Navigating the future of scholarly societies | Empowering communities

How can scholarly societies stay relevant in a rapidly evolving landscape? 

This episode tackles the pressures facing society leaders today—from outdated marketing strategies to untapped data potential. Join Colleen Scollans (Partner at Clarke & Esposito), Steve Echard (Executive Vice President of the American College of Rheumatology), and Miriam Maus (Chief Publishing Officer at IOP Publishing) as they explore practical strategies for future-proofing your organization. Discover how to validate products your members actually want, filter decisions through a community-first lens, and rethink marketing approaches that aren't working.

0:00 Intro
0:36 What society publishing means for your mission
1:27 What sets successful societies apart today
3:54 Overcoming resource and scale challenges
6:08 Finding the right partnership model for your needs
7:32 Leading transformation when consensus slows progress
9:51 How to prioritize when everyone wants everything
11:24 Tackling your top challenges: data, integrity, and AI
13:10 Attracting quality submissions, not just volume
15:19 Making the business case for technology investment
18:20 Building stronger publisher partnerships that work
20:09 Diversifying revenue beyond traditional publishing
24:38 Creating products members will actually pay for
27:13 Navigating AI without rushing or falling behind
29:10 What tomorrow's societies will look like
30:52 Why your community connection is your competitive edge
33:10 Closing thoughts

Transcript

The Conversations EP05 Society Transcript

[00:00:00] Jay Flynn: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Conversations, a show brought to you by Wiley, a global leader in research and education publishing. This series is about exploring the biggest opportunities in the world of academic publishing. It's about asking tough questions and getting into meaningful debate about where our industry needs to go.

[00:00:18] Jay Flynn: Now let's start the conversation. Hi, and welcome to the Conversations. I'm Jay Flynn at Wiley. Uh, I've got Miriam from Institute of Physics Publishing to my right. Colleen from Clark and Esposito and Steve from the American College of Rheumatology. When did you realize that society publishing was a thing?

[00:00:36] Colleen Scollans: My first job was at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and we were at the time trying to redefine what it was to be a CPA. And it felt really inspirational, pivotal, and it kind of set the trajectory of my career. And I've been in one way or another, working with society since. 

[00:00:52] Steve Echard: So I started at the American College of Rheumatology, actually was my first job out of school.

[00:00:56] Steve Echard: Right. And we had abstracts back in those days and people sent their abstracts via FedEx or fax. And then I had to take them and sort them and do everything, like we do everything digitally. Now 

[00:01:06] Jay Flynn: what about you, Miriam? 

[00:01:07] Miriam Maus: I first learned that, um, societies exist when I started my publishing career in a company called Blackwell, um, back in the 1990s.

[00:01:15] Miriam Maus: And Blackwell at the time was, um, really specializing in publishing on behalf of learned societies. I've, all my publishing career have had a connection to societies and now I work for a society publisher. 

[00:01:27] Jay Flynn: As you think about the changes that are happening, are certain societies at an advantage right now?

[00:01:33] Jay Flynn: Do they have structural advantages? 

[00:01:35] Colleen Scollans: I think the, the societies that have strong business leaders at the publishing home make a really big difference, right? Mm-hmm. They're commercially minded. They understand that even if you're part of a association with a nonprofit mission, you're competing against some very powerful and large commercial entities in some ways, right?

[00:01:56] Colleen Scollans: But there's sort of that sort of commercial acumen, I think. I think that's one. I think two is they understand that scale and investment matters, 

[00:02:04] Jay Flynn: right? Right, 

[00:02:05] Colleen Scollans: right. And they're very, very focused on developing the strategies that are going to give them competitive advantage. 

[00:02:12] Jay Flynn: Is that intuitive for most of your clients, or is that a large part of the value that you guys try to bring to them?

[00:02:20] Colleen Scollans: I think more people are waking up to the commercial realities, right? They're, they're seeing lost market share, right? They might be seeing the economics changing and they're realizing they have to, they have to behave differently, right? And so we're definitely seeing more knocks on the door. Are they at a place where they should be investing and scaling and growing?

[00:02:39] Colleen Scollans: Uh, do they need to look for partnerships? It's a real moment, I think, for a lot of association executives to think really strategically about their journal portfolio. 

[00:02:47] Steve Echard: Do you think that a lot of these executives have that kind of, um. Professional experience. So in other words, do they understand what they need?

