O’Reilly Plans Tools of Change for Publishers Conference

by Bridget Kinsella, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 12/4/2006

O’Reilly Media will host the first of what it hopes will be an annual event called TOC: Tools of Change for Publishing, June 18-20, at the San Jose Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, Calif. Sarah Milstein, O’Reilly’s conference program chair, describes TOC: Publishing as a how-to conference and trade show about the future of information exchange.

“All publishers are aware that technology is an increasingly big factor in their businesses,” said Milstein. “But very few know enough about the technology to exploit it.” The goal of TOC, Milstein said, is to help all companies in publishing look for opportunities and profitable business models created by technology.

O’Reilly representatives were in New York last week meeting with executives to discuss topics for the conference. Mike Shatzkin, founder and CEO of the Idea Logical Company, who met with O’Reilly reps observed: “On the one hand, O’Reilly is the most sophisticated company in terms of bringing print companies into the future. On the other hand, they approach things from a technological point of view, and I am not sure if they understand publishing when it is not technology related. That’s probably why we need a conference to come up with some answers.”

At this point, O’Reilly is looking for proposals from publishers large and small to participate in the conference in June. Milstein described TOC: Publishing as three days of tutorials with participatory seminars throughout. O’Reilly hopes to alternate the conference annually between the San Francisco Bay Area and New York.