The Philippine Online Chronicles

With the continuous expansion of digital publishing, local publishers and industry leaders gathered at the University of the Philippines (UP) Bahay ng Alumni on November 28 for the first day of the 2nd Philippine Digital Publishing Conference or Future of the Book 2.

The two-day conference features plenary sessions and talks about how publishers are facing the digital age, focusing on e-book production, digital bookselling and the future of printing.

The event was organized by the National Book Development Board (NBDB), the Book Development Association of the Philippines (BDAP), and Vibal Foundation Inc., the non-profit arm of leading educational publisher Vibal Publishing.

Leveling up

“Umberto Eco once said, printed books are still the best companions for a shipwreck and the day after. Change, however, is coming...and change will be technologically-driven,” said Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, the newly-installed chair of the NBDB, during her welcome address.

As the market turns towards e-books, the future of paper books remain uncertain. E-book readers, which were the focal point of last year's Future of the Book seminar, promise to revolutionize the book industry but remain difficult to grasp for some consummers.

BDAP president Lirio Sandoval pointed out that “Books are only being reinvented in a different format.”

“The country’s goal is to be the major publishing country in the world and thus market internationally. The creation of e-books has to help us achieve that goal,” he said. “Our only concern here is what we write and how we write them. That is what’s important."

Making e-books

Local and international guest speakers talked about developments in the e-book industry.

Bill McCoy, an alumnus of the University of California-Berkeley, now executive director of the International Digital Publishing forum, talked about Digital Publishing Standards with an overview of SML, ePub, NextPub, Mobipocket and other digital publishing formats.

He focused on the importance of ePub3, the newest format on the block which he says promotes ‘books for everybody’.

“The standards that we have have no value unless it proves the efficiency of a solution that uses it,” he said via live conference. “The key to making an e-book is creating content over and over again. And it is what the ePub3 is focused on — content reflow. We cannot afford to do it in different ways.”

Chris Datol of Vibe Technologies Inc., technology subsidiary of Vibal Publishing, talked about how to create e-books for cross-platform publishing.

He talked about the evolution and promotion of tablets and e-books, and the natural progression towards publishers releasing digital content online, like Vibal's Vee Press.

Nelson John, a consultant for Technical Solutions Group for Adobe South East Asia, broadcasted a live conference via Adobe Meeting where he showed a step-by-step workflow of how to create a digital sales channel using a B2c platform.

Schools going digital

Other speakers discussed digital publishing for education in the Philippines.

Jose Marie ‘Toots’ Policarpio, master of ceremonies and executive director of the corporate communications department of Diwa Learning Systems, Inc., gave a plenary session on student-centered learning.

According to him, what is needed is an online learning management system consisting of the 4 Cs: content, connectivity, change management and the community. For him, an ICT-enabled curriculum is one way for the country to improve its educational system.

Next came Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada, now a technology consultant for De La Salle Greenhills, who oversaw the installment of tablets as the main educational tool for some of the students in LSGH this year.

“With the changing trends in education, the K-12, a decreasing budget and an increasing demand, we need an adapting mindset. We need to introduce the digital word as the new medium — one that drives learning system design and not the other way around,” he said.

For him, it is imperative to identify the fears of potential users, and determine the rules in using these new technological advancements.

“It is a new industry. The expensive prices of the tablets and the books cover for the cost of the unknown,” he added.

Neil Nocon, a board member of second district of Laguna, discussed the introduction of the province’s own educational tool: the eRizal tablet, an e-reader which comes pre-programmed with books for students in Laguna.

The local government of Laguna ordered 3000 tablets to be distributed to first year high school students in Laguna to pilot the project with hopes of expanding it afterwards.

He says the project is part of the sesquicentennial celebration of the birth of national hero Jose Rizal. The eRizal project is backed up and monitored by the Departmen of Education along with the APEC office in Laguna.