Bookcamp – On The Future of Books
Penguin UK is sponsoring Bookcamp, a user-generated conference centering around the future of books and “book-like technology” that will examine the role of books as delivery mechanisms for stories, information, and entertainment.
Our plan is for this to be a day of talking and doing – examining the role of the book as an object and as a delivery mechanism for content. We’re inviting authors, typographers, cover designers, printers, technologists, retailers, literary agents, publishers and geeks to come along and consider if and how technology can transform and perhaps improve on The Book. Will print on demand mean the end of the bookshop? Will ebook technology allow everyone to be their own publisher? Will printed books go the way of vinyl and become collectors objects? Are games the new novels? And does format matter or, to paraphrase Berry Gordy, is it what in the groove that counts?
Participants and guests will choose the agenda for the day, breaking into groups to discuss and create. Jeremy Ettinghausen, Director of Digital at Penguin & a listed participant, was behind last year’s We Tell Stories – a storytelling experiment that sought to create stories designed specifically for the internet.
From Jeremy’s post on the Penguin blog today:
It’s quite hard to know what to expect from Bookcamp which is now only a few days away… we’re hoping to see lots of things people have made or hear them discuss what they might like to make in the future. I’m looking forward to following discussions about how we get children hooked on reading, hearing about authors’ fear of the internet and learning why everything on the internet is the opposite of how it is in print! And I’m excited to meet some new people who share an interest in and passion for books and stories and, yes, technology.
(via PSFK)
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