With a great attendance of publishing and media professionals, the second edition of the Globalocal Conference organised by the German Book Office took place in New Delhi on November 26th under the title “The ‘Other’ English Speaking World”. The day-long conference aimed at providing a comprehensive overview from all the players – publishers, agents, printers, service providers and vendors, not just from India but from all parts of the world. The nature of the participation truly reflected the title: ideas and issues from the so called ‘mature markets’ like the UK and US but also from different corners of the globe – from Australia, Indonesia, China to Lebanon, South Africa, Europe and other parts of the world and all over India.
The conference opened with the welcome note from the director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Juergen Boos. And continued with interesting panels around different subjects such as ‘The English Speaking Market’, ’Territories in times of Digitisation’, ‘Views from other Regions’, ‘Return of the colony: India as a service hub’, ‘Going Global, Going Digital’ and ‘Commons-sense’ (and the case of Wikipedia).
Anna Soler-Pont attended the conference as one of the speakers and had the opportunity to increase the contacts in the publishing industry of this “Other English Speaking World”, as well as to catch up with old friends and colleagues.
The day before and after the conference, the participants had the chance to meet informally and network around New Delhi.