[00:02:55] Colleen Scollans: Not always. Sometimes what you'll have at the helm of an association is a skilled scientist, a professional who's absolutely brilliant at their topic. At their topic, but less well versed in the economics of publishing. Mm-hmm. 

[00:03:10] Miriam Maus: So at IOP, uh, we are splitting to IOP publishing. The publishing business and the Institute of Physics, the society.

[00:03:18] Miriam Maus: And that is a, a setup that allows us at IOP publishing to really make those commercial decisions be strategic around publishing. Uh, we, we answer to a board of directors, not the council of the Society. So that distinction between. Subject matter expert and a publishing expert. I experienced that at, at work that has really helped us navigate those difficult changes we have to make, make investment choices that help the publishing organization, which then in, in turn helps the, the society 

[00:03:54] Jay Flynn: our publishers set up, society's set up to.

[00:03:59] Jay Flynn: Really make this transformation. And what are their top couple challenges on the like tech side that you're seeing? 

[00:04:07] Colleen Scollans: Um, I think, I think the first challenge is some publishers simply don't have the scale. Right? Mm-hmm. And so, um, whether that's Salesforce marketing, individuals, technology scale, um, they just simply don't have the scale.

[00:04:20] Colleen Scollans: Right. Um, and I think that that's a reality. Why many, why many societies partner with commercial publishers for that reason. I think the, the biggest challenge we often see is society's. Not really investing in their core technology to engage with their community and their audience. Right? Their members love them, but they're.

[00:04:43] Colleen Scollans: Engaging with brands every single day that they're used to having highly engaged, highly personalized, highly relevant experiences, particularly if you're dealing with early career professionals. 

[00:04:55] Miriam Maus: Sure. That is so true. I, I feel that the, the traditionally, the society was the members, the members came to meetings, the members published in the journals that there was a sort of very defined community that you knew, right, because you could see them at.

[00:05:11] Miriam Maus: Various events that is changing. In, in, in IOP Publishing's case, we, we publish in physics, the world's largest funder in physics is China. A lot of our authors, reviewers, editors are not based in the UK or in Europe. They are based in Asia. How do we engage with, with that community? Um, if we don't know.

[00:05:35] Miriam Maus: Really how they come to us, right? If we don't understand, you know, kind of are they, are they authors, are they reviewers? Um, are they members? Engagement used to be much more sort of on a one on one personal level. It's now a lot more high scale, and, and Colin is absolutely right. You need to invest in, in technologies and skills and capabilities to understand what, what that means.

[00:05:59] Miriam Maus: For you to be successful 

[00:06:00] Colleen Scollans: on, on your platforms, but also as you say, Jay, on CH channels where your community is like WeChat and China, 

[00:06:08] Jay Flynn: it's a totally different ecosystem. Um, it's really hard for a smaller society to scale. Um, one of the things that Wiley we're trying to do is we offer this sort of a la carte set of services that allow societies to maintain their independence, but then we also do the full partnership.

[00:06:23] Jay Flynn: Mm-hmm. Um. But one of the things we worry about as an observer and as the largest society publisher is, is that independence possible. Uh, in or, or sustainable in the medium term with all the changes, 

[00:06:38] Miriam Maus: I would say you can partner and remain independent. Mm-hmm. You can, you can partner 

[00:06:43] Colleen Scollans: true 

[00:06:44] Miriam Maus: to solve a particular technology problem.

[00:06:46] Miriam Maus: You can partner to get some expertise. And that seems to me a model that is, is has legs in, in the society publishing world, um, you know, stick to the core. Activities that the society does and where the subject expertise, the community knowledge really matters. Yeah. Editorial control, et cetera, but look for opportunities to, to fill the, the gaps you may have internally in terms of knowledge and, and capability.

[00:07:13] Steve Echard: Mm-hmm. 

[00:07:14] Jay Flynn: I mean, that is something, uh, Wiley we see as viable as well. And we made this big commitment to trying to keep both tracks available to folks and yet. Yeah. Even at our scale, we, we struggle to keep up with all the changes all the time. How do we modernize and how do we improve? How do you get folks to come along on this 

[00:07:32] Colleen Scollans: transformation journey?

[00:07:33] Miriam Maus: To do well in this environment? You need to understand what is driving the behavior of the people you work with, and then find that common ground. Yeah. Find a change that actually responds to the demands of the world out there, rather than the demands of the journal or the society or the publisher.

[00:07:49] Jay Flynn: Volunteer led organizations sometimes have less scale. 

