WAN-IFRA’s first Digital Media India 2012'
conference concludes successfully
Digital Media India – the extension of the highly popular Digital Media Conference organized by WAN-IFRA every year in Europe and Far East Asia was held for the first time in India at Hyderabad on March 12, 2012 attracting 58 participants from 21 publishing houses in the region. The conference was chaired by Gregor Waller, WAN-IFRA’s frenemies consultant from Germany. Speakers included Rajesh Kalra, chief editor of Times Internet Ltd; Riyaad Minty, head-digital media of Al Jazeera; Gyan Gupta, head-digital business of Dainik Bhaskar Group; Monalisa Sengupta, head-apps division at NDTV Convergence; Adam Hill, head of diversity advertising and Paul Jansen, CEO of aSpecial Media Pte Ltd.
The highlight of the event was the case study of Al Jazeera, presented via Skype, by Riyaad Minty. He shared their experience of the new(s) ecosystem of virtuous cycle of different channels and participatory culture in reporting the Arab spring (or) Arab uprising and showed the power of the social media and how it can be used by publishers effectively for news sourcing and to be closer to their news consumers. Paul Jansen from aSpecial Media spoke on going beyond online analytics and statistics. In such a scenario, news publishers have to tap the rich vein of behavioural data flowing through the internet and through their own websites, said Jansen.
Rajesh Kalra, of Times Internet, spoke about going online to offer more to the readers. A case study on Dainik Bhaskar’s successful mobile publishing, in vernacular languages, was presented by Gyan Gupta, head-digital business at Dainik Bhaskar. Monalisa Sengupta, head-apps at NDVT Convergence spoke on their Tablet Publishing experiences. NDTV’s iPad app had won the silver award for the ‘Best in Tablet Publishing’ from WAN-IFRA’s Asia Digital Media Awards in 2011.
In the concluding panel discussion, panelists including leading digital media professionals from India, agreed that Indian newspapers are looking for ways to monetise contents online and to increase their share of revenue from digital. Yet, most content is available online for free and a very few content is on paid model. To a question when will it change, panelists answered that it will continue to be free for some more time. The panelists included, Rajesh Kalra, chief editor of Times Internet; Gyan Gupta, head of digital business of Dainik Bhaskar Group and Vincent D’Souza, editor and publishers of community newspapers in Chennai, India. The event was sponsored by 4CPlus, Atex and CCI Europe.
Digital Media India Conference will be a regular annual event and the next edition of the conference will be organised in the first quarter of 2013.
