conferences

Upcoming Conferences for Digital Publishers and App Creators

If you want to learn how you can profit from digital publishing or app development, here are two conferences that might be helpful: Going Digital 2012 and the Media App Summit.

Going Digital 2012: The Digital Publishing Report Conference
November 8-9, 2012
Skytop Lodge Executive Conference Center; Skytop, Pennsylvania
Organized by The Joss Group

This conference is for anyone who wishes to publish content in a digital format. It doesn’t matter if you work for a traditional publishing company or not, this conference is for any organization that publishes short-form or long-form content, including e-books, magazines, catalogs, journals, or technical materials.

In a relaxed, yet focused learning environment, you can learn how to design and manage the digital-publishing process and maximize profit opportunities from digital publishing projects and businesses.

Conference organizer Molly Joss recognizes that “Publishers of all kinds are under pressure to understand and adopt digital technology. Print is not dead, but every publisher today must also consider digital.” She believes very little practical information and help is current available to help small- to mid-sized businesses make the most of digital publishing technologies. This is particularly true for companies and organizations whose main sources of income don’t come from traditional publishing.

Topics that will be discussed during the program include:

  • Nitty-gritty of How to E-Publish
  • Digital Rights and Copy Protection: options, priorities, and necessities
  • Workflows and Staffing Issues: what needs to change and what can stay the same
  • Distribution Options: newsstands, private servers, e-mail, and more
  • Making the Most of Digital Formats by Making Use of Audio and Video
  • Sales and Marketing Metrics

The keynoter on November 8 will be Bryan Yeager who leads InfoTrends’ digital marketing and media practice. He will talk about how emerging trends in short-form (magazine) digital publishing will affect all publishers.

On November 9, David Renard of MediaIdeas will talk about how publishers can take advantage of the possibilities in reader and tablet technology to improve their success in digital publishing.

The Joss Group, founded by Molly Joss, publishes The Digital Publishing Report, a monthly newsletter that talks about the technology, techniques, strategies, and plans publishers are using to develop their digital publishing efforts.

LINK

Going Digital 2012: The Digital Publishing Report Conference

Media App Summit
December 3, 2012
The New Yorker Hotel; New York, NY
Organized by Media Bistro

The conference unites book and magazine publishers, developers, digital content strategists, editors, authors, and entrepreneurs for an extensive look into the cutting-edge world of media app design, demographics, and distribution. Learn how to build apps within budget, make them discoverable, and monetize content across all media platforms.

Here are some of the topics and featured speakers:

New Distribution Models for eBooks and Apps
Evan Ratliff, co-founder and editor of Atavist , explores how to maximize the social media presence and cross-platform exposure of your app. Panelists will discuss some of the tools and strategies which are now available to market and publicize apps and ideas.

Maximizing Discoverability and Profitability in Book App Marketplaces
Matthew Cavnar, VP of business development at Vook , shares advice for making your app more discoverable in vast online destinations. Learn how to create eye-catching content, rise up the Top App lists, and promote your app in the right places.

App-Centered Outreach for Non-Profits and Institutions
Learn how non-profits are using mobile technology to build brand awareness and get the fund-raising message out, without breaking the bank.

Multi-Platform Publishing for Mobile News and Magazine Content
Hear how leaders behind successful magazine apps are setting up subscriptions, budgeting for the app, building a subscriber base, negotiating royalties, and managing app updates.

New Distribution Models for E-Books and Apps
This panel will discuss some of the tools, strategies, websites, and services that can help you market and publicize your app.

From Download to Domination: Engaging Mobile App Users with Analytics and Targeting
As users acquire more apps, the amount of time they spend with each one goes down. Learn ways to move beyond the download and acquire the right users, use engagement metrics, and re-market to your high-value users.

Exploring Apps and Educational Publishing
The marketplace of education apps is exploding. This panel will explore different aspects of the educational app field, including digital textbooks, app-based study guides, and flashcard-making tools.

