AI will be the transformative technology of the 2020s

1. Dear Mary Ellen, could you please describe your job and your connection to the fair and the conference?

I am the principal (and sole employee) of Bates Information Services; my business involves providing business analysis to strategic decisionmakers and consulting services to the information industry. My job revolves around working with clients to discern their "unknown unknowns" - what information and insight they don't even realize they don't have. The Frankfurter Buchmesse is where information creators and information disseminators look at the most important issues currently facing the writing and publishing world. Because I am both an information user and a consultant to digital publishers as well as an author, I appreciate the dynamic relationship between buyers and sellers of information. And as a long-time business researcher and writer about trends in the information industry, I am looking forward to both sharing what I know and learning about others' best practices for business intelligence.

2. You describe yourself as an information professional – can you please explain what this means?

Those of us who are involved in finding, analyzing, organizing, managing, and disseminating information have long struggled to find a job title that encompasses all that we do. The title "librarian" does not feel accurate; many of us do not work directly in a library. Titles that focus on the services we provide - researcher, taxonomist, analyst - also miss what we bring to our jobs. Information professionals look at information as a strategic asset, and we look at what we can do to gather better information, make sense of it, and make it available to our clients or patrons. The distinction is that information professionals focus on the role information plays in their users' lives.

3. Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are topics everyone is talking about – how do they already affect the work of an information professional?

AI will change the information landscape in ways that we cannot even anticipate. Just as the introduction of electricity revolutionized how people live and work, so artificial intelligence will transform how we work in ways we cannot predict. The most important role for information professionals today with respect to AI is to keep an open mind and to watch for how they can harness the power of big data and AI to enable better decisions.

4. What will be the biggest trends and challenges in the information market during the next decade?

AI will be the transformative technology of the 2020s, particularly for the information industry. We have to look at not just how AI and big data help us do what we already do better but how they will enable us to create new insights. Just as we could not have predicted the impact of the web on business when it was first introduced, so we have to keep an open mind about our future roles in an AI-enabled world.

5. This is your first time at Frankfurter Buchmesse—what do you expect?

I expect to be overwhelmed by the size of the fair, and I expect to be surprised by new publishing and digital media initiatives. And I expect to come away with fresh perspectives on how information professionals address the needs of their clients and organizations.

After receiving her Master’s degree in library and information science, Mary Ellen Bates worked in libraries and information centers within corporations and the federal government for over a decade, providing research services, building internal databases and designing new information services. In 1991, she launched Bates Information Services, focusing on providing high-end research and analysis services to strategic decision-makers and consulting services to the information industry. She is a frequent speaker and author on trends in the information profession.

'Indispensable Information Professionals – Building Value in an Artificial Intelligence World.' - with this keynote Mary Ellen Bates, Director of Bates Information Services Inc. of Colorado, USA, will kick-off the "(opens in a new window)Steilvorlagen"(opens in a new window) conference for information professionals and data scientists at Frankfurter Buchmesse. The event will take place on 17 October 2019 and will discuss the latest trends and market developments in information research, use cases around innovative technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. Another focus will be successful self-marketing and long-term personal branding. The conference will address all persons who work in information-processing professions, such as business consultants, data scientists, information managers, market researchers, marketing managers and more.