BIIA Chairman David Worlock commented on the proceedings and outcome of the recent BIIA Business Information Forum 2011, which had the purpose of bringing users and information providers together:
“… March 24th 2011 around 3 pm Hong Kong time I heard a conference light up with really vibrant debate, sourced from all around the Asia-Pacific region, on a subject which at once focused regional attention and yet was symptomatic of the state of ePublishing and Business Information Solutions in a global networked society as a whole.”
“… In a topic devoted to eliminating information asymmetries it quickly became clear that for many participants business information was becoming increasingly controversial. There were major issues concerning government-held information in the region, symptomatic both of culture and control, and of privacy and data protection legislation.”
“ … Yet there was also an air of discontent: Current content was becoming commoditized, and in particular, it was becoming much more difficult to provide reliable and verifiable information about small and medium-sized enterprises. And the problems were not confined to banks and finance houses: clearly identifying SMEs (or even defining them) was a problem for all traders in the market, especially as SMEs are generally seen as the engine of growth in any economic recovery. How well I recall this debate in the European Union in the 1990s, and how frustrating it was that nothing could ever be done at any level to alleviate it. I (Worlock) settled in for an interesting but fruitless discussion.”
“Which was not how things turned out. Instead real energy was devoted to ways of tackling this.”
“… I do not seriously doubt any longer that the answers to most information services development questions are already known, because the content needed to answer them already lies, though under-exposed, in the network. And Asia-Pacific remains undoubtedly the most stimulating part of the world if you want to think about Next Steps.”
