Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere

Social media’s a great way of stirring the pot on ideas, which, I suppose is exactly why we’re here.

The other day, Wan-Ifra retweeted a link to an article by the noted media commentator and Guardian blogger, Roy Greenslade, who was himself passing on some information from another respected media figure, Peter Sands.

Peter used to be the editor of one of my former local newspapers, The Northern Echo, who has also been a director of training for the Press Association, Britain’s national news agency. He’s also been involved in redesigning newspapers and I’m pretty sure he’s done some work with our colleagues at the MNA from time to time.

Anyway, that’s where Peter comes from, but what prompted Roy Greenslade’s blog comment and the subsequent Wan-Ifra retweet, was Peter talking about newspaper subs being able to work from anywhere.

Peter had made the comments first in his blog (http://sandsmediaservices.blogspot.com/) on Friday, August 19 when he was talking about some work he’d done for the Irish Examiner while on holiday and about the fact that pages for the Evening Herald in Dublin were being produced from Castres in the south of France.

In his piece, Peter says: Subs don't all have to be in the same room, the same building, the same town or even the same country... which is why all the fuss in regional newspapers about moving production sites from one city to another struck me as nonsense.

“In future I reckon all newspapers will be produced this way. Who needs complicated management systems?”

He adds: “Bedroom subs armed with a computer, a set of stylesheets, the right fonts, broadband, a piece of software (doesn't matter if it's Quark or InDesign) and Distiller will be contracted to do so many pages per day to deadline.”

I’d say ‘amen’ to most of what Peter says, because I know a Midlands-based publishing software developer who  has a system that allows subs to do just that. It was designed that way. It’s not that complicated either, just smart.

We’ve created it at PCS. It’s called Knowledge and we’ll be showing it at Ifra Expo in Vienna from October the 10^th to the 12^th. If you’re going and you fancy a demo, get in touch with my PA, Michelle McClure at mmcclure@presscomputers.com to arrange a slot.

Me, Myself and UKTI

I’m just back from a break in scorching Spain, but the work never stops here, so this week’s blog comes from our Marketing Officer, Matt Cole, who’s been looking to spread the PCS message far and wide...

Over the past few months we’ve been working closely with UK Trade and Investment, a government department that encourages businesses in this country to get into overseas markets and so far, I have to say, the experience has been nothing but positive.

We came to UKTI almost by accident, having heard about an event in Coventry where members of various British consulates in the USA came over to pitch their services to businesses from across the West Midlands.

The States has been on our radar for a while, so it was a case of ‘nothing ventured’ and possibly much to gain.

At Coventry we met the Vice Consul in charge of the ICT sector in the Big Apple, Patricia Young, and we set out on a process we hope will reap dividends not only in the USA, but more lately has given us contacts in Europe, too.

Next up was an event hosted by Coventry Chamber of Commerce near Leamington that further explained the UKTI export offer, starting with a kind of ‘exporting for dummies’ which they call Passport to Export, followed by services such as OMIS – the Overseas Markets Introduction Service, where UKTI will report back to you on specific requests for information about potential markets – and the Export Markets Research Scheme, or EMRS which offers grants to go into a potential market and do the research yourself.

In fact there’s a whole bunch of UKTI acronyms to get your head around, but currently we’re on one that doesn’t seem to have one - Passport to Export - which is being delivered by UKTI Black Country and our dedicated – that’s not just to say he works hard, but that he works hard for us – International Trade Adviser, Terry Wood.

Our introduction day at the Black Country Chamber of Commerce was interesting because it put us in touch with companies pretty much in the same boat, like ceramics producers The Big Tomato Company and their boss Gloria Daniel as well as soft furniture manufacturer Soul Living run by Amarjeet Mahey.

They’re a little way off browser-based publishing software for print and digital, but the exporting process is pretty similar.

From then on we’ve pretty much been in constant touch with Terry in particular and UKTI in general with regular catch-ups as well as further visits to the Explore Export event at Coventry City’s Ricoh Arena which put us in contact with commercial officers from around the world – including Miles Fisher in Vienna, for instance – and a Doing Business with Germany seminar in faraway Guildford.

We’ve also had further conference calls with the UKTI team in New York and with one of their contacts, Bob Schukai (@iammobilebob) from Thomson Reuters and we’re now well down the track  towards one OMIS looking at the American market and another concentrating on Europe.

There are costs involved. Passport to Export was £500 for instance, but you get that money back towards the cost of an OMIS if you head that way and if you go on to something like EMRS, there’s matched funding available.

Obviously, we’re still very much in the process and looking forward to seeing where it takes us, almost literally, but so far I’d have to say, we’d recommend it. We’ll keep you in touch with how it’s going. And if you have any questions on the experience, get in touch with me at mcole@presscomputers.com .

If you’re a UK business interested in exporting, you can get more information from your local chamber of commerce or from the UKTI at http://www.ukti.gov.uk.

Hoping to make a Mark in Vienna

There’s nothing like a challenge – and that’s what we’ve set our new Business Development Manager before he’s even had a chance to really get his feet under the desk.

Mark Wilkinson’s joined us from Microsoft’s Authorised Refurbisher programme, where he worked as a partner manager in the EMEA market.

Mark’s focus will be on improving relationships with magazine groups and among corporate, catalogue and educational publishers, in Europe as well as in the UK. So, hopefully, one of the first tasks we’ve set him should be right up his street.

He brings with him a solid background of building and developing customer partnerships for a major corporation, in the UK, Europe and beyond and we think Mark’s experience will help us to take our products to new markets and new geographies.

Exciting times ahead!

So, where to start? Well, this week we’ve booked our place at Ifra Expo in Vienna in October. It will be the first time PCS has been back to Europe’s major publishing technology event in around six years and we’re going with plenty to say for ourselves.

We launched our ground-breaking digital content management and publishing system, Knowledge, at one of the UK’s biggest shows, Publishing Expo, in 2010 and we were back there earlier this year, but Ifra Expo is on a much bigger scale.

We’re looking to present Knowledge to a wider market because we feel the time’s right to make a bit of noise in the company of some of the biggest names in the business in Vienna.

We’ll be on Stand A651 at the Reed Messe in Vienna and we’ll be taking bookings for demos very shortly!

We’ll have some interesting and innovative things to show and maybe a couple of surprises up our sleeve – and over the next few weeks we’ll let you know how it’s all coming together.

Logistically, taking the stand and the crew across Europe is in a different ball park to a quick tootle down the M40, so there’s a lot to do in the meantime – and frighteningly, there are only around 50 working days to go until we pack up the van.

You can follow our progress on Twitter - @pcsltd1- and on LinkedIn as well as via the blog.