Digital Media Europe to focus on transforming media businesses

The annual digital publishing event of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) will be held from 16 to 18 April next in The Science Museum of London and will focus on innovative revenue models and new ideas for transforming media businesses. It will also include a "Future Day" focused on developments in the labs of some great game specialists, App designers and promising start-ups.

Now in its second year, Digital Media Europe is expecting 300 high-level attendees and speakers for three days of keynotes, panel discussions and networking that will challenge conventional thinking about the future of media businesses. Full details can be found here.

First confirmed speakers include:

• Sam Duncan Brown, head of Innovation at A&N Media. He is out to change the perception that publishing companies are organised in silos and slow to react and innovate. At A&N Media - which includes Associated Newspapers, Northcliffe Media in the United Kingdom and A&N International Media - Brown works closely with businesses and IT teams to drive innovative technology, from idea to implementation. Recent projects include implementing Google Search Appliance to disrupt user search behaviour, and social networking news gathering initiatives throughout the organisation.
  
• Mattias Miksche, CEO of StarDoll. He is a master of "gamification" of content and has developed a very successful Freemium model, a concept that many media companies are testing or implementing. Miksche is never short of new ideas to mix new revenue streams with an exciting business model. StarDoll, a safe and engaging destination site for 9- to 16-year-old girls, has 130 million users around the globe.
  
• Richard Bergman, chief operating officer of Blocket.se. He will show how a general classifieds site can become an engine to create a mass of good businesses. Blocket, which is Schibsted's big consumer-to-consumer classifieds site, now operates in 20 countries, including Sweden, where 70% of the population has bought or sold something through the site.
  
• JP Rangaswami, chief scientist at Salesforce.com. He believes in the "social enterprise" concept where companies leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies to put customers at the heart of their business. Rangaswami will engage in a question and answer session with the audience on how media companies can apply these principles, which blur the lines between sales, marketing and service.
  
• Georg Konjovic, director of Premium Content at Axel Springer, which is beginning to reap the benefits of its new paid content strategy. Konjovic coordinates all activities at Europe's largest publisher to develop paid content and establish a paid culture for content for web and mobile. He is also responsible for the new brand, "iKiosk," which is a marketplace for journalistic products from more than 100 magazines and newspapers available on the iPad and the web.
  
• Plus much more! The full programme, registration details and other information can be found here.