Self-Publishing Across Multiple Platforms
Experts and best-selling self-published authors share tips for working with the Kindle Store, Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.

Case Study: Mobile Advertising
This panel will focus on how to use rich media mobile ads to engage users and drive conversions.

Media Bistro provides networking opportunities, career-development resources, and education to anyone who creates or works with content, or who is a non-creative professional working in a content/creative industry. That includes editors, writers, producers, graphic designers, book publishers, and others in industries including magazines, television, film, radio, newspapers, book publishing, online media, advertising, PR, and design.

LINK

Media Bistro Mobile App Summit

Four Future-Focused Conferences for Creative Pros

Conferences and trade shows often let us see what types of creative skills will be the most marketable over the next five years. While it’s natural to feel comfortable attending the same conference year after year, it’s probably smarter to attend at least one conference that will challenge your view of the status quo and think about what’s next. Here are just a few examples of conferences with a focus on the future.

SIGGRAPH 2012
August 5-9 in Los Angeles

Computer graphics and interactive technology professionals will attend technical and creative programs focusing on research, science, art, animation, music, gaming, interactivity, education, and the web. An exhibition of products and services for the computer graphics and interactive marketplace will be held August 7-9.

The show’s Art Gallery will exhibit digital and technologically mediated artworks that explore the existence of wonderment, mystery, and awe in today’s world of mediating technologies and abundant data. Entitled “In Search of the Miraculous,” the exhibition will include 12 works handpicked from almost 400 submissions. The SIGGRAPH art exhibition jury included artists, designers, technologists, and critics hailing from academia, industry, and the independent art world.

Emerging Technologies demos will allow attendees to directly experience novel systems such as 3D displays. robotics, and interactive input devices.

The keynote speaker at SIGGRAPH will be Jane McGonegal, a visionary game designer and futurist,who is using alternate reality games to conduct research, build communities, connect with markets, and solve real-world problems from curing disease to addressing issues of poverty, hunger, and a world without petroleum. She currently serves as Chief Creative Officer for SuperBetter Labs.

Content Marketing World
September 4-6 in Columbus, Ohio

Logo for Content Marketing World 2012Content marketing is a fast-evolving field of marketing in which companies attract and retain customers by developing, curating, and delivering content that is relevant to their targeted buyers. The content is created for delivery through multiple channels, such as print, online video, blogs, webinars, and e-mail.

At the 2011 event, 16% of the attendees were journalists, copywriters, editors, bloggers, and others involved in content creation or content-management positions. Other attendees were company owners, partners, chief content officers, and managers or worked in other aspects of marketing, public relations, communications, and advertising.

The 70 sessions planned for the 2012 Content Marketing World include:

  • Book Publishing and Marketing for Businesses and Brands
  • Finding the Right Stories for Your Brand
  • How to Use Infographics and Visual Storytelling
  • Building Your Internal Publishing Department for Content/Social Success
  • How to Turn Your Blog Posts into an Amazon Best-Selling E-book
  • Leveraging Data to Drive Your Content Plan without Being Creepy
  • How to Reboot Your Content for a Mobile World
  • Creating an Original Video Strategy that Works
  • Creating Content that Shortens the Sales Cycle

The event will kick off with a presentation by content-marketing evangelist Joe Pulizzi. Joe founded the Content Marketing Institute that is hosting the conference.

HOW Interactive Design Conference
September 27-29 in Washington, DC
October 29-31 in San Francisco, CA

Logo for HOW Interactive Design ConfThis conference will teach designers how to transfer traditional design skills to web, digital, mobile and other interactive work. Beginning sessions are available for designers who are transitioning from print. More advanced sessions can help designers who are already experienced in web design. Sessions include:

  • WordPress Theming for Web Designers
  • Creating Content for Tablets: The Do’s and Don’ts for Touch Interactivity
  • Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content
  • Building Engaging Digital Advertising
  • The Role of Research in Great Interactive Design

In a general session on feedback, you can learn how to use analytics and feedback from users to improve your designs. Other topics to be covered include: HTML5, information architecture, web hosting, mobile design, web fonts, and more.

