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By Robin Neidorf

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Keeping track of new products and services is essential - find out how FreePint's Community of Practice (CoP) sessions, reviews and Topic Series can help you stay on top of developments. Upcoming CoP sessions offer the opportunity to discuss how to determine the value of information investments, and the state of the industry as regards product development. Tools which allow PR professionals to monitor social media are also under the spotlight in the next couple of months.

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I've just finished the final in our current series of in-person Community of Practice sessions with a lively group of information professionals in my hometown of Minneapolis. This series focused on understanding the changing market for news content, and each of the groups (two in London, one in New York, two in the Chicago area, and today's in Minneapolis) has drawn a range of diverse perspectives on which products and which tools are best suited to different corporate environments.

Add to the mix the recent shift at Dow Jones - still the market leader but now struggling to regroup following the departure of Lex Fenwick - and there's plenty to debate and discuss over the course of two hours of workshop.

In response to customer requests, we're looking at new dates and locations to continue in-person sessions on alternative approaches to news content delivery, as well as:

• Discussing, determining and measuring the value of information investments (May and June 2014)
• Buyers and sellers discuss the state of the industry and their needs in product development (September 2014).

I'm particularly excited about the potential of half-day sessions bringing together buyers and sellers for meaningful and frank dialogue around resolving mutual challenges. Early plans put these in London and New York in September.

As with all CoP offerings, participation is included at the Team level of subscription and higher.

Enterprise Goes Social

Our FreePint Topic Series: The Social Enterprise continues to offer insight as to what it is that breaks down between the theories around social tools and their implementation. Many a good idea, even a great idea, falls down due to inadequate attention to culture, matching the right tool to the job and developing clear objectives.

Of particular note is Rebecca O'Reilly's case study of the successful CapInTouch knowledge sharing platform, implemented for Capco. This case study will be presented in detail during a FreePint Webinar in this series. Read more about the session, coming up in March.

Social and emerging media are rich sources for research and competitive intelligence, as the latest product review of Digimind Social demonstrates. Reviewer Aileen Marshall explores both the research capabilities of the tool, as well as how organisations can use it to track the impact of their own social campaigns.

Digimind Social competes with a number of tools built to support PR and communications departments. Chris Porter is reviewing a number of them for us in the coming weeks, and he introduces this project with his commentary on this market segment. Watch for his full reviews and mini reviews of Engage121, PR Newswire Agility and others.

What Have We Missed?

One of the hardest things to do in our industry is to keep track of new products and services. What products have we missed? What subjects do you want us to cover? Where should we host our next in-person meetings for customers?

Send your suggestions and comments to us through our contact form - as one participant in today's CoP meeting in Minneapolis noted to her peers, we respond quickly and personally to your comments!

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