When selling is teaching

All publishing industries are living tough moments. In part is due to the impact of technology and massive use of it by people. Change is happening at every level and at every process....every day.


Traditional selling and marketing processes are inefficient, specially for new designed content product and services. This is just a small portion of the problem, but an interesting one. 


How do we tell people a new product or service is better than the one they´re already using... and is working fine? How do we change the way they are using information and content? How do we insert technology -more technology- in their life and work?


I believe in one answer: we first teach them.


Presenting and showing new content or information product and services is always fascinating. But much more fascinating is when people starts to buy and use your product and they tell the world about it. And even more fascinating when they start to build guides and recommend it in their blogs, twitters, networks....in their digital world. And, maybe, the best of all is when they become anxious for the next release, the new functionalities, the new contents you are going to present them in a few months.


This occurs because they've learned how to use it, they are excited about the benefits they obtain and, of course, that paying the price is fair.


If we first start teaching how to use a product we will have two good inputs: what issues are not resolved the best possible way and the barriers people have to buy and start using it (price, content, format, hardware, mobility, dependencies and more). We will have the opportunity to solve them and go on. But the best thing is we could transmit the passion that is behind every creation of a new tool, product or service. If we become a "positive engine" to energize the others, the best of your creation is exposed. So imagine having this "power" in every training session of every single product and service you want to sell.
Introducing a new technology is also a part of the teaching process. 


To face this circumstance we need to focus on two realities. The first is: the more simple the technology is, the less time a person will need to adopt it; and the second, the new technology has to solve problems and not to create new ones. If during the selling process, which now has to be the teaching process, the user understands both correct, 90% of the work is done.


I truly believe that, to sell, teaching is much more effective than just exposing the product. I will apply this belief  from now on and tell you my experience in a few months.

Changing the Way Medical Students Learn: 4 Stories from Europe

(This presentation will take place in Tools of Change for Publishing 2010 conference in New York, 02/24/2010)

Healthcare change is on everyone’s agenda nowadays as the role of medicine in society changes. The focus has shifted from the occasional care of individuals in hospitals to promoting health in the community. These changes place new demands on doctors and have forced a rethink on how students are taught in medical school. Medical training is becoming more student-centered. There is an emphasis on active learning rather than on the passive absorption of knowledge. Rigid curricula are giving way to more adaptable and flexible ones.

Publishers of medical textbooks, like Elsevier, must take account of these changes. They must be equally adaptable and flexible in the way they deliver the information. They must understand how teachers teach and how students learn. We believe there is a tremendous opportunity to drive sustained innovation in medical education.
This presentation is based on our experiences in Europe. We will highlight four stories of medical students from the UK, Spain, France and Germany that illustrate how publishers are responding to the changing needs in medical education.

The stories will cover the following topics:

• How students collect information today in order to pass exams
• New exam testing tools
• Case-study exams
• Wiki-like collaborative lesson creation
• Dealing with piracy when moving from print to electronic delivery
• Sources of content: e-libraries & e-Books
• Delivering knowledge in small chunks

Products and services that will be covered:
UK: International Virtual Dental School
Spain: ArenaMIR
France: Université Médicale Virtuelle Francophone
Germany: Mediscript

This presentation is for anyone interested in how self-directed education changes the rules of the game for publishers. No medical knowledge required!

Google Wave: teaching online made easy?

I'm one of the persons who received a Google Wave account with eight invitations available in it. I was very interested -and excited- in discovering this new territory in the net. 

It was announced as a new collaborative tool, something between email, twitter and chat. But I didn't have a clear idea in my mind of what was his potential.

Now I've been playing with Google Wave, creating new waves, sharing contents, maps and files, making simple polls, chatting in real time and locating all his secrets.

While chatting with a colleague I realized the potential Google Wave has to teach. I was giving him some information in text format: a short paragraph of a new concept I am working on. He asked me some questions (more text) and then I sent them some images with comments so he could fully understand me idea. He then proposed minor changes and asked some more questions (more text). A YouTube video came to my mind, something from a parallel world that could help me to communicate better my project to him (movie). After the movie I decided to share with him a presentation I made to introduce my thoughts to other colleagues from other countries (PowerPoint). Finally I presented to him different sources (links to different sites), which inspired me to build the concept.

So that’s what we shared: text – questions – images + text – conversation – questions – video – slideshow – links

And another very key issue in that moment was my full control of the message and contents I was using to make him understand an idea. Just adding a test at the end of this path and I would have an online teaching object (and I could share it also with others).

So now, I would like Google Wave to fully deploy its potential (some areas are not ready to use yet) so I can discover more interesting usages for this new tool.

