Winthrop Room
Day 2

Video streaming by Ustream

Video streaming by Ustream

Community Cookbooks: Historical, Literary, Digital
Anne Bower, Alison Kelly, Sandra Oliver, Ann Romines
The way community cookbooks are created and accessed or used changes from century to century, yet this cookbook form, from its inception during the Civil War to the present, continues to both reflect and shape the communities in which it exists. Scholars (and others) exploring community cookbooks can discover within them the values, historical milieu, culinary and social customs affecting the cookbooks’ makers, as well as the diverse methods each cookbook’s contributors employ to reach out to a community (real, virtual, or imagined). Panelists’ topics will include: Discovering Community Cookbooks in the Library of Congress; Coast to Coast, Cover to Cover: Community Cookbooks as Historical Resources; and Creating Literary and Culinary Communities: The Cather Foundation Cookbook.

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Video streaming by Ustream

What is a Recipe
Andy Coe, Cathy Kaufman, Laura Schenone, Barbara Wheaton
What is a recipe? Is it a memory, a story, a way of life? Is it a formula for self-improvement, a promise of good health, a lesson in culinary technique? Recipes often don’t live up to their expectation, but our hunger for them never seems wane. For this reason, recipes continue to be a source of commerce, profit, and endless fascination. This panel will explore recipes from the age of cuneiform tablets to our current (and pilfering) Internet era. We will especially look at the recipe as an information system that relies on shared assumptions between recipe writer and user–creating either disappointment or triumph.

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Cookbooks from Mars, Cookbooks from Venus
Michael Krondl, Charlotte Druckman, Priscilla Ferguson, Barbara Haber
Historically, cookbooks have been written by men and women, for men or women. Just what form they took was typically determined by the gender of both the writer and the intended audience. Compare the kind of books written by Escoffier and Mrs. Beeton, or for that matter by chefs like Thomas Keller and contemporary lifestyle gurus like Martha Stewart. The sex of writer’s voice still matters.

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Are Cookbooks Scholarship? University Press Food Lists
Jennifer Crewe, Elaine Maisner, Kate Marshall, Bruce Kraig
Several university presses have food lists, some of them focusing on food history, some on regional cuisine, including cookbooks. Sometimes books in this field are a bit removed from the scholarly works that form the backbone of a university press list. How do the presses, and their faculty approval boards, look at these lists? What is different about publishing a cookbook or a food history book with a university press? Our panel includes two editors at university presses with established food lists, and a series editor whose list is published at a university press.

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Starlight Room
Day 2

The People behind the Pages: The Appeal of the Personality-Driven Cookbook
Judith Weinraub, Madhur Jaffrey, Peter Kaminsky, Jane Lear, Jane Ziegelman
Beyond instruction, some of our most beloved cookbooks provide companionship with a trusted culinary guide — someone we welcome into our kitchens. By taking readers into the author’s world, that personal presence can teach, warn, amuse, inspire — and sell cookbooks. This session will explore the cookbook author as friend and even literary character, from the carefully crafted personae behind 19th-century “bestsellers” to the multi-media culinary personalities who dominate today’s cookbook marketplace.

Talking with Publishing Houses
Dan Rosenberg, Libby Edelson, Chris Navratil, Judy Pray
The publisher’s role is changing. Sitting at the top of a publishing house, there are many moving pieces, of which bringing a viable book to market is only one. And now, with all that’s happening in the world of digital/online, there’s even more that must be done to keep a publishing house on a path of growth and innovation that leads to success. Hear from a number of publishers living this day-to-day, who will share what they see as some of the biggest challenges and opportunities facing publishing houses as a whole, as well as some ways that we can capitalize on these developments going forward.

Working with Bloggers
Casey Benedict, Pam Anderson, Maggie Battista, Abby Dodge; David Leite
As traditional media morphs online and digital content channels take on even greater importance, bloggers are becoming the new media outlets. Gatekeepers to a larger online community, tastemakers for what’s hot in food, and evangelists for trends, products, and more, food bloggers have firmly positioned themselves at the center of the cooking community. Many publishers have begun exploring what it means to work with bloggers, but how does this fit into a larger social media strategy, and how do publishers build real, meaningful relationships with bloggers who perhaps don’t always want to be pitched on the latest product? We’ll bring together a spirited panel of bloggers (and blog community organizers) who will share their insights on how they’ve worked with publishers and brands in the past, and what we can all do to improve relationships, provide value, and drive engagement both around our books and the bloggers we work with.

