Monday, September 22

1:45-2:30 p.m. M901

Assembling and Motivating Killer Teams

Speaker: Tim Andrews, CEO, Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI)

Talented and productive teams are the lifeblood of today's media companies. And Tim Andrews is a master when it comes to building teams, having done it at Primedia and Dow Jones before ASI. Learn how to find and motivate talent, develop commission and bonus programs that motivate growth and reward "good behavior" across multiple platforms, and create pathways and opportunities that ensure commitment, engagement, and retention. You'll learn the actionable steps you can take to create alignment among your key team members around your company goals.

2:45-3:30 p.m. M902

Driving Profits in a Downturn

Speaker: Robert Faletra, CEO, Everything Channel

This session will sharpen your focus on how to evaluate and align (or realign) your business to withstand the headwinds of a challenged economic environment. We will focus on where to cut, where to invest, how to identify hidden cost savings, how to enlist your employees to participate in the process, and how to keep your business on track without sacrificing future growth.

3:45-4:30 p.m. M903

Creating Your E-media Business Strategy

Speaker: Bill Oakes, Manager, Chicagomag.com

If your goal is to generate at least 20 percent of your revenue from e-media, you’re going to have to make some big decisions on where and how much to invest in people, technology, and outside services to get there. This session will cover the options you have for creating an e-media business plan for your organization, including the costs, timelines, ROI, and resources (people and technology) you’ll need to build a revenue generating e-media operation. This session is for publishers large and small who are looking for guidance on what it takes to build and support a Web business strategy.

Tuesday, September 23

9:45-10:45 a.m. T911

Money-Making Brand Extensions

Speaker: Brad Felenstein, Director, Business Development, Golf Magazine

As print's share of the customer spend continues to decline, smart publishers are using their print brands to spawn new business extensions -- events, e-media, services, and more. Attend this session and you'll learn how to approach brand extensions, see examples of successful simple and complex extensions and how they were created, and how to create internal "strike teams" to develop and execute new business concepts.

11:45 a.m. -12:30 p.m. T912

Landing "Whale" Accounts

Speaker: Jimmy Saunders, Director, Chicago Office, Forbes.com

This session will focus on how to build a team approach to targeted monster sales. You'll learn how to size up the "whales," do your due diligence, create the approach, assemble your internal team, get the right players to the table, and create the killer concept that will not only sell, but can access pools of dollars beyond traditional media budgets. You'll hear real-world success stories and walk away with a process road-map you can use with your team.

2:45-3:30 p.m. T913

Creating a Lead-Gen Machine

Speaker: Pamala McGlinchy, VP, Marketing, TechWeb

Today's advertisers are all about leads. And if you're not delivering them, your business is at risk. A true lead strategy is more than click reports and names on lists. This session will show you how to create and integrate advertising programs designed to generate leads, how to create a lead-gen infrastructure to qualify and process leads for your customers, and how to position print as the key element in a lead-gen campaign. Yes, it can be done.

4:45-5:30 p.m. T914

The Changing Media Value Chain

Speaker: Bob Carrigan, CEO, IDG

Print may be challenged, but print brands are at the heart of thriving communities (or should be). In this session IDG's Bob Carrigan describes how he transformed his company, and how you should view your current media assets and align them into a strategy that you can use to create new revenue opportunities, lock in current customers, get them to spend more, and identify gaps in your strategy that you need to fill in order to keep your competition locked out. This session is geared toward senior level business leaders looking to assess and align their assets to create stronger barriers to competitive entry and capture a larger "share of customer dollar."

Wednesday, September 24

9:15-10:00 a.m. W921

Building Communities as Assets

Speaker: Michael Westcott, Managing Director, Event Marketing Institute

In a world where content is a commodity, community is capital! Media fragmentation, consumer control and the limits of mass marketing have forced B2B and B2C brands and media companies to reconsider what it means to build brands and business. This interactive session will focus on specific community building practices that highlight the value of combining content, commerce and connections to drive the sea-change in marketing rather than getting swamped by it. Attend this session and you'll learn specific ways to create customer experiences that capitalize on the value of your content, your brands, your thought leaders and your community to drive new revenue and forge a powerful new business model.

11:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m. W922

Creating Your 36-Month Growth Plan

Speaker: Jay Lauf, Publisher, The Atlantic

If you don't know where you want to go, all roads will lead you there. In this session you'll learn the steps, processes, and discipline you need to achieve your short to mid-range goals. From knowing where you want to go to creating the plan that will get you there, this session will provide you with a roadmap for how to focus your investments, planning and attention in areas that will enhance the business value of your organization.

12:30-1:15 p.m. W923

TrendWatch: Digital Growth and Revenue Opportunities

Speaker: Rex Hammock, CEO, Hammock, Inc.

Mobile, video, social media. There's an array of content platforms online and all are important tools in your digital arsenal. In this session, media forecaster Rex Hammock offers an analysis of how each platform is being used in the marketplace, how and to what extent customers are adopting them, and the projected share of revenues they'll command.