[00:07:52] Colleen Scollans: Yeah. 

[00:07:53] Jay Flynn: What needs do they have that are different? 

[00:07:54] Colleen Scollans: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's, it's helping them think through what that strategy should be, what the focus areas should be, you know, when, when, when should they remain independent? When should they partner?

[00:08:04] Colleen Scollans: What does that investment roadmap look like? And, and, and maybe they do need to bring in some other staff members that come from more of a commercial kind of background. Mm-hmm. 

[00:08:15] Steve Echard: I would say also that the, the, if you're talking about like small versus large, I don't know if that's what you mean by volunteer versus, uh, professionally led.

[00:08:22] Steve Echard: I think some of the smaller ones have a great opportunity to be much more flexible in making change happen. Mm-hmm. Whereas when you have a larger organization that has a lot of, like you say, professional people, then getting them all to change or agree to change is much more difficult. 

[00:08:35] Jay Flynn: You are a larger organization.

[00:08:37] Jay Flynn: Mm-hmm. You have a large professional team. But as the leader, what keeps you up At night? 

[00:08:41] Steve Echard: We were having issues with, uh, the, the turnaround town when people submit a manuscript and when it gets published was taking for some of our journals was taking a long time. And so that's what we had to address. Um, and that same thing goes with anything else that we do.

[00:08:53] Steve Echard: Is there another way to do it? Is there another company that could do it for us better? If that's the case, that's fine, but that, that's a difficult thing to do to those kinds of changes are hard. 

[00:09:01] Miriam Maus: Yeah. I, I, I think the challenge that I observe with a lot of smaller, medium sized organization is. Being able to prioritize effectively, especially if you work in a mission led, purpose driven organization that's very community focused.

[00:09:14] Miriam Maus: There is a tendency to want to do everything Yep. And to continue to do everything right, because there's always somebody there who loves the way something has always been done. Really being clear about where your community, where your activities, where your, um, priorities need to lie, is absolutely crucial.

[00:09:34] Miriam Maus: That often is a, is a challenge to, to, to decide what you don't want to do anymore because you need to do this new thing with the same amount of resources and that that. That is what I really observe in, in small and medium sized organization as a, as a challenge. 

[00:09:51] Colleen Scollans: It's hard to get to focus mm-hmm. If you are leading with consensus.

[00:09:55] Jay Flynn: Yep. 

[00:09:56] Colleen Scollans: Right? Mm-hmm. And so it, it can't, it can't be consensus. It has to be a really strategic look at your mission, at your community needs, at the commercial and financial realities. And as you said, Steve, the options. What does it look like if we do it ourselves? What does it look like if we outsource? What does it look like if we partner?

[00:10:13] Colleen Scollans: What are the pros and cons of each of those models? Yeah. 

[00:10:16] Jay Flynn: So how do you get them to move faster in those consensus based and then, and, you know, discourse is a, is a feature. Mm-hmm. Right? Not a bug of the way academic progress and scholarly progress gets made. 

[00:10:30] Colleen Scollans: You need to have, uh. The helm volunteer or not.

[00:10:36] Colleen Scollans: Someone with a bold vision and a strong ability to communicate. Um, in my experience being on the marketing side of the fence, everybody thinks they can do marketing and 

[00:10:47] Miriam Maus: you know, it's a craft, like anything 

[00:10:49] Colleen Scollans: as a craft like anything else. And, and often I've found even the most entrenched editor when they're presented with evidence and data and really walked through the change journey.

[00:11:01] Colleen Scollans: And you, as you said, Miriam, fully understand where they're coming from. You're not just speaking at them, you're having a real conversation, but you have to have somebody at the helm who's willing to do that and who's got that bold vision. 

[00:11:13] Jay Flynn: It's about bringing the, the academics, the volunteers, the editors, the society publishing professionals, consultants from outside publishers together to work a problem.

[00:11:24] Jay Flynn: What's your top three problems right now? 

[00:11:26] Steve Echard: So I would say technology and data is the big one. The amounts of data that are available for us as an organization, the amount of data we have on our members that we don't use. If we could harness some of that, then we would be able to do a lot better with enticing some of those people to either become members or to kind of participate, engaged with the a c.

[00:11:44] Steve Echard: I think the second one is just, um, the sustainability and the kind of the systems that are in place in healthcare in general. Right. So, you know, reimbursement, the way people are getting reimbursed. Academic centers are struggling people out in practice or not say struggling, but you know, the thing, the, the environment's changing, 

[00:11:59] Miriam Maus: the research integrity crisis Yeah.

