Tim O’Reilly announced today that the annual conference will be suspended and the company will no longer run its digital publishing conference in New York.
Since 2007, the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference has been the seminal event for professionals and companies engaged with the challenges and opportunities of new publishing technologies and business models. The company had engaging speakers and was often one of the best breeding grounds for new ideas and for industry professionals to meet up and chat about the current state of affairs. Tim mentioned in a statement today, “The decision to discontinue a popular conference was not one we made lightly. But after TOC 2013, we realized that a conference was no longer the best vehicle for us to contribute to publishing’s forward movement.”
O’Reilly seems to be doing away with conferences and focusing more on its tools group. It seems as though the company has all of the intelligence it needs and a better understanding of the industry to push out a series of digital publishing tools that it will market online and offline. The new project is called ‘Atlas’ and is a work in progress.
Tim wrapped up a digital publishing legacy by saying, “TOC was a great ride, and we’ll miss many things about that annual gathering of the future-positive publishing community. Ideas and connections from TOC will continue to inform our work and, we hope, yours. I especially want to thank TOC program chairs Kat Meyer and Joe Wikert for the passion, creativity, and commitment they brought to their work. I wish them well, and am confident that they’ll continue to help shape the publishing industry’s future.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