Reaching Consumers: How Author Tours, Events, and Online Outreach Sell Cookbooks
Celia Sack, Alison Fryer, Naomi McEneely; Jennifer Reese, Julia M. Usher
As consumers move online to research, discuss and buy cookbooks, there’s major opportunities for publishers and authors who want to reach audiences and build relationships. But how can these constituents go “direct to consumer” and how do offline events complement the 24/7 outreach that can happen online? In this panel, we’ll hear from cookbook authors, booksellers and content producers who will explore the benefits of in-person events at bookstores and other venues, how those opportunities can be leveraged into productive partnerships with brick-and-mortar venues, and how that engagement can be translated online both during and after those events.

Recipe Monetization
Rochelle Grayson, Art Chang, Dave Feller, Yummly; Phil Michaelson, Kamran Mohsenin
The buzz word for online content is monetization (along with chunking, atomizing, community, and more). As future sales of print books remain uncertain, publishers will increasingly have to find new ways to diversify their revenue models, and find ways to entice consumers to pay for content that’s free elsewhere. Not only will this session look at the various opportunities for publishers, from content licensing, chunking, to in-book advertising, but it will also explore ways that publishers can use the media assets they create to enhance revenue outside of the book. As part of this session, we’ll also explore ways in which curated content differs from free online content and how we can convey that value to consumers for the purpose of monetization.

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Winthrop Room
Day 1

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Behind the Numbers: Looking at Cookbook Data
Ted Hill and Kelly Gallagher
Ebook reading adoption is on the rise, and across many sections of the book industry, readers are putting down print books in favor of their digital counterparts. But what’s really going on out there? And how does that translate to ecookbook adoption over the next few years? In this presentation, Bowker will talk about what they see in their deep dive studies on reading habits, how reading is evolving between print and electronic and what that means for the world of cookbooks. They’ll also share details about a cookbook study that will answer questions on consumer demand for electronic products, pricing around specific platforms, and functionality needs.

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Historical Cookbooks
Ken Albala, Cynthia Bertelsen, Nora Rubel, Francine Segan
How are historic cookbooks relevant for today? Can we cook the past and learn directly from the process or are such sources merely tools for dry historical research? Is there a deeper reason to attempt to understand the taste preferences of our forebears and is it even possible to truly comprehend what they liked to eat without living in the same time and place and without the same contextual setting and mental framework?

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Tick-Tock: Cooking Against the Clock
Cathy Kaufman Linda Civitello, Steve Schmidt, Laura Shapiro
Efficiency in the kitchen has been a theme for cookbook and lifestyle writers since the eighteenth century, but minimizing time spent in cooking has become a key goal for many mid-late twentieth century cookbooks. What was once the rapid-fire “60 Minute Gourmet” now seems like scratch haute cuisine. Time-saving strategies run the gamut and tell us about our changing technologies and values.

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A New York Food State of Mind in Food Writing and Cookbooks
Annie Hauck-Lawson, Jonathan Deutsch, Cindy R. Lobel, Peter Rose
New York’s history of extraordinary capitol in its land, skies and waters, its people, their communities and foodways provides a similarly rich context for expressions through food. Cookbooks and food writing—both contemporary and historic—will be discussed for the New York people- and placed-based pictures they paint through words and recipes.

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Feast for the Eye? Food Styling, Photography, and Cookbook Design
John F. Carafoli, Roy Finamore, Melissa Hamilton, Christopher Hirsheimer, Maricel Presilla
The look and feel of cookbooks has changed dramatically over the centuries, from the authoritarian Black Letter of early English works to the gastro-pornography of lavishly illustrated modern cookbooks. This panel examines the ways in which cookbooks visually communicate our culinary concepts, from photography and art work to typography to layout and design. We will examine what has sold, what sells now, and what the future may hold.

