Yaffa's Gunn at the head of publishing thinking

Halfway through a 35-magazine rollout, production director at Sydney’s Yaffa Publishing Group Matthew Gunn was among those taking time out for the WoodWing publishing conference in Athens last month. Gunn, from one of Australia’s largest independent media companies, says he was able to talk with like-minded publishers and get an insight into other workflows through the case-studies and keynote speakers. “Having the opportunity to see where WoodWing is headed, observe live demos from affiliated partners, and sit down and talk with the development team enabled me now to start planning the implementation of new products to further enhance our digital workflow,” he says. The event in Greece, themed ‘The fast track to online’ turned out to be a leading meeting point for publishing specialists from all over the world. More than 130 people attended from publishing houses, printing companies, advertising agencies and solution partners. Keynote speakers included Dries Buytaert (Drupal founder, CTO and co-founder of Acquia, USA), Frits Habermann (VP Core Technologies, Adobe Systems), Samuel Huegli (Group CIO of Ringier, Switzerland) and Karl Schneider (Editorial Development Director RBI, UK) talked about the latest technologies and how they can be implemented in existing publishing environments. WoodWing presented new strategies to enable publishers to streamline workflow and facilitate varied publication channels … with a lively feed to Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr, YouTube, mobile, web and email by way of demonstration. Says WoodWing president Erik Schut, “More than ever publishers need to look at new sources of income, and they need to do it with a sense of urgency.”