Often knowing when to stop and move on is harder than continuing to
plough the same old furrow.
Last week Tim O’Reilly decide to call it a day on his well respected
‘Tools of Change’ adventure.
Many applauded him for the work he had done in moving the digital agenda
forward, whilst others said he should continue and owed it to his follows to
keep up the work. We are not able to say what tipped his thinking to flip his
attention elsewhere, but will say that we should never expect any party to go
on forever.
Tools of Change arrived at the right time. It fed the appetite of many
to understand the emerging digital landscape and listen to those breaking new
ground. It certainly pulled together the brightest and reshaped the Book Fair
World. We attended one of the conferences and found ourselves wondering what
all these folk attending would be doing, or adopting, if they didn’t have this
focal point?
Does the shutting up of the Tools of Change mean we are fully conversant
with digital and change? We would suggest not and change is all around us. But
it does signal the end of the beginning and the question now is as what follows
and how will that help shape our thinking. Perhaps it signals the end to the
mega conference, which in our opinion is probably well overdue, but again we
have thought that for a long time. Perhaps it signals an end to the ‘payola’
conference where money can buy the platinum sponsor a speaking slot, a booth,
literature in the delegate pack and even if they have little to say. We refused
to be drawn into this sham circuit with its often predictable group of speakers
and luvvies.
Perhaps it draws an end to the constant barrage of conferences and pulls
them together around major Book Fairs.
Others will step into the void and some are already doing so, but are
they merely replicating the formula or adding new ingredients?
We remember Richard Charkin shutting up his blog, which was insightful
but often more a mixture of social insights and executive travels than a
commendatory on digital advancement. Then Evan Schnittman took off those Black
Plastic Glasses and said we are now digital time to put this pen down. Now
Tools of Change is moving on.
It’s ironic that this last month we have written nothing. Were we
missed? Did the digital world stop spinning? Probably we were the ones most
frustrated and itching to write about so many things, but we found ourselves
not with writer’s block as much as a desire to get on with something different.
We have just announced our Read Petite venture with ex Chief Editor of
the Bookseller, Neill Denny, Agent and broadcaster, Peter Cox and founder of
Waterstone’s Tim Waterstone. We found ourselves wanting to write about Read
Petite at the expense of all else. That would clearly be wrong but how do we
balance the industry commentary with what we feel so passionately about?
After some 2,200 blogs, we have decided it’s not time to move on but it
is time to start to rethink what we write and how we communicate it. It’s a bit
like when Bibliophile started t do video reviews to supplement the text ones.
We saw the power of the visual the passion of the reviewer and realised that
text reviews are good but are only they because that was the only way we could
effectively express them. Today music is about YouTube more than it’s about
iTunes. Conferences are more about TED than packing a room full of delegates
and collecting money of the speaker’s companies. Commenting on change is about
effecting it and helping it happen than writing about it.
