Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Just Trying to Get Some Long Tail

Have returned from the BEA (Book Expo America) and lived to tell the tale.

Now that I’m in New Business, I have a lot to learn, so I went a number of the seminars and forums. Learned how to embrace collaboration from Don Tapscott (interesting); learned about Blogging and how to better serve my readers (your attention span is VERY short. One screen is about all you can handle. I’ve been telling you far too much. Sorry!)

I also need to get more connected. This same blog is also available on http://www.isabelsblog.com and I’ve signed up with Technorati.com as well. Check out my Technorati Profile. Blogging is not the place to be shy and retiring.

Was among the many who attended The Future of Publishing in the Digital Age (wouldn’t you want to know the answer to that?). Given by Carly Fiorina, the room was packed. She has a book coming out (big surprise). The whole experience was a great example of Marketing coming up with a selling title and then forgetting to mention it to the author or whatever. Carly quickly informed us that she had no answers, only questions (Please, I think we can all come up with those on our own!) and had only recently even heard of Wikipedia (not something I’d share).


The most impressive thing about the entire event was Carly’s hair. If it was done with tinfoil, they must have used rolls of it. And hours. Many hours. I didn’t put any money down, because no way to verify, but I was wondering if they went the bathing cap/crochet hook route. It was that impressive. That would be significantly painful though, and I was wondering, given all that she’s gone through, if she had the stomach for it.

Listened to Chris Anderson on The Long Tail, which I’ve mentioned in prior post (and if you click on Long Tail, it’ll take you to the Wikipedia definition). His book is coming out, and seems worthwhile. He coined the term to articulate the idea of small sales and niche content—a new way of looking at the market.

It was interesting listening to a lot of these guys laying claim to word coinage in their forums, like planting flags on the moon. Very…you know.

And you’ll be intrigued to know there is not only a Long Tail, but a Big Head as well. Are you following me?

Yes, there were moments when I felt that the 21st century was afloat with countless spermatozoa searching for…I’d better stop now! I’ve gone on long enough and your attention span is flagging.

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