How to say f*ck you in 140 characters

March 18, 2009
Yesterday the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival concluded. A four day event spun off from the more famous music festival in Austin, it has over the last 15 years developed a reputation as the venue for new ideas in technology and media. Bloggers, designers, artists, programmers, and activists descend on the convention center to learn new tricks and share experiences. The conference fosters an openness that is especially refreshing--though commerce is never far from the surface, the spirit is always open source. Please check your copyright at the door.

rfishfed: #sxswbp #sxsw huge panel at New think for old media. Lots of book authors and publishers, my man clay #shirky among them.

On Sunday I was invited to participate on a panel about the ways in which old world book publishers could respond to the changing media landscape. Organized by Penguin and entitled "New Think for Old Publishers," it was announced as a conversation between myself, Ivan Held (the president of Putnam), and John Fagan (Penguin's marketing director). But the main show were the moderators Deborah Schultz and author Clay Shirky (crowd sourcing guru and author of Here Comes Everybody), who we joined on the stage of Ballroom B shortly before 5 pm. Their fans packed the room and flipped open their laptops in anticipation. The conference had been in full swing for two days at that point. They were waiting to be dazzled.

rebelprince: At the New Think for Old Publishers talk, @cshirky sporting SB swag & ITP kids clustered along the left wall #sxsw #sxswbp

Publishers are not naive to the challenges of promoting books today, but they are new to the SXSW scene. Penguin in particular has made bold moves to utilize the internet and e-books, not to mention cultivate relationships with bloggers. They seem to take their author Clay Shirky's ideas and optimism about the web genuinely to heart. The panel was a bold first step to create a dialogue within SXSW about how book publishing can coexist and thrive digitally. Though John, Ivan, and I--hardly the self satisfied, backslapping executives depicted in a recent Harper's article--were nervous to speak in front of the overflow crowd, we were prepared to hear what the attendees had to say about our business model.

On the dais there was only one laptop, which controlled the powerpoint--a single slide saying "The internet is the largest group of people who care about reading and writing ever assembled in history. Now what?" The rest of us (including Deb and Clay) chose to address the audience unplugged. Our only weapons would be crude pens and pads of paper. Deb led off the discussion by challenging the room not to hold back, to interrupt when needing clarification. We wouldn't have to wait long. Every panel at SXSW begins with the same demand: "What's the hashtag?" Deb smiled and turned her head slowly to the right to Clay. Taking command, Clay made an executive decision for all of us: "Let's make the hashtag 'sxswbp,' for book publishing." The discussion was now live on Twitter.

mtobis: #sxswbp Curate curate curate. Does that mean edit? What's the difference?

I have to admit that SXSW was a steep learning curve for me. Though the bookstore has a Facebook page and I blog semi-regularly, I had not signed on with the Twitter revolution. But SXSW is very proud, rightfully so, of the social networking tool it has championed over the last two years. Returning SXSWers used the 2009 conference to tout the amazing applications of Twitter: in politics, in charity, in the arts, in journalism. I heard many moving stories about social activists who raised five figures in mere hours after tweeting on behalf of a needy cause. The recent emergency landing of a plane on the Hudson demonstrated the power of citizen reporting via Twitter, creating a mosaic of coverage that the New York Times could never rival. After one woman asked her followers to give clothing for an African village, she was shocked and overwhelmed by the amount of donations. Though it's unclear whether these successes can be repeated as the novelty of Twitter wears off, I too was starting to see it as a beacon of hope.

alroker: #sxswbp new think for old publishers = complete existential jackoff, zero meat. Off to the garyvee pep rally next door

After Deb argued that writing is a continuum (comparing the Talmud to an early group blog) and polled the audience (a large proportion raising their hands to indicate they were long form bloggers), Clay Shirky reiterated his thoughts that the promise of social media need not be mutually exclusive with traditional book publishing. Books still need editors and curating. We don't blink at the large crews required to orchestrate even the most modest of films. Why shouldn't we accept that books too are collaborative efforts? Copyediting oneself, for example, is like scratching your back--you could do it solo but it's more effective if another party helps. And books need to matter beyond the moment. Where the internet celebrates the ephemeral, books suggest permanence. At Penguin, nearly 45 people have a hand in the creation of a book--from the writer to editor to production to publicity to sales rep--before it reaches a bookstore. He concluded by stressing another theme of SXSW: search versus serendipity. The first must not come at the expense of the other. How do we not lose the ability to stumble on things we weren't looking for?

