Day One of Tools of Change, New York produced a rash of posts yesterday. Today I’ve had to slow down. The ideas are coming at me so thick and fast that I can’t process them fast enough, so they’ll have to filter out post-conference.
As an aside, I’ve found myself looking at New York differently this visit. My hotel is a tiny art deco building crammed into a narrow space between 5th & 6th Avenues. Its vertiginous marble staircases and narrow corridors serve as a real reminder of how precious space is in this city, and I can’t help wondering how many thousands of people have passed through its rooms since it was built in 1903 on the site of an orphanage. By contrast the Marriott Marquis has acres of space in what Kate Pullinger refers to as its Matrix-like atrium. Yet the Marriott, too, is dated. Each of these buildings is of its time and its place.
When I first came to NYC 25 years ago, I was bowled over by this energetic, thrusting city. I still love it, but what I see here now is history. This is a city of the last two centuries, and its visible economy still appears to be based in traditional businesses. Although NYC is the focus of much of the US publishing industry, it is not the focus of the US economy. The richest companies in America are on the West Coast, and that is where this century is being shaped. I can’t help thinking that this presents American publishers with an extra set of problems. They need to be immersed in and in constant contact with the web-based businesses that are shaping their market place, and geography works against this. It is no accident that one of the most successful independent US publishers, O’Reilly, is a West Coast venture.
I always used to conform to the often-cited view that London lags a few years behind New York. I don’t feel that any more – and I think London-based publishers are particularly lucky that there’s a thriving start-up economy in London, that includes many home-grown software companies. Finding innovative partnerships in our own capital city is a real opportunity for British publishers, and one I’m increasingly excited about.