Working Smarter By Christopher Durso
Take Away
Pages Without Pages
A new application successfully tested at two recent major medical shows is taking the e-reader from beach books to conference content
WhenBeth Croll,CMP,bought Barnes&Noble’s Nook electronic-book reader, it was supposed to be a Christmas present for her husband — a “technical guy”who“subscribes to lots of differ- ent journals and books,” said Croll, senior manag- er of the Scientific Sessions program for the Amer- ican Heart Association (AHA), “and every few years they publish a new edition.” But then came Scientific Sessions 2009, held on
Nov. 14–18 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, during which theAHApiloted OASIS, anewapplication fromCoe-TrumanTech- nologies thatmade its 550-page final program, as well as its exhibitor guide, available as e-book downloads fromthe 21,000-attendee event’shome- page. That meant that people with a Nook, an
Amazon.com Kindle, a Sony Reader, an iPhone, or
2009, held on Oct. 17–21 atMcCormick Place in
Chicago.Thecompanywasresponding toavariety of forces, Jenkins said, including greening, the desire to cut costs, and the need to move content more quicklyandfluidly.“There’s this intersectwherecon- tent is evolving,” Jenkins said.“The challengewas, we would survey association staff, and they were telling us consistentlythat they personally don’t use these devices.Wewerescratchingourheads, because we see plenty of attendeeswho appear to use their phones and othermobile devices to see content.” Coe-Truman’s instincts turned out to be pretty
good. Amazon hasn’t released sales figures for the Kindle—themost popular e-reader on themarket by far—butbusiness analysts have estimated that the company sold three million last year alone. Barnes&Noble debuted theNooklastOctober—
“I love to read, but when I buy a paper book, I feel guilty now.”
most other portable wireless devices could eschew hard-copy versions of the program and exhibitor guide infavor ofpaper-free, easilynavigable e-pubs. Or they could download e-reader software onto their laptops, and look at the pubs thatway. About 2,500 people visited the e-book section
on the Scientific Sessions homepage, according to Jon Jenkins, product manger for OASIS, with 684of themactuallydownloading thepublications —“which reflects 27 percent of conversions to download, which is great.” Behind the scenes, Croll herself was hooked.
“Since [Scientific Sessions 2009], … I love to read, but when I buy a paper book, I feel guilty now,” she said, laughing. “I feel like I’ve got to share it with multiple people or I’ve hurt a tree.” Coe-TrumanworkedonOASIS for a fewyears
beforedebutingit atbothScientific Sessions2009and the Society for Neuroscience’s (SfN) Neuroscience
only to announce amonth later that it was sold out for the holidays.Apple has sold more than 40 mil- lion iPhones worldwide since launching the device in 2007, and its iPad, announced in January, has generated a lot of buzz. Eventually,Coe-Trumangathered enough data
to approachsomeof its clients, including theAHA andSfN,abouttestingOASIS at their events. In addi- tion to being more environmentally friendly than printed materials, e-book pubs offer a certain ease of use —including search and bookmarking capa- bilities. That’s not an insignificant selling point when you’re talking about a 550-page program, evenona small screen. “Itwassurprising to see the uptake of basic session content on devices like the iPhone,”Jenkins said.“Whatwe’ve foundis that if you’realreadycarryingadevice with you, it’sapret- ty natural derivative to checkacalendar or program on that same device.”
ON_THE_WEB: Visit the AHA Scientific Sessions 2009 e-book portal at
www.scientificsessions.org and the Neuroscience 2009 e-book portal at
www.sfn.org/am2009. To learn more about Coe-Truman’s OASIS application, visit
http://home.abstractsonline.com.
20 pcma convene March 2010 ILLUSTRATION BY GREG MABLY
Papered Over The e-book option at theAHA’s Scientific Sessions 2009 was as much about providing “one more electronic method” for attendees to access content as it was about saving the planet, according to Beth Croll,CMP. Not that greening
isn’t a priority for the AHA. “We are abso- lutely trying to partici- pate in the green initiative,” Croll said. “We’ve put together a plan of several things we’ve done and plan to do. [The e-book application] isn’t something we thought of, but it absolutely fits into this.” Is going completely
paperless in the future for theAHA? “Yes,” Croll said. “But not quite yet. Definitely a long-term goal.”
Christopher Durso is executive editor of Convene.
Working Smarter is sponsored by PSAV Presentation Services,
www.psav.com.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108