¤ New SIIA Content Division Staff
The Content Division is pleased to announce that industry veteran Ed Keating accepted the role of Vice President. Prior to accepting this position, Ed worked for eighteen years in the information industry with Easton Consultants, Avantt Consulting, EDGAR Online and Commerce Clearing House (CCH). Ed can be reached at 860-663-5535.

Brian McCloskey also joins the department as Program Manager. Brian will be working with Ed and our member companies on a wide variety of initiatives including our Brown Bag program, the Information Industry Census and our CEO Breakfast Series. McCloskey joins us from the SIIA's Software Division and can be reached at 202-789-4482.

¤ SIIA Announces New Content Division Board
In May 2005, the SIIA welcomed the following newly elected members to the Content Division Board of Directors: Jeffrey Cutler (GuruNet Corp.); Larry Schwartz (Newstex, LLC); Webb Shaw (J.J. Keller & Associates, Inc); and Pamela Springer (ECNext, Inc.). Click here to view the Press Release announcing the new Board members or click here to view the complete Content Division Board.

¤ The 21st Annual SIIA Codie Awards: Call for Nominations
Nominations are now being accepted for the 2006 Codie Awards. Gain instant prestige, industry recognition, media attention and increased awareness. Get your products and/or services in front of members of the press and potential customers and partners. Nominees receive extensive exposure to software and technology business professionals and consumers along with key media and analysts.

Nominations will only be accepted until October 14, 2005; so do not hesitate, visit http://siia.net/codies/2006/ to view this year's categories and nominate your solution today! For more information, please contact Leila Rao, SIIA Awards Program Manager, at 202-789-4458.

¤ Save the Dates, January 31 - February 1, 2006: Information Industry Summit 2006 - NYC
SIIA's Content Division invites executives from the electronic publishing and content industries to attend an exclusive two-day Summit to discuss the strategic outlook for the industry. The Information Industry Summit 2006 will feature industry leaders offering their unique perspectives on how users are taking control of their purchase, usage, storage and sharing of content. Details and registration information can be found here.

¤ Brown Bag: Creating Strategic Partnerships that Work, 9/27 - NYC
The digital information industry is built upon an extensive network of partnerships that link aggregators and syndicators with content providers and content providers with each other. This panel will bring together key information industry deal makers skilled at getting these deals done. Details and registration information can be found here.

¤ SIIA CEO Breakfast: Matthew Szulik, Red Hat - 9/27 - NYC
Matthew Szulik, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Red Hat will present at the next installment of SIIA's CEO Breakfast Series. The Series showcases the innovation and thought leadership of SIIA members speaking on salient industry issues to an audience of influential New York-area executives. More information on Matthew's presentation, as well as registration information, can be found here.

¤ "Information User Behavior Changes" Brown Bag Replays Available - Webcast\Podcast
SIIA and ScribeStudio are pleased to announce that replays of the July 28th Brown Bag are now available via webcast or podcast. Any employee of an SIIA Member company interested in taking advantage of this great resource should contact Brian McCloskey.


¤ Working Groups
The Content Division’s working groups are a great way to get involved with the SIIA. It provides members a way to learn about current industry issues and affords you a chance to work with peers at other companies. Membership to these groups is open to any employee from a member company. Please contact the chairs to find out more.

¤ Business Models Working Group
  Judy Hsieh, BusinessWeek Online (Chair)
The Business Models Working Group focuses on assessing and providing information on best practices for business models for electronic content. The goal is to track and report on how buyers and sellers of data are successfully managing distribution of digital content.

¤ Standards Working Group
  Ken Ficara, Wall Street Journal (Chair)
The Content Standards Working Group serves as a resource to SIIA members who are interested in adopting standards for content format and management, but who are confused by the plethora of choices and confusing claims. This group also brings a business focus to standards discussions, in the hope of influencing standards groups to concentrate on solving the problems that publishers and editors face.

¤ Content Anti-Piracy (CAP) Group
  Keith Kupferschmid, SIIA (Chair)
The CAP group is a collection of content providers who gather under the auspices of SIIA's Anti-Piracy group to address compliance, digital rights management, and data piracy issues.

¤ Online Fraud Prevention Working Group
  Pamela Springer, ECNext, Inc. (Chair)
The objective of this initiative is to review and identify areas of fraud that online publishers need to be aware of and concerned about and develop a short “best practices” guide on Personal Identity Information for online publishers. The guide is aimed at helping to improve internal practices around payment processing in order to mitigate the risk to publishers of fraudulent online purchases – both for themselves and their customers. The group will be kicking off in September 2005.


¤ Government Affairs/Public Policy
SIIA's Government Affairs program aggressively promotes and protects the interests of its member companies in legal and public policy debates by working with state, federal and international policymakers, organizing grassroots activism and participating in landmark legal decisions. SIIA is the leading voice on key issues affecting the software and digital content industry, particularly with regard to electronic commerce and the digital marketplace.