IPA President Gvantsa Jobava’s Opening Speech at the 35th International Publishers Congress

Good morning everyone,

How special it is to be here.

Please can we give another big round of applause to Shake and his team here for the intense work in organising this wonderful Congress and bringing us all together.

And I also have to thank our fantastic Programming Committee. Thank you for volunteering your time and dedicating your knowledge and experience to the development of the next two days.

130 years ago, almost to the day, the founders of IPA were gathering in Paris for the first ever IPA Congress.

As if to demonstrate the words of the Malaysian-born, multi-award-winning novelist Tan Twan Eng in The Garden of Evening Mists, 'The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man.' So by being here today we are making ourselves part of 130 years of IPA history.

Back in 1896, our founding President, the Frenchman, Georges Masson said, 'the first International Publishers Congress is one of many gatherings whose purpose is to multiply peaceful relations between nations, in encouraging the visible tendency of peoples to join more and more through a community of interests.'

Masson was clearly idealistic.

In fresher ink, in the book marking IPA's 100th anniversary in 1996, the 25th President of IPA, Fernando Guedes, sets the scene for that first Congress and even mentions Malaysia but sadly only in the context of its being part of the British Empire and the various political travails that different parts of the world were going through.

How our world has changed.

How our sector has changed.

Would our founders have seen what lay ahead?

Two world wars.
The empowerment of women.
The advent of radio, just on the horizon, then television, then the internet.
The cheap paperback.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
International printing and distribution.
Ebooks.
The global reach of scientific journals.
Smart phones.
Artificial intelligence.

But at our core have we changed?

At our first Congress, Masson noted publishing's close association with technological change: 'Our profession is tied intrinsically to the very beginnings of the history of thought. It appeared the day when, for the first time, we thought to reproduce ideas through symbols and to trade in this reproduction. And when the wonderful invention of the printer permitted us to infinitely multiply a writer's works, we saw the sudden emergence of the need for material organisation which is, to this day, the publisher's responsibility.'

As publishers, don't we still want to bring the best stories to readers, to provide access to the best educational resources, to facilitate the sharing of the best, validated scientific research?

Our times are troubled, as they were then, in 1896. In many ways new technologies are dividing our societies not bringing us together as Masson hoped. But as I stand before you all now, the evidence would suggest that there is still a visible tendency of peoples to join more and more through a community of interests.

Over the next two days, here in Kuala Lumpur, we have the golden opportunity to make our coming together count. We are not here to talk about the past. We are here to imagine our future.

I think it would be difficult to ask you where we will be in 130 years. But where could we be in 2030?

As part of our work to mark our 130th anniversary we have asked our Executive Committee about the trends they see in publishing across a range of areas: technology, society, sustainability, politics, and the economy.

Of course when it comes to technology we have Artificial Intelligence front of mind but also the skills transition that our workforces will have to go through. On the societal level, we are thinking about how we can continue to be a trusted source in an age of misinformation and fake news. How will we continue to engage readers and maintain literacy, as well as ensuring the trinity of freedoms: the freedom of expression, the freedom to publish and the freedom to read? How can we guarantee sustainable access to knowledge? How will our supply chains evolve to be more innovative and sustainable? How will geopolitical trends and national policy shifts affect our sector? How will market consolidation - not just in publishing, but in distribution and other areas - affect us? And finally, how will we fight piracy and IP theft?

Against this backdrop we have created a video and infographic imagining the role of publishers in the future. I look forward to sharing the video with you in a moment.

And we will be circulating a survey to all our members, and more widely, to find out where you think our sector is going, whether we have identified the right trends and which ones will be the biggest in your markets.

You don't have to wait for that survey. We are here together now and over the next two days we ask you to engage with the conversations on stage. Challenge each other, find your favourite speakers, ask them questions, share your experiences.

Finally, let me ask you to already imagine what you will leave with at the end of these two days.

In another Malaysian book, The Harmony Silk Factory, by award-winning author Tash Aw, he wrote: 'We are defined by the stories we tell others about ourselves'.

As publishers we get to choose the stories we tell others about ourselves. I want you to think about the stories you will tell when you leave, the stories you will tell policy makers, and the media in your country, the stories you will tell your publishers associations and your readers.

Here are some of the stories that make me proud to be a publisher:

In all of our diversity we carry knowledge, new ideas, new stories, empathy. Our collective work has become the best source of training data for AI. Our books are valuable individually and collectively.

We take responsibility for what we publish. We invest our money, and take legal responsibility for those works.

We are here for readers of all ages. We can create shared moments between parents and children. We support children in discovering the world around them. We can help adults understand and re-imagine their world, re-educating themselves for a new career. We can bridge generations across decades and even centuries.

Not only do we take responsibility, we are brave. From Galileo to Darwin and many others today, we publish stories and facts that are dangerous and contentious. Stories that powerful people do not want to hear. There are publishers joining us on stage later today who are in exile, who have gone to prison, but in the true spirit of the Prix Voltaire, they keep publishing.

I am proud that if Artificial intelligence is ever to fulfill its promise then it is only because of the quality of the books that you all produce.

These are some of the stories I believe define publishing.

In my message to IPA members at the beginning of this year, I said: 'These anniversaries are like chapters in the book of the IPA and my small contribution to that book last year has left me eager to write what comes next. I look forward to writing it with you.'

And I repeat that. Let us write more stories together in the coming days.

Thank you.