Tools of Change 2013: Win Your Way In

This year, like last year, Smart Bitches is a media partner for the 2013 O'Reilly Tools of Change in Publishing Conference. As part of my media sponsorship, I agree to talk about the conference – and attend, which makes the talking about it a lot easier – while sharing what I learn while I'm there. There are a couple of sessions I'm very much looking forward to (more on that in a moment) and usually there's at least one new digital reading device, app, or program each year that seems impossibly neat (or just impossible).

As part of my media sponsorship, I also have a code to give away for complimentary admission. Tools of Change for Publishing can be an expensive conference, especially for an individual, but with the coupon, one winner will have admission to the Tools of Change conference. Woo! The conference will be held February 12-14 at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. 

First, data and details: the admission code does not include sessions that are not included in the basic conference fee. Void where prohibited. Must be 18 years of age and in all likelihod reading something to enter. Airfare and hotel accommodations are the responsibility of the winner. Current value of the conference code is $1,295.00. You can see the conference schedule and hotel information at the Tools of Change website.

I've said before that Tools of Change is a “right brain/left brain conference.” It's a mesh of creativity and technology, and planning and possibilities for publishing. Each year I've gone, there's been sessions I think about and reference for months afterward. This year, there are two sessions I'm very curious about. 

Barbara Genco has presented pieces of the data collected by Library Journal's Public Library Patron Research. This year she's giving a keynote titled The Library as Ebook Discovery Zone: More Lessons from *Library Journal's* Public Library Patron Research. The presentation description says it will include “key insights into library patrons’ rapid, enthusiastic adoption of the ebook format. Despite the “friction” created as many major publishers impose limits on libraries’ ability to acquire or lease content for sharing, demand continues to grow and compelling links between patron borrowing and patron buying endure.” I tend to love data-filled presentations, especially ones about readers, libraries, or how book readership changes, even though I can't hold a number in my head to save my life or my shoe collection and have to write them down immediately. I'm curious about this one in particular because I've noticed the digital book promotion at my own local library – and the “friction” that develops as publishers try to limit digital library lending tends to make me grit my teeth and long for a frozen fish with which to dispense some sense and sensibility.

I'm also looking forward to the keynote from Alexandra Gillespie, who is an Associate Professor of English and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Print Culture and the Medieval Author (Oxford, 2006) and she co-edited The Production of Books in England, 1350-1500 (Cambridge, 2011). (Don't you love how academic books are over $100 each?) She studies the history of bookmaking: “her research is concerned with the changing technologies and the dynamic business of medieval book production; it spans more than a thousand years—beginning with the earliest surviving parchment and papyrus books of the second century AD, up to the first century of printing in Europe.”

Did the nerdgasm gerbil in your brain just start jumpspinning on the curiosity wheel like mine? I'm going to be all 0.0 at this keynote, I think. History and how books changed people? We never talk about that, sheesh. /sarcasm. 

Are you interested in attending Tools of Change (perhaps to see what the nerdgasm gerbil in your brain can do)?

To enter to win, have a look at the schedule, and tell me which session you'd most like to attend, or what you'd most like to learn from attending Tools of Change in Publishing. Winner will be selected by random drawing at 3pm eastern on Thursday 17 January. Good luck! I hope to see you there!