Visiting WoodWing Uncovered – ‘Dare to Discover’

Uncovering horizons

Ross Paterson, WoodWing's CEO, kicks off the day by stating how nice it is to see real people attending and having some human interaction after more than four years without a proper, offline WoodWing customer event. “We are here today to discover how WoodWing can help you generate (more) digital revenue and to show you how to apply AI to gain efficiency whilst staying within the boundaries of the law, regulations and ethics.”

“Together with our partners, we deliver innovative and hands-on solutions that allow customers to deal with challenges and benefit from new opportunities – now and in the future. In response to customer demand, WoodWing teams are using exciting technology to create:”

1. “innovative (AI) solutions that drive efficiency and automation
2. stronger digital capabilities to drive digital reader revenue
3. agility to adapt solutions to changing business needs
4. increased feature velocity at better quality and stability
5. a secure and stable technology infrastructure”

Innovate to facilitate – Building a product stack for the future

Leveraging AI and SaaS technologies is crucial for those who want to gain or keep a competitive edge. But in day-to-day practice, this is easier said than done.

VP Product Marketing Tom Pijsel: “WoodWing adopted a different mindset and velocity to help organizations be successful in a fast-evolving technological landscape. And we’re not just talking about it, but already delivering:”

• Assets Photo Editor now helps you crop images, do color corrections, apply filters and use text overlays
• Right after the summer the Video Editor will be geared up to quickly create social videos, another attractive way to push your products and services
• Easier ways to collaborate on content and dossiers in WoodWing Studio allow you to create exceptional content
• An ever-growing variety of pre-built integrations are available to you through WoodWing Connect
  • We used one of these, the Infogram integration, to provide the new ‘tables in articles’ feature
• WoodWing Assets 10 – a multi-tenant cloud version of WoodWing Assets - is in the making with new functionality, increased speed of introducing new functionality and faster recovery times and content delivery

Ongoing experiments with the responsible and respectful use of AI in content processes show promising results in the areas of:

• Content Transformation – translate, change tone of voice, SEO optimization, conversion of print to digital
• Find and re-use content – find related content and transform it into new output
• Print copyfitting – help in the copyfitting process, while ensuring the user is in full control
• Deepfake detection – finding out if images and text are generated by or with the help of AI
• Layout automation – using algorithms to generate the geometry where to place articles on the pages of a newspaper
  
  

Impression of the WoodWing Uncovered event 2024

WoodWing CEO Ross Paterson about WoodWing Uncovered

To integrate or not to integrate is no longer a question

Demand for integration has never been higher and will continue to grow. Moving the WoodWing products to a SaaS platform makes it easier to create integrations, removing the developer dependency. WoodWing Connect enables you to integrate WoodWing's solutions with hundreds of applications to further optimize the content creation processes.

WoodWing Studio

WoodWing Studio, shifting to the multichannel publishing field now, also got some airtime during Uncovered... and rightfully so. A new and very interesting feature, from an efficiency and a usability perspective but also from an esthetical point of view, is the tables in articles feature which is based on the Infogram integration – available in the Integrations Marketplace. 

Content Collaboration is another feature on the WoodWing roadmap – both for Studio and Assets. These content collaboration features, which are (being) developed for the cloud-based versions of these products, facilitated through WoodWing Cloud, include:

• Commenting (within the active file and dossier) – currently being released
• GenAI tools (copyfitting, deepfake detection, layout creation) – in the works

A Product Manager needs an eye on the future to be able to present customers and prospects with the products they don't even know they will want – yet.

Dani Leyhue, Product Manager WoodWing Studio

WoodWing Assets 10

WoodWing Assets, formerly known as Elvis DAM, has been one of WoodWing's flagship products for a long time now. With the launch of the cloud-based version, labeled WoodWing Assets 10, we're entering a new era of digital asset management. Assets 10 will be fully SaaS-native, compliant with the latest security standards, delivering high performance and scalability.

WoodWing Assets 10 is the next step in WoodWing's extensive DAM journey. It's definitely a scoop that was reserved for the Uncovered audience, and those who missed out have something exciting to look forward to.

Responsible AI in your organization – takeaways from the Uncovered panel discussion

Bram Hoovers, Director Legal at Considerati, Philippe Remarque, Director of journalism and editorial development at DPG Media, and Tom Pijsel, VP Product Management at WoodWing, discussed ways how to come to grips with AI – specifically the responsible use thereof.

Their practical tips to start experimenting with (and benefitting from) AI in your own content creation processes:

• Get past the sentiment that AI will cause us to lose our jobs – it won’t. In fact, if we manage to use AI well, it’s going to make our jobs much more interesting.
• Increase AI adoption in your organization by putting early adopters at the forefront. Inspire the more skeptical colleagues by sharing practical possibilities of AI that are relevant to them.
• The first step in making sure you are using AI in a responsible and compliant way is to check which systems use AI and how they use it. Then, define what type of AI is used and what rules apply to each category.
• Scan the market for relevant content solutions that use AI and look at competitors to see how they are going about it.
• Are you contemplating whether to outsource the AI search and exploration or do it yourself? Considering that AI might change your entire company, finding out more about this subject is too important to delegate to a third party.
• Try to exchange AI experience(s) with peers in your market – publishers do that all the time! This subject is way too broad to tackle on your own. Sharing and collaborating is easy enough, since discovering the possibilities of AI is stimulating and exciting.

All of us will have to deal with these new developments and make choices about how to move forward – let’s work together!

It’s a wrap (Boom Chicago)

Two members of the famous Boom Chicago comedy club were present to ‘roast n' toast’ WoodWing for this special occasion. Announced as a surprise act, it was a rather hilarious ending to an exciting day, and the attendants had a good laugh. After taking a few shots at us for the sake of comedy, they did have a few nice things to say as well, as you can read below.

“The desire and need for top-class journalistic and creative content is higher than ever. WoodWing’s innovative tools and expertise and the hard work of the partners, enable the customers to work smarter and faster and concentrate on what makes them great – their content.”

“WoodWing’s success as a leading publishing software vendor, and the continuing success of the publishing industry – even in very challenging times – is down to the hard work, adaptability and innovation of everyone in this room: the WoodWing team, its partners, and the customers. And we have no doubt that you will continue to grow and aid the publishing industry throughout 2024 and beyond.”

“Here’s to you! Thank you!”