San Francisco, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Stanford, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, San Jose. For a student of the history of technology (ie total geek) as the Caltrain rolls through these stations thoughts of dotcom glories past and present are evoked. One can't help look at ones fellow passengers and wonder who is the google millionaire and which younger, hungrier buck dreams of usurping him.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I am excited to be in San Jose, California for the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference, which (starting in about five hours) will be looking at the ways that book publishing and technology are intersecting now, and the future of this sometimes happy, sometimes not, relationship.
Perusing the agenda there is lots of stuff to look forward to, but the publisher - rather than the geek - in me, was also looking forward to meeting some fellow publishers for a gossip and an exchange of views on the issues raised by the conference. But apart from the odd exception (Random House are here in numbers!) there are almost no book publishers here! What is going on? Am I at the wrong conference? Is it that the conference is in California, rather than New York, that has kept others away? Or is it, as a book blogger suggested to me in the bar, that publishers 'just don't get technology', and don't think they need to? Hopefully I'll find out the answers to these questions and more over the next couple of days.
Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher
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I concur.
Posted by: Justin | June 19, 2007 at 12:41 PM
Jeremy,
On the contrary, I'd love to be there! If I had the time and money of course.
It is an incredible line up.
Eoin
Posted by: Eoin Purcell | June 19, 2007 at 05:33 PM
sure wish i was there!
Posted by: mikey | June 19, 2007 at 09:54 PM