With the availability of tools that mean anyone can self-publish a magazine, perhaps the media companies offer something that is really valuable – [relatively] independent journalists. When coupled with the publishers database that let them reach huge number of potential readers, this gives publishers a real opportunity to generate significant business from custom publishing.

Although custom publishing can be an excellent marketing vehicle, with ARM possibly offering the best example of a company that depends upon a vibrant ecosystem for its success, I do wonder whether it’s all good news.

Marketers have no problems making sweeping statements, such as “print is dead”, despite new launches providing clear contrary evidence. Personally I think that the marketing industry is increasingly looking for the “magic silver bullet” that will achieve great ROI and clear measurement, whilst requiring minimum effort. Perhaps some of the enthusiasm for custom publishing is a result of people searching for the “one big thing” that will really make a difference?

It will be interesting to see whether custom publishing does grow in our industry. I definitely do believe that there is a place for it – the ARM special is clearly a great move for vendor, partners and publishers. However, I hope marketing managers don’t lose sight of the importance of frequency and simple hard work that will generate the most sustained returns in the long term.

There are, however, two approaches to posting the video: you either see this as a revenue-generating opportunity, or as a way to promote the event. PCIM falls clearly into the first category, charging €295 for access to the material (with a €100 discount for universities).

I’ll be interested to see what happens in the long term: PCIM has a very high standard of presentations, and so you can be sure that you’re not going to pay for a procession of product pitches. So I can definitely see people paying for access, although I’d like to see the organisers experiment with different price points: maybe a nominal charge such as €50 might bring in more revenue? I’ll also be interested to see whether other events offer content free of charge: I’m sure speakers would like access to the largest possible audience, and the astonishing cost of marketing events to visitors, might make video content from previous events one of the most cost-effective ways of filling a conference or exhibition.

You’re based in Germany, which probably has the best advertising support of any country in the electronics industry. So why did you decide to publish pan-European titles in English?

Isn’t the cost of sending print magazines around Europe becoming prohibitively expensive?
Yes, it is expensive. Cost is heavily depending on the weight and is usually more than 1 EUR per copy. Mailing costs and printing costs are the two items which make print magazine much more expensive than digital ones. And this is the reason why many publishers are on the road to “digital-only”. But this purely cost-driven strategy is not in line with what the readers want – at least not in Europe. The majority still prefer to read on paper. The cost driven switch to digital is in the short term good for balance sheet of the publishing companies, but in the mid-term it weakens their position in the market.

Do you really think print magazines can survive in the next five years?
You may have anticipated my answer already: Yes, I am convinced that in 5 years print magazines will still be around in Europe – less than today, but print will stay alive. It is the 40+ generation that on one hand uses the Internet for searching for information and collecting information, but prefers reading on a piece of paper, rather than on a computer screen. The majority of the engineers in the Electronics Market are these “Best Agers”, especially in senior and management positions. Therefore it makes not only sense for publishers to stay active in print, but also for advertisers.
Everything beyond that is anyway crystal ball reading. For sure technology will step forward and at some point in the future there will a new generation of iPad-like devices available with a new generation of displays which allow the same or even better reading comfort than print magazines. Reading comfort combined with the possibility to download any magazine at any time you want will be the undertaker of the print magazines. But then, I might be retired already and will enjoy reading good books during overwintering on a warm Greek island.

ICC Media has been one of the first European publishers in our industry to use online video. Why do you think you were able to see the opportunity before other publishers?
On one side – the content side – ICC Media is very focussed; we are covering “Embedded” only. But on the other side – the media side – ICC Media is a broad ranger. As I said already, it is our strategy to offer a one-stop service for the MARCOM activities of our customers. To keep our service portfolio always up-to-date, we are watching very careful what’s going with new media, web 2.0, etc. Over the last couple of years – mainly driven by portals like You Tube – videos have become quite popular, even for professionals. Therefore we decided to invest into video. Just recently we have launched the embedded-news.tv video portal. We do not only create our own video content, but also promote videos of our customers to the readers/users of our media. As part of our one-stop service strategy we are also offering the production of videos and the hosting on our embedded-news.tv portal.

