Publishers Forum Berlin: IT Goes Center Stage. And LAST CALL for early bird rate

Announcing the next set of details on the Publishers‘ Forum Berlin programm and agenda, as the Early Bird discounted reggistration closes nxt Monday (February 2, 2015).

How can large and medium-sized publishing houses adapt or upgrade their IT infrastructure to manage requirements that are rapidly increasing in complexity, and how can they finance such changes?
This is the crucial question facing management at almost every publishing house today. And the acclerating pace of innovation is exacerbating a decision making process already balancing day-to-day requirements and forward-looking strategy.

It’s a question of highly practical requirements:

Can – and should – books at trade publishers be produced right from the database? Does it make sense commercially to offer single chapters for purchase? Should the production and targeted mailing of the catalog of new publications be part of a single workflow (delivered either lavishly printed or in various electronic formats depending on customer preference)? And should it then include the dispatch of text samples and advance reading copies (printed or digital; PDF, Kindle Mobipocket or EPUB) to media outlets and booksellers, document the feedback and provide the results in a useful form to marketing and sales?

But answers to questions regarding the integration and practical use of user data are also pending. The keywords are: direct-to-consumer, social-media marketing and, still, multi-channel sales.

In most cases, the much-discussed subject of Big Data mutates for publishers into small data; into fragmented, heterogeneous data, whose analysis and the resulting knowledge are not always easy for marketing and sales to apply. Are innovative technologies such as semantic systems also interesting to small and medium-sized publishing houses?

And, at the end, fundamental, organizational decisions have to be made: where is the lead? Do previously autonomous business units have to become more centralized – „for the sake of the IT“?

The theme „IT Goes Center Stage“ is bringing a slew of top speakers to the Publishers‘ Forum 2015, who, in keynote presentations, compact podium debattes, and practice-focused workshops, will „roll out“ a uniquely board range of experiences and „lessons learned“ for application in publishing practice.

To mention just a few names in advance:

Volker Smid, CIO of the Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, Matt Turner, CTO of the database specialist MarkLogic and Steve Odart, CEO of Ixxus, a leader in the area of publishing and media integration.

Case studies on the integration of innovative IT solutions in organizations and process will be the focus of several workshops with catalytic figures who are well-known to the German-speaking publishing world, including Florian Geuppert (CEO, BoD), Beate Kuckertz (CEO, dotbooks and venusbooks), Christian Damke (CEO, Open Publishing), Heiko Beier (CEO, Moresophy), and the Akademie der deutschen Medien (German Media Academy).

Find all the details on the programm and speakers at http://publishersforum.de/speakers-2015/