Connecting with Connections

This year, the meeting sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America will be held in San Francisco in conjunction with the NAA's Marketing Conference. Connections will be July 18-20 and the Marketing Conference will be July 20-23.

Speakers at Connections include John Seely Brown, chief scientist of the Xerox Corp. Palo Alto Research Center; Lawrence Ellison, chairman and CEO of Oracle Corp.; Robert Ingle, president of Knight-Ridder New Media; Ralph Langer, executive vice president and editor of the Dallas Morning News, and Pattie Maes, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab.

Sessions include "Battling for the home page advantage," "The advertising landscape," "Integration strategies," "Technology update," "Storytelling," "Design tools" and "The latest and hottest."

A trade show will accompany the conference, with more than 35 exhibitors.

The Marketing Conference will feature speakers David Verklin of Hal Riney & Partners, Paul Wolfe of Foote Cone & Belding, Gregory Holmes of VISA USA Inc., John Oppedahl of Phoenix Newspapers and Chris Mahai of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.

More information on both conferences can be obtained by pointing a web browser at http://www.naa.org/ or by calling (703) 902-1600.

-- dmc

Bit bucket ...

"It's not like the national debt -- you can't pass it on to the next generation."
-- David Lightfoot, president of Chesapeake Resource Group, discussing the Year 2000 problem.

Real bits: At the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, Stephan Conaway has been named chief information officer. Conaway, most recently the director of computer services at the Financial Times of London, has more than 20 years' experience with European newspapers (including the Mirror Group in London), despite the fact that he is an American. ... At the Seattle Times, Doug Ranes has been named plant manager at the North Creek production center in Bothell, Wash.; previously he was plant manager at the Fairview facility. Taking over Ranes' role in Fairview will be Kathy Hunter, who is the paper's composition and production planning manager. ... At the Chicago Tribune, Richard Malone has been named vice president of manufacturing and distribution; previously Malone had been vice president and director of operations at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. ... At the Newspaper Association of America in Vienna, Va., Margaret Vassilikos has been named vice president of finance and administration; previously Vassilikos had been controller of the association. ...

New media mavens: At The Times of Munster, Ind., Jim Tuchler is leaving his job as head of new media for Howard Publications in order to become a partner at Inforte, a computer consulting firm, where he will be in charge of Internet/intranet development. ... At the Seattle Times, Nancy Bruner been named director of new media, a new position; most recently, Bruner served as consulting director for business development at Sprint Multimedia in Kansas City and before that, she spent eight years with US West Media Group in Denver. ... At the Washington Post's on-line effort, Digital Ink Co.'s WashingtonPost.com, Leslie Walker has been named editor; previously she was the newspaper's Maryland editor. Former WashingtonPost.com editor Jason Seiken is on a two-month sabbatical and is scheduled to return full-time as editor-at-large for the on-line service. Mary Lou Fulton, who had been managing editor of the WashingtonPost.com site, resigned shortly before her position was eliminated. Also at Digital Ink, Liddy Manson has been named vice president of advertising and development; previously Manson had been vice president of special projects at Discovery Communications' Discovery Channel Multimedia. ... At the Observer-Reporter of Washington, Pa., William Northrop Jr. has been named assistant publisher; he retains his role as on-line director. ... At Alabama Live, the Internet site of Newhouse's Advance Publications, Michael Carmean has been named editor-in-chief; previously he was with Ohio.com, the web service of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal. ... At the Los Angeles Times, Leah Gentry becomes editorial director of new media. She moves from Excite, where she was managing editor; previously Gentry had been managing editor at Excite and had held 'Net editor positions with the Chicago Tribune and Orange County (Calif.) Register. Also at the Times, Robert Lautz Jr. has been named chief executive officer of ListingLink, a real estate resources web site with more than 400,000 real estate listings; previously he was CEO of IndeNet Inc., a broadcast management software systems supplier. ... At Women's Connection Online of McLean, Va., Angelia Herrin has been named executive editor; previously she was Washington editor at USA Today. Also at Women's Connection, Julia Wilkinson has been named community builder; previously she was a columnist and on-line host on America Online's Women's Network. ...

