Topics for the web conference include "Our Digital Future," "Cool Doesn't Cut It: Building a Usable Web Site," "Email -- The Only Push that Works," "Subscription vs. Advertising Models" and "Messaging Systems as a Publishing Medium."

The systems conference will have tracks addressing design and authoring, pre-press production, media-independent publishing and output.

For more information, call (650) 578-6900.

Co-sponsored by the Poynter Institute, Visual Edge '98 will encompass both a conference and a workshop as well as a trade show. The workshop will be divided into on-line and print. The on-line session will be led by Jim Wallace of the Smithsonian Institution; the print sesson will be led by Cindy Christie of the Contra Costa Times in California.

Conference topics will include "Managing Change," "Digital Cameras," "Archiving," "Color Calibration" and "Online."

For more information, contact The Planners Network at (513) 728-4671.

A full-day seminar on Sept. 10 will look at advertising design; another seminar that day will deal with improving web site design. A free half-day seminar that day will be jointly sponsored by SND and the National Press Photographers Association.

Four two-hour, hands-on "MacLabs" will be offered in Quark XPress, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Macromedia FreeHand and HTML coding.

For more information on SND, send e-mail to snd@snd.org or call (401) 276-2100.

-- dmc

Bit bucket ...

"No one understands how, or even if, advertising works. Because the system ... is so large and complex, attempting to isolate the effectiveness of a single element -- advertising content -- is all but impossible. ... Hence, the Knowability Paradox: The less we have known about how advertising and the media work, the more advertising and media there have been. ... Once advertising's Knowability Paradox is solved, the era of Big Media and the coddled audience will be over."
-- Randall Rothenberg, in Wired Magazine.

Corporate types: At Knight Ridder of Miami, David Starr has been named vice president and chief information officer. Previously, Starr was chief information officer at the Reader's Digest Association Inc., and before that was with General Motors, Price Waterhouse and ITT Corp. ... At Tribune Co. of Chicago, Thomas Eastwood has been named vice president and chief information officer. Previously Eastwood was chief technology officer and co-founder of SportsLine USA, and prior to that was with Apple Computer and General Electric Information Services. ... Also at Tribune, Kathy Ameche, director of systems development, will oversee Tribune's Year 2000 compliance project as director of the company's Year 2000 Project Office. Ameche has been with Tribune for less than a year and previously was with Geac. ...

New media mavens: At CareerPath.com of Los Angeles, Stephen Ste. Marie has been named chief executive officer; previously, Ste. Marie had spent six years at Directv Inc., where he was senior vice president. Before that he was with Egon Zehnder International, American Television and Communications Corp. and Viacom International. Interim CareerPath.com CEO Renee LaBran will now resume her position as vice president of new business development at the Los Angeles Times. ... At Real Media Inc. of New York, Howard Fishman has been named vice president of marketing. Previously Fishman was with Softbank Interactive Marketing, where he managed marketing and sales strategies; before that Fishman was with Fox, Pavlika & Partners and Bozell (New York). ... At WashingtonPost.com, Leslie Walker is leaving her position as editor and will return to the newspaper later this summer. Taking over as editor will be Doug Feaver, a 28-year Post veteran who since last fall has been serving as chief liaison between the print and on-line editions of the Post. ... At Free Range Media of Seattle, Scott Pine has been named senior vice president of sales and client services; previously he was vice president of sales and marketing, and prior to that was with Eagle River Interactive, Sybase and Gerber Alley Corp. Also at Free Range, Rene Claudio has been named director of client services. Previously, Claudio was with Ernst and Young LLP Management Consulting and Intel Corp. ... At CBS MarketWatch of San Francisco, Michele Chaboudy has been named vice president of marketing; previously Chaboudy was with Wired Digital Inc., Urban Associates Inc., the Houston Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. ...

Vendor views: At Augment Systems Inc. of Westford, Mass., Laurence Liebson has been named chairman, president and chief executive officer. Previously, Liebson led the management buyout of Harris Corp.'s Electronic Design Automation Division, now known as Xynetix Design Systems Inc., where he was CEO. Prior to Xynetix, Liebson founded and served as the chairman and CEO of Xyvision Inc. ... At Cascade Systems Inc. of Andover, Mass., three regional sales managers have been named -- Steven Schwartz for the southeastern U.S., William Perry for the Northeast and Terry Millington for the Pacific Northwest. Schwartz previously worked for network software publisher Axxis Corp. Perry comes from Inso Corp.; before that, he worked for Autologic, Camex and Xenotron. Millington last was regional sales director for Krause America. ... At Graphic Enterprises of Ohio Inc. in North Canton, Greg Pasco has been named vice president of sales; he has been with the company since 1994. Also at GEI, Mike Frank has been named national sales manager for the pre-press division and John Johannsen has been named director of service partnerships; both men are longtime GEI employees. ... At Junglee Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif., the newly created position of president and chief operating officer has been filled by Ram Shriram, who had been vice president at Netscape Communications Corp. ... At Managing Editor Inc. of Jenkintown, Pa., Gregory Root has been named publishing industry account manager. Root had been national sales manager of Classified Network Inc. of San Diego. ... At Miles 33 of Darien, Conn., Howard Spruck has been named senior systems analyst in the newspaper publishing systems group; previously Spruck was with CSI and Crosfield Composition Systems. ... At Monotype Systems Inc. of Rolling Meadows, Ill., Stewart Woodard has been named a sales executive. Previously, Woodard was with Gannett at the St. Cloud Times in Minnesota and Battle Creek Enquirer in Michigan. Also at Monotype, Antonio Lopez has been named tech support engineer and Don Pfister has been named purchasing specialist. Previously Lopez was with the San Antonio Express-News in Texas and Pfister was with ABS Associates of suburban Chicago. ... At NewsCom Services Inc. of Coral Gables, Fla., Rosemary Metal has been named president. Metal is a co-founder of NewsCom and previously was with British Telecom and the Burroughs Corp. She succeeds Peter Eisner, who resigned in April. ... At Quark Inc. of Denver, Chuck Bland has been named to the newly created position of chief operating officer. Previously Bland spent 22 years with Owens Corning, where he held a variety of positions, including general manager, vice president and president of multiple domestic and international business units. ... At System Integrators Inc. of Sacramento, Doug Coulter has been named vice president of research and development. Previously he was with ImageSoft Technologies, Datacom Global Corp. and Mikros Systems Corp. ... At X-Rite Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., Richard Cook has been named president and chief operating officer; previously he was president of Cascade Engineering, a developer of plastic mold injection technology. Cook replaces Mat Peabody, who resigned last July. ...

Confabs: DCI, the big information systems conference outfit, will have four meetings June 22-25 in Boston. The Knowledge Management Conference will run June 22-24, Component Directions '98 will run June 23-25, Database & Client/Server World will be June 23-25 and Microsoft Focus on Windows NT will be June 23-25. For more information on these meetings, ring up DCI at (978) 470-3880 or point your browser at http://www.dci.com/. ... Graphix East 98, a big graphic arts trade show, will be June 25-27 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. For more information, dial (703) 264-7200 or e-mail info@gasc.org. ... Web Design '98, a Thunder Lizard Productions conference, will be June 29-30 in Seattle. Speakers will include Roger Black (formerly art director of the New York Times and Rolling Stone), Jim Heid (contributing writer at PC World and Macworld) and Glenn Davis (co-founder of Project Cool Inc. and inventor of the "Cool Site of the Day"). For more information, e-mail tlp@thunderlizard.com or call (206) 285-0305. ... #

From THE COLE PAPERS, June 1998, Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved.