A Personal Note After The CEPIC Congress 2006 In Biarritz

Besides meeting all the GBOEs (Greatest Business Man on Earth), GAOEs (Greatest Stock Agency Owner on Earth), GPOEs (Greatest Stock Portal Owner on Earth) and GJOEs (Greatest Stock Photo Journalist on Earth) and besides the confidential things happening behind the curtains, I found little newsworthy things happening in Biarritz during the  CEPIC. Except for one circumstance.

This was the first time* that a top micropayment stock photo company attended the CEPIC, namely the CEO of Fotolia Germany, Dietmar Frohmann (I conducted earlier an interview with one of Fotolia´s founders, Thibaud Elziere).

It was juicy to observe how many respected GAOEs and GPOEs were frankly either surprised and irritated or simply upset about this fact and acted like they had been meeting the spawn of satan. Only a few were open minded and faced the new reality.

Except for the contributions of Jeff Sedlik on PLUS (Picture Licensing Universal System), Stefan Windh and of few others, some got the impression that the event had been partly a meeting of dinosaurs discussing the same old topics they are discussing since years. The recent PACA Conference in March instead arranged seminars like "State of the industry" or "Wholly owned content".

An informal survey with attendees on the question "What do you think are the major challenges this industry has to face in the next three years" resulted unsurprisingly in the answers "the impact of the micropayment phenomenon will rise" and "footage is the next big challenge for all of us".

Another attendee explained in detail his sophisticated assumption that the Big Three will constantly lose market share in the next years. More on this topic later in a separate essay, directly from the source.

As a novelty, the CEPIC has started to report about its own congress, just like if Porsche would compose a review of the new Porsche Cayman itself. If you are more interested in this official view with lots of hooray acclamation points, continue here (Day One), here (Day Two) and here (Day Three).

A big part of those attendees which did not fly to Biarritz with their private jet, enplaned on sunday morning for an Air France flight to Paris, overcrowded with GBOEs, GAOEs, GPOEs and GJOEs. One of those GEOEs (Greatest Stock Agency Employee on Earth) hanging around noted: "If this plane goes down, the whole industry will go down." Instead the plan made its way to Paris.

Tags: Stock photo industry CEPIC Congress

*Update June 15th: A reader explained that in fact Bruce LIvingstone of iStockphoto attended the CEPIC Congress 2004 in Copenhagen and spoke on the Technology Panel. So the honor to have been the first one goes to iStock.

Comments

[Roman]

The plane made his way to Paris and the GBOEs made their way to their computers and there's more images on internet. Great

[Jeff Greenberg]

Who flies a private jet? I would like to know if I, in part, am making it possible. If yes, I intend to ask for permission to photograph it inside & out -- for editorial usage only, no model release required.

[Klaus Plaumann]

As GMDOE (Greatest Marketing Director On Earth) I had a great time meeting the in-crowd. Believe it or not: It is the most successfull IMPOSP`s (International Meeting Point of Stock Photo People) on this earth. Let`s continue!