IDPF Conference gathers industry leaders to discuss mobile content

[Bob Russell]

The IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) describes itself as "the trade and standards association for the digital publishing industry. Our members consist of academic, trade and professional publishers, hardware and software companies, digital content retailers, libraries, educational institutions, accessibility advocates and related organizations whose common goals are to advance the competitiveness and exposure of digital publishing."

On Wednesday, May 24th they will be holding an annual conference in New York City at the McGraw-Hill auditorium, and the topic chosen this year is "Connected & Mobile!" This is not only a great opportunity for publishers and device makers to get together (including a lot of big name sponsors like Adobe, Motricity, Rosetta), but also should provide some very interesting materials for the rest of us.

The press release includes quite a teaser line, as it says “The stakes are high as publishers, search engines and portable device manufacturers seek to create the 'iPod and iTunes for Books.' ” How true that is, and yet even that may be not the destination, but simply one step toward greater things.

One of the exciting things about this organization is that they make a lot of great information available to the public. You can find many presentations from last years conference on e-books in education at their web site here. I'm really looking forward to seeing what becomes available after this year's event.

As with any standards organization, there are some great challenges and many vested interests that make progress full of obstacles and hurdles. But we certainly are delighted to see this kind of effort towards the furtherment of e-books, and are especially happy to see an emphasis this year on mobile and wireless content.

For more information on the conference, just visit the 2006 conference web page.