Following the previous Colophon, we created a small magazine called Colophound, containing wisdom and objects from the first event.

One section was called Magazines 2027, in which a number of people, including me, had a stab at predicting a magazine future 20 years ahead. Others had already speculated on digital screens and moving paper, so I decided to focus on a kind of hybrid magazine, combining growing trends in print-on-demand technology and RSS readers. Here’s what I wrote:

“The cover is like a free gift for subscribers, because the content inside has been compiled to the individual formula of the person who this is for, in this case a woman in her early 20s…

“Also in this issue are 80 pages from Vogue – the latest big photoshoot and a summary of the catwalk fashions. The small print inside tells me that the following week will include selected content from Harpers, the week after that from Wallpaper* – and that more content can be purchased via the reader’s online profile.”

Two not twenty years on, have Mine, a new trial from Time Warner. You pick the 5 magazines (from a selection of 7, but this is a trial) that match your personality, and you’ll get sent a regular (weekly at first, then biweekly) compilation of features from the selection over the next ten weeks. These aren’t small publications either – Time, Sports Illustrated, InStyle among them.

It’s being described as a “printed RSS feed”. I should really talk to my lawyers.

For now at least, Mine is free for the first 33,000 US-based subscribers (and the first 100,000-odd digital subscribers) – sign up here. I’m predicting a rather disjointed reading experience… but who knows? Maybe this single-issue Reader’s Digest/The Week-style compressed edition will help keep print relevant. It certainly makes it a little more unpredictable, which can only be a good thing. Though does anyone know how they’ll report these on the advertising rate card?

Here’s how my 2007 piece ended:

“An ad on the inside back page talks of a new service starting this month – 20 pages of specially curated content for the price of 10. This content will be chosen, edited and designed by former big names in the magazine industry, including editors of the New Yorker and the designer of Creative Review; I can visit each of their profiles online to see who they are. Strange and a little disjointed as this new magazine world is, it’s something of a relief for me to see that the editor still has a job, albeit as a personal brand designed to compete with the magazines themselves.”

And for my next digital prediction: five years or less from now, Mine magazine and eMagazines do a deal, and compilation publications go big. It’s not The Future Of Print but I still suspect it might be one of them.

Luggage on arrival in Luxembourg: 11 kilos. Luggage on departure from Luxembourg: 39 kilos, plus a back-breaking carry on. I think that qualifies as a successful event.

Being a co-organiser is a frustrating task. Like a diabetic beekeeper, you simply don’t get the chance to sample what you’ve spent so long preparing. Apologies to those speakers, marketplaces and panels I didn’t make it to. I was a little busy, but the feedback was so overwhelming positive about the whole thing, and the atmosphere so grief-free and upbeat, we’re thinking about creating our own religion. Or maybe we already did?

One question I was asked was “Why is everybody here so happy? Are they pretending the recession doesn’t exist?” The best answer I can think of is that the independent magazine world is one in which creative struggle is a daily event, in fat years as well as thin. You work with what you have, you adapt to available resources, but whatever happens, you create regardless. The recession hasn’t made a single one of the hundreds and hundreds of attendees begin to doubt why they want to make magazines. It just changed some of the parameters.

The feedback is still leaking out of the netosphere. Highlights for me have to include Kasino A4′s Greyscale Bar, and editor Jonathan Lander’s baby son sporting a “Kasino A6″ mini tshirt; Sang Bleu doing live tattooing at the event, including of Maxime, the magazine’s creative director; having a cup of tea round Karen’s place and discovering Barry Norman’s pickled onions; peeking behind the curtain in Volume’s Dr Strangelove-esque War Room; sailing on a pirate ship with BabyBabyBaby; finally spending some decent time with La Más Bella, for a long time one of my favourite magazine creations; telling Liebling how much I admire their mag even though I don’t speak German, and being told “We put the pictures in there just for you” (Bless!); seeing how Nuke filled their incredible gallery space with wonders, including a washing machine built out of pictures of a washing machine stapled together; finally meeting the minds – and beards – behind Good, and loving how they exploded characters from their pages into the room (and back again); seeing cinema patrons discover IdN’s animated wonders (the world-premiere sneak preview of IdN TV).

Other stand-out moments: Kati and Guido’s restraint from doing something nasty to me as I blithely strolled in to the Making a Magazine room at 5pm on Saturday and cheerily asked “How’s it going?” (and then seeing the results slowly start to appear on the wall, amazed at how good it all looked and read – those two are insanely talented and make a great team, unending thanks to both. Here’s the cover); interviewing Jeremy without Jeremy being there, and seeing his reaction as he worked on the resultant piece; delivering a Pecha Kucha in the style of an overexcited kids TV presenter (I’ll be writing up a version of my talk for the blog soon); constant amazement at Mike’s organisation, brilliant (and entertaining) team, and his calm pleasure throughout; Hans and the magazine store – well, duh; the unofficial addition to the programme, in Kasino’s Greyscale Bar (“Five golden rules to surviving Colophon2009″); seeing the book We Make Magazines LNK for the first time (it’s really rather purrty); the exhibits, the parties, the talks I did see and the faces of people as they came out buzzing about the talks I didn’t; discovering new magazines, new people, new adventures, new collaborations. Celebrations and new beginnings. Passion. Creativity.

We learnt a few things that we’ll tweak for next time, some ideas that we’ll implement, some improvements, some changes. Overall, however, I think we can declare Colophon2009 a success.