[00:12:00] Miriam Maus: Remains at the top. I mean, it's almost boring to talk about it, but it is absolutely still the biggest challenge. We face geopolitics. 

[00:12:08] Jay Flynn: Mm-hmm. 

[00:12:09] Miriam Maus: Very international. Author based colleague base, what does that mean, um, for the future. And the third one is of course, ai. And there I'm on the fence, whether it's a opportunity or a challenge or both.

[00:12:23] Miriam Maus: Yes. But working out where you play in that AI space, that, that is probably my, my, my, my third biggest issue. 

[00:12:31] Jay Flynn: So let's get into the research integrity thing for a second. First and foremost, can you describe for everybody like what the reality is? 

[00:12:39] Miriam Maus: The deal is that. At the moment, we are seeing submissions increasing staggeringly.

[00:12:47] Miriam Maus: We get a load more submissions than we got five, six years ago. But the quality of the submission has not held up. 

[00:12:54] Jay Flynn: Is that 'cause the marketing's too good? 

[00:12:57] Colleen Scollans: Always. Always Jack. 

[00:12:58] Jay Flynn: But seriously, when you think about the tech transformation that has to happen, yeah. Um, does that include a change in the. Like the weeding out of submissions earlier.

[00:13:10] Colleen Scollans: Rarely does somebody want more submissions. They want more. Quality, yeah. Submissions. Uh, and the way to get quality submissions is to have real good fundamental data so you know who you're targeting, right? You're targeting the right researchers that you want to publish in your portfolio. And so you need the technology stacks that help you do that, that are identifying individuals that tell you sure.

[00:13:31] Colleen Scollans: What other things that. A person has published with you or with other reputable publishers. Yeah. If they're a member in your association, you can't spray and pray marketing anymore, right? It has to be highly targeted. Right? Highly personalized, and you're attracting the right authors. 

[00:13:46] Jay Flynn: Okay. 

[00:13:46] Colleen Scollans: It's not hard to get submissions.

[00:13:48] Colleen Scollans: It's hard to get the right quality submissions. 

[00:13:51] Miriam Maus: I think there's another side to that coin, which is, yes, absolutely you want the quality submissions to come to you, but you also want to. Deter the low quality or flawed submissions. And that is as much of a challenge as getting the quality in, you know, kind of, you want the reputation to have really good research integrity checks and, and, and processes.

[00:14:13] Miriam Maus: So there's no point spamming your journal with hundreds of, they're not gonna get of flawed submissions because you will get desk rejected. Right. That's the, that's the, that's the goal to, to, to. To play that, that. Right. So, and, and putting your marketing and your brand message out there to support those dual goals is 

[00:14:34] Colleen Scollans: absolutely 

[00:14:34] Miriam Maus: key.

[00:14:35] Colleen Scollans: Good research, integrity is now part of your brand. 

[00:14:37] Miriam Maus: Yeah. 

[00:14:38] Jay Flynn: It's gotta be, 

[00:14:38] Colleen Scollans: gotta be. Yep. Yep. 

[00:14:40] Jay Flynn: How much time do you spend personally thinking about research Integrity? 

[00:14:43] Steve Echard: I think that's really more of something that our various committees think about a lot about, and so they have ways to combat that. They do a lot of mentorship, for example, um, teaching people the, the correct way to do things.

[00:14:55] Steve Echard: Yeah. But we do have these, you know, when you think of globally, we have all. Uh, people who are not members of the A CR because it's a, you know, a US based organization who are constantly submitting things. Um, I don't know. I think we rely heavily on our publishing partners to help us with, uh, with screening those kinds of things out.

[00:15:13] Jay Flynn: What kind of investments do societies need to make in data and how do you convince people it's the right thing to do? 

[00:15:19] Colleen Scollans: I think, um, the first thing to a knowledge is a lot of associations have. A large amount of technical debt. And that's an incredibly difficult conversation to have that if you, if you're looking to really, um, get your data in very, very good shape, you probably do need a data lake or data warehouse.

[00:15:40] Colleen Scollans: And I know Miriam, you know that very well. You, you have excellent data. 

[00:15:44] Miriam Maus: It's not me personally either. Right? 

[00:15:45] Jay Flynn: That's what I was gonna say. 

