don't think websites, think data

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don’t think websites: think data [ the surprising conclusions of someone who prefers content to technology ] www.slideshare.net/dmje

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The notion of allowing access to your website content and data via API's and other machine readable means is well embedded in geek circles. This presentation aims to look at the non-technical reasons why these approaches are a good idea, arguing that it is time for Machine Readable Data (MRD) approaches to be better communicated to content owners, budget holders and other non-technical stakeholders.

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Page 1: Don't Think Websites, think data

don’t think websites: think data[ the surprising conclusions of someonewho prefers content to technology ]

www.slideshare.net/dmje

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Hi. I’m Mike Ellis, Solutions Architect for Eduserv, a not for profit IT company based in Bath, UK
Page 2: Don't Think Websites, think data

ten reasons why you should pay attention to the geeks

actually, the real title is this:

>

because actually they have something quite importantto say which us non-geeky people should be listening to

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(you wouldn’t have come along if I’d said that before)

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first, the geek snigger test

Presenter
Presentation Notes
First, I just want to ascertain the level of geekiness in the room using a tried and tested, statistically robust method
Page 5: Don't Think Websites, think data

hardcore geek

http://xkcd.com/327/

Page 6: Don't Think Websites, think data

amateur geek

http://www.neologies.net/2007/03/html-tattoo.html

Presenter
Presentation Notes
This talk is mainly non-technical, for reasons that will hopefully become clear later on. If you are technical (and find this cartoon funny), you may all be converts already. If this is the case, your job is to go convert 3 non-technical people to the way of thinking I’ll talk about today
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(awake?)

http://boingboing.net/2006/11/02/hilarious-piechartvi.html

Presenter
Presentation Notes
And just to test whether anyone is actually awake. You should find this funny...
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what will you come away from this talk with?

Presenter
Presentation Notes
I almost used the phrase “learning outcomes” and then realised I’m in a room full of educational types. So didn’t.
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I want to:

1. Convince you that good content is content that has been set free

2. Demonstrate 10 reasons why machine-readableness is a good thing

3. Give you 5 ideas about how do “do it”

4. Not be technical* * depending on the outcome of the geek snigger test

Presenter
Presentation Notes
...but these are the essential things I’d like to get across today
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...simple, really.

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consider the value of locked-in content

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Everyone has been talking numbers, particularly around investment into digitisation Not all of this is “locked in”. But I think it’s fair to say that most of it is.
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locked in = single purpose

single purpose = wastehttp://www.jisc.ac.uk/events.aspx

http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/single.htm?ipg=8727

http://www.ucas.com/instit/i/h60.html

http://unicorn.lib.ic.ac.uk/uhtbin/opac/webcentral

Presenter
Presentation Notes
By “locked in”, I mean single purpose. If you consider the amount of time that has been spent researching, keying, formatting and updating these kinds of sites, I think you’ll agree that for this information to be used once, on that particular page/site is a bit of a waste..? I’m not picking on these example sites particularly - this is a hugely common issue, and far easier to find examples of bad practice than examples of good...
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“..[to decide] the next stepsthat need to be taken to ensure the sustainedintegration of digitised content into research and education ”

why are we here?

Presenter
Presentation Notes
At the JISC conference this week, our statement of intent was this. The key words for me are *sustained* and *into* - this is about finding ways of providing our stuff in a way that suits users
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“content needs to be made availablequickly, easily, and in a way that suits individual needs”

Catherine Grout, jdcc09:

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Catherine put it rather better yesterday...
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and the answer is...?

Presenter
Presentation Notes
So what can we do about locked in content? What’s the answer...?
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actually, it’s these: machine-readability

APIRSS

RDF

RDFa

REST

OpenSearch

JSON

microformats

iCal

Presenter
Presentation Notes
It’s these. Machine readable formats of some description. You might have heard of some / all / none of these
Page 17: Don't Think Websites, think data

(i.e. stuff that a computer can

get at when it comes to your site)

Presenter
Presentation Notes
The important thing is this: data and content that can be “got at” by things other than humans. The non-human things might be feed readers, scripts, other sites, widgets...
Page 18: Don't Think Websites, think data

“machine readable” is a bit of a mouthful, so how about..

MRD:“machine readable data”

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Let’s call all these things together “MRD”...
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purists might argue with this

but we're going to ignore them

Presenter
Presentation Notes
The technology types will be squirming in their chairs about me calling RSS and an API the same thing, but the essence of the approach is the same...
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<tr> <td colspan="2">

<div class="mxb"> <h1>John Simpson: Secret voices of the new Iran</h1> <p>John Simpson reporting from Tehran before his visa ran out on Sunday...</div>

</td> </tr>

browsers (therefore people) read html

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Here’s some content (the bit in orange) from the BBC website It is surrounded by *markup* which just happens to be about *presentation* (there are some subtleties here - CSS, etc, but I’m NOT BEING TECHNICAL)
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non-browsers read non-html

<rss version="2.0"> <channel><title> John Simpson: Secret voices of the new Iran </title> <link>http://bbc.co.uk/.../</link> <description> John Simpson reporting from Tehran before his visa ran out on Sunday...

