30/05/06

Medialoper

Medialoper is a very well written blog that seems to be about convergence, but is really about lots more stuff that interests me. Two recent articles stand out: the first (and preferred) on ‘Publishing versus the net generation‘ which includes:

Despite the fact that it’s had ten years to prepare, the publishing industry doesn’t have a new media plan. To suggest that the rapid changes appear to be blind-siding the industry might be harsh, but, yeah, it looks like someone got caught with their strategy down … So what does this mean for the publishing industry? Content matters, but only if presented in the right context. An entire generation of consumers is growing up with different expectations than previous generations. And technology should not be feared.

as an aside there is a piece on how a $50 wifi access at BEA is a metaphor for the publishing indystry as a whole;

Which is, perhaps, why this event started with a day of 2.0. 2.0 what you ask? Good question, because the planners apparently have no idea. The press release announcing the day of sessions repeatedly refers to 2.0 without any indication of what 2.0 is – other than to say that it’s important and it’s changing the world.

Technically they meant Web 2.0, and fortunately the presenters on Thursday had a clue. After a slow start in which John Blossom of Shore Communications paid tribute to PowerPoint bullet points, things picked up a bit with perennial futurist Don Tapscott, and the day concluded with Chris Anderson providing a sneak peak of his soon-to-be-released The Long Tail (complete with advanced reading copies – fortunately I did not succumb to an Amazon pre-order on this one, but you definitely should).

There was just one problem. With the exception of The Long Tail session, the other Web 2.0 sessions were mostly empty. It’s actually not a surprise considering Web 2.0 has, until the recent Newsweek cover story, been almost exclusively the domain of web geeks. In the context of BEA, however, Web 2.0 seems to be a proxy for the Internet in general. It might as well be Web 1.0 (or Web 49.95 as the case may be).

Having vented a bit, I have to note that there’s some actual news being made here. I’m working on posts about the coming Book Search Wars, as well as Amazon’s interesting new Upgrade and BookSurge products. The publishing industry may want no part of the future, but Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are doing their best to drag publishers into the 21st century.

and a recent, longer, post, slightly off-topic, on copyright.

Posted by Peter Collingridge in Future of the book, Publishing.

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