[00:15:46] Colleen Scollans: Um, but that also doesn't allow you to market. Right. You still need the appropriate marketing technology on top of that that allows you to personalize and engage and et cetera.

[00:15:56] Colleen Scollans: So, you know, it can be, it can be a difficult conversation. And I would just add that technology is maybe a quarter of it. There's no point in bringing in fancy new technology if you do not have the skills or the staff to do things with it. If you don't have people who understand how to date a model.

[00:16:14] Colleen Scollans: Your data lake will become unhygienic incredibly quickly. If you don't have the marketing people that know how to segment and personalize and test at scale, you'll have invested in fancy marketing technology and have blunt marketing creatives. Right? So it's, it's not just about the technology, it's also about the skills and the organization and the process.

[00:16:32] Steve Echard: So the hard part of all of that is then having a conversation with your members or your board who doesn't understand all that, and you say, this is how much it's gonna cost. Right. And they're like, do we really need to do that? Or do we need to go that far? 

[00:16:44] Jay Flynn: So how do we navigate these tensions? It's like short term, long term.

[00:16:48] Miriam Maus: I'm coming back to priorities. Yeah. And stop doing some things. 

[00:16:52] Jay Flynn: Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:53] Miriam Maus: And colleagues, teams, skills and expertise is a really good example. You need to look at the kind of skills you need. Data literacy is absolutely essential. These days, not everybody in a traditional society or, or or publishing organization has data literacy.

[00:17:12] Miriam Maus: So understand how you bring the people that are in your organization up higher, some, some new expertise, and think about things that you may not want to do in the future. Traditionally, the, the sort of the move away from print has been a, a great, um, opportunity to release some resources and invest them into newer digital skills, right?

[00:17:33] Miriam Maus: Yeah, sure. So, so look for those opportunities because it's hard to see that, um, revenues and, and, and income from, from publishing or other society activities will increase significantly, right over the next few years. So you have to be really clear about. What do you need most urgently? 

[00:17:52] Colleen Scollans: It may mean some hard decisions have to be made.

[00:17:55] Colleen Scollans: Yes. Um, we'll see organizations with high technical debt and a large need to invest and there's pushback on an investment and they're still spending tons of money 

[00:18:09] Steve Echard: Right. 

[00:18:09] Colleen Scollans: On marketing that frankly hasn't been effective in a deck for a decade. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. So some of this is making really hard choices and investing.

[00:18:19] Colleen Scollans: More strategically, 

[00:18:20] Jay Flynn: is it easier for you to have that conversation with a society and association than it is for, let's say, me, to have that conversation with like, do they believe you more than they believe their publisher? 

[00:18:34] Colleen Scollans: I, I think, I think it's gonna depend society by society, but certainly consultants bring that cross industry perspective and that objectivity that clients value, 

[00:18:45] Jay Flynn: right?

[00:18:46] Jay Flynn: It feels like it's something we all need to work together on. Because, you know, historically we haven't been in the MarTech business, but the needs that, um, we have as a publisher ourselves overlap very heavily and we're making tons of investments in these areas. Yeah. What do you think the, the single biggest opportunity there might be?

[00:19:07] Colleen Scollans: I think one of the challenges in general with a society, working with a commercial partner. Regardless of who that, um, commercial partner might be, is the fragmentation at the society level. 

[00:19:21] Jay Flynn: Right. 

[00:19:21] Colleen Scollans: Right. I, I, I, if I was at the helm, a CMO of a society, what would be really important to me is that unified data view, not having my publishing over here, my membership over there, anything that can facilitate, um, me having that view of my entire.

[00:19:39] Colleen Scollans: Community would be really important to me. 

[00:19:41] Jay Flynn: Okay. 

[00:19:41] Colleen Scollans: Not, not continuing the fragmentation, I mean, I'm, I'm of the view that in general societies are a little too siloed. Mm-hmm. Um, and they need to be thinking it's, it's one community, it's one audience base. Um, to your point, Miriam, before about focus, part of the reason society cost basis are maybe in some cases higher than they need to be is fragmentation.

[00:20:03] Colleen Scollans: I mean, that's another lever to think about how you might sort of be more efficient in coming together as sort of one organization. 

[00:20:09] Jay Flynn: Revenue can solve a lot of problems. It can help you pay down your tech debt. It can give you options for the future. Okay. Talk to me about ways you're looking to diversify revenue or you've successfully diversified your revenue.