Online Education on the Horizon

Online learning is one of my main concerns today. I'm actively working in understanding what online instructional models are the good ones for different kinds of students: university, residents at hospitals, professionals improving their knowledge, etc.
I've been looking at different (and innovative) e-libraries, e-books, e-book readers, online databases and other content containers but a single one made me completely happy. 
I'm also following in Twitter different specialists and people interested, like me, in e-learning and the future of education. It seems to me that all of us are disappointed by the lack of real innovation in this field.
Most of the key opinion leaders expressing their ideas on the net seem to end in the same concept: The Future Doesn't Fit in the Containers of the Past (Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO Denuo).
We have an inmense opportunity to innovate and try to find the correct models for e-learning. 

Color e-paper update - May 2009

An article published in Nature Photonics (read the summary of the article at http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v3/n5/abs/nphoton.2009.68.html) about a week ago informs about two prototypes of color e-paper displays. It is very interesting to see that the techonology they are using comes from the past. In fact, both developments are focused on using pigments in an aqueous solution inside the pixel. Then, by manipulating the voltage on each device the liquid with the pigment draws out from the reservoir into the freee space of the pixel (in the second prototype, there are two pigments in each reservoir but with different charge properties so that the voltage controls which of them is shown in the display). 

The potential of colorized e-ink for the health sciences publishing industry is huge. It opens a vast universe of possibilities and new developments on e-books and, also, new instructional models for education, e-libraries, multiformat services and more other interesting gadgets.

Fujitsu has started to sell his first color e-reader (FLEPia) on march this year, with an 8-inch screen display and up to 260,000 colors in high-definition. Even if it's a very good start for this new market, the re-draw speed is still low and the weight (385g) and specially the price is too high if compared to the Sony e-Reader or the Kindle. 

Sony eBook Reader PRS-505 (part 2)

After being with the Sony PRS-505 e-book reader for a couple of months and testing it with different contents (books, articles, blogs)., the final conclusions are:

• e-Ink tech is on his first steps;
• Color is a must have for our market (e-Ink is still B&W);
• Lack of interactivity is a big problem;
• Battery in the Sony reader is amazing (10 days in active mode)
• As a simple reader is very good, but don t ask for more. Very simple solutions could be created for this reader, but this is not our interest right now (iPhone solutions are).
• Music player integrated is awful (horrible sound quality)
• A technology to allow reformatting texts is needed (so you are allowed to increase text size).
• iREX should be my next Laboratory Toy.

Sony eBook Reader PRS-505 (part I)

First impression on this ebook reader when unboxing is ....."nice gadget" but let's see what's inside. And what we find there is a very good ebook reader but nothing else: no wifi connection, no color, no interactivity and little problems with PDF reading. Design could be also better....allow Apple do this for you!

It's a very good reader because it has no other ambitions and reading ebooks in the .lrf format is a nice experience. I've been reading some articles and parts of different books for the last two weeks (in very changing light ambiences) and no problems came up with this issue.

But connection or interactivity with the reader are a must-have for the next version. Sony must also allow PDF to be correctly displayed in his screen (zoom is not enough) and,

maybe, think about producing a bigger screen with touch capabilities (and eliminate lots of

useless buttons). IRex is doing quite well with its last product Iliad 2nd Edition but at a much higher price ($599 vs $299).

E-ink technology is in his first development steps so we will have to wait till improvements are available for this readers (faster changes between pages, better transitions, ink colors).

Reader is prepared for leisure but not for professionals: no medical or biology or painting books are possible without colour and other improvements.

On eBook devices

I've been recently looking at those new eBook readers coming from different companies: Amazon, iRex, Sony, Bookeen, Hanlin and others. I was asking myself which one could feed my actual needs.

All of them are based on e-ink technology and, depending on the price (from $200 to $650) they offer more functionalities. For me, two things are the most important: 1) battery life and, 2) the chance to easily upload and storage all content formats (Word, PDF, txt, html, epub, etc.).

After reading different reviews and opinions, I decided to give a try to Sony PRS-505. I will let you know my experience with it in a few weeks.

TECH - Where does information go ?

I use to read The Economist and Fast Company magazines when I'm waiting at the airport or flying. A few days ago I was reading some articles in those jornals and I realized that they are small pieces of text. Nothing compared to the traditional articles we could found, for example, in traditional legal journals. In fact, articles (in the broadest meaning of the word) are changing from full lenght studies of a reality, idea or thought, to a sort of fast and short commentaries compiling as much information as possible.

The same thing happens with articles published in the newspapers: we have an increasing number of texts and they become shorter and shorter.

Make a test: go to a library, read a newspaper from the 60's and count the total number of articles. Now do the same with a recent newspaper and you will obtain a much higher number of works. Where does the information go ?

Do you think we accumulate more thoughts and ideas and the small pieces of text we are receiveing from the publishers are just updates of those things? or, is information changing its structure and presentation to allow us understand a much more complex world?

I really don't know but the increasing number of communications/informations and the increasing number of sources (blogs, podcasts) are making us short-text-readers. What will be the consequences of this fact?