his monthly reports that my company had subscribed to. I would then share those reports with our sales reps who were always interested in Charles’s specific state-by-state funding information.

It’s become a tradition for the new Ed Tech Impact honoree to receive the award from the last recipient. The first awardee, Ellen Bialo (IESD), presented it to Tom Greaves (The Greaves Group) two years ago and Tom presented it to Kathy Hurley (Pearson) last year. This year Kathy, now with the Pearson Foundation presented it to Charles Blaschke, this year’s awardee and her husband!

For the Lifetime Achievement Award, we chose Dr. Patrick Suppes, now the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stanford University. Suppes began conducting research using computers to teach students in the 1960s and even though he recently turned 90 years old, he is still doing online instructional development! He founded Computer Curriculum Corporation (CCC) in 1967, and served as CEO for many years, while maintaining a large class schedule at Stanford University.

We were lucky to have Ron Fortune, a colleague and CEO at CCC, introduce Dr. Suppes by providing background information about his 50+ years of experience in education technology. Dr. Suppes accepted the award from SIIA President, Ken Wasch, and gave very insightful comments about how far we’ve come – and haven’t come – in our industry. He pondered on the effects of cross-age tutoring via online, as well as the opportunities with voice recognition technologies. After his award, many in the audience came up to congratulate him and request pictures; some were SIIA members who had worked at CCC at the same time as Suppes and Fortune.

Few attendees with start-ups and early stage companies attending this year’s Ed Tech Industry Summit likely knew either of these men – or were aware of their work – before we presented them with the awards. Jenny House, President of RedRock Reports who sponsored the awards luncheon, remarked afterwards that the audience at the Summit luncheon was ‘getting older and – at the same time – younger’.

But we also agreed that whether young and old, the audience really appreciated the accomplishments and contributions the two awardees have made to our industry. It was truly an honor to introduce Patrick Suppes and Charles Blaschke to everyone in the audience, but in particular, to those very young companies who will grow and advance the use of technology in K-20 education.

Karen BillingsKaren Billings is Vice President for the Education Division at SIIA.

Filed Under: Ed Tech Industry Summit, Education, Education Events Tagged With: ,

This Week in IP Enforcement

May 16, 2012 By Keith Kupferschmid Leave a Comment

ICANN Targets May 22 To Reopen Web Address Application System (The Hill)
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said it expects to reopen its application system on May 22 after a glitch forced the organization to temporarily stop accepting applications for new Web domain endings.

Court: Schools Can Publish Small Excerpts Of Texts Online For Students (eCampus News)
U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans sided with Georgia State University on a range of copyright infringement claims filed by Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications and Cambridge University Press, in a ruling that administrators said could set an important precedent regarding the “fair use doctrine” and how educational material is used by schools.

Member Of Internet Piracy Group ‘IMAGINE’ Pleads Guilty To Copyright Infringement Conspiracy (US ICE)
A California man pleaded guilty to conspiring to willfully reproduce and distribute tens of thousands of infringing copies of copyrighted works without permission, and faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release.

Backed By Microsoft, Russian Anti-Piracy Firm Pirate Pay Eyes International Expansion (VentureBeat)
Anti-piracy firm Pirate Pay, which aims to tackle Bittorrent piracy by confusing clients and preventing users from connecting to each other, is planning to expand its foreign operations and spearhead the ongoing fight against online piracy.

Keith Kupferschmid is General Counsel and SVP, Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement at SIIA.

Filed Under: Anti-Piracy, Policy - Intellectual Property

Lorraine Landfried, Deputy CIO for Product Development at VA to speak to SIIA Public Sector Group

May 16, 2012 By Mike Hettinger Leave a Comment

Lorraine Landfried

As part of its ongoing Executive Roundtable Series, SIIA will host Lorraine Landfried, Deputy CIO for Product Development at the Department of Veterans Affairs for a roundtable discussion on the latest developments around IT enhancement and strategy within VA.

In her role at VA, Landfried facilitates all IT development activities, including planning and oversight of the IT projects supporting the Secretary’s 16 major initiatives.

The roundtable will be the first executive discussion before SIIA’s new Public Sector Innovation Group, a newly created division of SIIA comprised of innovative software and IT services firms seeking to take advantage of the evolving Federal investment in Cloud-related technologies.

The event is open to all SIIA members and invited guests. Please contact Mike Hettinger for more information.