[00:20:21] Steve Echard: So a lot of things that we are doing are related to some of the. Tried and true things that we've done in the past, but just taking a different approach. One of the things that a lot of, uh, let's say our pharma sponsors want is they want engagement with the members themselves. Yeah. So we create in the exhibit hall an innovation lab where they get to kind of go into this, you know, meeting room and it's.

[00:20:44] Steve Echard: Everybody meeting together, everybody talking together, that's the kind of things they want. That's the kinds of things they're willing to pay for. That's much more than buying an ad somewhere or putting up a banner somewhere in a hall. Right. And I think that's what we're creatively trying to think of.

[00:20:58] Steve Echard: How can we do that? 

[00:20:59] Colleen Scollans: Yeah. We have a lot of conversations with societies who wanna grow commercial revenues, right? Mm-hmm. I think that's where most of the revenue growth is, whether it's AI licensing or innovative commercial sponsorship and advertising revenues. That's where the Greenfield is. Yep. Um, and it does involve being incredibly innovative about your product formats, um, rethinking the assets you have.

[00:21:23] Colleen Scollans: Magazines, for example, or news magazines. Newspapers are often under commercialized assets at associations. We find that very, very often, but sometimes it's hard. Questions about policy. Policy. There's a revenue trade off between sharing more data and being very member friendly and understanding where you can be on that spectrum.

[00:21:42] Colleen Scollans: It's really important. 

[00:21:43] Jay Flynn: We completely agree with that assessment that, um, both on the r and d side in corporations, but also on the partnership and audience side, um, the interplay between society, membership, what they're doing at meetings, the access to those members. It does come back to data, but it also comes back to policy.

[00:21:59] Colleen Scollans: Yeah. 

[00:21:59] Jay Flynn: And, and, and I do think as we evolve together to look for new ways to, to grow, pay down the tech debt, do whatever, it's gonna be a discussion that keeps coming up. Do you feel like folks with the publishing experience are consulted enough in these conversations? 

[00:22:19] Miriam Maus: That's a slightly tricky question for me to answer because we are so, so separate in, in that way.

[00:22:26] Miriam Maus: Yeah. I would say that the. The policy questions come up when, um, when the members are impacted by anything. Mm-hmm. We do the interaction with the members. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So, so Ma Colleen mentioned magazine. So we, we, we do as a publishing house, produce the magazine that goes to every member of the society.

[00:22:50] Miriam Maus: And that is a, that is an opportunity for us to experiment with new. Corporate sales models, it, you know, replacing that traditional ad uh, revenue that Steve talked about, but there we have to be mindful of the fact that the membership of the society has an expectation of what their magazine would be like, right?

[00:23:11] Miriam Maus: And, and, and, and really find that common ground. Other than that, I, I don't think we have a lot of conversations about revenue diversification. For the group. 

[00:23:24] Steve Echard: Yeah. 

[00:23:24] Miriam Maus: Writ large. We are, you know, we are the biggest funder of the society, so they, they do rely on, on our surplus to, to, um, fulfill their mission.

[00:23:36] Miriam Maus: And that informs internal discussions at IOP publishing. So we want to invest of course, but it has to be done in the context of being able to provide funds to our owner. 

[00:23:48] Jay Flynn: How do we. Work with society leaders because I'm not hearing a lot of societies say, you know, what I need to do is I need to go buy that new MarTech stack.

[00:23:58] Jay Flynn: Right now 

[00:23:59] Miriam Maus: my experience actually is a little bit different. Mm-hmm. To that, my experience is that the society, um, the Institute of Physics really understands how important it is to. To modernize in publishing to make sure the publishing business is competitive. Of course there are then trade offs to be made.

[00:24:19] Miriam Maus: Yeah, because you can only spend money once. And, um, if we spend it on investments in our technology, that means there will be less surplus to go to the society. But my experience has been that there's a high degree of understanding how important it is to, to keep us. As a competitive player. 

[00:24:38] Colleen Scollans: I was gonna say, kind of pivoting, if it's okay.

[00:24:40] Colleen Scollans: Jay, back to the other question. We were talking about revenue diversification. Yeah. And we talked about data and we talked about policy. I think the sort of third leg in that stool is also content and product innovation. Mm-hmm. We're seeing a lot of associations really. Start thinking about two things.

[00:24:57] Colleen Scollans: One is how they might repackage their content slightly differently, right? Um, you've kind of talked about that, Steve, with your innovation idea. Right. Um, and the other is, if you think about associations, how many of them have real product teams, product marketing, 

[00:25:11] Steve Echard: but you know, they, they don't, they don't have that mindset of like, develop a product.