2012 Storyworld Conference + Expo
October 17-19 in Hollywood, CA

Held immediately before the Writer’s Digest Conference West (Oct. 19-21) and Screenwriters World Conference (Oct. 19-21), the 2012 Storyworld conference can help Logo for 2012 StoryWorld Conferencewriters and other content creators understand how a single storyteller with the right tools can excel at TV, film, books, web series, and games.  Producers and writers will share what they have learned by developing cross-platform entertainment and describe how a “transmedia” approach can give a story space to grow across media boundaries.

The conference will lead off with an introduction presented by Scott Trowbridge, the VP of Creative/R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Sessions include:

  • Achieving Blockbusters and Evergreen in the Age of Pervasive Media
  • Narrative  Design for Interaction
  • The Rise of Data-Driven Storytelling

In a session entitled “Trans-Museum: Non-Fiction and Culture,”  speakers from the Smithsonian and Ball State University will talk about how partnerships with museums, universities, and other historical entities offer a unique way to create great transmedia experiences

Conferences Evolve with Technology Adoption

While some of topics at these fall conferences might not seem relevant to your current work, I have seen how quickly “futuristic” concepts can take hold. Over the past 15 years, I have met many entrepreneurial creatives who boldly tackled difficult technical skills long before the skills were automated and simplified for mass adoption.

Because technology marches on, so does the need for certain events. Earlier this month, I received a press release announcing that the bi-annual Cybertarts Festival will not be held in 2013. The festival was the first and largest collaboration of artists working in new technologies in all media in North America. Boston Cyberarts was launched in 1999

According to George Fifeld, director of Boston Cyberarts, “The mission of the Boston Cyberarts Festival was to promote new technologies in the arts. We were wildly successful and new media has become an integral part of arts programming and computer technology has become indispensable to the artistic process. So, it’s time to move on to new initiatives.”  Two of those initiatives include the “Art on the Marquee” digital display and The Boston Cyberarts Gallery, which will help foster the development of new practices in contemporary artmaking.

 

Nonfiction Writers Conference To Be Held Online May 16-18

WRITERS. Registration is now open for The Nonfiction Writers Conference, a 3-day online teleconference for writers who want to learn how to publish profitable non-fiction books.  Five 50-minute sessions will be presented from 9 am to 3 pm PST on Wednesday, May 16, Thursday, May 17, and Friday, May 18.

Topics include traditional and self-publishing, e-books, virtual book tours, social media, Amazon sales strategies, blogging, SEO, professional speaking, freelance writing, information product sales, and other book marketing tactics.

Conference organizer Stephanie Chandler has assembled a stellar line-up of 15 speakers, including:

  • Dan Poynter, author of “The Self-Publishing Manual”
  • Mark Coker, founder of the Smashwords.com e-book publishing platform
  • John Kremer, author of “1001 Ways to Market Your Books”
  • Michael Larsen, literary agent
  • Penny Sansevieri, author of “Red Hot Internet Publicity”
  • Jane Atkinson, author of “The Wealthy Speaker”
  • Jim Horan, author of “The One Page Business Plan”
  • D’vorah Lansky, author of “Book Marketing Made Easy”
  • Roger C. Parker, author of “Looking Good in Print”
  • Karl Palachuk, author of “Publish Your First Book: A Quick-Start Guide to Professional Publishing in a Digital Age”
  • Dana Lynn Smith, author of “How to Sell More Books on Amazon”
  • Kevin Smokler, author of “Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times”
  • Peter Bowerman, author of “The Well-Fed Writer”
  • Bill Belew, a search engine optimization expert.

Chandler, who has written a book “From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur:  Make Money with Books, eBooks and Information Products,” will also present a session.

