Tales of Hoffman

One more thing before I go....

OK, off to vacation. I'll let you know what it feels like to be "off the grid" for a full week. While you are waiting for me to come back (after all, it's all about me, right?), take some snapshots and contribute to Mark's new project thisisbroken.com. What a great idea. I hope to come back from Scotland with some "Broken" European Experiences.

BloggerCon: Is There a Doctor in the House?

From Scripting News....

Ed Cone announces the journalism session at BloggerCon with Scott Rosenberg, Glenn Reynolds, and Joshua Marshall. We should have another panel to announce next week. October 4, 2003; Harvard Law School.

When can I announce the Medical session (hmm, I think Harvard has a Med School too, right? ;-)). I think maybe Jacob, Medpundit and DB (and/or Rangel, and/or Richard, and/or Ross, and/or Alwin, and/or....). That would make for a nice freewheeling discussion.

Harry Potter and the Concept of Reservations

Here's a nice exchange I had at my local Barnes & Noble yesterday:

Me: I'd like to reserve two copies of the new Harry Potter Book

B&N Employee: I can't guarantee that we will have a book for you on Saturday, but I'd be happy to take your reservation, sir.

Me: Excuse me?

B&N Employee: We have been told that we can continue to take reservations, but that unless you have the book in your hands on Saturday -- or on Midnight Friday -- we can't tell you you we will definitely have enough books.

Me: Didn't I see this in a Seinfeld Episode once about a Car Rental Counter? I'm not sure you understand the concept of a reservation...

B&N Employee: I understand what your saying, but that's the way it is. By the way, I love that episode of Seinfeld...

Me: Thanks anyway.

Calling all Docs

By the way, I'm still on a one man crusade to get something about Medical Blogs in BloggerCon this fall. Maybe some of you doc bloggers out there can write about this too so we can get some momentum behind grabbing the attention of those who are organizing?

Posting about Postings

Things have been relatively quiet here because there's a confluence of events coming up that are keeping me pretty busy. You'll see some nice changes to Medscape's interface in the next few weeks, we are in the process of planning our next live webconference in the next two weeks and, best of all, I'm going on vacation next week...to Scotland....with the whole family....to stay in a castle!

Other than that, not much going on . ;-) As much as I'd like to post while I'm away, keeping track of all my belongings -- as well as all the extra stuff that comes with taking three kids under the age of 9 across the Atlantic Ocean -- will most likely cause me to not bring my laptop along. I'm not sure how I would get on the net anyway since I abandoned my dial up connectivity when I signed up for the cable modem. I'm sure I'll come back with plenty of stories and pictures, however. It'll be interesting to be away from my computer and the Internet for a whole week. Not sure I can do it. Does that make me sick in some way?

Bloggercon: Why not Medicine, too?

Yesterday, Dave W. wrote:

I just got a call from the chair of our journalism panel at BloggerCon, and he got a yes from his fourth panelist, so one of the key events is now set to announce. I've asked him to write up a two-page introduction for the site and the mail list and we're going to move on to the education panel, politics panel and technology panel.

Here's the email I sent him, maybe you can send him one, too:

Dave,

Where's the "medical panel"?

I'm sure Jacob (www.docnotes.net) would be willing to speak as would some of the other great doc bloggers out there (www.medblogs.com)....

Steve

Ads in RSS Feeds -- Reading Between the Lines

There's been some back and forth in blogland about Infoworld's inserting ads into RSS feeds, and Jenny at Shifted Librarian has a good wrapup of where folks stand in this entry: InfoWorld Adds Ads To Its RSS Feeds. At Medscape, our RSS feeds, which were launched a few months ago, are doing well for us. The number of people using them is growing on a month over month basis and, although the raw numbers are pretty low compared to overall readership on our site, we'll be happy to see it keep growing.

<corporate hedge> For now </corporate hedge>, I agree with Dave W. and Jenny that the main purpose for a media company to issue feeds is to get people to their site, NOT serve ads. Jenny cites this interesting paragraph from Infoworld:

RSS allows a Web site's top stories to be summarized in XML, then pushed to a user's desktop automatically. While publishers naturally hope an RSS feed will inspire readers to click through to the host Web site, there's the danger some will never delve further than the headlines, cutting into ad revenues. Hence, the desire to monetize the RSS feed itself.

Excuse me? Infoworld is not pushing full text content to the user's desktop, only headlines. I understand what they are concerned about, because that's the argument everyone uses. In plain English, it boils down to this..."We know a certain number of ad impressions on our site can be attributed to people who come to the site to see what we've published that day, are uninterested in anything we have to say, and then go away. If we send headlines to those folks over RSS, we'll lose those pageviews."

Putting ads in RSS feeds is the wrong solution to this problem. The correct solution is actually extremely simple. Publish stories that people want to read. Make them compelling and well written. Provide depth in articles. If you are posting stories where the headline says more than the body, you've got bigger problems than deciding what to do with your RSS feeds. Have faith in your content and trust your readers and they will repay you many times over with a level of loyalty far above the norm.

The SARS Event Aftermath

We had a blast doing the live SARS event on Medscape. I have to admit, I've been one of the leading skeptics in terms of online "events" that require any user (especially a doc!) to be in front of their computer at a certain date and time. Our experience last night was a good one however. We did get some good attendance given the low level of promotion we had on the site, and it was truly exciting to see questions come across the transom from Bejing, Rio de Janeiro, Pennsylvania, UC-Davis and other areas all over the country. I hope we helped some docs and other providers who wanted the lowdown on the latest SARS thinking, but are located in a place where they are not able to see a live presentation.

We'll be doing more of these soon (and you'll undoubtedly hear about them here). In the meantime, you can see the archived version of the webcast here.

Medscape SARS Event Details

Here's the Link to our Live SARS event on Medscape, tonight at 7pm eastern. OK, now I'll stop talking about it.....

...Until tomorrow when I let you know how it went. ;-)

Tomorrow's SARS Event

Putting the finishing touches on our Medscape Live SARS event scheduled for tomorrow night. I should have a URL for you sometime today, which I'll post here. The cool thing about this event is that if you can't make it at the time we are doing it, it will be stored as an archived multimedia event on Medscape, for which you can watch and earn CME credits, for the next year. If any of you watch the event, feel free to email me to let me know what you think of the format.