Keynote address by Dipak Jain at IFRA India’s first ever ‘CEO – Publishers Conclave

The CEO-Publishers Conclave will take place on 16 and 17 September 2008 with an opening keynote address by Professor Dipak Jain, dean of the Kellogg School of Management and the Sandy and Morton Goldman Professor in Entrepreneurial Studies. A professor of marketing at the Kellogg School and a consultant to HT Media based in Delhi, Professor Jain has advised media companies around the world.

At the exclusive CEO conclave, which has only forty seats, Tomas Brunegard, CEO, Stampen Group, Sweden, will speak on Business Model of Printing and Publishing. Dr. Horst Pirker, Chairman, Styria Medien Group, Austria, and President of the Board of IFRA, will make a valedictory presentation on Investment Strategies of the Styria Medien Group. Other speakers include Steve Yelvington, Senior Strategist of Morris Digitalworks, USA, and Tomasz Jozefacki, Head of Internet Division of Agora, Poland. There will also be a panel discussion featuring CEOs of India’s leading newspapers, chaired by Tariq Ansari, Managing Director, Mid Day. Hans-Peter Rohner, CEO, PubliGroupe S.A., Switzerland, will give a special address at the Conclave dinner.

Registration to the Conclave is limited and will be exclusive to CEOs, Publishers, Managing Directors, Managing Editors, Editor-in-chiefs and Board Members – on a first-come first-served basis. Many CEOs and Publishers have already confirmed their participation and more than half of the 40 seats available have been booked. The registration fee for the conclave is Rs. 55,000 (for Ifra non-members) and Rs. 45,000 for Ifra members. For more details you can visit www.ifra.com/ceoconclave2008. To make the conference stay comfortable, a limited number of hotel rooms at the Marriott Resort have been blocked for delegates at very attractive price.

Pre-conference workshops – 16 September 2008

The main Ifra India conference on 17 and 18 September will be preceded on September 16 by two pre-conference workshops -- Reorganising Multimedia Newsrooms 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, six publishing system vendors - 4CPlus, Adobe, Comyan, Quark, Summit and Televisual -- will present their products while an IFRA consultant will moderate. 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.

The main conference will take place on September 17 and 18. In the opening session Newspaper of the Future will look at changes in newspaper production technology, explore case studies and try to determine the shape of newspapers in the future. Topics such as semi-commercial printing, digital printing, and printing using lower grammage newsprint will be discussed. Other sessions include Materials and 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.

Ifra India 2008 registration fees

Rs. 22,000 for Ifra non-members and Rs. 20,000 for Ifra members. For more details visit: www.ifra.com/ifraindia2008. Contact IFRA India, telephone +91.44.42112893 and eMail infoindia@ifra.com.