Vendor vigor: At the Associated Press of New York, Stephan Hart has been named corporate web site manager; previously Hart was an on-line producer at The Wire and before that was a photo editor in Washington and New York. ... At AdOne Classified Network Inc. of New York, Robert Raczkowski has been named vice president of sales; previously Raczkowski had held a similar position at Automatic Data Processing, and before that worked in sales management positions with Sun Microsystems and CText. ... Electronic Classifieds Inc. of San Francisco reports lots of changes. Robert Howe has been named business development/sales director with specific responsibilities for a new New York office. Lyn Chitow Oakes joins ECI as vice president of marketing; previously she had been a vice president at America Online. Tony Schaller has been named vice president of engineering and chief technical officer; previously he had held a similar position at Intersect Software. Steve Buck has been promoted to vice president of business development/sales; previously he had been the director. And Fran Maier has been named vice president in charge of ECI's Match.com business unit; previously she had been Match.com's general manager. ... Lots of changes also at Gerber Systems Corp. of South Windsor, Conn., where Tim Kacprowicz has been named product manager for graphic arts; previously he had been product manager for imaging systems at Konica Imaging and had done stints at Atex, Hell Graphics and Readers Digest. David McFarlin has been promoted to director of manufacturing; previously he was production manager. Lastly, Heinz Weideli has been named regional sales director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa; previously he was director of pre-press at Maschinen AG of Switzerland. ... Monotype Systems Inc. of Rolling Meadows, Ill., also has a raft of new hires. Nick Koriakin has been named western district sales manager; previously he was director of sales at CompuText, with time served at Atex and Triple-I as well. Luis Ramous has been named graphic systems support engineer; previously he was with Cascade Systems. Donald Schrumpf has been named East Coast customer service representative; previously he was with Ogden Newspapers Inc. of Wheeling, W.Va. And Caroline Kennedy has been named administrative assistant at Monotype. ... At Polaroid Graphics Imaging of Waltham, Mass., Jim McElhenny has been named vice president and general manager of worldwide sales. With Polaroid for just a few months, McElhenny previously had held sales positions with Besco Graphic Systems and Eastman Kodak. ... At Spanlink Communications Inc. of Minneapolis, Patrick Irestone has resigned as president, chief operating officer and member of the board. Spanlink said Irestone plans to start a noncompeting company in the area. Brett Shockley, founder, chairman and chief executive of Spanlink, has taken on the role of president, the company said. ...

Confabs: Internet World Summer, designed to tide you over if there's too much of a gap between Internet World Spring and Internet World Fall, is July 21-25 in Chicago. Keynote speakers include Eric Schmidt of Novell Inc., Irving Wladawsky-Berger of IBM Internet, Jeff Papows of Lotus Development Corp., Tom Evslin of AT&T WorldNet Service and Kim Polese of Marimba. Info is on the Web at http://events.internet.com/summer97/conference.sHTML; by voice, call (203) 226-6967. ... Digital Libraries '97, co-sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery, is July 23-26 in Philadelphia. A typical session title is "Evaluating the cost of Boolean query mapping" (you were warned). Details and registration are available at http://www.acm.org/coe/e74920000.HTML or by calling (412) 624-9459. ... Summit '97, the Interactive Services Association's 12th annual conference and expo, is July 27-30 in Washington, D.C. Speakers include Ira Magaziner, the Clinton administration's senior adviser for policy development; Steve Case, president of America Online; Esther Dyson, of EDventure Holdings, and Fortune magazine columnist Stewart Alsop. More info is on the web site (http://www.isa.net/) or by calling (847) 384-7756. ... Camp Internet, an "annual retreat for marketing leaders," is July 30-Aug. 2 in Beaver Creek, Colo. Information is on the phone at (800) 538-5053. ... Editorial Issues on the Web, a conference co-sponsored by Editor & Publisher, the American Press Institute, the Associated Press Managing Editors Association and the Foundation for American Communications, is July 31-Aug. 2 in New York. Speakers include Rem Rieder of the American Journalism Review, Jay Small of Indianapolis Newspapers, Bob Ryan of the San Jose Mercury News' Mercury Center and our own Chris Feola, whose day job is director of new media at the American Press Institute in Reston, Va. Details on the web site (http://www.mediainfo.com/ephome/events/eventshtm/confer.htm). ... Local Markets on the Web: Profiting from Local Internet Content & Advertising is Aug. 7-8 in San Francisco. Speakers include Frank Schott of Microsoft Sidewalk, Peter Winter of Cox Interactive Media and Marty Yudkovitz of NBC Interactive. Phone (609) 921-7200 for info. ...

Mark your calendars: The Ninth Annual Electronic Photojournalism Workshop is Sept. 10-17 in Columbus, Ohio. Details are at http://www.sunsite.unc.edu/nppa/epw. ... The Seybold Seminars/Cole Newspaper & New Media Seminar is Sept. 30 in San Francisco in conjuction with Seybold S.F.; point your browser at http://www.colegroup.com/ for all the information. ... #

From THE COLE PAPERS, July 1997, Copyright © 1997, All Rights Reserved.