Daniel Ambrose writes:
“Innovation is not coasting to a stop now that the iPad has been launched. New platforms are multiplying like rabbits. Sony’s Reader and Kindle came first; now there is Barnes & Noble Nook, Astak EZReader; Bookeen Cybook, Ectaco jetBook, Samsung Papyrus, iRex iLiad. All are poised to compete in the e-reader category. Some of these share aspects of software format, content distribution plans, and even display technology. Then there is the mobile sector; different operating systems (and different apps) for BlackBerry, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, Goggle’s Android, Palm OS etc. This diversity of media delivery opportunity is far wider then you are thinking right now. It includes mobile’s opposite, place-based media — which is emerging as well as a new delivery platform that is easier to deploy and to distribute to than ever before.
It should be clear, then, that if reaching the maximum number of readers and customers – and customers for advertisers — remains a key strategy for media companies, they’ll be doing that on a wider and wider range of devices and platforms. Analog media companies have struggled to adapt to one important new distribution platform in the last 15 years: the browser-based Internet. Over the next 15 years there will be dozens of new opportunities to deliver media company content and services. It’s time to begin the education process in earnest; not with highly specific training on particular platforms anointed by management, but with conceptual thinking that provides a framework for taking in each new delivery form. It’s time for publishing companies to begin to re-invest in their staffs at all levels. Companies that do so with thrive. New opportunities are emerging every day that their staffs will recognize and exploit. Companies that don’t will see the future pass them by.”
Well said!
Oh, boy, Daniel, you must work with INNOVATION…
My 10 questions to publishers and editors:
1. How you can handle new platforms when your newsroom still thinks print first?
2. How you can handle new platforms when your website people still thinks online first?
3. How you can handle new platforms when print and web newsrooms still are not integrated?
4. How you can handle new platforms when your sales people still doesn’t sell multi-media packages?
5. How you can handle new platforms when your journalists and managers don’t talk each other?
6. How you can handle new platforms when your IT people want to control everything?
7. How you can handle new platforms when your visual journalists still are mono-media story tellers?
8. How you can handle new platforms when your journalists are not able to create unique, relevant and compelling content?
9. How you can handle new platforms when your are not organized like a 24/7 multi-media operation?
10. How you can handle new platforms when you don’t spend money on research, training and innovation?
Let’s wake up!
Our INMA/INNOVATION Oxford Tablet Summit will try to answer some of these questions.
If you are interested, please register here.
(Thanks to Eivind Thomsen)
Tags: Daniel Ambrose, Eivind Thomsen, INMA, INNOVATOON, Oxford Tablet Summit