Does online video generate a significant proportion of your revenue? Do you have a target for how much revenue will be driven by video/multimedia in the future?
To answer this question I need to go back a little bit. We are not – and we have never been – a publishing house in its traditional sense. From the very beginning, we have defined ourselves as platform provider. We provide platforms where the embedded industry (our advertisers) can meet embedded systems designers (our readers/users). The key to attract readers is to provide relevant content. Relevance of the content has the first priority, format of the content is secondary. In the past, online platforms used to purely provide text-based content. Even today there is still much more text-based content (new product releases, white papers, technical articles, ..) around in our industry than video/multimedia content. But in the last years more and more content was shifted into rich media, especially into Flash-based videos and webinars. Therefore: Yes, rich media is already responsible for a significant proportion of your revenue. But: No we have no target for the future. We will always try to publish content (and advertisements) in the format most suitable for our readers.

ICC Media is running a number of virtual conferences. People have tried to make virtual conferences work for many years, so why do you think they are going to work now?
The answer is simple: I know that Virtual Conferences work, because we are practising this. This year we have started 5 Virtual Conferences already and all of them have worked so far – technically and in terms of visitors (typically 200 to 300 delegates are signing-up per event). It is our plan to do around 10 new virtual conferences per year now.
But there is a long way to go. We have tried for virtual conferences and webinars, for at least 5 years. We made several attempts to establish virtual events and we failed several times, mainly due to the complexity of the technology, lack of acceptance and lack of bandwidth at the users end. Now these problems have generally been solved. We have learned our lessons and now know how it works technically (the key is to keep it simple) and in terms of users acceptance. At the beginning of this year, we launched www.iccmedia-vcon.com, our own platform for virtual conferences. Currently there are 6 virtual events online on demand as archived versions.

Do you think virtual conferences will replace physical seminars, conferences and shows?
Virtual events will never fully replace physical events. But it is fact that the number of virtual events is rapidly increasing and that the number of physical events is decreasing. This is because “virtual” is so much cheaper and less time consuming than “physical”. But a virtual conference or virtual show can never deliver the same amount of interaction, socializing and networking between visitors, speakers and exhibitors as a physical event does.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not writing about electronics?
This summer a lot of my spare time will be filled with watching football. I like football! But during the year I am not normally not too fanatic about it, unless there is a major tournament. Then – according to my wife – I get completely mad and spend hours and hours with watching not only all matches, but also all the pre- and post-match reports. Of course I am supporting the German team which normally gets quite far in the World Cup – normally as far as playing against Italy. Then we always loose. But I am sure this year it will be different.

Although I was on a press tour, the members of the Napier team at the event reported a great show with good attendance from editors as well as visitors. Yet again Germany proves that shows remain a powerful marketing vehicle in Central Europe.

I’m not surprised that the site sees the German market as a good opportunity: it’s the largest embedded market in Europe, and engineers clearly have a strong preference for local-language publications. At the time of launch, the German site appears to be getting most of the advertising revenue from the same partners as the .com site, although if Embedded Developer can build a local audience, I’m sure that they will begin to pull in revenue from the many embedded companies based in Central Europe.

It’s even better when we can say that the Europe leads the way, which is definitely the case for the Embedded Software Engineering Kongress. The organisers of this event, MicroConsult und ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS, confidently tell me that, with over 600 visitors expected for this year’s event, is the leading embedded software event in the world.

If you want to participate in the ESE Kongress, you need to submit an abstract online by 14th May.

As Johann Wiesböck, Editor in Chief and Publisher of ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS tells me, "Software is the future…"

The conference attracted attendees from 39 Countries. Germany accounted for a quarter of the attendees, followed by USA, France and – perhaps surprisingly – China.

DATE 2011 will take place from 14th to 18th March 2011 in Grenoble, Switzerland.