I’ll be posting the list of publications I picked up and some of the lessons I learnt over the next few weeks and months. There’s a big pile of it to get through. Big thanks also to everyone who gave me free copies of their magazines – you sure know how to keep an addict giddy. The magazine we made will be available online and in print over the coming months – more to come on that.

What fun. But don’t take my word for it:

Highlights from Stack
Sang Bleu in the build up and then in action
Turning an event into some spectacles
Little White Truths
Moving Wallpaper*
Drinking in greyscale
Postr magazine and the aftermath of their Gonzo party stint
Volume and the situation room
A fan speaks
Pictures of old Luxembourg

And the videos: Caution: Contains Luxembourgish and The watchful eye of the Athenaeum.

Not to mention the numerous Flickr galleries, and of course Jeremy’s comprehensive coverage. If I’ve missed your blog / information then let me know – we’re hungrily gathering all viewpoints we can.

One of our main speakers, amazed at the whole thing, has called it “The Sundance of the magazine world”. I think we’ll use that on the flyers for 2011. Coming?

OK, I confess: I’m not even going to try and blog the Colophon weekend, on top of helping make a magazine in three days, doing some on-stage shenanigans, taking part in a Pecha Kucha, moving between venues, partying, buying/blagging new magazines and almost certainly not sleeping.

Instead, I’ve taken charge of the Colophon Twitter feed, so I’ll be microblogging there. If you’re looking for more, Jeremy is your man.

And now I’m going back to the madness… If you’re coming to Colophon, don’t forget to say hello!

Pics as soon as I get the right cable, but it’s all looking rather lovely. The upstairs exhibition accompany the book is all but ready, the atrium wall is filled with Shift!s, the Magazine Making room is all shiny and waiting for the chaos to begin. I’ve seen Karen, heard that BabyBabyBaby are in town, and all the preparations are going rather well… some would say too well…

And if you are coming, and haven’t yet started to follow the Twitter, you should. I’ve just seeded some surprises in there for later…

Horst Moser has many alter-egos – owner of the world’s biggest magazine collection, author of essential-purchase Surprise Me!, founder of the studio Independent Medien Design – and he will be presenting his new publications cut and Schrift. He’s also known for his monthly one-page magazine cover compilations in Novum, made up of themed selections from his collection. I particularly liked this recent offering, featuring the one publicity shot of Madonna her people made available (scroll down).

As Jeremy has noted, there’ll be a new Karen there.

Acido Surtido is looking for new contributors. Its founder, Lucas, will be blogging the event in Spanish over at Visualmente.

And, like many magazines, Good has reduced its frequency, from bimonthly to quarterly in their case, to cope with the fall in ad revenue. Unlike other magazines, they announced their move in a special, very cute mini-sized, subscriber-only Recession Issue (cover line: “Now at least 80% less!”), which introduces their own special “Recession Alert” coding system, and opens with the words “Hello dearest.”

Much more to come…

New file-sharing magazine site appears
Just PDFs, without Mygazine’s slickness. Odd disclaimer: “You may not use this site to distribute or download any material when you do not have the legal rights to do so”

Dutch museum makes an exhibition magazine
You can read it (or at least 20 pages of it) here

New York magazine archive now on Google
Makes sense. Here’s a sample – and it’s great to see that the ads have been included. New York has featured some good articles, but its archives are now mostly of niche historical interest – not much money for them in that. And it’ll make internal research so much easier

A list of all the magazines that have appeared in The Simpsons
My favourites include “GLUTIUS MAXIMISER”, “MARTIN SHEEN’S TEEN SCENE” and “AMERICAN BREAST ENTHUSIAST”

Wired gets philosophical on designing a magazine
“You’re looking at a box…”

Where Arena went wrong
The author then apologised for the article’s timing – a little unfortunate for one of the mag’s contributing editors. He stands by the piece though, which is good and contains the fabulous phrase “Squares are always more powerful than cool kids, they just need to get organised” – very true. Speaking of which…

Nick Logan on the closure of his last big title
“Since 1999 I’ve not looked at magazines very much.” Unusual and insightful interview with the quiet man who we wanted to get for Colophon, but he kindly declined, saying that one of the motivations for starting his own company was so that he wouldn’t have to speak in public

Ten style magazines for men
Perhaps all is not lost outside the boundaries of EMAP, Conde Nast, Natmags, etc

Heat launches non-celebrity gossip mag
Kind of looks like an 80s teen magazine

Freestyle speaks to Magtastic!
“Every issue will come with a professional-grade frisbee. The first issue has a 110gm fastback from Whammo. We are currently deciding on what will go on the frisbee but it will definitely be either a high-profile designer’s work or a fashion brand. We plan to change the type and size of frisbee each issue (and hence the magazine) – they will always be professional standard as we are all devoted frisbee players.” First issue out in June, apparently

While the printer works his inky magic, Gestalten has officially been unveiled as the worldwide distributor of our forthcoming Colophon-accompanying book, We Make Magazines. And to celebrate, they’ve put some pages online.

Edited by your humble correspondent and designed by the one, the only Jeremy Leslie, It’s very different from We Love Magazines, but equally essential for magazine lovers. I would say that, wouldn’t I? Yes, I would, though the truth is that I’m rather proud of the thing. It’s very lovely, a fascinating and relevant read, filled with great imagery (and free to all Flash Pass holders at Colophon!)

More details over at Gestaltan’s website.

We’re hoping to organise a discussion panel on independent magazines in New York, to celebrate the book’s release over here in May/June. Any thoughts on where we should do it, though?