MediaLive International, whose tradeshows and conferences include Seybold, Comdex, NetWorld+Interop, and others, has announced that it is returning Seybold to its conference roots and will create an entirely new series of events for 2005.
The new conference-only events will separately address the specific needs of the creative professional and publishing workflow managers. Events held in New York and San Francisco will focus on the creative professional, while events in Amsterdam and Chicago will concentrate on the digital automation of publishing workflows. The events have yet to be named.
“The addition of Seybold Seminars events in New York and Chicago now gives both the creative and the production communities their own individual conferences to help them focus on the specific needs of each industry, and allow these professionals to become more successful in their fields,” says James M. Smith, Seybold Seminars VP and GM. “Based on feedback from vendors and buyers, and advice from the Seybold Advisory Board, we realized that the needs of the creative and workflow markets are better served separately.”
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Although specifics for each group of seminars is still being worked out, Smith indicates that the San Francisco and New York events will comprise three separate tracks: IT (covering operating systems, XML, storage, creative challenges for the Web); User (hands-on education for product suites including Adobe, Quark, Macromedia, etc.); and Production (production for print and Web, as well as digital asset management). “It made sense to hold these events in New York City and San Francisco, which both have a professional design community,” says Smith.
The Chicago and Amsterdam events will be for prepress managers and other users wanting to find workflow solutions. “Here, we looked at our 2002 and 2003 PDF and workflow conferences in Amsterdam”?these did extremely well, so we're building on them,” says Smith.
The dates for 2005 events include: New York, February 23-25; Amsterdam, June 20-23; San Francisco, August 29-31; and Chicago, September 12-14. Specific venues, content, and conference names are to be addressed in the next few weeks. (MediaLive International Seybold Seminars: www.seybold365.com/2005)