Next Great Publishing Show? Not so much. . .
Posted On Monday, March 28, 2011 at at 12:58 PM by Dianne Kennedyi M back in Chicago after attending the first Publishing Xchange Conference. While I was hoping for a replacement for the late great Seybold Conferences of old, this was not to be.
Publishing Xchange presented two and a half days of cross-media publishing content with an Expo shared between PubX, OnDemand, iTex and info360. Each of the co-located Questex conferences had a unique focus and taken together filled the DC Convention center.
· The AIIM info360 Conference focused on enterprise content and business technology. Topics such as Business Intelligence, Business Productivity Apps, Cloud Computing, Document Management, Enterprise Content Management, eGov, Knowledge Management and Mobile Content Management were presented.
· OnDemand focused on digital printing & automated production. It is the largest conference and exposition dedicated to the technologies that personalize, manage, print, and deliver content.
· iTex, the Imaging Technology, Education & Exposition, is the North American tradeshow for the document imaging technology industry.
· This year Publishing Xchange was a new addition to the Questex Conference and Expo series. PubX was an educational event promising to analyze the business opportunity presented for publishers, marketers and digital service providers who possess the understanding and capabilities to serve the multi-media needs in demand today.
Taken together, the content of the combined conferences were bound to touch on one or more “hot buttons” for any attendee. Sessions I attended were excellent. But the disappointment was that while Zwang and company provided great educational content, attendance was light. Perhaps two tracks instead of three might have help concentrate the attendees more evenly. Many who did attend credited “being local” as their key criteria for selecting this conference to attend. Whatever the reason for the sparse attendance, I am giving up hope for a resurgence of publishing conferences. Even with the pressure iPad publishing is creating, distance education and social networking seem to be the learning places for the foreseeable future.
Dianne Kennedy
