The Future of the Prospectus

I had a day out in London on Tuesday to attend the Future of the Prospectus conference at the Magic Circle HQ. Really interesting event covering digital, print and mobile ideas about where the prospectus is headed.

The programme was:

• Luke Mckend from Google
• The Heist prospectus winner discussion
• The Printer's Forum
• TVU - the first iPhone prospectus
• Sean Montgomery - Fonemedia
• University of Surrey - in-house personalised prospectus
• Tracy Playle - Picklejar communications

Bit of a mixed bag, all the speakers were interesting but it was the digital side that was of more interesting to me. (I have a long history of printers in the family so I can relate but am really glad I didn't go down that route!)

So first up was Google, nothing new here as i've seen them at most conferences, only thing that peaked my interest was a mention of YouTube EDU, something to keep any eye on, similar to iTunes U.

Heist Prospectus winners all chatted about their award winning publications.

The printers wanted to stress that they are there to help look at how to save us all money and that we should look at them as an extension of our teams.

TVU showed off their iPhone App, bit of a trend to the day that the iPhone is the way forward. Interesting that Android didn't get too much of a mention despite being on a seriously fast growth curve.

Sean from Fonemedia demonstrated Bluetooth and SMS functionality (both of which we have already). Also, he showed off the idea of using QRCodes on printed materials.

University of Surrey were very interesting, a fully personalised prospectus, printed, finished and sent in-house! Genius idea if you can do it and they looked to be managing a massive process very well!

And finally, Tracy from Picklejar Communications who had some interesting observations on social and digital media. Augmented Reality was mentioned, if you haven't seen it check out the Lego video on YouTube. This could be a strong development area but again comes down to needing a smartphone or a desktop machine.

All in all, some interesting ideas around the development of digital publications, social media integration and printing options. And the conclusion draw at the end of the day?

Even with the best digital offerings we all still like a bit of printed material!

Augmented Reality

I was shown Lego's attempt at Augmented Reality last week by my eight year old nephew and it not only made me smile but also made me a little concerned! Here he was, with a print out of paper with a black symbol in the middle, waving it at his webcam to see a 3D model of the latest Lego creation appear in front of him. It's a truly brilliant piece of functionality and although i've been aware of it for a little while i hadn't been totally prepared for how quickly it appears to be accepted! Lego are running it on their website but also are rolling it on in-store with print outs on their boxes, US only at the moment but there's a video below to show you how it works.

To him, it was perfectly normal to have a 3D model in front of him, seemingly attached to a piece of paper... so, I showed it to some colleagues in the office for their reactions as well and the difference was pretty significant! They thought it was amazing, understandably! But there wasn't the acceptance that it was perfectly normal functionality and if the future of our audience are growing up expecting that to be available then we really need to start looking at it!

So, I dug around to see who else is using it and whilst the list is small the application of it seems pretty impressive, from car demos to business cards! If you're interested in how it works though check out this site and see if your technical team can do anything with it!