At O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt, George Walkley organized an end-of-day Pecha Kucha featuring several speakers and almost as many points of view about the future of book publishing. None of the presentations involved programming or programmers.
Two presentations that stuck with me were given by Richard Nash, who talked about Cursor, and Eoin Purcell, who provided his point of view on “Six Implications of Digital Vertical Niches”.
Eoin has just put up his slides and some text to bring them to life on the web, and I recommend the post. As I note in a comment, “It explains why the recent discussions about “controlling the interface” are off the mark.
The question isn’t really who owns the device that people prefer to use, but who “owns” the community that you’d like to reach. As publishers become more involved in direct-to-consumer digital selling, Eoin paints an effective picture of the skills they will need to develop.
