The overwhelming topic of the event, which was repeated many times by most of the speakers, was the need for culture change in the media workplace.  Joe Ripp, CEO of Time Inc., said it. Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, Chairman of the Kadokawa Corp of Japan, waxed poetic about it, and my friend Peter A. Kreisky, Chairman of The Kreisky Media Consultancy, spent a full 45 minutes  delving into the topic  after interviewing Media CEOs from around the world on that very subject.

 

I believe that it is this important need for culture change that is at the heart of why many upstart media companies are cleaning the clocks of many traditional publishers.   The newbies have no expensive traditional media structure to support and they actually  live and use the constructs of the new world of digital media consumption.

The more traditional publishers have legacy businesses that are costly to maintain and much more cumbersome to make efficient in the digital age of free flowing information distribution. And many times the traditional employee, in the traditional company, doesn't live in, use and fully understand the nuances the newest social technologies.

As I've said in the past, all digital immigrants speak with a traditional accent.  

 

Joe Ripp gave the opening keynote in which he said that this is the most exciting time for our industry, and the opportunity is to look forward to the possibilities.  Joe is an old school banker trying to bring forth a modern sensibility in a company seeped in stogy traditional methods. He reminds me of many men I used to work for back in the 1980s. He has a blunt, no nonsense business forward style.  He discussed the culture at Time Inc. and how he is seeking to implement major changes to an industry in transition.  He said that people are multitasking more now than ever before and asked, "How do you make this lifestyle change work in corporate world?"  You do so by focusing on the internal culture. He also stated that "we must be excited about the future because culture trumps strategy."

 

Here are some of my other notes from Joe's Talk:

 

•  Data is an important component of how we will proceed into the future

 

Joe also talked about the current attention span of the millennials. In this case I think Joe and many other senior managers in the media business are gravely mistaken.

Using a slide of a gold fish he said the average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. In my opinion, If people think that data like this is truly meaningful and that the next and any other up-coming generation is less thoughtful and less accomplished than we are, they are gravely mistaken. Do they think there will never be new engineers, lawyers, teachers, brain surgeons, publishers, bankers and all the other parts of a functioning modern society? All these disciplines require long form reading and long form attention spans. So what people do on their cell phones has little or nothing to do with their potential to think, prosper and contribute to both businesses and society. I implore you all to reconsider. It's time to get over with the massive negativity of the next generation, as they will indeed rule the world and do so just as effectively, and most likely even better, than we do now.