Saturday 23rd May: My Media Roundup by Nikki Simpson, Founder & Director, International Magazine Centre

Every Saturday morning, we invite a publishing pro to put together their top media links. This week's guest editor is Nikki Simpson.

Nikki is the founder and director of the International Magazine Centre, which will be a building dedicated to all-things-magazine, with office and incubator space, exhibitions and events, magazine shop and café.

You can find Nikki on LinkedIn or email. You can find the International Magazine Centre on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Nikki says:

"After a long week of work, I’m guessing Saturday morning is not the time to hit you with more work, so I’ve tried to keep this focused on passion, inspiration, and a bit of fun at the end. The International Magazine Centre is all about celebrating magazines, promoting innovation and connecting publishers, so hopefully these links will do a little of that too."

Live events, in person – remember them? Weren’t they lovely? I run a lot of events and Ruth’s talk in 2017 at Magfest really stuck in my mind. At the time she was Director at the Festival of Marketing so said plenty to inspire me – especially her chat about the ‘Value Exchange Matrix’ from about 13:30.

I have never been as affected by any other article as I was by this one. It is very difficult reading (probably leave it if you’re having a tough day already), but the most incredible piece of reporting – if I could write anything close to this quality I would die a happy woman.

We've invited an incredible mix of experts in magazine publishing to facilitate a peer-to-peer publisher problem-solving workshop. Not only will it be useful, it’ll be an excellent networking opportunity, and very likely lots of fun too.

Back in 2014, Peter Houston published a lovely book called The Magazine Diaries – 100 words from 100 magazine professionals on how they felt about what they do for a living and the biggest (digital) disruption in publishing history. Ha! Little did we know what was coming in 2020. Most of these will make you smile if you’re a publisher, and a wee birdie told me there might be a follow up coming soon, so if you’d like to contribute you know who to contact.

This project is a way for me to keep talking to people during lockdown, an easy way to share the magazine-love. We’ve had nearly 40 people contribute now – some informative, some funny, some their passion just spills over, some talk about how magazines have shaped their careers, some about the importance of magazines, and there’s even a couple on the smell of print. Send me yours now!

If you’ve got young kids at home during lockdown, I feel your pain – our 3-year-old is keeping us both sane and driving us insane simultaneously. Sadly, Supermundane’s super colouring-in is too old for him, but maybe it’ll help you fill half an hour a day – good luck!

If you would like to guest edit a future edition of My Media Roundup, simply reply to this email.