The speakers will discuss:

  • How to write a compelling book with market appeal.
  • Methods for generating business revenue and opportunities with your book.
  • Simple ways to attract valuable media exposure.
  • How to break into professional speaking–from free to fee!
  • Ways to build your platform and get known as an expert in your industry.
  • How to take advantage of low-cost, high-return social media marketing strategies with Facebook and Twitter.
  • What it takes to turn your website into a traffic-generating machine.
  • The pros and cons of self-publishing vs. traditional publishing and mistakes to avoid.
  • Real-world advice on how to land a book deal.
  • Insider secrets for promoting your book online.
  • How to generate passive income from ebooks, special reports and other information products.

Stephanie Chandler conducted the first Nonfiction Writers Conference in 2010. She is the author of several books, including “Own Your Niche: Hype-Free Internet Marketing Tactics to Establish Authority in Your Field and Promote Your Service-Based Business,” “The Author’s Guide to Building an Online Platform: Leveraging the Internet to Sell More Books,” and “Booked Up! How to Write, Publish, and Promote a Book to Grow Your Business.”

Several registration options are available, including discounts for writers who register early.  If you can‘t listen to all of the sessions live, you can register to receive MP3 recordings of all sessions and/or transcripts of the sessions.

LINKS

Nonfiction Writers Conference

About Stephanie Chandler

The Future of Imaging Is on Display at 2012 International CES

PHOTOGRAPHERS. This will be a big week for imaging-technology rollouts, as the 2012 International CES opens today and runs through January 13. The Consumer Electronics association (CEA) expects this year’s consumer-electronics show to be its most innovative show on record.

More than 20,000 new products are expected to be announced this week as more than 2,700 exhibiting companies vie for the attention of 140,000+ attendees and 5,000 journalists.

At a private reception hosted by WIRED magazine and Condé Nast, Magnetic 3D will showcase high-quality 3D visual content on their autostereoscopic “glasses-free” 3D displays and digital signage .

If the latest forecasts from GfK Digital World and CEA prove correct, 2012 will mark the first year that global spending on consumer technology devices surpasses $1 trillion. This represents a 5 percent increase over the 2011 figure of $993 billion. The key drivers for growth are expected to continue to be mobile-connected devices, such as smartphones and tablet PCs. Sales of tablet PCs, which reached $39 billion this year, are expected to show double-digit increases in 2012.

PMA@CES

For the first time, the annual convention and trade show of the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) has been integrated with CES.  The convergence seems natural as digital photography has enabled visual communications to play an integral part of our everyday lives.

Consumers today carry camera-phones everywhere they go, and take pictures as a means of documenting and sharing day-to-day experiences more than preserving memories. The Instagram app has become one of the most popular apps in the ITunes.

At CES, exhibitors will be showcasing hundreds of new apps and smartphone accessories, new 3D and touchscreen displays, and innovative standalone cameras such as the Lytro and the Zink-enabled Polaroid Z340 instant digital camera.

Polaroid’s Z340 combines a 14 megapixel digital camera with a printer that uses the ink-free Zero Ink Printing Technology from ZINK Imaging to deliver a 3 x 4-inch print.

 

With the Lytro light-field camera, you can focus and re-focus the image anywhere in the picture after the capture.

Should professional photographers feel threatened by the growing power and versatility of smartphone cameras?  Not those who make the effort to adapt.

An essay in the December/January issue of 6Sight Magazine recaps comments Joe Byrd made at a PMA@CES press preview: “Photography is a booming business across the world today. More photos are being taken by more people and shared in more ways than ever before, and it’s all steadily trending upwards. With so much activity and interest there are plenty of opportunities for everyone in the industry to make money. The only remaining question is: How? How do I need to change what I’m doing to capture my share of revenue from this rising tide of interest?” He advises photo-industry professionals to find a niche in the expanding sea of opportunity, then learn what it will take to prosper in that niche.

“The bright future of imaging is yours to grab,” says Byrd. “If you only take this opportunity to figure out what works best for you.”

