On Thursday 8th December, Bristol’s Watershed hosted Publish!, a one-day conference on the future of the book, organised by Media Futures. Baldur Bjarnason reports.

The Watershed in Bristol is the city’s go-to place for media events of almost any sort. A few weeks ago a day-long conference on the influence of the media theory guru Marshall McLuhan was held there, and on Thursday, 8th December, it was home to the event ‘Publish! A Day of Innovation on the Future of the Book’.

From one perspective, it was just another day-long conference like so many others. Panel after panel, presentation after presentation, delays and overruns that left little time for questions – a schedule that owed a lot to the human mind’s endless capacity for optimism.

But there were points in it that made it different; perspectives that aren’t seen or heard on a regular basis. It had highlights that made it well worth the price tag (which, in and of itself, wasn’t that high, cheaper than many rail tickets from Bristol to London, for example).

Publish! was a day when the fringes got to dance at the centre of attention. Their voices were what dominated the entire day.

It’s hard to describe those highlights, exactly, without referring to what you are likely to see and experience at a normal publishing event, one that is dominated by the people you expect to dominate at those events: industry mainstays, experienced pros, the old guard of publishing.

In most publishing events, even those that focus on ebooks and new trends, you are going to encounter fear, hesitation, doubts, and a constant drumbeat for the survival of old corporations that haven’t changed at all since the 19th century. You’ll have the new guard, the startups, the ebook mavens, and the innovators as well, but their voice won’t be as strong, and it won’t carry.

Well, their voice carried at the Publish! event. Their voices were what dominated the entire day. It was a day when the fringes got to dance at the centre of attention.

We got to hear the voices of app developers of varying ilk, new media storytellers, futurists, experimental novelists, and hackers. The projects we heard described were, for example, a zombie-themed exercise app (think ‘run for your life, zombies are chasing you’ and you’re on the right track), various experiments with translating illustrated books into apps and ebooks, high budget app productions, a mad app story based on a ‘lost phone’ concept, new approaches to audiobooks, as well as a fairly nice guide on how to do a hack day (days where the entire office dedicates itself to programming and implementation for the sake of programming and implementation, and fun).

In short, it was engaging and it gave everybody food for thought, as well as a grab bag of ideas to take home.

The attendees themselves were also an important part of the day. The event’s affordable price meant that they were a bit more eclectic than what you’d expect. Dance choreographers, writers, academics, programmers, designers – it was a cross-section of the creative industry, with a little bit of the software hacker mentality thrown in. To say that the discussions at the bar afterwards were interesting would be an understatement.

Both the panelists and the attendees had one thing in common, a trait that dominated the day and left me with a feeling of optimism: the joy of making things. You very much got the sense that everybody there enjoyed what they were doing and enjoyed talking about it almost as much.

I wrote up most of the panels and discussions on my website for those who want more detail. Be warned, though! It’s over five thousand words, so you have to like detail a lot to dive in.
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Baldur Bjarnason lives in Bristol and works in web development, research, design and marketing. Lately, he’s been returning to his PhD subject: eBooks and interactivity.