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Here’s *the same content* but delivered as RSS. The important thing here is the content stuff in orange. Notice that although the syntax *around* the content has changed. The content hasn’t.
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these things are the non-html bit

APIRSS

RDF

RDFa

REST

OpenSearch

JSON

microformats

iCal

Presenter
Presentation Notes
..so the common connection between all these technologies is the *delivery of content*
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geeks are signed up to MRD

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Geeks understand why this is important. Pretty much every bleeding edge web app these days has an API delivered as part of the site. And if it isn’t there, it’s “on the roadmap”...
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the importance of this isn’t immediately clear

and certainly hasn’t been well communicated

Presenter
Presentation Notes
But to date there has been a terrible job done in communicating it to the people who *actually matter* when it comes to content: content owners, budget holders, strategists, managers, stakeholders. I tried doing searches like “return on investment for API’s” when I was researching this presentation. There isn’t much out there. API’s and the world of MRD is a *geek world*. We need to change this, and now.
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now is the time to convince the non-geeks

that they should invest* in these approaches

* attention, not necessarily money

Presenter
Presentation Notes
The “investment” in MRD isn’t necessarily in terms of cash. It is more about understanding and attention; getting these approaches onto the strategic plans of content owners. The harder barriers are those around copyright, access, content freedom and mindset. But we’ll see now why these barriers aren’t as concrete as they first appear...
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ten reasons to stop thinking websites

...and start thinking data

Presenter
Presentation Notes
So here’s ten *non technical* thoughts on why these approaches are important, and how to convince content owners that this is the case.
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1: content is still king, and always will be

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Content is the single most important thing, bar none. This isn’t new.
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MRD is a content concern, not a technical one

Presenter
Presentation Notes
As we’ve started to see, the techniques here aren’t about technology, but about the *content* that the technology surrounds. This is a *content concern*, not a technical one. That’s why we need to move it out from under the geek rock...
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2: re-use is not just good, it's essential

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Re-use isn’t a new phrase either. Anyone who has built or procured a CMS will have heard this a lot. It is still important.
Page 30: Don't Think Websites, think data
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Here’s some simple examples where simple API’s have led to content re-use across Eduserv. This is an internal example, but the principles are the same. The same content is repurposed for use via multiple channels. In this instance, I built a simple API which lets my contact information surface across multiple applications throughout Eduserv.
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3: life is easier when you (everyone) can get at your data

"wouldn't it be great if..."

Presenter
Presentation Notes
If you own websites, you’ll undoubtedly have been asked “hey, wouldn’t it be great if...”
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archive?

run a kiosk?

make it pretty?

run a report?

have a mobile version?

re-purpose?

...?

build a widget?

make it more searchable?

Presenter
Presentation Notes
All these things become much, much easier if you can *get at your data* easily via MRD methods. You want a mobile version? Easy. A touchscreen? Trivial. An offsite widget? No problem... I’m simplifying here, but only a bit...
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4: content development is cheaper

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Content development becomes cheaper because you can focus on the content itself, not the means of delivering that content...
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launchball

www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/launchball

Presenter
Presentation Notes
This example wasn’t cheap, but *changing content* is made cheaper by having an API under the hood. Here, all the content in the Launchball game is held in the Sitecore CMS. If a member of staff wants to create a new level, change a gizmo, reverse gravity, etc – it is done in the CMS and delivered via an API to the Flash game. The net result? Content changes are cheaper because they don’t require Flash development resource.
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5: things get more visual

Presenter
Presentation Notes
We’ve heard a lot about visual interfaces the last couple of days. Hurrah for that. It’s important – making interfaces and web environments attractive isn’t what geeks are good at...
Page 36: Don't Think Websites, think data

http://visibletweets.com/

Presenter
Presentation Notes
If you can squeeze your data out, it can be made beautiful. (and if not by you, by someone or something else “out there” on the web)
Page 37: Don't Think Websites, think data

seattle public library: http://bit.ly/Bmc8N

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Here’s a couple of familiar examples MIT timeline (top left), Google charts API (bottom right)
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6: taking content to users, not users to content

Presenter
Presentation Notes
If we want our users to *really* engage with our content, we *have* to stop assuming that they will come to our website. They probably won’t. They probably prefer to see it on Facebook, Netvibes, Google homepage, Google Images, in their email, on their mobile...etc This is often a bitter pill to swallow when you’ve invested in a beautiful website, but ask yourself: do you want more traffic, more people, more coverage, more engagement?
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your content on other sites

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Here are some examples: widgets, panels, feeds, syndicated content - all because of MRD
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7: it doesn’t have to be very hard

Presenter
Presentation Notes
All of this may look hard. Some of it is.
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Presenter
Presentation Notes
But a lot of it isn’t. Here’s www.aadl.org search results. Looks pretty normal, but it has an RSS version under the hood (I don’t think it’s OpenSearch, but similar). Just by doing this (it is literally a template change), I (and I’m not a very good developer!) can take the results and *do* things with it. Here’s a Yahoo! Pipes version and a mobile one. Mobile search results from nearly no effort...
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8: you can't hide your content

