Kudos to Tim and O'Reilly for the launch of their "Tools of Change for Publishing" conference which we will definitely find a way to attend... but I have to believe that Tim is going to take some grief for this comment:
Truth to power? Or a mistake that will cost O'Reilly attendees and $$ ? Or both?
We're holding the conference in San Jose rather than New York, because we believe that the future of publishing is being shaped in Silicon Valley.
As a silicon valley entrepreneur building a company that is challenging some of the assumptions about how publishing should work, I have to agree with Tim that I see more innovation in Silicon Valley then "back east." But on the other hand, that is normal -- we don't have an existing entrenched industry and business model to protect. Take the PC instead, and ask how much thinking is going on in Redmond about the future of the PC? If Vista is the yardstick, not much is the answer.
I spent much of last summer speaking with publishers about the Personal Bee and a vision of reader inclusion in the editorial process. These are smart capable people, and they understand where this future leads. But they are also bound by the chains of their existing businesses and find it hard to make changes to products that still, today, produce profits.
But the bigger issue for our nascent industry is that there are a group of people with ideas (here) and a group of people with money and audience (east coast). Having the conference here may mean that fewer of those people with money and audience will bring those assets to the people with ideas. And that would be a loss for the whole industry.
Comments