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With the collapse of Book Expo Canada this week, industry professionals immediately began talking about alternatives. While the Association of Canadian Publishers and the Canadian Booksellers Association will most likely host annual meetings with some sort of educational opportunities, another group of people jumped in with two feet and announced the BookCamp Toronto, an unconference on the future of the book, to take place on Saturday, June 6. The event is free, but organizers do ask that if you sign up you attend. Examples of workshops suggested for the day include:
- Lesson learned from the music industry (or how to avoid the same pitfalls)
- Twitter 101 – how to build loyalty in 140 characters or less;
- The changing definition of literacy;
- Publishing newbie? Skills you need & lessons to learn in the 2.0 age;
- Podcasting Your Fiction;
- Territory copyright - who gets the revenue for digital books in a borderless world; and my very favourite
- Hire the wired: What and where publishers should be looking for the kind of talent that will save the industry from itself (or “Why your intern is doing more for your authors with their Twitter account and blog than your marketing department has accomplished in a year”)
as well as many, many more. You can see that it will be a broad-ranging day, with content driven by the interests of the attendees. The Toronto event is being based on BookCamp London (UK), a day that engendered enthusiastic response and prompted a grass-roots effort here to create the same kind of day.
Mitch Joel of Twist Image and Six Pixels of Separation is one of the organizers. I first heard of unconferences from Mitch when I attended a seminar he led on social media marketing. I think the idea has great potential to keep the ideas flowing among us without incurring great costs. If you wonder what will happen to publishing and the traditional book in our new ultra-wired world, I urge you to check it out.
