As the evening lengthens, I am working through the actual sense of today's discussions:

Users today have so many ways of communicating. We heard a number of references to Twitter and to Facebook and to blogs, technologies that are useful in support of certain forms of communication. There's a disconnect between in-the-trenches publishing activities and the tools that are being pushed at publishers (or that publishing professionals perceive as being pushed at them) by the mainstream.

Digital publishing is less about communication and more about creating platforms or environments that weld content and technology together in support of a goal (such as learning) or workflow (such as developing a new pharmaceutical product or solving a technical challenge). Publishers individually have to figure out what combination of content and technology those platforms or environments must provide in order to sustain value to the customer. The only questions that scholarly publishers ask about the new technologies being made available today is "Does this technology do something that scholars find necessary in the performance of their work?". If so, publishers will try to integrate that technology into a service; if not, publishers will ignore the technology as irrelevant to their own objectives (ie. sustaining a revenue stream or a business).

If publishers are being pushed to explore new technologies, it is because those who have already adopted a specific technology see in it potential for enhancing processes or efficiency. Second Life is seen as presenting new ways of connecting members of dispersed teams. It may provide a better educational experience for certain individuals geared to visual or kinetic learning. Twitter and Facebook are seen as potentially offering more attractive ways of communication between co-workers or building relationships between buyer and seller. Blogging is seen as perhaps a better way of shaping a discussion or line of thought that may ultimately morph into a best-selling book. Wikis are seen as potentially offering a better way of eliciting tacit knowledge for subsequent delivery to others needing that knowledge in the future. What will hasten problem resolution? What will enhance learning? How much more rapidly and effectively can we preserve and pass along knowledge to those who follow after?

Those are really the challenges that face scholarly publishers.