A couple of years ago, EAI Journal — a vendor-supported but generally useful free publication — cast off an overly-constraining name and became the Business Integration Journal (BIJ) (I’m not sure of the exact date, but it was recent enough that if you go to the old EAI Journal URL, it still takes you to the BIJ site). Now, they feel that another name change is in order, and are becoming Business Transformation and Innovation.
I totally understand the switch from EAI Journal to BIJ, since EAI was fast becoming a term that defined only a narrow part of the market, and the publication really addressed the entire range of integration technologies, but my problem with the new name is that it doesn’t actually mean anything.
I would publish a brief excerpt of the editor’s explanation of the new name and mandate, but they don’t allow copying from their PDFs, so you’ll just have to read it for yourself. Basically, it’s along the lines of "first magazine of its kind", "Senior Executives", "working together to quickly adapt to changing business needs", and "maintain competitive advantage". Yeah, yeah. And, they want you to go to the new site and subscribe again, even if you’re already a subscriber, since it’s a "brand new magazine", although when I went to the site, I realized that it’s because they want you to –wait for it — PAY! Even for the digital version! Hahahahaha.
There’s a ton of free information on the web of the same calibre as EAI/BIJ/BTI, including what you’ll find here on ebizQ, on BPM Institute, and even on direct vendor sites such as BPM Basics: short articles, typically written or sponsored by vendors or consultants, that can help to supplement other sources of information such as analyst reports or personalized research. I’m not saying that articles written by vendors or consultants don’t have value, but I am saying that they are fundamentally a form of marketing for the company in question, and I have the same aversion to paying for them as I do to paying for a t-shirt with a vendor logo on it.
Sandy – EAI and BIJ were magazines I actually took the time to read when they came in the mail, particularly the columnists. The main beef I have had with both is the vendor focus – particularly the “Gartner-izing” of BIJ, but hey, they gotta pay the bills too…
Couldn’t agree with you more about not paying them for content – they aren’t providing anything that couldn’t be had elsewhere gratis. Guess we just need to let the marketplace decide with their pocketbooks if they return any value or not, but I will be joining you in not paying for a subscription.
I am a frequent author since ‘EAI Journal’ era and someone supporting the new publication — don’t know if that is disclosure or credentials. But I am a bit surprised by your response. Our industry (apply whatever label you like, but we’ve run in the same circles for years) has suffered a stigma of opportunism and pay-for-PLAY. Then here comes a publisher willing to take on the value of content — pay-for-content, not pay-for-play, and not marketing posing as journalism. You being someone whose business is content, I would have thought you would celebrate this. Regardless, my suggestion is to wait and see the result. If what they provide is simply the same marketing fluff you could find anywhere, then their paid-access model will be short-lived. But I give them more credit than that.
Nathaniel, thanks for your comments. There are others (such as Bob, see his comment above) who are also not willing to pay for a publication that has historically been articles written by vendors. My point is that articles of this calibre — not just marketing fluff, as you put it — available for free, so why would you pay?
My business is content to a certain extent, depending on how you define content, but I’m not paid to write this blog and I’m not an employee of ebizQ. I’m an independent architect / consultant / analyst, and this blog serves, in part, as marketing for my services: sort of an online portfolio. That is, I believe, the same reason that people write articles (for free) for publications such as BTI.