There are two trends in the attitude of our people which I'm picking up from recent staff discussions.  One trend I like and the other, not so much.  Both are worth a discussion.

The trend I like is a growing positive sense about the business environment we are in and the recent sales numbers we have been posting.  Since roughly mid-March we have been seeing better results in advertising sales, conference registrations, book orders and other measures.  Having reduced our sales forecasts during the first three months of this year due to a slow start in some areas, it is encouraging to see us now raising our forecasts as forward bookings begin to grow.  There's still some caution -- law firms remain slow about committing marketing dollars to our publications, for instance.  But there's definitely a sense that the Great Recession is beginning to recede in the rearview mirror.

More importantly, most people internally understand that as the business comes back, it will not come back exactly as it was before the recession kicked in during 2008.  We all recognize now that former 100% print advertisers are now looking at other ways to spend their money, including online marketing and conference sponsorships.  Similarly, print subscription declines are not likely to reverse themselves -- more and more of our audience will come to us electronically.  So while we can feel more positive about the direction in which our sales figures are headed, we need to be clear that the future will not look like the past, and act accordingly.

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As good as I feel about the positive vibe described above, I also sense rising frustration among those of our editors who work on our various websites every day.  They are growing frustrated with the downtime on our sites and the quirks of our editorial system, where web pages sometimes disappear and old pages mysteriously pop up.  More importantly, our editors voice concern that our sites go down in ways which discourage our readers and keep them from accessing our stories and other content. 

There is no question that web technology has been a "weak link" at ALM going back many years.  A couple of years ago we did a massive upgrade of our Fatwire content management system, and that certainly helped, but even so our systems have been unreliable.  During the past year we have tried to solve these problems by bringing more outside resources to bear on the problems, and have seen some improvement thanks to new relationships with Akamai and Element 115.  Nonetheless, as recently as this morning some of our sites reported serious problems. 

Just to say it plainly, this can't go on any longer.  As a company we need to make a smooth and successful transition to digital publishing, and getting the technology infrastructure to work as it should has to be a primary goal.  The good news is that our IT Department knows this, and we have been investing heavily in both technology and people to ensure that the objective is reached.  This year we will spend more money on new technology -- mostly related to digital publishing -- than we have ever spent as a company.  And I have not hesitated to sign job reqs for programmers, analysts, consultants, whatever, to fix what is broken and install the new systems properly. 

In the short run, we are now proceeding with an upgrade to the Fatwire content management system (on which most, but not all, of our websites are run).  Our IT folks believe that that is the best path toward solving the current instability in the system.  According to Matt Perkins, who oversees Fatwire for the IT Department, preparations for the upgrade have begun.  The steps as he has outlined them are:

"Basic Outline of Steps for the Upgrade