Aimed at publishers, the WoodWing community and every professional working in multi-channel and digital publishing, the WoodWing Xperience took place in Amsterdam on March 27-28. The high-profile event attracted more than 300 visitors from all over the globe. With a strong focus on efficiency and monetization for publishing, a number of renowned industry leaders shared their experiences and insights. Adobe, WoodWing and WoodWing partners outlined the future of digital publishing and delivered in-depth product and technology knowledge. WoodWing used the Xperience to offer a sneak peek into SmartDPS Tools, a new product in the field of digital publishing.

Hosted by the international publishing expert Russel Viers, the two-day event kicked off with keynotes by WoodWing CEO Hans Janssen and Erik Schut, President of WoodWing. Mitch Klaif, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Time Inc., followed by sharing his experience bringing all 21 Time Inc. magazines to various tablets. Klaif quoted a study conducted by Time Inc. that said 68 percent of Time Inc.´s subscribers who own an iPad wish to receive both digital and print editions of their magazines. The study also revealed that digital magazines designed for tablets earn 40 percent higher satisfaction levels over digital editions generated straight from print as a PDF. As a bonus, Klaif offered one-week free access to all of Time Inc.´s digital magazines to attendees of the WoodWing Xperience.

Joe Zeff, owner of Joe Zeff Design in New York, took the audience on a ride through the third wave of digital publishing, explaining the do´s and don´ts in tablet publishing while stressing the fact that tablets are a tool to address business objectives. Simon Regan-Edwards, Head of Technology of The Sunday Times, explained how they grew their renowned tablet app from 31,000 downloads per issue in July 2011 to 64,000 in January 2012. Roger Webster, Chief Architect of Barnes & Noble´s Digital Products, explained the key elements of the success of the Nook tablet and what it means to be “the reader’s tablet.”

Rebecca McPheters of McPheters & Company gave a deep insight of the results of the company´s iMonitor rankings evaluating more than 5,000 apps from 65 countries. Among many other tips, she strongly recommended creating an enveloping consumer experience which is increasingly personalized through the use of multiple versions, language and social media.

In her presentation, Betty Wong, Editor in Chief of Fitness (published by the Meredith Corporation), shared some of the results of a survey among the readers of the tablet edition of Fitness – 79 percent read the app cover-to-cover (the average reading time is one hour) and 41 percent consider buying or shopping for a featured product. Stefan Ragaz, Deputy Editor of the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Luzerner Zeitung, explained how the paper successfully implemented WoodWing Enterprise and Content Station to create six daily regional issues and several supplements. Felippo Teixeira, Head of the Tablet Lab of Abril, introduced their approach to educate ad agencies to tap the possibilities offered by tablets to create stunning interactive ads. Ben O´Neill, Production Manager at BeritaSatu Media in Indonesia, explained their approach in launching a newspaper in the Facebook age.

The future in Print and Digital Publishing
Members of the Adobe and WoodWing teams provided not only in-depth product and technology information, but also shared their vision of the future in print and digital publishing. Zeke Koch, Roger Risdal and other Adobe staff outlined the feature set Adobe DPS will offer within a 12-month timeframe and went into the details of DPS Direct Entitlement (subscriptions) and Analytics. Among many other topics, the WoodWing team drew the Enterprise road map for 2012-2013 and explained the use of Enterprise in the cloud. In addition, WoodWing showed an early version of SmartDPS Tools, a set of digital publishing plug-ins for InDesign for standalone use outside of an Enterprise-based workflow environment. SmartDPS Tools will become available in mid-2012.

WoodWing technology partners introduce new integrations with WoodWing Enterprise
A number of WoodWing technology partners used the Xperience to introduce new integrations of their products with WoodWing´s multi-channel publishing system Enterprise. Crossip Communication presented their powerful Digital Subscription Clearing Platform, a real-time high-volume system for authentication while delivering digital content to subscribers. PicturePark and Modula4 introduced the integration of various digital asset management solutions with WoodWing´s Content Station, and dataplan showed the latest version of Digital Designer, a planning solution for digital publications, also integrated with Content Station.

“We are very satisfied with the continued success of the WoodWing Xperience," said Hans Janssen, CEO of WoodWing Software. "Speakers and participants travel from around the world to attend the event. The strong interest reflects the high demand for information by publishers to make the right decisions for efficient multi-channel and digital publishing. Monetization and efficiency are key focus points for all of them.”

The WoodWing Xperience 2012 was sponsored by Adobe Systems, the WoodWing technology partners dataplan,Tansa Systems, crossip and Picturepark, as well as PubliQare, one of WoodWing´s Gold Authorized Solution Partners in The Netherlands.