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Starlight Room

Day 1

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Consuming the Brand: Corporate Cookbooks

Deanna Pucciarelli, Christina Ceisel, Linda Morgan, Bonnie Slotnick , F. Smith,

Advertising the virtues of food products took place mainly in newspapers until cooking related pamphlets, which later evolved into cookbooks, emerged in the late 1800s. American corporations began issuing small, product driven cookbooks targeted at literate middle class women with the intent of ingredient early adoption and brand loyalty. Early on the materials were distributed free of charge when purchased with corporate goods, or sometimes sold for a modest price. As the nation began to purchase rather than produce goods at the household level corporate cookbooks played an important role in creating consumer demand for new products. It is during this period that food-related, corporate America rather than family tradition began to shape a sphere of the American palate. Then as now, corporate cookbooks occupy a niche in the cooking instruction domain while commodifying the American diet.

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Enhancing Content Both Online and Off

Adam Salomone, Rick Joyce, Cheryl Kramer-Toto, Andrea Nisbet, Tanya Steel

As more content becomes readily available online, consumers are increasingly engaged by a mixed-media approach when learning about, and cooking, recipes. Video, step-by-step audio, timers, and serving size functionality are all elements that are at consumers fingertips when searching the web to answer “what’s for dinner?” As cookbook publishers continue to find ways to compete in this new arena, enhanced content has become the new norm. But how can publishers finance such video/audio projects? And how can they appropriately use them, not only within the e-book, but across the print book as well (and even as incorporated into online properties, to further drive revenue opportunity). This session will explore ways in which publishers can leverage their existing models, work with outside partners (and perhaps even their authors) to develop and implement enhanced content strategies across their content platforms, and also to discuss what shouldn’t be in an enhanced book.

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Predicting Future Trends from Current Data

Lisa Ekus, Lynn Andriani, Irena Chalmers, Suzanne Rafer, Dan Rosenberg

New trends in cooking are emerging all the time. How can publishers keep up in an ever-quickening cycle of information, where every new development seems like the “next hot thing?” In this session, we’ll talk with agents, editors, and content creators to figure out how they separate what’s popular now from what will sell in years to come, and we’ll take the lessons from what works in cookbooks and apply it to real world publishing programs.

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Media Outlets in the Digital World

Mark Rotella, Addie Broyles, Melissa Clark, Caroline Russock; Joe Yonan

Whether in traditional or digital forms, the cookbook review/author interview is one of the all important pieces to any cookbook publicity campaign. As the publishing/media landscape becomes evermore crowded, publishers have to become more focused in who they pitch and how. In many cases, the straight press release with an offer for an interview just isn’t enough and getting creative with both pitches and content can be the difference in getting a big publicity hit. On this panel, we’ll hear from a number of media representatives in about how they’ve seen publishers innovate, what they’re looking for in this new media landscape, and how their own content initiatives are changing (and how publishers can capitalize on that change).

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Strategic Partnerships in Online Content

Geoff Allen, Dave Feller, Jane Kelly, Will Schwalbe, Jonathan Vlock

Food startups abound as the barriers to entry in the food/tech space begin to fall. Not a day goes by that there doesn’t seem to be a new recipe website, and even beyond cooking in the kitchen, entrepreneurs are developing new ways to interact with food on the web. With this emerging marketplace comes an enormous need for content, especially curated content from cookbooks and publishers are uniquely poised to deliver value in this new space. And, there’s also the potential for disruption of current ways that publishers operate both online and off. With this session, we’ll be examining the current startup ecosystem within food, looking towards emerging companies (and some of the bigger players that are coming on the scene), exploring ways that publishers can benefit both through new revenue streams and marketing potential, and identifying potential sticking points for content creators as more of these companies come on the scene.

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In a new year, filled with exciting potential, I am encouraged by the opportunities that are in front of me. It’s a time to be socially responsible and encourage those who are heading in a similar direction. It’s a great time to be inspired. I am building new relationships that I imagine will be long lasting.

If you find yourself interested in knowing more about what is going on here at the Roger Smith don’t hesitate to reach out. Share with us what you are up to and ask something of us. Maybe we can help.

Have a great Friday afternoon and enjoy the weekend.
Please comment, share and engage…
John Knowles, Director of Digital Marketing

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Broadcast – February 10-11, 9am – 6pm EST – For broadcast schedule see below. For complete conference program click here.

