Updated: Thursday, March 11, 03:46PM EST
TAKEAWAY: In Vienna to address Austrian journalists today. The iPad is the talk. Caution while accepting the innovation challenge is the message.
Editorial/Technology: 50/50 partners in this venture
Here is looking at you kid: for lack of a real iPad, we must improvise with a paper cutout to simulate the size and shape of the real thing.
It is snowy Vienna today for me, as I prepare a presentation for the Austrian Press Agency.
Like everyone else that I encounter this week, as I tour Europe, the main topic of conversation is tablets——-primarily Apple’s iPad, which makes its grand entrance in several European markets in late April (following its announced debut in the US for April 3). To say that European publishers are all abuzz about the promise of the iPad is an understatement.
I have not seen this level of excitement, preparation, anticipation and, yes, logistical planning, for a very long time. For reasons I have not yet analyzed, online editions never truly captured this degree of interest (and we now know that perhaps it should have happened then).
With online editions, there was not the sense of what I would describe as challenging reinvention that I see with the iPad.
So, in a sort of last minute change in my presentation, I will now devote more than one third of it to thinking innovatevely about the iPad or other tablets, and facing the realities that getting a publication out into iPadland will mean.
A high learning curve ahead
We are all learning together here, but I would like to draw up on one tip, if I may, from our own experience in early workshops as we prepare clients to get out of the gate with an iPad edition:
First stop, check what your technical resources are. You will find out that it will not be possible to do it all on that first day or first week or even first month. Beware that your iPad 1.0 version (more like 0.5, if you ask me), will have the users’ fingers running over the promise of what could be more so than the splash of the here and now. But, that’s OK, as users will be so enthralled with the machine itself, with doing their own learning, that they will be happy to take Baby Steps with you and your introduction to iPad surprises.
Engage your technical people in all your discussions. No question about it (and for traditional editors this is a hard reality to accept), you must deal 50/50 in terms of editorial/technology as you prepare. If technology is not engaged, you may have one side of the house dreaming of a tour of the moon, while the technical guys get ready for a short two-hour flight from point A to B.
There is, indeed a point Z in iPad land, but for now the destination is the goal, the reality of that first journey should be more modest.
But, even there, you can put your signature into that first iPad Baby Step. What does your publication do so well, that it can be tremendously enhanced with an iPad edition.
Hold that thought.
For the Joe Zeff blog, go here
The iPad Puzzle Calls for Partnership
http://joezeffdesign.com/blog/