IfraExpo heading for record

The “Annual Event of the Newspaper Industry” will take place for the first time in the Austrian capital. Another première is that 73 companies - mainly from Austria, the nearby Eastern European countries and the US - will present their products and services for the first time at an IfraExpo.

Other innovations are the 96 “IfraFirsts” which suppliers will present for the first time at an IfraExpo. These, though also proven solutions for newspaper and media production - on both the print-and digital platforms - will be shown in Vienna, where about 10 000 media managers from approximately 80 countries worldwide are expected. Details about all exhibitors will be available from 1 September 2007 in the online catalogue under www.ifraexpo.com.

Dr Horst Pirker, Ifra President, summarises the exhibition trends as follows: “The desire of the customers for increasingly higher-quality print products for specific audiences is driving the demands on ‘hybrid printing'. Business models, eg mail distribution, are resulting in greater demands on CRM systems. Growing numbers of publishing houses are choosing a multi-platform strategy. Consequently, content management and editorial systems must provide video, audio, text and images for a wide range of different output platforms. At the same time, technologies such as RSS make it possible to reach the users even faster with the latest news.”

Accompanying events

A programme of accompanying events, some of which are free of charge, focusing on topics of current interest for every visitor, will complement the overview that the IfraExpo offers of the latest technological developments, and provide suitable platforms for an exchange of views among international decision-makers:

• Five (charged) Focus Sessions “Newspapers Today” from 8 - 10 October on the specialised topics of: Cross-media Newsrooms, Newspaper Production, Distribution and Sales, Advertising and Marketing, Business and Management;
  
• IfraExpo Get-together - the Expo party on Monday evening (8 October) with the presentation to the winners of the XMA Awards;
  
• the AdsML Information Session “Faster and Simpler Advertising Processes” on 9 October;
  
• the (charged) Workshop “Multimedia Reorganisation for Newsrooms” on 11 October;
  
• practice-oriented and innovative Best-Practice presentations in the IfraExpo Solution Park;
  
• the special exhibitions for the Ifra XMA Cross Media Awards 2007 (www.ifra.com/xma) with 50 projects from 18 countries, and
  
• on the newspaper techniques “Future Press 2007” series of special articles.

For more information about the programme of events accompanying IfraExpo, go to www.ifraexpo.com.

Visitors can register online in advance up to 11 October at www.registration.ifraexpo.com. A list of recommended hotels and a room reservation form can be downloaded from www.ifraexpo.com (“Visitors - Accommodations”) or www.austropa-interconvention.at/congress/ifraexpo/hotel.asp. This also includes travel, tourist and general information about Vienna. Austrian Airlines is the official carrier for IfraExpo.

The Ifra newspaper techniques editorial team will once again report about the exhibition and accompanying events, as well as about Vienna, in the Gazette exhibition newspaper, which is published daily in English, plus directly via the multiblog http://ifra-nt.com/multiblog/ifraexpo.