The kick-off meeting of the consortium of the ASAP – Anticipatory Skills for Adapting the Publishing Sector  will take place at Villa Montesca, in Città di Castello, Italy on 01-02/03/2017. The project has been funded by the EACEA Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Comission in the framework of Erasmus Plus Programme – Sector Skills Alliances in vocational education and training.

The Digital Agenda for Europe estimates that the publishing industries employ around 750,000 jobs in more than 64,000 companies in EU. Technology has had an unusual impact and a massive economic change on publishing: it’s changing the traditional business model and it’s giving a key role to new distribution channels such as aggregation platforms. The technological evolutions affect the consumption patterns of publishing products and production processes, impacting all the areas of the book publishing value chain (Production – Design – Editorial – Distribution and sales – Marketing and publicity). The passage from physical to digital distribution, the zero marginal cost of producing an additional book, the many competitors entering this industry thanks to the digital technologies, the problems linked to electronic security, are only some of the characteristics of this revolution. ASAP takes into account the impact of the changes in the competences and skill, proposes an evolutionary map of the skill needs and designs and delivers flexible training programmes (one for each area of the publishing supply chain) that, according to EQF/ECVET standards and also establishing the quality principles of the EQAVET framework, will provide employees, but also unemployed, self-employed, low skilled employees and young VET students the opportunity to update their professional skills and knowledge covering the gap related to the lack of specific skills determined by the “digital revolution”.The project expects to promote a wide cooperation among the different stakeholders using a participatory portal and a MOOC (Massive Open Online Platform) platform for making the contents at the disposal of a massive target group (it can become the first MOOC of the Publishing Sector), also after the forma end of the project.

Partners:

• Fondazione Hallgarten Franchetti Centro Studi Villa Montesca – Coordinatore (Italia)
• AFAPP – Confartigianato imprese Perugia (Italia)
• AIE – Associazione Italiana Editori (Italia)
• Giunti O.S. Organizzazioni Speciali (Italia)
• CESIE Centro Studi e Inziative Europeo (Italia)
• The Publishers Association (Regno Unito)
• Capacity London (Regno Unito)
• O.E.V. National Federation Of Publishers & Booksellers (Grecia)
• EUROTRAINING Educational Organization (Grecia)
• EOPPEP National Organisation for Certification and Vocational Guidance (Grecia)
• CEPYME Confederación Española de la Pequeña y Mediana Empresa (Spagna)
• CECE – Confederación Española de Centros de Enseñanza (Spagna)
• FEP-FEE Fédération des Editeurs Européens FEE ASBL (Belgio)