More than 300 delegates heard the very latest theory and practice in online publishing at a London media conference yesterday.

The Association of Online Publishers was taking a close look at Making it Happen, as well as hosting its annual awards ceremony.

The lessons learned so far were examined by a series of speakers, including Caroline Little, chief executive of the Washington Post, Jeff Henry, director of ITV Consumer and Duncan Edwards, chief executive of the National Magazine Company.

They also looked at the challenges which lie ahead for the industry.

Caroline explained the tricks of the trade for growing readership online, talking both about global news and hyper-local content.

Another was creating ‘widgets' for their own pages and other sites, encouraging people to interact, such as giving people the chance to set up feeds to "read about politics with us", for example.

She said: "No one knows a project like the people within an organisation and we have had 30 widgets from employers."

Readers were also offered different default home pages according to DNS server and zip code, with participation geared to readers "talking with each other rather than just shouting".

Jeff Henry introduced the "new" ITV.com, while another speaker, Caroline Slootweg, from Unilever, explained the effect of 2.0 on advertisers and branding, with "webisodes" of acted drama reinforcing the brand message in America.

Other speakers included Josh Cohen from Google News, Peter Bale, of MSN.co.uk, former Reading Evening Post trainee Andrew Hawken, now online editorial director at BSkyB, Karl Schneider, of Reed Business Information, the BBC's Pete Clifton (a former Northampton Chronicle & Echo man), and Meg Pickard, head of communities at Guardian Unlimited.

Meg explained how the website is planning to extend its tools for user interaction to increase ways for readers to use its editorial.

She also warned against trying to compete with established social networking success, saying they should be embraced: "You can't walk into a bar and ask people to stop drinking, and come to the bar over the road. That's a disjointed user experience. You should be in their bar and offer to buy them the drinks."

And the secret to future growth?

Bingo, according to The Sun's Pete Picton.

The Sun Online editor said: "It was something we didn't expect. Readers play bingo online but they're chatting to each other all the time on the message boards, too."