[00:25:15] Colleen Scollans: Product disciplines. 

[00:25:16] Steve Echard: Yeah. The research, the market research, all the stuff that has to go into like, we know what, this isn't gonna work. Let's not do this. It's let's do this and let's try it and let's see what happens. And then, then we'll worry about market. Then how are 

[00:25:26] Jay Flynn: they gonna figure it out? I mean, like, that's a craft too, 

[00:25:29] Colleen Scollans: right?

[00:25:30] Colleen Scollans: Yeah. They're, they're, you know, they're either gonna need to think about the resources they need or partner with organizations that can help 'em. Product, whether it's product development, product management, product marketing is a real skill. And if you're creating and launching a new product, you, you need, you need that kind of skill to bring it into the market effectively.

[00:25:48] Colleen Scollans: But we're starting to see. Associations think a little bit more about product innovation than I've seen in a while. 

[00:25:53] Jay Flynn: Who, who do you think is the the best example of that in the society space? 

[00:25:57] Colleen Scollans: ASCO has done phenomenal stuff on the commercial advertising side. Right, right. Yeah. The products now, but also the guide side, the guideline side, right.

[00:26:05] Colleen Scollans: They have that new AI guideline product that came out super cool 

[00:26:07] Steve Echard: recently. Super cool. 

[00:26:10] Colleen Scollans: HIMSS has done a really good example of sort of innovating, creating really a content apparatus that you could argue part of HIMSS is a digital marketing agency now. They've gotten so good at it for other organ, you know, other sort of entities that wanna use their digital marketing and content apparatus.

[00:26:25] Jay Flynn: Yeah. Do you feel like you're resource to do that? 

[00:26:27] Steve Echard: And I think there's a lot of societies, they create these programs and products because the, the members need them and so let's just give it to 'em. If they're a member, then they get it. As opposed to like, should it cost something? Like is there a price that should be put on some of these things?

[00:26:40] Steve Echard: And if we put a price on it, well what if nobody buys it? Well then that tells us we shouldn't have launched it in the first place. Right. If it's, there's no value that they're not even gonna pay for it. You know, we have seen the financial pressure of, like I said, post COVID, financial pressures have started to allow us to then have these kind of conversations where we just can't launch every single one of these projects.

[00:26:57] Steve Echard: Products. Yeah. Some of them are, you know, gonna be valuable and people will want them. And some of them won't. So you think of it from two ways. One is from the members, which, which members will want to use that product, but then are there other companies or other sponsors who want to then sponsor that product?

[00:27:12] Steve Echard: Right. 

[00:27:13] Jay Flynn: I think that the other piece that I really spend a lot of time thinking about is the social impact of ai. 

[00:27:21] Colleen Scollans: Mm-hmm. 

[00:27:22] Jay Flynn: We hear from a lot of our younger employees, we hear from a lot of, um, our society partners. What about the environmental cost of ai? Yeah. What about the. Um, what about the, the social impact of this on writing, on learning, on teaching?

[00:27:38] Jay Flynn: Um, I don't know that any of us have answers for that, but what do you guys think about that? 

[00:27:46] Miriam Maus: I think a concern I have about AI is that in, in, in the environment, we're where resources are constrained. Everybody's looking for solutions to pretty big problems. If you read it fast, AI could be the solution to many of our problems.

[00:28:01] Miriam Maus: Automation, identifying problematic content, helping editors making decisions. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all of that could be somehow automated? And the temptation is to really lean into this and think this is gonna be, this is gonna be the future of how we do, how we do publishing. Where I am hesitating a little bit is at the moment, what I, what I haven't seen is a solution that really creates those efficiencies and that effectiveness and that, that is where I think we as a, as, as, as.

[00:28:34] Miriam Maus: Publishers societies can play a role in saying, okay, we, we understand there is an opportunity here, but there is a, we can't create a massive creativity deficit that years later we then have another crisis at, at our hands. So there is a, there is a, um, there's a real, I think there's a lot to think about.

[00:28:54] Miriam Maus: There's a lot of opportunity, but we need to take one step at a time. There's a little bit of a temptation to rush into it. 

[00:29:02] Jay Flynn: Yeah. 

[00:29:03] Steve Echard: And I think it depends on the industry you're in. It depends on what field you're in. Some are gonna rush much faster than others. Yeah. Some will be much more cautious. 

