We are five - diginomica then, now and the future
- Summary:
- We’re celebrating our 5th birthday. Join me as I set out some of the things we’ve accomplished while also offering a glimpse into the near future.
Five years on, the core team of five that launched diginomica in May 2013 has only had one (early) replacement but added more than 200 occasional and regular contributors, including those from our ever growing list of partners.
Looking back, I take special pride in a few things we have consistently accomplished.
Where are we now?
Our willingness to openly and transparently show which content has been created by partners has not diminished. It’s always been our mission to help partners craft content that people who visit diginomica want to read. While we’re not done, we’re getting there. Some of that content blows the doors off our reading stats - let’s see if we can make this year the one where all that content achieves blow out numbers.
I’m also proud of the fact that we have at least one customer-facing story every publishing day. It’s always been my belief that customers buy from customers. Our job is to extract the signal from the all too familiar rah-rah hype and noise. I think we do that well. From a quick view over our stats, that translates to around 1,000 stories from the more than 7,400 we’ve published since day one in 2013.
We have very little partner attrition, net-net it is negative.
The Team
Jon’s Hits & Misses has grown into a weekly ‘must read’ by thousands of people, not only through direct site visits and RSS feeds, but increasingly through the weekly email blast which we send out on a Sunday. I suspect that part of the attraction is Jon’s impish use of strikethroughs to make snarky comments, coupled to the increasing array of bizarre whiffs that he surfaces via Twitter. The Reed Strikethrough has become something of a badge of honor with honorees frequently retweeting their elevation to the Reed Hall of Shame Fame. This year has seen Jon crisscrossing the US for events during the Spring and Fall event seasons. As I pen this, he’s on a train to New York City...
Last year has certainly been one of change. We launched the /government site as a stand-alone unit, managed by Derek, one of the very few people who can call upon the UK Cabinet Office and get Very Important People politicos to take his calls. Alongside that, Derek is one of our most traveled core team members bravely giving up valuable downtime to lounge by the pool make early event inroads at an undisclosed hotel in Las Vegas as I pull this story together.
Phil developed our first d·book covering XaaS. Despite the slightly arcane moniker, XaaS was a success and will shortly be available in Kindle format. Phil’s travel is also crazy. Last time I heard, he was yo-yo’ing Between London and San Francisco.
Stuart seems to have spent most of the year engaging in his favorite hobby, retail therapy; i.e. offering therapy to the many failing retail businesses both in the UK and US, while at the same time holding up examples of how a very few are getting past the omnichannel hype to understanding the customer in new and novel ways.
For myself, this year has been one of adjustment as I dialled back travel and content production considerably, (I’m getting too old for the travel thing) spent a lot more time on technical oversight and development, engaging with some partners on a much deeper level while continuing to think up (mostly) madcap ideas that take us forward but often sideways. I’m still trying to suck less every day with varying degrees of success.
At the broader team level, we continue to expand our roster of regular contributors but at a pace that ensures we have the best quality of deeply experienced people at hand. We now have people on at least three continents. We’ve eaten our own dog food from a diversity standpoint. Close to 40% of our regular contributors are women. The most important thing is that everyone who contributes, regardless of race, gender, creed or (dis)ability brings something unique.
I continue to be amazed at the depth of understanding our contributors bring to the table. While most media properties fight over scraps from the Google/Facebook ad-fest, our contribs content themselves with sticking to our commitment to meet the needs of the informed buyer, unhindered by vanity metrics or the need to generate gazillions of page views.
All of that is far removed from the ‘science experiment’ that was diginomica in 2013. Back then, we had no idea whether the concept would work, let alone be profitable. We knew that the ad-fed media model was a zombie economy and 2017 was certainly a watershed year for those that chose to ignore the facts that were staring them in the face.
I’m happy to report that diginomica has been both profitable and cash flow positive from day one - largely due to the tremendous support of our early partners who continue to support us today, but also due to the spending discipline we exercise internally. Today, we are a proven, legitimate and important source of content for those that care about technology in the 21st century and, from what I understand, are considered a ‘must read’ among the board level digests of some of the world’s largest businesses. And we continue to deliver on our promise of a 48-hour payment turn around for everyone who provides services to the business.