Event details:
What: SIIA Public Sector Innovation Group Executive Roundtable
When: May 24, 2012, 11:00am
Where: SIIA Offices, 1090 Vermont Avenue, Suite 600, Washington, DC

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

Filed Under: Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG, Software Tagged With: , ,

VIA Recap: Audience Engagement 3.0

May 15, 2012 By SIIA Leave a Comment
 On May 9 & 10, the SIIA Content Division hosted Content VIA Platforms – a conference dedicated to educating media, publishing and information professionals about the technology and business issues related to distributing content via mobile, social and other platforms. Guest blogger, Angus Robertson, gives his write up on the session Audience Engagement 3.0
 

Burt Herman, Co-founder, Storify

Go away helicopter before I take out my giant swatter :-/

Shoiab Athar posted this tweet on May 1, 2011, unaware at the time that he was witnessing the assault that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.

Speaking at the SIIA Content VIA Platforms conference in San Francisco, Storify Co-Founder Burt Herman used this as a compelling example of how storytelling is becoming social. Of course his business is predicated on building stories out of social media, but he made a good case, arguing that the web is inherently social media. Examples include how social media can add context and meaning to photos and how pulling together tweets from Apple employees after the death of Steve Jobs provide a touching “story” that would likely not be available through traditional reporting.

Herman also argued that content “curation is incredibly suited to touch,” and showed how easy it is to use Storify to “swipe” social media and other web content into a “story” that can be easily shared as an embedded object:  “YouTube videos are embeddable anywhere on the web, so why not stories?”

As somebody who, like Herman, was once a wire service reporter, I was taken with the way in which constantly updating a Storify “story” with new information is similar to a constantly updated AP story. Storify is also stretching the definition of what a story is. Herman gave the example of the White House using Storify with a headline #DontDoubleMyRate to bring attention to its position on the issue of student loan rates.

Storify is a venture-backed free service that envisages including social ads in its stories as a way of generating revenue.

This post was written by Angus Robertson, Robertson Advisors LLC.

Filed Under: Content, Content VIA Platforms, Events, Platforms Tagged With: , , ,

TPP Negotiators Discuss IP and Cross Border Data, OMB/NIST Talk Standards Reform, FTC MySpace Settlement Keys on Syncing and Cyber Continues to Slip in Senate

May 15, 2012 By David LeDuc Leave a Comment

TPP Negotiators Convene in Dallas
Negotiators for the nine countries committed to a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement met in Dallas starting on May 8 for a new round of discussions aimed at opening trade and encouraging investment among the countries that border the Pacific Ocean. SIIA had a presence at the stakeholder event held by the US Trade Representative (USTR) on May 12, which allowed interested parties to interact directly with the negotiators working on their issues. SIIA is supported a TPP agreement that would contain strong copyright enforcement provisions, measures to protect trade secrets and prevent the disclosure of software source code, and provisions allowing the cross-border flow of information and prohibiting mandated localization of cloud computing servers. A significant development at the discussions was the suggestion from several countries that some of the provisions of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) be substituted for the corresponding provisions in the US proposal on intellectual property. In addition, some countries raised privacy objections to the US proposal on cross-border data flows.

OMB Workshop on Voluntary Consensus Standards

Today, NIST hosted an OMB workshop on Federal Participation in the Development and Use of Voluntary Consensus Standards. The workshop explored agency experiences in the implementation of OMB Circular A-119, public and private sector discussion regarding challenges associated with referencing private sector standards in federal regulations and industry case studies from their perspective on federal use of private sector standards and conformity assessment mechanisms. The Workshop is another step in an ongoing exploration of the Government’s participation in standards development, including a recent Federal Register Notice requesting public comment on whether or not OMB should consider supplementing the existing OMB Circular A-119, a memo earlier this year and proposed policy recommendations in October 2011.

FTC Settlement with MySpace has Implications on Syncing
On May 8, the FTC released a settlement with MySpace that has implications for companies that synchronize (“sync”) or link data through unique identifiers. The FTC charged that MySpace broke its privacy promises to consumers by making it possible for an ad network to connect MySpace’s user identifier with the ad network’s own user identifier . As a result, the two data bases of user information could be merged into a single record. In his post on the topic, the FTC’s chief technology officer, Ed Felton, issued a general warning to firms in this area: “If your product syncs pseudonyms or identifiers with third parties, or makes such syncing possible, you might want to ask yourself which information flows, if any, are enabled by the syncing, and whether those information flows are consistent with your privacy obligations.”

Cyber Continues to Slip in Senate
Senate leaders recently confirmed that consideration of comprehensive cybersecurity legislation will not take place this month, but they’re still hopeful this will now happen in June. Additionally, a planned bipartisan discussion among key Senators that was originally scheduled for today has also been pushed back to next week. These most recent setbacks follow major substantive opposition revealed last week when a coalition of civil-liberties groups urged the Senate to reject the legislation because it would allow military spy agencies to gain access to people’s personal information.

ICANN Announces Date to Reopen Applications
The latest from ICANN is that they are targeting May 22 to reopen its application system for new Web gTLDs, with the anticipated new deadline for submitting applications to be May 30.

