I would like to state for the record that I have met Mumpsimus more than once, and, yeah, you want to know him. He’s great. He’s lovely. He’s my kind of guy. I met him last year when the AWP was inadvertently holding their conference at the same time SXSW was happening. Another litblogger and I snuck out of the “how to blog when you don’t wanna” session to watch the AWP blog session.

As for publishers “knowing” the online culture, well, a few do. Jeremy from Penguin gets it, absolutely. He’s not an editor who thinks about what the web can do for him; he actually uses the web as part of his life. Now I’m not suggesting that I know anything about his secret activities, but…

Did you hit the fictional characters blog? I haven’t had a chance to write about that yet, but it was great. Too short. Too much information to digest in a half hour, too much information to cover. I wanted more — and I rarely say that about conference panels.

I was at SXSW and probably attended several of the same panels as you–although I haven’t the foggiest idea who you are

The print world doesn’t know what to make of the interactive conference. It has more of a workshop feel than a commercial feel.

SXSW is more about indie media and promotion/marketing and cross-pollination. For example, three of my most interesting/useful sessions I attended for me as a writer was the lonelygirl panel and one on remixing video and gamer Richard Garriot’s panel on storytelling.

One thing publishers are doing at SXSW is using the lure of free book copies to interest SXSW organizers to start panels around their “media celebrity.” When a panel description contains a messsage that “100 free copies of this book will be handed out to the audience,” you know you are becoming an unwitting part of a publicity campaign.

BTW, I attended a future of the book panel. The panelists had interesting perspectives, but really had little idea what was going on in the digital publishing world (although the audience seemed to). I (who write for teleread.org , a site that covers the ebook world) was particularly astonished that Kahle went on record as saying that ebooks were unlikely to amount to anything anytime soon.

Interestingly last year, they had a literary conference next door going on at roughly the same time as SXSW. Writers had no idea SXSW even existed, and interactive people had no idea the literary conference was going on. (I would have attended but never heard about it–I would have liked to meet Mumpsimus, for example, who was there).

Literary pursuits are moving towards collaboration (see for example http://ficlets.com/ ), so it only makes sense that the interactive sessions would be useful for people trying to start stuff. SXSW has been particularly good about providing pointers about cultivating an online community. Publishers don’t know how to sell an “online experience” or experimental storytelling. They are more comfortable selling conventional forms of storytelling. On the other hand, this is a really good crowd for lulu and blurb.

BTW, I am happy to report that I did not blog once about any of the panels I attended this year. (I blogged about it for my city paper last year as was exhausted).

http://www.peterme.com/browsed/browsed090899.html

It reminds me of something I wrote myself on returning from the Electronic Book 2000 conference put on in D.C. by the National Institute of Standards. Needless to say, everything was resolved and all in e-book land has been hunky-dory since:-) That article is title “What’s in a Name” and starts about halfway down the page at,

http://www.fonerbooks.com/naming.htm

I ended with a definition of terms:

“Post Office” – 1. Coming after the office. Usually refers to the period of time coming after the “information age” and before ” Aquarius.”

Enjoy the points — they’re low cal. Mostly.