The plenary session is divided in six sub sessions. The most expected one, at least for me, is going to be Tim O’Reilly. I’ve heard the man speak several times, he’s not always proven right but at least he has a vision and is willing to share it with people.
Welcome & Announcements
Joe Wikert and Kat Meyer
With Kat Meyer (O’Reilly Media, Inc. ), Joe Wikert (O’Reilly Media, Inc.)
Some Reasons for Optimism
With Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media, Inc.)
The ebook transition has had many publishers running scared. Tim O’Reilly is still excited about the future of publishing, and optimistic that we’re discovering it, bit by bit. He’ll share his thoughts from the front lines.
We are here because we want to learn, we want to see the future. We should not fear innovation and new technologies. Publishers should really consider cross media. Innovators are in the driver’s seat. Publishers should think back about their primary mission: educate & entertain. Work on stuff that matters.
Update: watch Tim O’Reilly on stage.
How to Change the Future
With Brian David Johnson (Intel Corporation)
In the next decade it will be possible to turn anything into a computer. We will be living in a world where we are surrounded by computational intelligence. What tools do we need to design this future? How can we envision our tomorrows so that we can start building them today? It is possible to change the future and it’s simpler than you might think.
Brian is Intel’s futurist. His job is to project the world in 10 to 15 years, at Intel the design of a chip can take 5 years, so they better know what they are designing them for! Besides his anecdote on President Clinton, Brian thinks that everything will become a computer. A book can be a computer, a chair can become a computer.
So, everything we do is building the future. People in this room are designing the future of publishing (hey, we’ve been working on that).
We will change the future.
Unbound
With Matt MacInnis (Inkling)
Over 400 years of human communication and innovation have been powered by the book. We’re on the cusp of dramatic change, but to date the industry has been using woefully inadequate technologies to build natively digital products. Page layout software is a relic of the past. Text is necessary, but not sufficient: we now need to achieve the fidelity we’ve come to expect of print in digital products, too. And that’s a tall technical order.
Inkling has announced Inkling Habitat, which really seems to be a cool tool. Matt described Amazon as Darth Vador. But even if Matt looks more like Luke, his platform may also be a lock-down for publishers, no?
Anyway, the tool really looks cool and is probably worth a try.
Top 10 Reasons to Plan for a Successful Migration to EPUB 3/HTML5
With John Wheeler (SPi Global)
The impact of EPUB 3 and HTML5 continues to expand. In this keynote, you will learn the top reasons to maximize your content for different devices and why you should be converting your existing assets to HTML5. This keynote will be followed by a full breakout session which will dive deeper into these opportunities.
John is certainly not the best speaker of the morning, but selling services after a demo of a cool tool. SPi Global is a service company which can help foster content and turn them into ePub or HTML.
Henry Jenkins in Conversation with Brian David Johnson and Cory Doctorow
With Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California), Brian David Johnson (Intel Corporation), Cory Doctorow (craphound.com)
Henry Jenkins, Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts, USC Annenberg in conversation with Futurist at Intel Corporation, Brian David Johnson and Cory Doctorow, Science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger.
Let’s dream a little bit… Cory says that facts are now really cheap. They use to be expensive in the past, like spending the time to find the guy who knew how to phone for free using pay phones. Now, all that is available on the Internet.
From left to right Henry Jenkins, Cory Doctorow and Brian David Johnson.
Now, the author can assume that the reader has access to Google as he reads so he can expand his knowledge, go deeper on some subjects. It’s like watching a documentary with your iPad. If you haven’t done it yet, I really recommend you try that. You can go deeper on Wikipedia, check facts, add bookmark to your mind map. It’s easier to gather facts and content in 2013. The authors should focus on explaining concepts.
Content travels in a lot of much different ways. We don’t control it anymore. Whether its good or not, it’s a fact. It’s not about piracy, it’s about distribution.
The challenge of distribution of the books is pretty similar to the freemium model with the web. Books are really more and more like apps. Trying to start the viral mechanism and “hope” that your thing (either a book or a software) will be known. Having tried freemium, I really doubt that this is the way we should go. The quasi free for, let’s say, an abstract of a book and hoping it will be enough to promote the full piece is really something I doubt.
Science fiction is beautiful because their authors have an opinion and they are ready to “fight” for it.
Passion is great!