Wikis and DRM @ Tools of Change

The morning keynotes hinted at the [d]evolving state of DRM. Hopefully Bill McCoy will touch on his interest in Social DRM at his session tomorrow. Michael Jensen, Peter Brantley, and Ale de Vries hosted an interesting session on DRM too. In my estimation, they mostly talked around the idea of DRM and the problems one can encounter when approaching the topic. I got a late question in regarding the music publishing model and the potential for using performance rights organizations to introduce an new form of renumeration for the book trade. I approached the same topic with Brewster Kahle in our interview from 2005. I can understand why he'd be apprehensive, but I can't fathom why publishers and authors aren't all over this concept. Peter Brantley entertained the question and seemed to suggest that we might one day see a system like this ... where the Google's, Amazon's and Microsoft's of the world might have to pay a royalty to "perform" page views of the content ... similar to how radio works. 'Definitely makes me want to give Gerry's interview with Peter a second listen.

Next up was a delightful presentation by Asheesh Birla of Thomson Learning. He talked extensively about Thomson's use and interest in wikis. They started using wikis a few years ago for internal project planning. He suggested that 80% of the contributors we from junior employees ... an interesting dynamic that may have introduced wider participation, but might also be a generational issue. He also shared some thoughts on his use of ActiveCollab (an open source tool similar to BaseCamp) for both project management and editorial collaboration. They're on their third pilot using the system and appear to be writing custom code to adapt the software for their needs.

He also talked about the value of moving metadata creation farther upstream in the process and how ActiveCollab/wikis helped facilitate that process. Birla suggested that in some ways, print is more economic than electronic counterparts because rights clearance has proven a very expensive process.

He shared a few thoughts on Thomson's use of wikis in the learning context as well. He cited an example where wikis were use to facilitate international pen pals aimed at supporting learning for foreign language classes. Has anyone else heard about this or similar techniques?

Apparently they're investigating Lucene as well. Finally, he hinted at some work on some semantic web applications and expressed an interest in ELGG, but there weren't many details of about that activity.

Towards the end, I was able to get in a question about the impact of the Pearson/ECollege deal. He suggested that activity may actually accelerate work tying tools like wikis and content together to support learning (and assessment). Both Sakai and Moodle were explicity referenced as potential avenues of interest for Thomson.

I'll try to elaborate more later as the next session is getting started now.