I attended and spoke yesterday at the Online Pubisher Association global forum in London. Day one was very much focusing on the impact of digital on traditional pubishing businesses. The forum is called “Forum for the Future” : i assure you that projects and revenus are happening NOW. Specific emphasis was place on web publishing, business models, mobile services, new content (UGC).
The Guardian has shown how it occupies now this space, financing its investments from some of its more profitable business lines. They have done an amazing job.
Pierre Bellanger Chairman, CEO and founder of Skyrock, France’s leading radio station among the new generation spoke about Skyblog.com, one of the first French websites and one of the main social networks of worldwide weblogs, which ranks ahead of Google on the youth segment.
Read Julien Jacob’s view on day one on his weblog
I joined fellow panelists Graeme Oxby, Marketing Director, 3 UK, Georgio Riva, Managing Director, RCS Digital, Simon Thompson, European Marketing Director, Motorola on a panel entitled “How should content companies approach the mobile platform to build successful business models?”
Michael Zimbalist, Vice President, Research & Development Operations, The New York Times moderated with talent the panel. He wanted a lively panel and made us work for it. Some of the points we brought up:
– devices are now up to par to provide quality user experience
– networks are still behind in providing “all you can eat” offers for users to view content on their mobile
– adapting content to mobile is not only about resizing it, but about new programs
– consumers want to experience their preferred services on multiple screens : mobile, computer, TV
– user generated content is now about quality programs uploaded by mobile and viewed on mobile within communities of shared interests.
The day ended with an outstanding speech from Bob Greenberg, Chairman/CEO/Global Chief Creative Officer, R/GA. I had a chance to have a long talk with Bob during the coktail party. Bob has been an advertising industry pioneer for three decades. He has a unique vision of the communication environment, forces, trends, players and new models.