Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) is covering the Tools of Change 2011 (@toc) conference in NYC. It concludes today. PW’s articles include “Old Pros, New Tools and the Future of Publishing,” “At Morning Keynote, Margaret Atwood Reminds Attendees Change Can Be Bad,” and “Technology Wars Never End.”
Tuesday’s TOC program closed with a keynote presentation by publishing consultant Brian O’Leary (@brianoleary) called “Context First: A Unified Field Theory of Publishing.” ... [H]e tried to outline the need for a publisher shift from a “container-first model,” i.e., an industry geared to focus on physical books, to a “context-first” digitally-focused model, a model that by its very nature will produce content prominently tagged and coded for easy and immediate discovery online, unlike the physical book. It’s a model O’Leary expects to dominate the newly emerging era of the “born-digital”—both the new generation of digital consumers and the digital-first ventures launched to serve their needs.