It is a few minutes before six as I climb on the train in New Haven, CT heading into New York City for the Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference, DPAC III. Besides writing for my own blog, Orient Lodge, I expect to post some entries on DigidayDaily.

525,600 minutes

The day starts off with a sponsored breakfast, with Lindsay O'Neill, Senior Vice President of Datran Media Display and Michael Silberman, General Manager of NYMag.com talking about “why audience measurement has become even more critical in today's publishing environment”.

It’s an important part of the business, measuring who is reading your articles and viewing your ads. Sure, I look at Google Analytics, Quantcast, Compete, and even Alexa to get a sense of what is going on with my traffic, but somehow, so much of audience measurement seems to miss the point. The lyrics of “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent go through my mind. “five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes… How do you measure a year?”

While the struggling bohemian in the East Village dies of AIDS, the ad execs measure eyeballs. At the DigiDay conference I heard people suggest we should not be focusing on eyeballs and but should be thinking about the minds they are connected to. As I think of the young bohemians I also think of the hearts they are connected to and all of this leads me to the idea of “winning hearts and minds”.

It will be interesting to see if anyone has anything interesting to say about measuring how engaged ones audience truly is.

Wealth

The first keynote speech will be by Dr. Jim Taylor, Chairman of The Harrison Group. I must admit, if I hadn’t of done work with The Harrison Group in the past, I wouldn’t have been able to find their website. The Harrison Group regularly produces as a “Study of Affluence and Wealth in America”. The program says that Jim will talk about the “10% of the economy” and how “people under financial hardship are taking pride and pleasure in their ability to manage themselves and their family's real needs”.

The Harrison Group website talks about the people in their survey as having annual discretionary income of between $100,000 and $5 million. While I am sure that the recession affects these people as well, it feels like this is another big disconnect. Another recollection of the DigiDay conference comes to mind where someone commented that frugal mommy bloggers are America’s new sweetheart.

The Media

The following keynote is scheduled to be Patrick Keane, Chief Executive Officer of Associated Content. He will be talking about “What defines content quality and consumer value in the growing landscape of user-generated content? How can traditional media companies build community and user-generated content platforms?” I believe friends of mine have written for Associated Content, and I’ve heard mixed reviews. It will be interesting to hear what Mr. Keane has to say. Beyond that, as users attempt to monetize the content they generate, either through sites like Associated Content, PayPerPost or Today.com, does the line between user-generated content and professional content begin to blur?

I expect to see this explored even more deeply during a panel moderated by Henry Blodgett, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Business Insider. The panel will include Brian Quinn, Vice President and General Manager of Digital Ad Sales for The Wall Street Journal and Betsy Morgan, CEO of The Huffington Post.

Recently I was told of a meeting in Washington where Arianna Huffington spoke of the success of her venture and berated some of the newspaper executives bewailing their decline in revenue as a bunch of crybabies. I’m told that the Huffington Post model is based substantially on unpaid user generated content, and I wonder if this model will face challenges as the media ecology evolves.

While it is good to see The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post on the panel, it is striking the lack of representation of others in the newspaper industry. When I’ve spoken with various people complaining about the decline of the newspaper industry, they talk about how they just can’t make as much money online as they did for print advertisements. Perhaps, instead of complaining, members of the news industry need to get more involved in conferences like this.

Smoothie Break

After the panel, Mojiva will sponsor a smoothie break. Staying with an inside joke since the DigiDay conference, I hope no one spills a smoothie on my blackberry.

While this only covers the first half of the day, it is probably about as much as it makes sense to put into a single blog post. Conferences like this can be overwhelming, especially if you get on a train before six in the morning, so I’ll rest a little and try not to hold too many things in my mind at the same time, or get overwhelmed, at least until lunch time.

A final word to my followers on Twitter: I hope to be sending many Tweets from DPAC III. If you are sensitive to the number of tweets you get and you don’t want to be inundated by messages about digital publishing and advertising, I’d encourage you to mute my Twitter stream for the day. On the other hand, if you are interested, please keep an eye on my tweets, since I hope they will be many and interesting.