Among those who took advantage of the first deadline for early bird rates and registered to the conference are editors and managers of the leading European newsmedia such as the Daily Telegraph, Corriere della Serra, Der Spiegel, El Pais, Helsingin Sanomat, Irish Times, Le Monde, Mecom, New York Times, Ouest-France, Schibsted, or Styria.

In total organisers of the Krakow event expect more than 200 newsmedia executives from all over Europe to gather this year at the main annual conference of the International Newsmedia Marketing Association and the Online Publishers Association in Europe.

The programme of the conference includes topical seminars on local newsmedia, research, sports journalism and marketing, and plenary sessions on innovations in news content, advertising, promotion as well as new mobile devices like tablets. (Check the latest version of the programme at the conference site.)

Confirmed speakers include David Montgomery, CEO of Mecom Group (UK), Shailesh Gupta of Dainik Jagran (India), Bernard Asselin of the Montreal Gazette (Canada), Espen Hansen of Schibsted’s VG (Norway), Massimo Russo of Gruppo l’Espresso (Italy), Chris Pennock of Johnston Press (UK) and Florian Nehm of Axel Springer (Germany).

Krakow, the host city of the conference, is itself a reason to come. Recognised throughout the world as an authentic and charming historical city, it is one of Europe’s official cultural capitals. It has a great location between the West and the East, and travel has become easy with affordable direct flights. (Learn more at this site.)

Check who’s already registered to the event (the list updated as of July 25th):

• Belden Associates (USA)
• ComQuotidiens (F)
• Corelio (B)
• De Gelderlander (NL)
• De Persgroep Publishing (B)
• DNA (F)
• Edytor (PL)
• Ekstra Bladet (DK)
• Gijbels Groep (B)
• Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso (I)
• Helsingin Sanomat (FI)
• Il Sole 24 Ore (I)
• The Irish Times (IE)
• Kurrier (A)
• Le Monde Interactif (F)
• Le Temps (F)
• MatchWork (UK)
• Mecom (UK)
• Media Convergence (NL)
• Media Regionalne (PL)
• Mediasite (N)
• New York Times Syndicate (US)
• Ouest-France (F)
• PBI (PL)
• Prisacom (E)
• RCS Digital (I)
• RCS Media Group (I)
• Schibsted (N)
• Styria Media (A)
• Spiegel QC (D)
• Telegraph Media Group (UK)
• Verlag Dierichs (D)
• WDM Belgium (B)
• Xtreme Nordic (N)

Join them by registering here. The next early bird deadline is September 15.

Here’s an overview of the latest developments in the mobile Internet industry. I used current reports from Morgan Stanley, Distimo, NetMarketShare and other sources published in June or July 2010.

The presentation features also some early findings on usage of newspapers on iPad thanks to John Einar Sandvand of a Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten. John Einar disclosed them during his speech at the Oxford Tablet Summit organized in May by INMA, Innovations Media Consulting Group and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. We had been trying to ask the right questions in Oxford — the list is included in the slideshow. Where to find the answers?

I hope we will be able to learn more this September in Kraków, Poland, at the annual INMA/OPA Europe Newsmedia Conference where we plan to have a special session on tablets and mobile reading devices. As we want to share the most current case studies, we are going to put them on the programme very close to date of conference. Expect then the unexpected.

Update: This deck made one of three Top Presentations of the Day at SlideShare on July 28, 2010. I think it just proves how important this topic is today.

Tomasz Józefacki

1. Aggregators. How to protect the content and compete with aggregators? There is a strong emergence of online aggregators such as Google News or Yahoo News. But there are also other aggregators that arise in classifieds. They are not only following the path of the content, but also the path of advertising.
2. Free content. How to make money in the free economy?
3. How to make use of video? How to take advantage of growing popularity of online video?
4. Great tools are appearing around. How to compete with online services like Facebook or Twitter for users’ time and attention?
5. How to deal with our users’ deepening advertising blindness? Aggressive advertising lead to ad blindness, so users learn how to skip over the advertisements.
6. How to give users the ads of products, services, they really search for?
7. How to counter media fragmentation? Media fragmentation means more competition.
8. How to effectively deal with calls for regulation?

Agora is an extremely successful newsmedia company in Poland. It has 298 million euro in revenues as of 2008. They exist on different platforms: print, radio, outdoor and of course the internet. They have almost 10 million users, and 58% total online reach in Poland. According to Tomasz Józefacki, this is how Agora deals with the challenges mentioned above:

1. Gazeta.pl is the main portal, aggregating all sites of Agora (around 70). Gazeta.pl focuses on being on top in different categories. They already are number 1 in Recruitment, number 2 in real estate, and in communities, number 3 in sports, and news and opinion. They are the largest online multimedia content producer on the Polish internet, having 70+ online brands under Gazeta.pl umbrella.
2. Free content. Agora is introducing paid content services and applications, and experimenting with e-commerce.
3. Agora does not own any tv station. They produce original news, documentary, entertainment video content and online tv series. For online only. 75% of people in Poland watch online videos at least once a month.
4. They host the second largest online community in Poland. 100 million posts on forums, 143 thousand blogs. It’s not necessary social network, but building community is important.
5. Agora integrates the ads with some none-journalistic content, and events.
6. Agora builds quality focused advertising nnetworks with other publishers. They cooperate with different companies: Glossy Media (for women targetting) or AdTaily (bloggers targetting).
7. Agora is well known for its filling the niches strategy, and efforts to expand the traditional printed brands. The latest one is wyborcza.biz built from the business content of Gazeta Wyborcza.
8. Agora strongly cooperates with local organizations and OPA Europe to promote quality standards and self regulation.

Tomasz Józefacki concluded his speech with a statement that digital is not an easy market place, but newsmedia publishers surely know that challenges are on both sides: print and online.