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The World Tour Event in San Francisco showed just how much the publishing world, and WoodWing, have changed in a year.

About this time last year, when WoodWing and Time Inc. introduced tablet publishing at the inaugural World Tour event, in New York. It was an impressive novelty, but just the first step along a path of unknown direction and magnitude.

Last week, when publishers, service providers and the WoodWing leadership gathered in at the Hyatt Regency, it was a gathering of professionals how are fully engaged redefining the industry to take advantage of what all the players now concur is an immense and permanent change.

In a day full of remarkable presentations, it was three outstanding publication designers from New York who showed just how much the iPad has rejuvenated their profession.

Roger Black has designed hundreds of publications in a career that spans creating the look of Rolling Stone in the crazy years, to redesigning the Washington Post in 2010. At the World Tour event he introduced ready-media.com and treesaver.net, two ventures that are aim new technologies at a common two-fold purpose. Firstly, these technologies provide with publishers a thrilling and consistent graphic presence in print, on the desktop and all mobile platforms; and do it with a quantum improvement in economics and time-to-market. Secondly, by absorbing typography and page design into a set of external templates, they free art directors to concentrate on the story telling that can truly distinguish a publication. 

Joe Zeff set up the eponymous design studio after leading design at both the New York Times and Time Magazine. I consider his presentation to be required reading for any publication executive, even in its abbreviated form at joezeffdesign.com/blog/  Joe focussed on the strategic issues that a traditional publisher should address carefully before plunging willy nilly into tablets. Bronze castings of two of his slides should hang in conference rooms wherever publishing teams gather: the first, "No longer do we simply publish content"; the second, "We create experiences that create revenue."

The Wonderfactory is known for iconic websites such as webmd.com, marthastewart.com, and huffingtonpost.com and for a 2009 youtube video meditation on the possibilities for a table presence for Sports Illustrated, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntyXvLnxyXk, that went viral and at the time of this writing has 1,058,854 views. Wonderfactory founder Joe McCambly focussed on the reinvention of the relation of editorial and advertising. For example, product reviews can provide immediate purchase opportunities. Also, advertisers can underwrite the development of one-off immersive experiences or games that enrich the static editorial environment.

These and many other presentations were set against reports from Erik Schut and Dennis van Nooij about continuing WoodWing innovations. WoodWing confirmed its commitment to support multiple platforms, multiple stores, multiple subscription systems, and maintain the leadership in functionality.