Yesterday’s dinner was a great opportunity for our members to meet Nick Verkroost, a Principal at DC Thomson Ventures. Dining at one of our regular haunts, Aubaine, everyone thoroughly enjoyed the topic of PublishingTech and how changes in publishing have opened up a world of new opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Publishing is a reserved and traditional business with digital coming in to disrupt traditional revenue streams and content.

Nick’s after-dinner talk highlighted the noticeable changes in publishing tech including:

1. Focus is on speed of communication to customers instead of writing in-depth stories. This requires a very different skillset – essentially content needs to be short and snappy with detail coming later.
2. More and more online content is moving towards video.
3. User interface is becoming more important as there is an increase in mobile traffic. Traditional companies are struggling with the difference in layouts.
4. Revenue is not coming from traditional streams.

All of this has driven change in the skillset requirement of staff in the industry. So, Nick says it’s important to understand how can you transition staff to this (as well as implement it). With a dinner chock-full of publishing-related info – some other interesting points that were raised included:

• Two thirds of website traffic on news sites is coming from other websites.
• Facebook is the best to get people to your website. It’s the largest referrer of traffic (even bigger than Google!)
• Facebook now wants to keep users on their site so have agreed with publishers to hold their content
• Use of SnapChat is on the rise
• 22% of traffic comes through mobile
• 23% added revenue from mobile
• Advert blockers on phones will be the challenge for next few years

Our speaker was joined by: Story Terrace, OpenPlay, TKG Group, Jackopaw, Mind Agilis, 93digital, Azoomee, Friends Recommend It, Solely Original, Smart Anchor Ventures, Collider and The Pigeonhole amongst others.

Special thanks goes to Nick for a fantastic talk and insightful Q&A session, as well as our partner Venntro.

Check out our upcoming dinners to see which one whets your appetite!