I'm in Austin today, attending South by Southwest Interactive and presenting "The opportunity in abundance" as part of O'Reilly Media's one-day Tools of Change for Publishing event here. O'Reilly has hosted similar one-day events in Frankfurt, Bologna and Portland (Oregon), but this is the first "mini-TOC" in Austin.
Walking up to the event, Jenn Webb interviewed me about the ideas included in "abundance". The interview, which was posted yesterday on O'Reily's Radar blog, gave me a chance to return to several themes of particular interest. Among these:
- the roles of editors and publishers are changing (have changed, really)
- readers need publishers to help them solve problems, not just sell them printed or digital objects
- the publishing supply chain is being transformed by the growth of digital capacity, and
- publishing can take advantage of this moment by redefining itself as the engine of the engagement economy
If it is of interest, Webb's post includes links to the full text or screencast of prior talks. I greatly appreciate her work condensing a longer set of responses into something more manageable (and a post that hopefully helps its readers solve problems).
Updated during the day to add: O'Reilly is streaming the content of this event. There are several good speakers, and the program agenda is available at the link provided in the first paragraph.
