Clark Gilbert, President and CEO of the Deseret News Publishing Company and one of the newspaper industry's most innovative thinkers, has joined the programme for the Digital Media Latinoamérica conference, to be held on 30 and 31 October in Bogotá, Colombia.
Mr Gilbert has succeeded in facing the challenges of digital disruption through a unique process of 'dual transformation', through which a company adapts its legacy business to the disrupted marketplace while simultaneously creating a new, separate, digital business.
The former Harvard Business School professor of entrepreneurial management, who will be the keynote speaker at the event, has transformed the Utah-based Deseret News and Deseret Digital Media. While the percentage of revenue derived from digital media is often in single digitals for newspaper companies, Deseret News Publishing averages 45 per cent of revenues from digital, and is one of North America's fastest growing newspapers, both in print and online.
With a well-established series of digital conferences in Europe and Asia, and with a global network of the world's most successful and innovative digital thinkers, WAN-IFRA has collected best regional and international cases and strategic advice to present at #DML13. The event, the first of its kind in Latin America, will provide a key opportunity to discover how the region is taking its own path towards digital transformation.
Other speakers include:
- Ana Busch, Director of the Digital Strategy Committee at the Brazilian Newspaper Association (ANJ) and former Director of Digital Media at Folha de Sao Paulo, where she was at the core of the newspaper's digital transition and was instrumental in the paywall implementation process last year.
- Jon Ruiz, CEO of Casa Editorial El Tiempo in Colombia, one of the first media houses in Latin America to undergo newsroom convergence and still a regional reference. He will discuss how the digital strategy is part of an overall company diversification process.
- Gastón Roitberg, Head of the Multimedia Desk at La Nación in Argentina, who will talk about the company's award-winning data journalism and innovative projects to deliver relevant, attractive, quality content.
- Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director of FT.com, who will bring the Financial Times' deep experience with paid content to the conference.
- Matt Skibinski, Vice President for Affiliate Relations at Press +, the leading payment platform in the United States.
- Ali Rahnema, Vice President Digital, and Michael Cooke, Editor, of the Toronto Star, who will provide the recent paywall implementation at Canada's largest circulation newspaper.
- Orlando Álvarez, Creative Director at Publicidad Comercial Lowe in El Salvador, who will speak in a session dedicated to digital advertising best practices in Latin America.
- Plus more speakers to be announced.
WAN-IFRA's Digital Media conferences have become a referent in the digital publishing industry, with more than 800 delegates from around the globe attending the Digital Media Europe (DME), Digital Media Asia (DMA), and Digital Media India (DMI) editions last year. This DMx network of events makes it one of the most relevant international business platforms dedicated to the transformation of the news media industry.
Digital Media Latinoamérica is being organised with the support of El Tiempo, the Colombian Newspaper Association (Andiarios), and with WAN-IFRA's Latin American members, who requested a regional digital media conference for some time. Digital media is flourishing in Latin America, which is set to undergo the biggest broadband expansion of any region in the world.
Digital Media Latinoamérica will be followed by Digital Media Asia, to be held on 12 to 14 November in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
