Posts Tagged “eBooks”

SxSW Interactive spotlights leadership and the war for talent

SxSW Interactive is promoted as a major tech event in Austin, Texas. But over the
years Interactive has become the most important content-centric event in the
world. Last year it attracted 20,000 participants that crowded into a half
dozen campuses in the downtown area – including the entire convention center – to
discuss content creation in all formats, related  technologies, user experience, social media,
and the future of music, film, and information at almost a thousand panels.
This year it looks more than 35,000 showed up to attend closer to 1,300 panels.

Most conferences that cater to the traditional book industry today focus on the
disruption created by the eBook. The eBook – even in its enhanced versions – is
a facsimile of the printed book. Although the digital format is challenging the
business, eBooks aren’t breaking any new ground or rules of the game. If you
want to understand how rapid the world of content consumption, including
reading, is really changing you need to be at SxSW. New forms of narrative
creation like transmedia are responding to radical changes in narrative consumption
that are not fads. According to the conference organizers, 72% of Interactive
attendees are under 40 years old. These are folks who live and breathe content
outside of its traditional packaging.

And, of course, all of this is changing the nature of leadership, management, and
hiring and retaining the talented people that make this happen. This year there
was a campus dedicated to talent management in all of its aspects and many
excellent discussions that I will report on here.