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Finding and Fine-Tuning the Financial Engine for Your Site
Kevin McKean, VP/Editorial Director, Consumers Union

What are the basic business models that can sustain a Web site? How do you decide which models are most appropriate for your site? In this session, we discuss site strategies that produce revenues, attaching questions that allow you to discern which combination of strategies will work best for your goals and mission.
Kevin McKean is VP/Editorial Director of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports. Prior to joining CU, Mr. McKean served as CEO and Editorial Director of InfoWorld Media Group, publishers of InfoWorld, PCWorld, MacWorld and many other tech magazines.

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Writing and Editing for the Web
Susan West, West Gold Editorial Consulting

Good Web copy is fundamentally different from printed material because Web users are different from print readers. Users don’t read on the Web—they scan. So your copy has to be short, to the point, and organized to deliver your message at a glance. We’ll look at basic techniques for “Webifying” articles and for creating headlines, link labels, and other display copy that inform and encourage users to act.
Susan West, former executive editor of Smithsonian magazine, is a principal of West Gold Editorial, a consulting group that helps start up and renovate publications and Web sites. Among other recent projects, she has advised Via magazine on Web strategies; consulted on the launch of an upcoming health site; and provided editorial training for Cooking Light and Southern Accents. Other print clients include University Business, Reader's Digest, the AARP Bulletin, and FamilyFun. Ms. West co-founded Hippocrates magazine, now the Time Inc. title Health, which won four National Magazine Awards while she was an editor there. During that period, she also served as a developmental editor for Time Inc. Ventures, creating editorial plans for several new magazine ideas.

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Video Strategies: What's Working
Sean Nolan, Director, Men's Health.com and
Molly Wood, Executive Editor, CNET

Why has video become so prevalent? How can you best incorporate it on your site? This session examines smart, new uses of video that can enormously enrich the content of your site.
Sean Nolan is Director of Men's Health online, where he is responsible for both the editorial and production/development teams. He brings to the position 20 years of publishing experience in newspapers, consumer magazines, and online.

Molly Wood is an Executive Editor at CNET.com, where she is host of the Buzz Report, a weekly technology news show that puts a fresh and funny spin on both gadgets and industry analysis. She also hosts the CNET Mailbag video series, and co-hosts the Buzz Out Loud and Gadgettes podcasts. Previously, Molly was a reporter and editor for The Associated Press and MacHome Journal. She is currently a recognized technology expert who frequently appears on CNBC, NPR, CNN Radio, MarketWatch Radio, San Francisco's KGO/ABC TV, G4 and numerous other local television affiliates throughout the country.

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10 Mistakes Web Sites Still Make—And How to Fix Them
Michael Gold & Susan West, Founders, West Gold Editorial Consulting

Many Web sites are still puzzling places that make it hard for users to do what they need to do. Working with a number of example sites, we demonstrate strategies for demystifying baffling navigation, sharpening fuzzy identities, unearthing “buried treasure,” translating “site speak” into an audience’s native language, and revving up flat content by making use of the Web’s special powers.
Susan West and Michael Gold specialize in launching and improving publications and Web sites. Founding editors of Health magazine, they have worked with some of the most prominent Web publishers in the U.S., including Time Inc./AOL, Consumer Reports, WebMd, the George Lucas Educational Foundation, BabyCenter, and Discovery Communications.

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Secrets of Search Engine Optimization
Jessie Stricchiola, Founder, Alchemist Media

Search engines present both challenges and great opportunities for site designers & developers. Learn how the search engines judge a Web page's quality and importance, how to improve your site's ranking, and what it takes to draw more visitors from search engines.
Jessie Stricchiola is co-founder of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) and author of The Art of SEO, soon to be published by O'Reilly Media. She has been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Business 2.0, and The Washington Post; and interviewed by NBC Nightly News, NPR, and the BBC. Her work on click fraud was featured in The Google Story by David Vise.

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SPECIAL: SITE CRITIQUES
Susan West & Michael Gold, West Gold Editorial Consulting, with other faculty

For this session, you will be assigned to a small team of your Web publishing colleagues. Working together in our computer lab, you will test-drive and critique one another’s sites using guidelines developed by our faculty. Your discussions will focus on clear presentation, intuitive navigation, and the ease with which users can perform critical tasks. At the end of the session, you will have pages of notes to take back to your organization on how to improve your site.
See above for bios.

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Using Web Analytics Strategically
Shari Cleary, Digital Marketing Consultant, Visual Sciences

We all have technology in place to track Web statistics. But interpreting the data we gather, and changing our sites because of it, are still black arts. What can you track with your web stats? What should you track?
Shari Cleary is a member of the Professional Services team at Visual Sciences (formerly WebSideStory), a leading Web analytics company. In this role, she works closely with media customers to optimize their Web analytics. Prior to joining Visual Sciences, Ms. Cleary served as Director of Research for CBS Digital Media where she was responsible for CBSNEWS.COM, CBS.COM and UPN.COM. She has worked in marketing research since 1997, and in the field of Web analytics since 1999 when she joined comScore Media Metrix, an Internet audience measurement company.

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Trends in Online Advertising
R.J. Hilgers, Avenue A|Razorfish

Video ads. Behavioral ads. Tickers and bugs. Ad networks. If you’re going to sell online advertising, you need to understand the fast-changing landscape of this important revenue-generating mechanism.
R.J. Hilgesr is a member of the team at Avenue A| Razorfish, an interactive services firm that helps companies use the online channel as a marketing and business tool. They combine data, design, technologies and rigorous optimization to build brands and improve relationships between customers, employees and partners.

