Changes For BEA’s Education, More On The Way

For the last 3 months we here at BEA have been talking with publishers about BEA and the talk has not always been fun recaps of the L.A. party circuit! The conversations have been frank, straightforward conversations - the kind you have with your parents when you are 17, came in an hour after curfew and clearly have vomit on your shoe. OK, maybe that was not a professional enough description. The President of our company has phrase he uses – ZOUD – The Zone of Uncomfortable Dialogue. On BEA I’ve been living in that zone for the past three months. I’ll be honest though, I’m energized by the feedback and challenges I’ve gotten during these conversations. When all is going well, change is hard to make. When times are tight, money is short and hard decisions are on the horizon, change is not just welcomed, it’s demanded. This is all to say that in the coming months you can be sure that you are going to see change on BEA – how we do business, where the show is located, who attends and much more.

Publishers Weekly recently ran a story that is a good encapsulation of the task at hand for the show, and in reading it you can see that BEA must change, but how depends on who you ask! Read it here.

Our first announcement on BEA 2.0 came out last week regarding our education programs – we’ve formed an advisory committee to help us craft our educational programs and we are opening up the process to you in the form of a call for papers (catch PW post on the call for papers here).

This may seem minor from the outside, but in fact it represents a major shift in just what our education is about. From the conversations we had in the ZOUD, it became clear that the educational offerings at BEA were too numerous and lacked impact and stature. We believe these steps will address it and the goal is simple: To create high level, focused programming on subjects effecting the entire global publishing industry comprised of the key players in our business and conceived for the industry, by the industry.

Simply put, you should expect less panels and expect them to be of a greater impact.

You can submit your own ideas for BEA educational session by using our call for papers right here. If you are interested in who is serving on our conference advisory board, you can see the entire group here.

This is the first of many wide sweeping changes you’ll be seeing from BEA this year and I promise to keep you updated and involved in all of them via the blog and other avenues.

Do not fear the ZOUD!

Lance