Highlights from Key Executives Mega-Conference

The Key Executives Mega-Conference is taking place from Feb. 17-19 in Fort Worth, Texas, at the Omni Fort Worth Hotel. News & Tech is at the conference.

More than 700 media executives are expected at the conference, which provides network opportunities and explores new solutions to issues facing the newspaper industry. Hosts are America's Newspapers, Local Media Association and News Media Alliance. Texas Press Association is a local partner.

A few happenings and announcements from the event:

• ProImage announces that Tribune Publishing is rolling out ProImage’s NewsWayX browser-based production workflow in a centralized environment for its printing plants at the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Sun Sentinel (Florida), New York Daily News and Hartford Courant. Each plant will have a customized workflow and only see their publications. Production can be monitored via a standard browser to check the progress of all pages and plates.

• Iowa-based TownNews is launching two products: iQ Audience+ and Data Insights. Data Insights will give media companies new tools for gathering and acting upon the multitude of data that impacts their businesses. The product is a weapon against “analysis paralysis,” says CEO Brad Ward. iQ Audience+ is an audience acquisition and retention platform that enables publishers, broadcasters, and digital-native media organizations to tailor their conversion funnels using machine learning and proven industry best practices, according to TownNews.

• The Anchorage Daily News is the latest newspaper to launch a digital out-of-home video network using the Phoenix Vision SiteView system. The new location-based video advertising tool, delivered via displays on stand-alone newspaper racks positioned at high traffic retail locations, is a means for the newspaper to reach consumers at the point of purchase. The initial network will consist of 100 rack-mounted displays and roll out in the coming months. Phoenix Vision is based in San Diego.

• Ancestry and Adpay | Memoriams, an Ancestry company, are announcing a solution for obituaries. Leveraging the free We Remember by Ancestry digital memorial, consumers and funeral homes can now place and search obituaries through a unified interface. This solution will empower media companies to offer an intuitive, perpetual search that will ultimately link to the world’s largest database of ancestral information, according to Colorado-based Adpay.

• Quintype Technologies is previewing the Page Builder application for their Ahead platform at the conference. Page Builder allows publishers to change the look and feel of their website on the fly without the need to know any code or any deployments while still maintaining stability and security, according to the company. Quintype was founded in California and has a presence in Delhi and Bangalore, India.

• Innocode introduces the Hyperlocal bundle for newspapers. The platform allows newspapers to add hyperlocal, personalized content to their existing news product or CMS, without adding burdens on the newsroom, and provides new revenue models that make hyperlocal viable, the company says. The bundle also works for setting up new, local, digital only news operations, Innocode says.

• Agfa was on hand with its new and patented print screening technology, SPIR@L. Based on the fundamentals of Sublima screening, SPIR@L allows users to hold a 1-99% dot. The result is striking image quality with reduced image slur, Agfa says.

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