Except that the ‘future’ in question is less than four years away.

Using material from Ericsson and Omincon PHd's 2011 ‘2016 Beyond the Horizon’ book project, Vogiatzakis envisioned a 2016 world in which technologies included OLED, Graphene, advanced voice recognition, 8000-line ultra HD video, virtual personal assistants – “devices will understand what we need” – augmented reality capabilities which include facial recognition, and both bionic eyes and internet-enabled contact lenses.

Google “will provide direct answers”, gamification will be everywhere, and there will be a further blurring between advertising and content.

“The next five years will see change like that of the last ten,” Vogiatzakis says.

Scary? Perhaps… not even new, in 2012... but exciting: “Change will never be as slow again.”

The conference programme was also packed with advice on how to cope with – and prosper from – the changes of the last five years.

Putting your best stories out via digital platforms first may be tough, but it’s the only way to go for Jeongdo Hong, executive director of South Korea’s JoongAng Media Network. And he warns, “Save something for a rainy day.”

He says there’s no surprise print editions aren’t selling when they do the same things as the previous night’s TV. “Focus on back-end culture and change editors’ mindset, in order to start creating the new content that is required,” he says. “Have the right structures and culture to make valuable news content: Ask, ‘what’s going on’.”

Jeongdo Hong says one innovation at his company has been the formation of a review system, in which a group of editors talk about what stories have been released in the past day, and discuss how they might have done better.

In a fast-paced review of classified trends, Peter Zollman had three key focus suggestions for publishers – greater emphasis on video and images – “it requires you to stop thinking like a newspaper” – mobile, and ‘fremium’ (“how to beat the other guys”).

The US-based founding principal of AIM Group and the Classified Intelligence report says ‘fremium’ – upsold free advertising – is the new global model for classified: “It’s scary, but you have to start with free… or someone else will.

“It doesn’t mean you have to give everything away, however. Most revenue will come from upsells and display.”

Featured ads, photos and video, ‘top up’ premiums, phone placement services and upsells to include print can all contribute revenue for online classified publishers. With profit margins of 80-90 per cent, some operators are making “big numbers on big numbers,” he says.

Advertisers want cutting edge technology in digital advertising, and “a true interactive experience, so they people about it,” Zertopia founder Janny Paul told delegates. Other demands include Big Data integration which delivers real data to advertisers and the “whole new world” of rich media ads.

Paul urges publishers to bring innovation in from outside – rather than trying to develop it inhouse – “be a video medium” and constantly experiment with new technology: “There will be a solution, a way of making money,” he says.