Faces of Econtent

As the sole database administrator (DBA) for startup Perfect Market, which provides traffic and content optimization solutions for web publishers, Tracy Tan likes the dual nature of her role. "It's nice to play with data-when business users ask me questions I can retrieve the answers. But I also like table design, and I get to do that for both our operational database and data warehouse database."

Of her title as conference co-chair and community manager for O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing (TOC) area of practice, Kat Meyer says, "That's a long way of saying I am a connector. I seek out and bring together the people, companies, and organizations that are creating the future of publishing." The TOC team produces in-person events, co-produces events and publications with partners, and publishes books. Meyer helps maintain TOC's online and social media presence via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and the O'Reilly Radar blog.

Name With The Face:Casey Jenkins
Job Title:Senior Product Manager
Organization:Elsevier B.V.
URL:www.elsevier.com

"I'm tasked with making an impact internally and externally."

‘We work closely with them to pinpoint the kind of information they need.'

"I never get to sit at my desk."

"I coach and guide my team in figuring out what product offerings are the best fit."

"Some days I will be locked into my chair, headphones on, surfing the web to compile competitive intelligence."

"I work alongside our production and content licensing teams to develop the final digital product for our web team and partners so they can access, manage, edit, publish, and distribute online."

"Being in the newsroom also means that every few months I get to work on some breaking news event where everything happens in an instant."

"While I don't do the translations, I am the hub for the various teams involved in the process, from product managers to developers, QA staff, technical writers, in-country teams, and translation vendors."

"I explain why the world needs more librarians and help to develop and educate librarians to fill the unmet needs out there."

"I'm fascinated by trends in information delivery especially to enterprise users, and my role here is to help companies get the right information to the right people at the right time."

"There is a plethora of research and historical materials here with value in the global open access environment. It is a sustainable model, as it will be maintained in perpetuity with URLs that never change."

As a technical project lead for ClearForest, a Thomson Reuters company providing text-driven business intelligence solutions, Sumit Shah works primarily on the company's Calais initiative, which offers free metadata generation services, developer tools, and an open standard for the generation of semantic content. In this role, Shah has a broad mandate, both helping customers who have deployed OpenCalais and adapting the platform for internal use at Thomson Reuters.

"I train people from all over the world, and curriculum development and understanding of different learning modes all still applies. And I still give assignments; It's old school but it helps customers retain what I've shown them."

'Essentially, font management is a specialized form of digital asset management, except that the asset is also a system-level software resource.'

‘I spend most of my day working with faculty to help them both showcase and develop their research.'

"I was once at a customer site for a few days and noticed that a printer had been running continually, requiring an employee to feed it reams of paper..."

"I'm currently preparing an exhibition on Darwin [that] will open soon in our gallery."

"My focus has been on education and awareness-building."

"Using scrum allows me to provide a rapid, flexible response to our client's business needs."

"Success is typically measured in small forward steps."

"I get to meet the people with whom I frequently work virtually."

"I am at the front line of customer interaction."

"Provide the best access to the huge variety of online resources."

"‘Success relies on whether we foster ongoing communication with our customers."

‘I hope to make a difference for the good.'

"It is challenging to find the best fit for the software."

"They were stunned at how quickly and easily it was done."

"My job is to translate their knowledge and expertise into the information that our customers need."

"I'm measured on the maintenance of the site's content."

"Usage metrics only tell part of the story."

‘We want a one-stop shop for ordering.'

"Sometimes customer service is like walking a tightrope, due to the time difference."

"I don't get woken up in the middle of the night these days."

"I like to be out in front of costumers as much as possible."

“I go out and play on the internet at least once a month just to see what is going on out there.”

“Regular users, readers, and drive-by people come in and let us know what they think.”

“I work with salespeople to make sure they have the tools they need to make sales.”

“We come up with a method to map the current content to the new application.”

"We drive the vision and the strategy of the product lines."

“I’m part of a team that helps the company go to market in the publishing industry.”

“I help people from the planning phase through to the actual implementation.”

"I use a statistical approach to get data into sensible and usable form.”

“We want to know about their relationships with the computer.”

“Our profiles are written by real people and are not just boilerplate.”

“It’s about your investment in your home and what upgrades you can make to it.”

“Leading the standards efforts gives us an earlier awareness of worldwide adoption.”

“I make certain that we get a positive ROI.”