Seven Days of Conferences and Workshops
I spent seven days, from last Sunday through Friday, at three different conferences and workshops, beginning with the American Independent Writers Annual Conference in Washington, D.C, on June 13, the 100th annual conference of the Special Libraries Association/SLA, also in D.C., June 14-17, and the Berrett-Koehler Authors Cooperative marketing workshop, hosted by ASTD, the American Society of Training & Development, in Alexandria, Va., on June 18-19. Berrett-Koehler is publishing my first book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life, in August. I had the opportunity to meet and learn from a number of my fellow B-K authors at the workshop. I found them all to be talented, generous people. Over the two days there were many top-notch speakers and workshop leaders to guide us through such areas as marketing, publicity, selling, the effective use of social networking technology and finding public speaking opportunities. At the end of the workshop, everyone participated in a brief but intense co-consulting session, in which groups of four or five people helped each other think through something we want to work on immediately, and we had to report to the larger group what we’re going to do about it. This was a great vehicle for helping me focus my efforts on promoting the book, as we get closer to publication. Thanks to everyone who put on the workshop and ran it so smoothly, and to the many people who shared their knowledge and experience with a first time author.
June 21st, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Yea, the workshop was lovely all around. A fine example of community. I was quite moved when Steve Piersanti, President of Berrett-Koehler, reported that even after 34 years in the publishing biz, even HE learned some new stuff at this workshop. As usual, it was not so much the content, but the context that made a real difference. Not so much what people said, but their presence. Like a figure ground puzzle, the reportage seems to always, inevitably focus upon the content and miss reporting on the context, the slideshow, a miss the presence. I guess you have to be there. …
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:04 am
Just to confirm what both Bruce and David concluded above from a slightly different perspective. This was my first Berrett-Koehler author co-operative and a very useful learning experience even for someone from the outside looking in. Glad to know that there are many satisfied B-K authors and the external presenters coming in provided some novel insite into the publishing business. I believe B-K works quite well with their authors and stays in touch even after the book is published (novel idea) but I also confirmed what I learned 9 years ago; a book’s author is the best person to market one’s book. The workshop provided some Positive Turbulence (1999) for me.
http://www.aminnovation.org http://www.positiveturbulence.com