Chennai, July 22, 2008 -- IFRA India 2008, the sixteenth annual conference of IFRA in India will be held at the Marriott Resort Goa, on September 17 and 18. This is the first IFRA India conference being held in the coastal resort city.

The conference will start with a session on ‘Newspaper of the Future’. It will look at changes in newspaper production technology, explore case studies and try to determine how the newspaper will shape in future. Topics such as semi-commercial printing, digital printing, and printing using lower grammage newsprint will be discussed. Other sessions include ‘Materials & Mailroom’ and ‘Technology to Use and Best Practices’.

Speakers from India and abroad have confirmed their participation. These include Sandeep Gupta, Executive President, Dainik Jagran; Sanat Hazra, Technical Director, The Times of India Group; Sanjib Hazra, AGM Quality, HT Media Ltd; Dean Du Toit, Senior Production Manager, Gulf News; Yusuke Naito, Nikkei Japan, and Ian Lewis, Director, Arcon Digital, New Zealand.

The main conference will be preceded on September 16 by two pre-conference workshops on Reorganising Multimedia Newsroom and Editorial Systems. The Reorganising Multimedia Newsroom workshop will be lead by the IFRA Newsplex team and is targeted at editors, sub-editors, online editors, IT directors, newsroom executives, new media executives, newsroom management teams and those leading newsrooms or multimedia and or convergence projects in the editorial department. The workshop will look at the basic concepts of multimedia organisations with examples and will also try to understand the phases of change – of editorial reorganisation and principles for guiding newsroom transformation.

At the workshop on editorial systems, publishing system vendors - 4CPlus, Adobe, Comyan, Quark, Summit and Televisual -- will present their products; an IFRA consultant will moderate the session. Delegates can compare the working of several systems in a highly productive environment. For the first time, the workshop will be conducted in a small-group format so that participants get enough time and opportunity to understand each system.

There is an early bird incentive for registrations received before 15 August 2008. Please contact IFRA India at the address below for more details. Details at -- www.ifra.com/ifraindia2008