Pages Without Pages

It's a funny thing when you stop and realize how much something has changed that you took for granted. Recently I was at the ACC 59th Annual Scientific Sessions event in Atlanta. As I walked through the amazingly large conference halls, I kept noticing bins upon bins of printed program books, abstract books, and all kinds of handouts. Keep in mind that it was the last day of the conference, towards the end of the session events, and most of the bins I saw were very full. I picked up one of each book to see the quality of the production--ACC did a wonderful job of putting together a format that reads well and is very professionally done. Yet surplus in the bulky-print-book department must certainly be costing the organization some undue expense.

ACC is an association clever enough to consider alternatives to physical, printed media. In fact, they partnered with us this year for the 59th annual event to offer their program and abstract book in Kindle, iPhone, Nook, Reader, and other digital formats (http://cttoasis.wufoo.com/forms/acc10-i210/). The uptake of these formats, especially the iPhone version of their content, signifies a real shift in preference for how attendees want to access content. It's impossible to know (without quantitative testing) whether it is the cost/environmental concern or the simple convenience and portability of this type of content that is the primary motivator for "trying it", but it's clear that digital content consumption is on the rise for good reason. Fortunately, we're going to survey all willing participants in the digital content download group to see how to better cater to this progressive segment in the future! Data rules, and we want to hear the voice of our customer and their attendees loud and clear!

At OASIS, we've experienced a surge in demand for digital content offerings. PCMA's Convene approached us to do an article about our partnership with AHA and SfN with regard to e-Book creation. You can read it here http://bit.ly/bUAJI1 in the great article "Pages Without Pages". (Contrary to the one contextual error in the article, we're sure you know by now that OASIS is one of the original abstract management solutions with a history of over 15-years. Our Content Discovery Suite e-Book offering is what is new--the article references e-Books and OASIS interchangeably). We are optimistic that many associations realize the benefits of this important trend. It is a part of our core offering and we'll keep pushing ahead to create more opportunities in the digital content space.