Overview

Everybody knows what a cookbook is — or do we? They’ve been around at least since the Middle Ages, dispensing information on something that all households formerly had to do at least three times a day. Whether written by pros or home cooks, they convey more about their begetters and users than can be reduced to teaspoons and tablespoons. Over and beyond advice on buying, preparing, and serving food for purposes of health, thrift, glamour, or pure pleasure, they can speak volumes about the societies and times that have produced them — including our own. Far-reaching change is underway within the genre as recipes migrate online, or into e-books and culinary apps. The future undoubtedly holds even greater changes in the entire economics of cookbook publishing.

This conference is planned as an eclectic gathering of those who publish, write, edit, agent, research, or simply buy and use cookbooks. Our object is to share as inclusive a range as possible of our very different learning experiences. Our explorations will take two broad overall directions: Track I: “Cookbooks Past and Present: Looking Beneath the Sauce-Splattered Page”; and Track II: Cookbook 2020: “The Future of the Cookbook.”

We hope you will enjoy the conference.
Cathy Kaufman, Anne Mendelson, Adam Salomone, Bruce Shaw, and Andrew F. Smith

A note about the conference format:

The conference runs over 3 days, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, February 9-11.
There are separate registration fees for Thursday, and for Friday and Saturday. You may register: 1) for a workshop on Thursday; 2) the Conference on Friday and Saturday; or 3) both. (There is no single-day registration for Friday or Saturday.)
Thursday is dedicated to workshops only. The three offered workshops will run simultaneously, so registrants can only select one workshop. There is a separate registration fee for the workshops. Pre-registration is a must; no walk-ins.
Friday and Saturday are the core of the conference program. On each day, 5 time blocks will each offer 2 or 3 sessions from which to choose either Track I or Track II sessions. These 28 sessions (14 each day) are not pre-registered—you may sample all of them or stick with a single one per block.

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1. Click book now.
2. Join the app.
3. Click offers.
4. Book a room
5. You can spend the extra money on pizza and stop clicking now.

BONUS: Brag about it to your facebook friends using the share button.

“That’s right. I’m in NYC, and you’re not.”

See you in NYC!

Travel dates: Now through February 29, 2012. Subject to Availability.

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Molly Barnes Brown Bag Lunch Art Discussions

Timothy Nye owner of the Nyehaus Gallery in Chelsea and The Brown Gallery in L.A. will talk about the current Getty show Pacific Standard Time, the history of L.A. art from 1965 to 1980.

Streaming live video by Ustream

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THE LAB: GALLERY is pleased to present Breath of Water, an installation by Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse.

Breath of Water is part of the artist’s on-going exploration into the representation of water both two-dimensionally and three-dimensionally. Their work is framed by the ideas of two Presocratic philosophers: Thales and Heraclitus. Thales discusses the omnipresence of water and it’s shape-shifting ability when he claimed that everything is water. Heraclitus, by asserting that one can not step in the same river twice, argues that identity is deeply rooted in change. Breath of Water looks at winter water as an almost secret environment not unlike the world inside a snow globe.

Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse have been collaborating since 1999. During this time, they have produced large-scale sculpture, painting, and prints. Mickett comes to the collaboration from a background in philosophy, film, radio, poetry, and theater. Stackhouse followed a traditional visual arts path, and his individual work can be found in museum collections around the world including the Museum of Modern Art, The National Gallery of Australia, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Both Mickett and Stackhouse hold Ph.Ds: Mickett in philosophy and Stackhouse has an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of South Florida.

All works of art and performances in THE LAB: GALLERY are shown within the confines of the space, and are intended to be viewed by the audience from the sidewalk.  This event is free and viewable 24/7.

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If you want to know more about “Google Plus for Business” you should read Chris’ book and engage in the conversation.

As part of our #Rogersrooms initiative, I will be giving away a 2 night stay at the Roger Smith to be used in January as part of this blog post. To win the #Rogersroom contest, please tell us your favorite feature or fact about the Google plus platform and why you think it is interesting. The most unique, cleaver, useful, or original feature presented will win the contest! If you present a case study of who is innovating with in the platform, that could help you stand out as well! Please post your comments on our blog or this G+ post to be considered.

The stay can only be used in January 2012. I will be choosing a winner on Wednesday January 11th. I look forward to your feedback!

Be sure to follow +Roger Smith Hotel and engage us with your interest, ideas or inquiries. We will be hosting Google + meetups in the future and are excited about the relationships we will build on Google + in 2012.

Please share, comment and engage!
Thanks
John Knowles – Director of Digital Marketing
@RSHotel, @Pancity

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