[00:29:10] Jay Flynn: And I'm wondering, like if somebody enters Society publishing today, what's their version of that gonna be like?

[00:29:18] Jay Flynn: What are they gonna be looking back on 20 years from now going, gosh, do you remember when we used to? I think it's, they're gonna look at the tool set that we're using today, and they're gonna just be like, you're, I can't believe we used to do this. Yes. What do you think? 

[00:29:32] Colleen Scollans: Uh, I think certainly on the marketing side, they're not gonna believe that human beings did certain things that AgTech AI agents are gonna do outside of our industry.

[00:29:40] Colleen Scollans: Right. What's happening in marketing is remarkable with ai. 

[00:29:44] Jay Flynn: Mm-hmm. 

[00:29:45] Colleen Scollans: Remarkable. 

[00:29:46] Miriam Maus: On a similar theme, I think they're gonna think, I can't believe they put up with those technology interfaces and systems and how user unfriendly they are. Yeah. Compared to some of the, the consumer digital experiences. Oh my god.

[00:29:58] Steve Echard: Yeah. So I think it's also the amount of time and effort that, and the number of people that have to do certain things. Yeah. Right. Like in the future I could. You know, a, a group of five people in a department and there's like one person doing it now and going, I don't know why they had to have five people do this.

[00:30:12] Colleen Scollans: Yeah, I agree. I also don't think the society of the future will be structured the same way. Uhhuh. Right. I think, um, I think to a certain extent, if you look outside of our industry, often organizations are structured differently than societies are. Sure. And I think, I think we're gonna gravitate closer. To other industries outside in terms of, you know, we've had this conversation, right?

[00:30:34] Colleen Scollans: The importance of marketing and digital leadership at the table. The importance of data skills, the importance of an association, thinking more holistically, maybe busting their silos, as I like to say. I think, uh, I think they're gonna look radically different, new teams oriented around ai. I don't think we'll recognize the structures.

[00:30:52] Jay Flynn: I want to talk about the big strategic advantage that societies have, um, over everybody else. Like, what's the thing that's going to keep them uniquely suited to survive, evolve, thrive in the future? 

[00:31:05] Colleen Scollans: I think the societies that are closest to their community and are serving them, you know, w will, will, will have a unique advantage over other organizations that don't have those community ties.

[00:31:16] Miriam Maus: I agree with that. I would say that it's, it is helpful when you make decisions. Small, big, strategic, tactical, to have that filter of does it help? Community. Does it help my subject area, that that's really the, the, the ultimate question that should be underlying everything. And if you have that discipline to really think this is making the life of my community better.

[00:31:41] Miriam Maus: Yeah. The answer is yes. Go for it. If the answer is no, think about something else you could do. 

[00:31:46] Jay Flynn: Mm. 

[00:31:46] Colleen Scollans: Think if you think how, um. Effective brands are right, right. We, we choose to purchase things. We choose to do certain things because the association of the brand and societies have such an ability, amazing brand.

[00:32:00] Colleen Scollans: An amazing brand with their community. 

[00:32:02] Steve Echard: Yeah, totally. So in my mind, the brand is how people experience. It's not all the things that you say, right? It's how people experience you. And so for us, we have a brand promise and we have a commitment. That we're here for you so you can be there for your patients.

[00:32:14] Steve Echard: And that's, that's the key takeaway. Right. 

[00:32:16] Jay Flynn: I've heard you talk about members a lot, uh, and I think my question for you is like, do you think the membership is your secret sauce? Like, is that, is it the thing that really sets, say, a society publisher apart from a for-profit? 

[00:32:35] Steve Echard: It's interesting, you know, there's a lot of business decisions when it comes to publishing that can be made.

[00:32:39] Steve Echard: That could be done just for, let's make more money or let's you know, have a wider audience. Um, but for us, a lot of times I take the, the kind of perspective of, you know, we're here to provide a platform for our members to publish and to, you know, disseminate their research. And so in my mind that's again, our mission is empowering those professionals.

[00:33:00] Steve Echard: That's really what we're here for. Um, making money and doing some of those other things is great. It's important because we can't do all the other stuff that we wanna do. Uh, but that's really the most important part. 

[00:33:10] Jay Flynn: Everybody. It's been really fun. Thank you for spending some time with us this afternoon.

[00:33:14] Jay Flynn: Thanks again.