‘Publishing in Digital Age’

The Printing Technologists Forum, Chennai organised jointly with Anna University Department of Printing Technology a one-day seminar on ‘Publishing in Digital Age’. In the seminar 100+ attendees were present and get benefited with the discussion.

Dr N Rajeswari, head, Department of Printing Technology welcomed the gathering and R Jayaraman, the forum president dwelt upon the importance of the seminar to update the printing fraternity on digital to which they need to change sooner or later.

The chief guest S Shanmugavel, registrar – Anna university in his special address touched on the change of digital mode itself which was known in 1980s and how it has developed to present day usage by engineers and technologists. Olivannan, CEO, Emerald Publishers set the tone by giving an overview of publishing industry tracing the method of publishing from ancient age to e-publishing of today. He said, “Publishing and printing will be present in one form or other as the printing technology has been changing alongwith the publishing from time to time.” One significant point he made was about distribution, sales and marketing is turning digital and electronic.

Badri Seshadri, CEO, New Horizon Media Pvt Ltd, made a forceful analysis of the challenges faced by the publishers in his presentation on ‘Conventional to e-Publishing.” He elaborated, “The difficulties lie in capital investment, logistics and returns. The challenges were on resources, distributioin and workforce and certain extent faced and solved due to strides in publishing industry. The difficulties have to be overcome by innovation and selective use of digital resources.” He turned to importance of digital and advised that what publishers should do is to store digitally, do print-on-demand and start thinking about digital distribution.

SK Venkataraman, executive director, TNQ Books explained about the various software available in the field particularly the pecularities of HTML5, how it is different from its earlier versions. Srinivas Venlatraman of Oracle explained about ‘cloud computing’ and said that it makes the use of resources available in the cloud with the computer. K Vipinendran, assistant professor, Anna University giving an exhilarating presentation on ‘Talent Management’ stressed that a hybrid employee is most useful one in present day circumstances. An employee should be well versed in more than one area. CR Sowmya, senior manager, Reed Elzevier India, talking on ‘Redefining the reading experience through Digital Content’ went through the possibilities available today to read digitally, how it could be done advantgeously.

Subramanian, CEO, Harness Handtouch, working on a tablet for education told that days are not far away when the children start learning ‘The Touch Way.’ The classroom will have a touch screen and the interactive content which is already preveling in but the question is of affordability. N Nagaraj, new media chief, The Hindu, gave an interesting presentation on ‘Social Media and its Impact on Publishing’ saying social media is other than selling and marketing.

A lively interaction arose between the audience and the panel consisting of Premamala Ramalingam, CTO, Jouve India and SK Khurana, editor and publisher, Print & Publishing, both globe trotters.