6Sight: Future of Imaging Magazine

A good way to get a sense of perspective on imaging-related products exhibited at CES is to read the December/January issue of 6Sight: The Future of Imaging magazine.  The December/January issue includes 16 pages of product news (including many apps), as well as the following feature stories:

Flixab Automates Editing: Instant Video for Social Media
David Slater talks about the platform Flixlab is building to intelligently handle video. The Flixlab service automatically makes editing decisions, so people don’t have to invest a lot of time or acquire special skills to produce engaging movies. The initial iPhone app also shares video clips and pictures to Facebook.

Mobile Imaging: Ericsson Advancing Phone Photos
Ericsson research engineer Mats Wernersson talks about what lies ahead in mobile imaging.

From High-End Film Photos to iPhone Photography
In an interview conducted by Paul Worthington, long-time pro photographer Jack Hollingsworth explains why “iPhoneography” has made him more passionate about photography than ever been. Hollingsworth says, “I really feel it’s the greatest time alive to be a photographer today. The opportunities for the entrepreneur in the photography space are astounding.”

For more detailed coverage of new product introductions, tune into the CES Channel on YouTube.

LINKS

 Official 2012 International CES Channel on YouTube

6Sight Future of Imaging Magazine: December/January issue

6Sight Future of Imaging Magazine: The Shape of Cameras Today (November issue)

See Visionaries Discuss Technology, Creativity, and Art

If you enjoy learning about trends, technologies, and ideas that will be shaping our lives and culture, check out the videos posted on TED.com.

Artist Janet Echelman talks about “Taking Imagination Seriously” at TED2011. Photo: James Duncan Davidson/TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” It originated in 1984 as a conference for leading thinkers in Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and has since broadened its scope. TED now conducts two annual conferences, offers other idea-sharing platforms, and covers topics such as business, culture, science, and global issues.

TED.com was designed as a clearinghouse of free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers. It was also developed to enable curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.

On TED.com, you can watch videocasts of some of best talks and performances from TED conferences. Each talk is no longer than 18 minutes long. The interactive transcripts that accompany the videos enable you to preview the key points in the talk.

Two talks that caught my attention recently were given by sculptor Janet Echelman and author Eli Pariser.

Janet Echelman: Taking Imagination Seriously

In this nine-minute video, self-taught artist Janet Echelman tells the story of her first creative breakthrough into sculpture and how it became a catalyst for monumental artworks that were commissioned in Portugal, Phoenix Civic Space Park, the Vancouver Winter Olympics, and at the San Francisio International Airport.

Image of aerial sculpture by Janel Echelman
For the Inaugural Biennial of the Americas in Denver, Janet Echelman created this 230-ft. aerial sculpture entitled “1.26” Photo: Janet Echelman

She recalled walking through a fishing village in India and recognizing the latent beauty and sculptural possibilities in fishing nets. “I’d seen it every day,” she explained. “But this time, I saw it differently—a new approach to sculpture, a way to create volumetric form without heavy solid materials.” With the help of local fishermen, she used the ancient knotting craft to produce a billowing sculptural self-portait entitled “Wide Hips.” Today Echelman is internationally known for her place-making sculptures that transform urban environments.

VIDEO: Janet Echelman: Taking Imagination Seriously

Eli Pariser: Beware of “Filter Bubbles”

Book Cover for The Filter Bubble by Eli PariserIn this nine-minute video, the former executive director of MoveOn.org , shares insights from his new book: “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You.”

He talks about some of the unintended consequences that are occurring now that web companies use algorithms to predict what type of content they think we want to see while filtering out other information we should see. As as example, he shows the vastly different results two individuals received after searching for the word “Egypt.”

Pariser contends that when online companies “personalize” our content for us (without our knowledge or consent), we get trapped in a “filter bubble” and don’t get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. He believes this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.

“We really need the Internet to be that thing we all dreamed of it being,” said Pariser. “We need it to connect us all together. We need it to introduce us to new ideas and new people and different perspectives. And it’s not going to do that if it leaves us all isolated in a Web of one.”

VIDEO: Eli Pariser: Beware online ‘filter bubbles’

BOOK: The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You

About TED.com