Colophon Redux, Part Two

More reportage from Colophon2007 [colophon2007.com], the International Magazine Symposium, held at Casino Luxembourg in early March.

Friday, Day One

Serious Blogging
The Press Conference begins, officially launching Colophon2007. It’s wierd sitting at the back with all the cameras. I feel like a bit of an imposter. Press Conferences only seem to be relaxing for the Press. Do they get fed at the end? Does that mean I get fed at the end too? I saw some people running about with mountainous trays of delicious Lux sandwiches. Mmm… sandwiches. Downstairs the queue for Flash Passes is already reaching out the door. Over 500 flash passes have been already been purchased with even more being sold this morning. Altogether over 2,500 people are expected to attend the event. About half an hour ago it was pretty calm and senere in here but that all about to change.

Around the world in 15,000+ magazines
As I expected Samir Husni, aka Mr Magazine [mrmagazine.com] covered a whole lotta ground. Starting with the premise that Print is Dead, a topic that still seems to rear it’s head every few years, he then took us on a whirlwind journey through the treacherous and very serious world of magazine publishing in the States and beyond, expanding the discussion out into how the more traditional magazine format fits into the current and turbulent media landscape.

The weather’s wine, wish you were beer
I’m sitting in the ‘Room with a View’ at the moment. The view is looking farily wet, but no less picturesque… well maybe a little). I just missed curator, Andrew Losowsky’s [losowsky.com] round table discussion on distribution entitled ‘The Hard to Sell’. Actually, I was a bit late and the only place left to sit was inside the Streets/Fruits/Tune [fruits-mg.com] room which felt a little weird, especially because images from Brick Lane in London kept flicking up on the screen which happens to be just around the corner from where I live, a little slice of London in Luxembourg via Japan.

Colophon collaboration
Luis Mendo from Good Inc [goodinc.nl] delivered a rallying call to arms on Friday evening to get people involved in the first ever Colophon Magazine [colophonmagazine.com]. What I thought would be a brief discussion of the mechanics involved, became a presentation on idea generation complete with a spot of audience participation. Luis started with a film about the Colors magazine ‘Notebook’ project [colorsmagazine.com/notebook] and went on to divulge his own personal ways to stimulate creativivty and generate ideas. John Brown’s ‘Pick Me Up’ [johnbrowngroup.co.uk] got a look in as the first example of a creatively led project.

Colophon Redux continues…