The Oxfordshire Publishing Group is a group of senior publishers (CEOs of SMEs, and senior staff from the major publishers) who have been meeting from time to time for social and networking dinners and to discuss things of mutual interest. We applied for a grant from Creative Skillset to develop training courses in Oxfordshire and were awarded £150K over a two year period starting in April 2014. W
e are now working with local publishers to develop these courses so that they genuinely fill gaps in the market. First confirmed course: Creative Entrepreneurship, January 14th-16th, 2015. Info: http://t.co/Hp5nM6wZ7W
Other courses in the pipe-line will be: Copyright Masterclass, Publishing Finance for Non-Financial Managers, Acquiring Content in a Digital Age, Project Management, a techie course for non-techies, and so on. Some courses will likely be aimed more at trade, some at educational, some at journal publishers... We are open to publishers coming to us with ideas for other courses they would like to see run. Anyone can come on the courses (they don't have to be resident in Oxfordshire!), and we can claim the development money from any publisher whose place of work is in England. The Group comprises publishers from all the largest, as well as from small- and medium-sized, publishing companies. There is no ‘membership’ and we welcome new publishers in senior roles who would like to come along.