For SIIA policy updates including upcoming events, news and analysis, subscribe to SIIA’s weekly policy email newsletter, Digital Policy Roundup.

David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy.

Filed Under: Digital Policy Roundup, Government, Policy, Software

VIA Recap: Facebook and Google+: Is the Reach Worth the Risk?

May 15, 2012 By SIIA Leave a Comment

Rachael Monroe

On May 9 & 10, the SIIA Content Division hosted Content VIA Platforms – a conference dedicated to educating media, publishing and information professionals about the technology and business issues related to distributing content via mobile, social and other platforms. Guest blogger, Rich Kreisman, gives his write up on the session Facebook and Google+:  Is the Reach Worth the Risk? 

 

This session, moderated by Rachael Monroe, Vice President, Client Services, BBN Networks, brought two experts on social media, Jim Brady, Editor-in-Chief, Digital First Media, and Christopher Carfi, Vice President – Social Business Strategy, Ant’s Eye View, before the VIA attendees to share war stories of the learning years in social media  (since Facebook’s launch in 2004)– and the future, which both Brady and Carfi see as bright for publishers who innovate and experiment with social media.  Publishers are still finding their own formula to leverage social media platforms – for traffic, customer acquisition or to create new hybrid products combining their own content and user insights, both Brady and Carfi acknowledge.

Jim Brady

Carfi, whose consulting firm advises large companies like Cisco and Starbucks on social business strategies, says most companies (including publishers) view social media platforms as a broadcasting megaphone. “Social media is not just another ‘channel’.” Companies who look at it as a one-way communication tool are not succeeding, he says.  “Rather, my clients who really learn how to listen and engage in the conversations are getting the most benefits.”  Listening involves active monitor of all social media channels and engaging in two-way conversations with users – even if the news is  negative. Talking about his experiences at WashingtonPost.com and at Digital First Media (a venture of Journal Register Publishing and MediaNews Group), Brady notes, “Social media has to be in the DNA of everyone in the organization to make it work…and, in most newspaper newsrooms, it is not.”  To coach editors and writers through their initial forays into social media, Digital First Media offers training and support sessions.  

Christopher Carfi

But unless writers see a direct benefit for their reporting, they are unlikely to take the risk associated with the two-way conversations of social media.  “I always tell people to be patient,” Brady says. “It takes a while to build the conversation up.”   Brady finds when social media does take root in a newsroom, it becomes an important arrow in a publisher’s quiver and can deliver unique insights to readers.  Both men definitely seem to believe the reach of the large social media players is worth the risk.  However, they advise the audience that an 18-24 month learning curve should be expected for the average publisher. Experimentation and learning are key, says Carfi, as well as finding the champions of social media throughout the organization to prove its value to others.

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 Post written by Rich Kreisman, Principal Partner, Kreisman Information Consulting

Rich Kreisman is Principal Partner of Kreisman Information Consulting, LLC, a San Francisco-based consultancy advising publishers, content creators, websites and mobile providers on content licensing, syndication and distribution partnerships to meet their strategic business needs.  Rich can be reached at rkreisman@kreismaninfoconsult.com


Filed Under: Content, Content VIA Platforms, Events, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

SIIA Submits Testimony to Congressional Forum on Information Technology

May 15, 2012 By Mike Hettinger Leave a Comment

Last Friday, Representatives Elijah Cummings (MD) and Gerry Connelly (VA) hosted a Congressional Forum on Information Technology at the Fairfax County, Virginia Government Center to review government’s efforts to leverage innovative technology to reduce cost and improve citizen services. The forum featured testimony from Federal CIO Steven Van Roekel, as well as industry representatives including SIIA Public Sector Innovation Group Board Member, David Mihalchik of Google. SIIA was pleased to have been asked by the Members to provide testimony for the record.

SIIA’s testimony focused on the important transformative benefits of cloud computing – economic growth, choice and lower cost — and encouraged Congress to consider these when looking at cloud computing. We also highlighted the key security benefits that can be realized by implementing cloud computing, discussed the importance of the 25 Point Plan to Reform Federal IT, and explored the inter-relationship between Cloud First, FedRAMP, the Shared Services Strategy and the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative.
Overall, the interaction between Reps. Cummings and Connelly and the forum witnesses was thoughtful and successfully highlighted the issues of importance to government and industry alike as the federal government moves ahead with cloud computing. It was particularly encouraging to see these key members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee engage on an issue of such great importance to SIIA members and the federal IT industry as a whole and we applaud them for their effort.

Read the full text of SIIA’s statement.

Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG.

Filed Under: Cloud Computing, Government, Policy, Policy - Cloud Computing, PSIG, Software Tagged With: , ,
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