The US' National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS), US, has announced the early bird discounts for 2013 NFAIS Annual Conference, In Search of Answers: Unlocking New Value from Content. The event will be held from February 24 - 26, 2013 at the historic Hyatt at the Bellevue in Philadelphia, PA.
Early bird registrations are available until January 11, 2013. Until then savings of up to $200 off the full registration fee are available and NFAIS members registering three or more staff at the same time receive even greater savings.
This year's offers include 50 percent discounts for staff of member organisations that are in the early stages of their career (5 years or less), 30 percent discount on daily rates for all government employees, 20 percent discount on full/daily rates for first time non-member attendees and use of audience-response devices throughout the conference to capture audience opinions – all registrants will be sent a copy of the results.
The three-day meeting will take a look at how technologies once considered disruptive have converged, been embraced, and are driving publishers and librarians around the globe to reinvent their methods of information creation, packaging and delivery. A "New Normal" information landscape has begun to emerge. The preliminary programme is available at: http://nfais.brightegg.com/page/372-2013-nfais-annual-conference.
Highlights include a keynote by David Weinberger, author of Too Big to Know, on the information explosion and how technology in combination with global collaboration and the shared wisdom of the crowd is reshaping knowledge creation. Qualitative survey results from Outsell, Inc. - showing the extent to which tools such as metrics and analytics are being used by publishers and librarians to unlock new value from existing content – will be released.
Other highlights include the perspective of scholars and researchers on the ability of existing information resources to provide the answers they need and what they believe needs to be done to extract new value, and a look at how innovative publishers and librarians are applying data mining, linking, analytics and metrics not only to create smart content, but also to better understand user needs and behaviour. New and emerging metrics for measuring the value of information in an inter-tangled world of scholarly publishing, social media and information sharing will also be discussed.
Additionally, the event will look at how publisher and ibrarian perspectives on how data mining, analytics, the re-use and sharing of content and collaborative research are forcing a re-evaluation of privacy, intellectual property and data ownership policies. A look at INM's Watson and the future role of technology in extracting answers from reams of information is also in the schedule.
