Strategy was the key word during last night's opening session of the 2008 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association's (ECPA) Executive Leadership Summit and Annual Member Meeting.

The event, which runs through Wednesday, has drawn 145 representatives from more than 60 companies to the Omni Dallas Hotel at Park West in Dallas.

"This is the executive level of most of the publishing houses in our industry (who are) coming together to learn about pretty high-level content, concepts that they can begin to apply in their houses," ECPA President and CEO Mark Kuyper said.

Keynote speaker and author Andy Crouch spoke on "Strategizing Cultural Creativity: From Consumers to Creators." Crouch spoke about a forthcoming cultural paradigm shift, where consumers will become creators and what that means for Christian publishers. "This is a tremendous moment for the gospel," Crouch said. "This is what human beings were designed to do-create."

Kuyper said Crouch's talk was a fitting beginning to the gathering's focus on reaching a changing audience.

"This whole concept of the consumer as a creator and giving examples of that is really what we need to be thinking about in terms of content," he said. "And how do we engage the consumer even as a creator of content? There are ways that that is already happening digitally, but there will be new and other great opportunities. ... Digital is really going to drive the innovation and drive the ways we're able to get messages out."

The meetings continue today with workshops on subjects such as direct-to-church marketing and the advent of digital media, featuring author Matthew May, Nicole Poindexter of Unbound Media and Ken Brooks of Cengage Learning.

On Wednesday, attendees will participate in an exhibitor site inspection of the Dallas Convention Center, site of the publisher group's Christian Book Expo, debuting March 20-22 next year.

• Prev
• Next