[This page contains information about last year's PubTechConnect. Click here for information about this year's PubTechConnect.]

Conference co-chairs Andrea Chambers, director, NYU School of Professional Studies Center for Publishing, and Carl Pritzkat, Vice president of business development, Publishers Weekly.

9:10-9:45 a.m.

Sree Sreenivasan, Chief Digital Officer, New York City, and Kinsey Wilson, Editor, Innovation & Strategy and Executive Vice President, Product & Technology, The New York Times, discuss how two of New York’s leading institutions dared to disrupt their way to innovation.

Caroline Waxler, executive producer, PubTechConnect.

9:45-10:30 a.m.
Leaders from renowned change-making companies discuss the entrepreneurial mindset, cultivating an obsessed audience, creating new metrics for tomorrow’s consumer, and what it takes for executives and organizations to make meaningful change.

J.J. McCorvey, Business & Technology Staff Writer for Fast Company moderates.

Hear from:
George Baier, IV, Head of Media Solutions, Dropbox
Hillary Kerr, Co-Founder & Chief Ideation Officer, Clique Media Group
Joanna Lord, Chief Marketing Officer, ClassPass
Amory Wooden​, Director of Brand Marketing,​ ​​Squarespace

11:00-11:30 a.m.

J. P. Eggers, Associate Professor, Management & Organizations, NYU Stern School of Business, speaks about how businesses can overcome creative inertia and successfully develop an environment that can lead to radical innovation. With the right approach, he believes that established companies can be the biggest architects of technological transformation.

Listen in on a targeted talk about how to manage today's multigenerational workplace, with special focus on millennials and the soon-to-arrive Gen Z. Lindsey Pollak, Author and Millennial Workplace Consultant, helps you turn generational diversity into a competitive advantage.

Top executives relay their experiences and best practices for discovering your most passionate niche audiences (in the strangest places), being the one to say yes when everyone else says no, and cultivating multiple channels in multiple countries—and staying sane.

Howard Mittman, chief business officer, GQ, GQ Style, Golf Digest, Golf World, Pitchfork, and Wired Media Group (WIRED, Ars Technica and Backchannel), will moderate.

Hear from:
Otis Chandler, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Goodreads
Rachel Elam, Chief of Staff, GLOBAL BUSINESS MARKETING, FACEBOOK
Ciel Hunter, Global Head of Content, Vice Media
Tom Klein, Chief Marketing Officer, MailChimp
Chantal Restivo-Alessi, Chief Digital Officer and Executive Vice President, International, HarperCollins Publishers

Learn the latest tips and tools on how best to use the platforms most relevant today for maximizing growth, reach, and ROI. Speakers include:

Ian Schafer, Founder and Chairman, Deep Focus and Christina Cooksey, Executive Director, Moment Studio, will help you understand how to maximize Snapchat for ROI.
Marcelle Hopkins, Executive Producer for 360 News, The New York Times, will guide you through the worlds of Virtual Reality (VR) and 360-degree video to discuss how these storytelling innovations can help your business.
Max Linsky, Cofounder, Pineapple Street Media, shows how you can tap into the power of podcasting.

These three seminars will give attendees the chance to work together with their peers to tackle some of today’s knottiest issues. Sessions include:

Content: Author Care and Feeding in a World of Self-Publishing and Author Brands, led by Judith Curr, President and Publisher, Atria Publishing Group, Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Marketing: Next Gen Social Storytelling and Getting the Message Out in Different Ways, led by Kristin Fassler, Vice President and Director, Marketing, Ballantine Bantam Dell, Penguin Random House

Digital Innovation: When (and Why) to Say Yes—and No—to the Next Best Thing, led by Torrey Oberfest, Vice President, Corporate Strategy, Hachette Book Group

Learn how to recruit and engage with millennial talent, particularly digitally savvy innovators who will help accomplish necessary transformations, as envisioned by Kathryn Minshew, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, TheMuse.com, a career platform used by 50+ million millennials, and author of The New Rules of Work, a modern playbook to help millennials navigate their careers.

Listen to Jim Bankoff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Vox Media, and Jon Kelly, Editor and Co-Founder, The Hive, chat frankly about what it takes to build a business based on technology, multiple content categories, and a make-it-happen mindset.

It’s not just the young and millennial-targeted companies that are fostering change. Long-established brands with deep roots in our life and culture are in the forefront of technological transformation. Look back and forward with leaders including:

Moira Forbes, Executive Vice President, Forbes Media, will moderate.