Presenter
Presentation Notes
This is a key point. If you put your content on the web, it *can* be got at. Consider Google Images for example – how many people are viewing your images there rather than on your site. While I was at the Science Museum, we went through a phase of 9% of our referrals coming from MySpace. This was entirely because of users embedding our images on their personal pages..
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http://hoard.it

http://developer.yahoo.com/yql

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Here’s some more examples. Screen scraping is a really old technology, but it is growing up a bit. On the left is http://hoard.it (a project that Dan Zambonini / Box UK and I have been working on) and YQL. Both are conceptually based on being able to turn non-MRD into MRD. Legalities? Who knows.
Page 44: Don't Think Websites, think data

Thanks to Tony Hirst: http://bit.ly/8zwEn

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Here’s another examples, from the OU’s Tony Hirst.
Page 45: Don't Think Websites, think data

9: we really is bigger and better than me

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Hundreds of people out there may well want to use your content in ways that you haven’t even dreamed about
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46

positive externality

next up are the Network Effects.

here’s a classic example: the more people who own telephones, the more useful they become.

There is a *positive externality* - a user doesn’t intend for their phone to create value for others, but it does ”

Presenter
Presentation Notes
...and by providing content in these ways, *positive externality* comes into play; in other words, the more people who do it, the better and more data-rich the environment becomes.
Page 47: Don't Think Websites, think data

10: traffic

Presenter
Presentation Notes
The web is about the long tail, especially if you own niche content. There is lots of evidence starting to emerge about API-based traffic. Twitter is the classic example right now, where it is believed that 10x the traffic to www.twitter.com is received by the Twitter API.
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48

but how?

Presenter
Presentation Notes
So how do you do this stuff?
Page 49: Don't Think Websites, think data

if you love it, set it free

(you lost control anyway)

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Firstly, embrace the mind-set. If it is on the web, you lost “control” anyway.
Page 50: Don't Think Websites, think data

don’t ever stop thinking users

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Users (the tiny bit of the iceberg above the water) are the only – repeat ONLY – important piece of this equation. Not your internal stakeholders, not your funders. If you build something and the users don’t like it, *it will fail*.
Page 51: Don't Think Websites, think data

start small

APIRSS

RDF

RDFa

REST

OpenSearch

JSON

microformats

iCal

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Start with the easier approaches. The ones in bold here are pretty trivial bits of technology – cheap to develop, becoming widespread in adoption.
Page 52: Don't Think Websites, think data

52

always think: “what if...?”

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Even if your content is only needed on one page right now, think about those “what if” scenarios. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to build X with less budget, less internal treacle, less complexity?
Page 53: Don't Think Websites, think data

never, ever procure technology again

without asking: “where is the [API]?”...

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Make your suppliers work. Don’t ever buy anything (that’s internal systems, external systems, content systems, finance systems, CMS solutions, etc...) without asking “where is the API?”. Eventually, suppliers will have to take notice.
Page 54: Don't Think Websites, think data

the takeaway thought

At some point in the future, you’ll want to do “something else” with your content. Right now, you have no idea whatsoever what that thing is.

These techniques allow you to make a worthwhile investment in a future no-one can know.

Presenter
Presentation Notes
If there is any investment in the future which is safe, this is probably it.
Page 55: Don't Think Websites, think data

thanks for listening

[email protected]

twitter.com/m1ke_ellis

electronicmuseum.org.uk

www.slideshare.net/dmje

Presenter
Presentation Notes
Thank you for your time.
Page 56: Don't Think Websites, think data

thanks to these people, too

abstract http://www.flickr.com/photos/toxi/292509986/empty room http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkmoose/2355080489/answer http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrs_logic/3320303076/components http://www.flickr.com/photos/storm-crypt/2078500698/sea http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezioman/410307927/destroy purists http://www.flickr.com/photos/apeology/2335392254/print screen http://www.flickr.com/photos/p1r/1351558354/bad communication http://www.flickr.com/photos/shelleygibb/3372412222/pay attention http://www.flickr.com/photos/subliminal/511527000/ten http://www.flickr.com/photos/spilt-milk/164145237/content http://www.flickr.com/photos/p373/2537069802/re-use http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcusq/3032678489/just relax http://www.flickr.com/photos/victornuno/205239817/cheap http://www.flickr.com/photos/project-404/142767581/visual http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielaguilar/2967187605/crowd http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalieye/3265551769/simple http://www.flickr.com/photos/martynf65/3494532917/hidden http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiggywinkle/54801422/social network http://www.flickr.com/photos/gustavog/4557105/traffic http://www.flickr.com/photos/djwudi/268382948/free birds http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankloohuis/468320896/freedom http://www.flickr.com/photos/josefgrunig/1732787905/night fight http://www.flickr.com/photos/strocchi/295280599/