Reaching new markets: an overview of Ingenta's UK Publisher Forum
As we hope you are all aware, Ingenta holds two annual meetings for publisher customers – one in the UK, one in the US. This year's UK forum was held just prior to Online Information at St Paul's Cathedral in central London. The theme of Reaching new markets was addressed by both internal (to Ingenta) and external speakers, including Michael Gallico from Maney Publishing and Cathy Gordon from Google.• Download the agenda
• Download the speakers' biographies
• Download the delegates list
Following a delicious lunch, Ingenta CEO Simon Dessain opened the afternoon with an update on Ingenta's organisational structure, and an overview of the themes to be addressed during the ensuing presentations.
• Download Simon's presentation.
Anne Orens (Director, North American Business Development, Ingenta) then presented current offerings from Ingenta's websites and Information Commerce division, which has recently delivered its first publisher platform to Institute of Physics Publishing. Anne demonstrated some of the capabilities of both the Information Commerce system, and looked at ways in which it can provide evidence and support for new marketing activities. Anne also gave us a sneak preview of the new "PDF portal" currently in development which is designed to provide a highly-customised yet low-cost full web solution for publishers.
• Download Anne's presentation.
Neil Charlesworth (Chairman, The Charlesworth Group) was accompanied by Charlesworth China's Rights Manager, Rick Liu, and Chinese librarians Professor Zheng Jiancheng and Ms Li Yan. Neil gave us a brief overview of his organisation's activities in China, including marketing on behalf of scholarly and academic publishers. The coffee break following Neil's talk allowed ample time for delegates to meet and question our librarian guests, who provided significant insight into the Chinese library market.
• Download Neil's presentation.
Michael Gallico (Managing Director, Maney Publishing) was next on the podium, and delivered an enjoyable history of this independent society publisher, including some wonderful images of publishing and typesetting in days of yore. Michael went on to give an overview of recent activities Maney has undertaken to further its market reach – including, for example, the MORE Collections project undertaken with Ingenta, of which we will be including a case study in the next issue of eyetoeye.
• Download Michael's presentation.
Neil Appleton (European Publisher Services Manager, IngentaConnect) then stepped up to address ways in which IngentaConnect can support publishers in an evolving market; Neil used examples from Michael's history of Maney to demonstrate some aspects of change, and categorised Ingenta's ability to help under the headlines of data, data, data; dissemination; and disambiguation.
• Download Neil's presentation.
IngentaConnect's UK Engineering Manager, Leigh Dodds, followed Neil with an inspiring exploration of new technologies and what they mean for online publishing. The web is coming of age, and beginning to realise some of its earliest intentions. Publishing, Leigh posited, should strive to be not just on the web, but part of it. Leigh provided simple examples of how existing IngentaConnect content could be transformed with mildly more sophisticated input data, and gave us an idea of what developments we can expect to see both within IngentaConnect and in the industry in general over the next year.
• Download Leigh's presentation.
Cathy Gordon (Director, Business Development, Google) closed the afternoon with an overview of current Google projects, which put paid to some of the more fantastic rumours that surround projects such as Google Book Search, but nonetheless provoked much discussion amongst attendees. Google continues to be the subject of fierce debate, and Cathy addressed many of the issues which have been of most concern to publishers over the last few months.
• We hope to make Cathy's presentation available for download in the near future.
If you attended the forum and would like to let us have your feedback, please return your questionnaire to us – by fax on +44 1865 799111; by email to kate.bennett@ingenta.com or by post to Kate Bennett, Ingenta plc, 23–38 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, OX1 2ET, UK.