Tech·Ed is pretty cool. Something unexpected happened tonight at dinner. Gerry and I were at some restaurant at the hotel (we are both staying at the Westgate Lakes Resort).
We walked in and were second in line to put our name on the list. Then a man walked in behind us. He was still wearing his Tech·Ed name badge so we all made a little small talk. Turns out that he was alone, so Gerry invited him to join us. It was about a 10 minute wait for the table so we sat a bar table and started talking.
As it happens, this guy is an Executive Editor for O’Reilly. He’s only been there for a short time (four months I think), but has been in the industry for several years. We come to find out later that he is the most published editor of technology books.
I probably have books with his name on them. Now I have to look and see.
We had really good conversation for quite a while, ranging from the use of humor in technology books to the effect of online reading and writing on book sales. (O’Reilly has their own online book subscription service called Safari; it works kind of like Netflix.) We also found out that there is a committee responsible for choosing the animals that go on the cover of each of their books.
It was all really interesting. I learned a lot about the process. Plus I might even get to be a technical reviewer on some books in the future.
On a separate note, Kelly is flying down tomorrow just in time to go with me to the attendee party at Universal Studios. I can hardly wait!