NFAIS Announces 2010 Annual Conference Theme and Location: Mark Your Calendar Now!
Philadelphia, PA, July 27, 2009 - The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS - www.nfais.org), the premier membership association for organizations that create, organize and facilitate access to information, today announced the theme and location for its 2010 Annual Conference. The conference, Redefining the Value of Information: Exploring the New Equation , is scheduled for February 28 - March 2, 2010 at the Park Hyatt Philadelphia at the Bellevue in Philadelphia, PA. Opening with a keynote presentation by Clay Shirky, Internet guru and author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, the meeting will take a look at what measures information seekers use to define value and determine what products and services they will use - and why these measures are important to them.
"Credibility and quality remain the core measures of information value, but the melding of content and technology has increased user expectations," said NFAIS President, Terence Ford. "The Web has created a spirit of connectivity between scholars and researchers worldwide, and online collaboration, information sharing and dynamic interaction have become integral to their daily professional lives. For this population "sociability" is a measure of value. For those who use hand-held devices to access information on the Internet, "mobility" is now a factor. The point is that information and technology have become inseparable, and as a result new measures for defining the value of information products and services have entered the equation."
Ford noted that the conference will begin with a discussion of how Internet technologies and user acceptance of those technologies are redefining the information landscape. This will be followed by survey results that indicate what users really want in an information product or service, and a panel of users from the sciences, social sciences and humanities will discuss the measures that they themselves use when determining value. The conference will also look at how innovative content providers and libraries are redefining the value of their products and services against the new factors that users weigh, as well as at current and emerging technologies that can be used to enhance content and improve user's perception of value. Critical issues such as the blending of internal and external content along with multimedia formats, the leveraging of new forms of communication such as Twitter, improving the user search experience and the precision of search results, differentiating the subtle difference between product value and product functionality, and introducing new business models and practices that support the new value proposition will also be discussed. Highlights will include case studies by organizations who have already redefined their value, the Miles Conrad Lecture and a visionary closing keynote on the changing value of information.
"Establishing value for today's digital information products and services is no easy task. It is difficult for information providers, librarians and educators to understand what measures of information value could rank equal to or possibly higher than the credibility, reliability, and quality that authoritative "brands" have provided for decades. But we need to look - without bias - at what new measures have entered the value equation and be sure that we are exploring how to address them," said Ford. "If we do not, the products and services that offer "good enough" quality and credibility along with a better user search experience, more targeted answers to queries, analytic capabilities, delivery to mobile devices, incorporation into the workflow, connectivity, etc. may be the ones that end up at the top of the ratings scale."
For more information or to be added to the mailing list for updates on the 2010 NFAIS Annual Conference, contact Jill O'Neill, Director of Communication and Planning (jilloneill@nfais.org, or (215)-893-1561 phone) or visit the NFAIS web site at http://www.nfais.org. Hotel information may be found here. Registration will open on September 1, 2009 with early bird discounts being available until January 8, 2010.
This program is being developed by the 2010 Annual Conference Planning Committee
