Publishing & Media Expo 2013 offered five free seminar theatres covering thought-provoking and sensational topics in publishing, with leading keynotes, workshops, panel discussions, all designed to inform and inspire.
Taking place across 5 dedicated seminar theatres, click on the links below to see the 2013 timetables.
>> Audience and Data Theatre
>> Production and Design Theatre
>> Digital and Multi-Publishing Theatre
>> NEW! Publishing Heroes Theatre
>> NEW! Digital Edition Theatre
A word from our Seminar Programme Director:
The publishing industry has been going through momentous times for a generation, and it doesn’t look like settling down any time yet. It does, however, show signs of settling into at least an understanding of the task before it. Let’s face it, even the wisest and most experienced pundits are fond of saying: ‘No one really knows what’s happening, and if they say they do, they’re lying.’ But for 2013 we’re beginning to see the industry facing up to its need for a re-think. Gone are the days when we just hoped that doing the same old thing – but digitally – would work. It needs far more radical re-engineering than that. While new technologies and their cost models are becoming more familiar, we are still tussling with new business models, redefined roles, re-purposed content, new routes to market, new revenue ideas, new user behaviours. It all makes the job of a Seminar Director fascinating, challenging and just a little bit scary.
An industry in flux, however – and a communications industry to boot – is always brimful of ideas. And ideas are meat and drink to the Publishing & Media Expo seminar programme. Challenging and scary, but fascinating. ‘Flux’ is the industry’s middle name.
Our keynote sessions – one each day in each theatre – will grasp the nettle of innovation and deliver as much of a definitive picture of today’s and tomorrow’s solutions as anyone can muster. Our VIP interviews, by now an industry institution, are this year being conducted by The Media Briefing’s Neil Thackray, no mean innovator himself. And rest assured, in every subject area we can promise intelligent, penetrating, and sometimes profoundly surprising contributions. If last year we were getting comfortable with the fact that content, not context, is king, who would have thought that this year someone saying ‘Content is not enough’ would be able to make a convincing case? Similarly, in a short year the kerfuffle about apps has begun to take new shape. Now we are asking, do we need all these bells and whistles? What about HTML5, or even e-books? How does this affect audience data, how does it affect design? And what, then, of the advertising picture? Where has the money gone, and will it ever come back? What are the most convincing business models? And what is publishing’s future relationship with brands? What can we learn from the music industry? And what can we learn from the games industry, now bigger than movies?
What can we learn by asking so many questions? That the Publishing & Media Expo seminar programme is where you’ll find the best answers, that’s what. No promises for final, definitive solutions; but this is where you’ll get the industry’s best minds at work and at play. Don’t miss it.
Aidan Walker, Director, Publishing & Media Expo Seminar Programme
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If you would like to hear more about the Publishing & Media Expo seminars or exhibiting at the show, please contact Jon Howell by email or on +44 (0) 207 921 8559.