Hear from:
Tara Brannigan, Head of Marketing Book, Cadillac
Jay Lauf, Publisher, Quartz and Senior Vice President, Atlantic Media
Declan Moore, chief executive officer, National Geographic Partners
Sam Olstein, Global Director, Innovation, General Electric

[This page contains information about last year's PubTechConnect. Click here for information about this year's PubTechConnect.]

“PUBTECHCONNECT was the perfect mix of speakers from the publishing world with experts and authorities from other fields, and provided ample time to network and brainstorm with our peers. I walked away feeling that I had been given a fresh perspective and new insights that would enable me to take a more creative and proactive approach to growing the business at Ballantine Bantam Dell.”
Kristin Fassler, Vice President and Director of Marketing, Ballantine Bantam Dell division of Penguin Random House

“PUBTECHCONNECT provided both an understanding of the current industry landscape and perspectives to help analyze and plan for changes on the horizon. I found the insights provided by the speakers and participants to be of great value as I analyze the marketplace. As an additional bonus, the conference also provided an opportunity to connect with experts within the broader spectrum of the publishing industry."
Chantal Restivo-Alessi, Chief Digital Officer, Executive Vice President, International

“Congratulations on an amazing inaugural conference. I thought the event was so well curated and it was an honor to play some small role.”
Sam Olstein, Global Director of Innovation, General Electric

"I absolutely loved hearing from such a diverse mix of business leaders across different disciplines and not just book publishing. Learning how others are dealing with the age of disruption gave a sense of camaraderie while at the same time provided takeaways, ideas, and inspiration for my own business."
Gail Gonzales, Vice President, Publisher, Rodale Books/Rodale Kids

"It was refreshing to attend a conference with speakers from a range of industries beyond publishing and media, and where the audience could make the connections to their own businesses when and as needed. Everyone who presented had something useful to contribute – and I'm still drawing on their insights months later."
Lorraine Shanley, President, Market Partners International

“PUBTECHCONNECT accomplished what a good conference should do: Expose you to ideas outside your immediate industry to reframe the way you think about problem solving. With speakers from large institutions to young entrepreneurs, PubTech offered fresh thinking from men and women who are leaders in their fields.”
Jacqueline Deval, Vice President and Publisher, Hearst Books

“PUBTECHCONNECT was a breath of fresh air. It gave me a great update on how media players outside of our book industry focus are further changing, adapting, and growing in the digital marketplace–ranging from The New York Times to Facebook to Squarespace.”
Peter Hildick-Smith, Founder and President, Codex-Group LLC

“PUBTECHCONNECT brought some of the brightest minds to focus on innovating within the publishing industry. I’m excited to see the line-up for next year.”
Kempton Mooney, Executive Director, Product Management, the NPD Group

"I gleaned a lot of useful information about how to be a better manager and how to think creatively about industry disruption, adaptation, and innovation. We were pleased to be included and look forward to supporting the initiative in future."
Lauren Klouda, Marketing Manager, Print + Digital, Independent Publishers Group (IPG)

“The power of storytelling in a period of relentless change, the challenges of managing a multigenerational workforce, and the evolving possibilities of social media were among the topics examined at the inaugural PubTechConnect, a daylong conference on the intersection of publishing and technology held at the NYU’s Kimmel Center on April 20... The digital era is well underway, and PubTech offered an opportunity to renew discussion about the challenges and complexities it has brought to the marketplace.”
Read more from “Books Meet Tech at PubTechConnect” on Publishers Weekly.
Read Publishers Weekly’s full conference coverage here.

“At some point late in the morning, it became evident that these folks from organizations as disparate as Dropbox and the City of New York don’t frequently hear from each other any more than publishing hears from them. All day long, there were interesting listening patterns going on, raised eyebrows across the stock market, quick notes being made of something heard from the other end of a panel.”
Read more from “PubTechConnect’s First Outing: Content in Digital Times” on Publishing Perspectives.

“Throughout the day there were periodic references to how book publishers could adapt the issues under discussion for their own use – and some energetic interactive session... But generally the purpose of the conference was to present the range of digital voices and platforms, and trust that publishers would find ways to adapt them to their own books, authors and audiences. In the final panel, Moira Forbes, EVP of Forbes Media, summed up not just her panel but the entire day when she talked about finding, understanding and communicating with your target 'customer' by continually embracing innovation... The audience, almost all of whom stayed through the last panel, was feted with champagne in what felt like a celebration of the multiple opportunities that had been highlighted throughout the day.“
Read more from “PubTechConnect: Where Publishing Meets its Future” on Publishing Trends.