What of tomorrow?
Change is coming at us with increasing pace. Our job in 2018-19 is to keep focused while we continue to carve out our own space.
As I peer down the list of more than 8,000 regular email subscribers, examine our industry beating open and click rates, dive into the detail behind the stats of around 1.8 million visits we get each year and note that we’re bringing on new partners - the latest is IQMS - I'm both optimistic and enthusiastic about an evolving business model that remains unique.
We will do more d·books - that’s a certainty, and on topics to be flagged up in the future. As you might expect, retail is high on that agenda. Going alongside that, we are looking at other verticals more closely but have yet to decide where to place our bets.
What about other formats? We’re playing with Alexa for Flash Briefings and we’re looking at Kindle much harder than we are PDF or other e-formats. How far we get is open to ongoing assessment.
What about podcasts and video? We’ve dabbled in those in the past and while the media generally raves about them, and video in particular, we want to make sure that we pick our spots in as careful a manner as possible. Video in particular is incredibly challenging and comparatively costly, even though hardware and software costs continue to decline.
What about content curation? That’s a definite possibility. There’s just too much stuff out there for everyone to consume everything of importance. Curation provides a handy way to expose content in bite sized pieces and then provide the means for readers to go exploring for themselves. Jon already does a limited amount of that through Hits & Misses and I often reference external content through the daily email newsletter, but there is so much more we could accomplish in this way.
Will we offer paid subscriptions? That’s an interesting question I’ll answer this way. There’s a ton of things we learn along the way that never see the light of day. Those learnings have value to buyers.
Are we a data-driven business? Kind of. We use metrics in ways we believe benefit readers and partners alike but there’s plenty we could do that we have yet to explore. But...numbers only tell part of the story and we think it’s foolish to rely solely on numbers to understand what people want. We’re much more interested in the people who read our content, their reasons for doing so and the direction of their interests beyond the news agenda hype. That’s a whole different class of analytical problem that is both challenging and fascinating in equal measure. I personally wrestle with it on a day to day basis, picking up and throwing away many technologies in the process.
In 2017 we had no alternative but to stray into the political world. It's dangerous territory for the unwary but we believe there are issues impacting the enterprise that demand our taking positions. Diversity is one of those topics. Expect to see us remain committed to a robust diversity agenda.
Partner success informs our success and we will do more with certain partners in 2018-19 than ever before. And while we don’t make much of a noise about this, it is gratifying that every member of the core team holds C-Suite relationships with partners and non-partners. In the last few years, a number of the people with whom we developed relationships as part of the broader partner relationships have gone on to run businesses big and small as CEOs in their own right. We keep in touch.
It is even more gratifying that those relationships are not fixed but are team driven. That allows us more feet on the attended event street than any other tech media business, ensuring that our event coverage is not limited to the marketing keynotes or to individual personal relationships. Last year, for example, we published 32 stories out of Dreamforce. Expect even more in 2018-19 with large-scale events like SAPPHIRE Now, Oracle OpenWorld, Workday Rising, and Dreamforce getting particular attention.
While it may not be obvious, we have spent a good amount of time with DevriX, our trusted development partner, both hardening the core while simplifying our technical landscape and generally improving the user experience. That continues and as I review progress on the project management system, I see there are 14 tasks assigned to me for review or action. While I can’t talk too many specifics, one thing I can mention is search. It’s been a bugbear since forever but we finally think we’ve found a method that not only kicks ass but is super fast. You should hear more about that very soon. And of course, GDPR gives me plenty to think about.
Finally
A big thank you to everyone who’s been involved in helping diginomica reach this milestone. A special thank you to all our readers, some of whom have become real fans who Tweet and ReTweet our ‘stuff’ on a daily basis. It’s a pleasure to know you as individuals who care as much about what digital technology can deliver as we do.