2005 Codie Awards - great products, Web sites often weak

I just returned from Universal City, CA (Hollywood) where I had moderated a panel called "Who's Paying Whom and How?" for the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Content Forum 2005. The conference was enjoyable and lots of interesting best practices for the content industry was shared. Coverage of the event is available from Rafat Ali's Paid Content.

The 20th Annual SIIA Codie Awards Gala at the Universal Studios' Globe Theater on Wednesday evening was great (except I got back to my hotel at midnight and had to wake up at 3:00 to catch a flight to Boston).  I was a Codie Award judge. It was fun to evaluate various product in several categories. It is amazing to me was that many companies that win a Codie Award for product excellence actually have terrible marketing programs and ineffective Web sites. The marketers at these companies would bring in so much more revenue for their organizations if they focused as much attention on marketing and communications as they do on products.

At the forum I had the pleasure of sitting at a table with the fun people from Factiva, including Alan Scott (CMO) Ryan Warren, Matt Hamel and Clare Hart (CEO) as well as my friend Pam Springer, CEO of ECNext.