I never thought I’d be pushing products on you, my fair readers, but today, publishing words and pictures on paper is like chiseling away on a stone tablet after the invention of the printing press.
Enter the year 2014. Enter touch tablets, called “the most important digital channel for... publications’ future” in a recent survey by the Alliance for Audited Media (formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulations). Major newspapers, as well as news magazines, beloved by many of us, have gone digital. It’s time for us to take the plunge: MeetingsNet, the umbrella group that for decades has published print magazines for the meetings industry (Association Meetings, Corporate Meetings & Incentives, Medical Meetings, and Religious Conference Manager—and once upon a time Financial & Insurance Meetings and Technology Meetings, too), is now publishing an interactive tablet magazine.
We are no longer be in the business of printing magazines, but we are still be in the business of publishing them. MeetingsNet is a free app that will be delivered on your tablet or smartphone once a month. We’re fortunate to have the MeetingsNet brand behind us, one that was the first to burst into the online business-to-business meeting planning world back in 1995, the first to feature a blogger (Sue Pelletier), and one of the only media franchises in the meetings industry that stands for integrity, doesn’t shy away from hard journalism, and delivers on the promise of providing service and how-to articles to enhance the careers and minds of meeting professionals of every stripe.
We continue to offer niched content—our brand’s hallmark—to the association, medical, corporate, incentive, religious, government, education, fraternal, social, and sports markets, within our app and on the MeetingsNet Web site. The tablet format is an interactive, multidimensional version of our magazine, highly visual, more consumer-oriented, not a replica of what would appear in print. It allows you to swipe, tap, and interact with a whole new world of content. It connects you to more information on our Web site, or others’; and it enables us to deliver our content globally.
Just within the last year, I’ve been inspired to see how many of you use your tablets at conferences and in your meeting management jobs. As a recent convert, I now make sure to download the most recent versions of my magazines onto my iPad before I go on a trip or away for a weekend. Visit Apple’s iTunes App Store, Google Play, or the Amazon Marketplace to download the preview issue for iPad, Android tablets, and the Kindle Fire, and be sure to opt in for automatic downloads. Our first issue is now available. You’ll get a push notification on your device, and as a current subscriber, you’ll get an e-mail notification as well, each time an issue is published.
Please join us as we step into the brave new world of 21st century publishing. And get thee to a tablet!
