He’s Steve Arnold, and he’s been advising information companies for years. His clients even include the White House. He’s also a Google-Yahoo!-Microsoft watcher. He’s studied all the search engines. His latest research findings? Search boxes, relevance ranking, contextual ads, and search engine optimization may be hot today, but as for tomorrow … Join us first thing Tuesday to hear Steve’s latest, possibly controversial, and sure to be insightful, remarks about how tomorrow’s “search” marketplace may literally go outside the box.

These days, it’s as much about discovery as it is about the content. With so many information alternatives, how do you get users to find your stuff? How do you bring them to the information they need? How do you fit in with the way they want to do things? Randy Marcinko shares his experience with helping people discover the right resources and then introduces three panelists who have their own approaches to capitalizing on users’ quest for content of all kinds, in all kinds of contexts. They’ll cover visualization, image search, social components in enterprise search, and exposing traditional databases to new markets.

• John Barnes, Senior VP, Strategic Development, Gale, part of Cengage Learning
• Raul Valdes-Perez, Vivisimo
• Chase Norlin, CEO, Pixsy

Lessons From the Front Lines. Russ Perkins has seen it firsthand—directory and data publishers reinventing themselves. In his consulting business, he’s shown many old hands how to turn drab data into vibrant content. At BSEC ’08, Russ shares some take-aways from his InfoCommerce 2007 event and then introduces three who have dared to take bold steps to turn data into cash. You’ll hear about models for transforming data into content, content into data, and even user interest into data tags. Ching. Ching.

• Mike Orren, President, Pegasus News
• Darrell Gunter, EVP/ CMO, Collexis Holdings, Inc.
• Chris Willis, VP, Social Media, Footnote.com

Meeting of the Minds. Bill Noorlander routinely advises Fat Cat content buyers on how to come to terms with Big Guy content sellers. At BSEC ’08, Bill will be bringing the buyers and sellers to the same table to discuss how good relationships with a few power buyers can drive your bottom line. The trick is getting to know each other. Here’s your chance to take the time…

For the Buyers:

• Richard Hulser, Principal, Richard P. Hulser Consulting
• Catherine Porta, Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers

• Simon Bradstock, VP, Corporate Products, Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group
• Syed Hasan, President, Library Sales, Springer Science + Business Media

Jeff Cutler invites his choice of a combined panel of moderators, keynoters, speakers, and attendees for a grand wrap-up, open discussion, and debriefing on this year’s edition of Buying & Selling EContent. Now that the entire program has played out, what do the thought leaders at the event think it all means? What are the takeaways from this year’s edition of Buying & Selling EContent? And just as importantly, what do you think? Plan to take away before you take off. Be a part of this concluding discussion, debriefing, and spontaneous