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Harnessing the Power of Blogging
Scott Karp, Founder, Publishing 2.0 and Publish2

Blogs are a platform for daily online publishing, which can dynamically connect your site to the larger online ecosystem and draw an audience of passionate, engaged readers. But blogging is a web-native publishing format that requires a very different approach and mindset from that of print periodical publishing. How do you harness the power of blogging as an extension of your editorial mission? Which publishers have been most successful in extending their brands through blogging?
Scott Karp is Editor & Publisher of Publishing 2.0, a widely-read and respected blog that takes an incisive look at how technology is transforming media. He is also co-founder & CEO of Publish2, a social network and Web 2.0 platform for journalists. Mr. Karp was previously Director of Digital Strategy for Atlantic Media, publisher of The Atlantic Monthly. Recently, he was named by Folio: magazine as one of the 40 Most Influential People in Publishing for 2007.

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User-Generated Content: Growing It, Controlling It
Kevin McKean, VP/Editorial Director, Consumers Union

The hallmark of the new Web is the engagement of your readers in adapting and repurposing your content for their own purposes. How do you to think about harnessing the enormous energy of your users to build out your site?
Kevin McKean is VP/Editorial Director of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports. Prior to joining CU, Mr. McKean served as CEO and Editorial Director of InfoWorld Media Group, publishers of InfoWorld, PCWorld, MacWorld and many other tech magazines.

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Eight Tips You Need to Know to Stay Out of Legal Trouble
Jon Hart, Attorney, Dow Lohnes PLLC

Copyright. Content acquisition. Fair use. Trademarks and domain names. Visitors' agreements. Privacy policies. Spam regulation. Contextual advertising. Paid search. Spyware. Deep linking. Libel. Deal making and the contract process. Our legal expert explains how to protect your content and your brand - and how to stay out of hot water when running a Web site.
Jon Hart is a member of the law firm of Dow Lohnes PLLC, where he practices in the firm's Media and Information Technologies group out of Washington, D.C. For more than 20 years, Jon has specialized in the representation of media and technology companies on a broad range of commercial, transactional, operational and content matters. He is author of Internet Law: A Field Guide (BNA Books 2007).

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Future-Proofing Your Site
Kent Anderson, Executive Director/Int'l Business and Product Development, The New England Journal of Medicine, and
Alex Wright, Information Architect, The New York Times


The choices you make today regarding your site's infrastructure will affect what you can do both on the creative side and on the business side for years to come--so you need to get those decisions right. This session will examine how to set up your site so that you have maximum flexibility going forward.
Kent Anderson is Executive Director of International Business and Product Development for the New England Journal of Medicine. Prior to this, he was Director of Medical Journals at the American Academy of Pediatrics. He has been in publishing for over 18 years, and has worked as a writer, editor, designer, managing editor, and publisher.
Alex Wright has led information architecture initiatives for The New York Times, Harvard University, IBM, Microsoft, The Long Now Foundation, Internet Archive, and Yahoo! He is the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, and his writing has appeared in Salon.com, The Christian Science Monitor, The Believer, Harvard Magazine, and Utne Reader, among others


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Video How-To and Video Lab
Kenji Kato, with Kempton Izuno and John Duhring, VisionIT

How tough is it to create video? With the new tools avaiable, it is simple enough to bring editors into the process, allowing them to support or extend a story in new ways. Video How-To is a step-by-step primer on how to create digital video, along with a discussion of ways in which it can be distributed to support your mission. Video Lab is an opportunity for you to work with the equipment yourself to create sometihing on the spot.
Kenji Kato has 18 years of experience in media and high-tech, focusing on video editing, motion graphics, podcasting and interactive media creation, plus collaborative Web technologies, eLearning systems and 3D computer graphics software. Since 2003 Mr. Kato has been an active member of the Pixel Corps' Graphics Guild (http://www.pixelcorps.com/). He can regularly be seen on "This Week in Media," "MacBreak" and "MacBreak Tech," podcasts that appear on the twit.tv and pixelcorps.tv netcast networks.

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Doing Deals: Why Contracts Shouldn't Be Left to the Lawyers
Jon Hart, Attorney, Dow Lohnes PLLC

Whether you're acquiring content, outsourcing to an application service provider or partnering with another website, contracts matters. A contract is not just a legal document that defines when the parties can sue each other. A good contract is a business tool that helps the parties define and manage a relationship. Don't just leave contracts to the lawyers:  you can and should understand what they mean and why they matter. This session is designed to decode the legalese and demystify the contract process.
See bio above.

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Turning Your Brand Into a Communications Platform
Matt McAlister, Director, Yahoo! Developer Network

Media companies are starting to think of themselves as platforms. This session explores how companies are distributing their brands in new ways, opening up for collaboration, syndicating data, and creating network effects around ad revenue.
Matt McAlister is Director of the Yahoo! Developer Network and an expert in online media technologies. His previous experience includes overseeing online operations for both InfoWorld and The Industry Standard.

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How to Pull Off a Successful Redesign
Michael Gold, West Gold Editorial Consulting

Web site redesigns don’t have to be interminable, gut-wrenching, politically charged ordeals leading to results that please no one and fail to deliver noticeable improvements. But they do need to be carefully planned. Here are 7 key steps--from the Big Buy-In through Reading the Tea Leaves and on to the Final Tire-Kick—­to help you create a bang-up new site with less bloodshed. This presentation includes a sample “spec doc” and simple mockups for communicating your ideas to designers and developers.
Mr. Gold's recent consulting projects include site re-design strategies for the George Lucas Educational Foundation's Edutopia.org, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Avalon Publishing Group's Moon Travel books; a workshop on blogging for ConsumerReports.org; and the re-launch of UCLA magazine. In 2000, Mr. Gold helped to launch Dwell, winner of a National Magazine Award for General Excellence.
In 1986, Mr. Gold co-founded Hippocrates magazine, now called Health, where he was managing editor and executive editor.