HannahSJohnson: Still waiting for the "new thinking" part of the New Thinking in Old Publishing panel #sxswbp

Deb and Clay asked John, Ivan, and I to speak a little about our backgrounds and roles within the industry, as well as a recent book we read and loved. While Ivan eloquently emphasized the passion it takes to do the job (God knows, it's not the money), I canvassed the audience looking for any familiar faces and noticed most of the room staring downward, furiously typing away at their keyboards. Strangely that calmed my nerves. I'm not accustomed to talking in front of large groups of strangers--their stares would have frozen me. On my turn I tried to explain the two hats I wear--as publicity director and bookstore proprietor--and told a story about the recent discovery on Freebird's shelves of an out-of-print book (by the New Yorker writer St. Clair McKelway) that caught the interest of my colleague Kathy Belden and is leading to its republication in 2010. Deb nodded her head in approval and congratulated me on such a great example of the serendipity we sometimes lose in online searches. I was feeling great. My leg stopped bobbing nervously.

littlestgator: #sxswbp too much back story- you all know better-- you are wasting a big opportunity

lalorek: The book publishing industry seems like they really need to change with the digital age #SXSWbp

ericaendicott: @kirkbiglione Whoa. Worst panel ever. I paid for this? #sxswbp

A little after 5:30 pm, Deb asked questioners to line up behind a microphone in the center aisle. Quickly five or six sprang up. The first one cut to the chase. Where are the new ideas we were promised? Why were we taking up precious time with this prattle? Did we have a clue? We weren't startled by the sentiment as much as the audience's spontaneous reaction. They erupted in a giant applause that must have made neighboring panels think we were scoring with the crowd. Deb attempted to calm things down by saying we never misrepresented this--that the point of the session was to open up the dialogue and hear what they wanted from old publishing.

kirkbiglione: Let me see if I understand this. The audience is a focus group for the panel? #sxswbp

SXSWers do not just value the DIY ethos, they revel in it. Any number of times I heard how users need to eliminate the middleman, bypass the system, build a better mousetrap. Do-it-yourself isn't only an agent of change. It's outlaw. It's punk. Appropriately enough that weekend Austin's Blanton Museum of Art was hosting an exhibit on the Birth of the Cool. DIY, where design, technology, and counter culture intersect, is the epitome of cool today. And one of its poster boys is James Powderly.

Featured as Monday's keynote, Powderly arrived with a nifty bag of tricks. Instead of a single slide saying "Now what?" he showed images of his work at the Graffiti Research Lab. A former engineer who helped develop Mars probes, he now devotes his time preaching the good word about open source and channeling the graffiti artists of the '70s (who he calls the original hackers) by creating very sophisticated and lightweight laser instruments to tag buildings at great distances. We were in the presence of a real celebrity, a geek with style and smarts. Dressed in black and wearing a Freddie Kruger-style hat, he spoke in laconic, hip terms. He was a trickster not an artist. Here was attitude the audience respected. Sexy and charming, smart and naughty. The kind of guy who can joke about his detainment in Beijing (for attempting to laser tag Tianamen Square) and the great ass of his Chinese informant without offending feminists or political dissidents.

tactica: Uh oh...Penguin doesn't have any ideas to save the publishing industry @ #sxswbp & they won't let us go til we give them some!

theatredude: #sxswbp great panel..too bad they were all standing at the microphone in the audience.

Back in Ballroom B, the line remained long. I slumped forward in an unpunk manner and templed my hands, covering my face. One person made an intriguing suggestion about applying the digital jukebox idea to books. Another complained how authors had to do their own publicity without support from their publishers. Some pitched their own websites before sitting down (a particularly common practice at SXSW). A conference handler at the back of the room signaled we had five minutes left. The last questioner delivered the parting shot. If, as an author, I can design it myself, write it myself, publish it myself, why would I bother going to a publisher at all? What purpose do you serve? Clay Shirky reiterated one of his mantras that publishing raises the signal and separates it from the noise. Aren't you merely a filter? the questioner retorted. Raising his voice Clay boomed into the microphone, "the filter is the single most important function on the internet today." And with that the audience was briefly back on our side.

eengler: @fraying They asked for it - "you tell us what to do" - creative crowdsourcing but poor expectation setting #sxswbp

azizgilani: huge copout panel, "We didn't come here with answers on how to fix our dead industry, we came here for you to give us answers." #sxswbp

griswold: I am sticking it out for a copy of @cshirky book... The silver lining of this panel. Clay - ditch these guys in the parking lot :) #sxswbp

At the afterparty, the loud, overcrowded bar served as a great equalizer. Since you can't blog while sucking down a Shiner Bock, the tricky laptops were blissfully stored away. We could finally have one on one conversations with people. One attendee, a very nice British man named Brett, shouted into my ear the mistakes we made. Yet he made a key observation. After deciding we were a pretty boring lot who fell far short of accomplishing the goals stated in the program, he stuck it out only to witness the Twitter drubbing online (let's call it the Twubbing for the sake of SXSW's fondness for neologisms). So it hadn't been a total failure. Yes we had been stripped and spanked by Twitter, but it had also given our panel new life. In the room and out of it, we had demonstrated Twitter's unintended purpose: as virtual blood sport. A publishing breakthrough!

kirkbiglione: I have to say, this has been an interesting study in culture shock #sxswbp

At dinner that evening, Yen Cheong, a publicist for Penguin who maintains their blog, let Ivan and I scroll through the Twitter feed on her i-phone. The tweets were endless. We pissed off this many people? For the first time all day I felt proud.
--Peter Miller