The future of the book is digital, mobile and global. The changes sweeping this US$100 billion global industry - and increasingly newspapers and magazines too - promise the biggest change in how we read since the invention of the printing press. This conference explores their impact on New Zealand and the new opportunities opening up globally for smart media and technology players.

The Future of the Book conference is organised by the Digital Publishing Forum, an industry group formed by book publishers, authors and their copyright licensing agency. The Forum's aim is to accelerate the growth of digital publishing in New Zealand.  The Future of the Book conference is at the Hyatt Regency Auckland 24-25 June 2009.

The conference includes sessions from international speakers and local experts and a highlight will be the Future of the Book in Education stream which will open up the global potential of e-learning.

International speakers include:

Sherman Young

Sherman Young is a Senior Lecturer in the Media Department at Macquarie University, where he teaches new media theory and production. His research focus is on the cultural impact of the new media technologies. He is the author of The Book is Dead, Long Live the Book (UNSW Press 2007). In addition to chronicling the death of the (printed) book, his current projects include explorations of the music industry and a forthcoming book on Media Convergence with Palgrave in the UK.

Neelan Choksi

Neelan Choksi is the COO of Lexcycle where he is responsible for marketing, business development and strategic management. Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza, has over 1.4 million users in over 60 countries and nearly 7 million e-books downloaded (as of February 2009). Stanza is the most popular e-book reader for the iPhone and IPod Touch. Neelan is a frequent keynote about e-books at conferences.

Prior to joining Lexcycle, Neelan was the COO at SpringSource, the company behind the popular open source Spring Framework, and co-founder and President at SolarMetric, a leading object relational mapping provider, which was acquired by BEA Systems in 2005.

Neelan currently serves on the boards of SpringSource and Tasktop Technologies. Neelan is a graduate of MIT, Stevens Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business.

Michael Ross

Michael Ross is the Senior Vice President, Education General Manager, at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., where he heads worldwide electronic and print publishing. Prior to joining Britannica in 2002, he was the Executive Vice President and Publisher of World Book, Inc., and has held executive positions at other publishing companies, including NTC Publishing Group. He began his publishing career as an editor for Time-Life Books and worked for three years in their Tokyo bureau.

Michael is responsible for forming many successful co-publishing ventures with such global companies as Bertelsmann, IBM, and AOL. Two years ago he partnered with KidsforKids, a German media company, to produce a multimedia product for learning English called Discover English with Ben and Bella, which has become a best-seller in Asia, Europe, and South America. Earlier this year, he established a joint publishing partnership with Hong Kong-based Planetii to bring SmartMath, an online math program for children ages 5-10, to North America.

He is listed in Who’s Who in America, and in October 2002 he was inducted into Printmedia’s Production Executives’ Hall of Fame. He is a recipient of the “Making It Happen Award,” and in December of 2009 he will be inducted into the AEP Hall of Fame, the educational publishing industry’s highest honour.

Michael has a B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota, an M.A. from Brandeis University, and a certificate from Stanford University’s Advanced Management College. He is married with three children.

Richard Pipe

Richard Pipe is CEO of Singapore- and India-based InfoGrid Pacific, a content management and publishing services provider.

He has been developing XML technology for publishing since 1999. Prior to that, he spent several years creating interactive multimedia CD-ROMs. Richard started Versaware India in 1999, designed and developed their XML production services business scaling up to 1500 staff. After the dot-com melt-down and Versaware's collapse, he re-engineered the Indian organization to Digital Publishing Solutions and created the products then called DX-*.

Richard, an ex-patriate Kiwi, started Infogrid Pacific in 2004 with a focus on ECMS (enterprise content management systems), and has since expanded into publisher technology with a range of Online XML products for Content Object Management, content reuse, and online multi-format production.