7X20X21

There was one big idea that I neglected to mention from the first day. This was the 7X20X21. The purpose of the numbers: 7 speakers, 20 slides maximum, with only 21 seconds per slide. I’ve separated this one because it actually had some pretty new ideas in regards to the publishing industry.

The first speaker was Jennifer Egan. She showed us a chapter of her book using PowerPoint. It was an interesting concept, and I must admit that the dialogue and the different ways she chose to show us this dialogue, worked well. It was the other elements of her story that didn’t work well. Without the speech, the PowerPoint meant nothing. Now, there are many ways to set up a Power Point presentation, as learned in Grad School. But in this case, since the point of the presentation was to show a chapter of a book, one shouldn’t have needed to hear the speech along with it. So in all, it was a very interesting concept, but not one that worked perfectly. Still, there was promise there.

The second was Ed Nawatka who talked about teaching literature backwards. Currently, schools teach works like Shakespeare to students before teaching the works that are more fun and interesting to our time. Ed suggested that first we get students interested in reading, teach them to love the written word first, and then move up to Shakespeare where you can teach students to analyze his work, showing the tools and similar storylines along the way. I thought this would be a great exercise in teaching. I know that for me the analyzing and understanding of Shakespeare took a long time. Had I understood then how many stories are based on works from the past great authors, I think I would have understood those classics better. It’s difficult to analyze a story when you’re not sure what it’s about. Start simple, start with what you know.

The third speaker was Jacob Lewis who is the creator of figment.com. His speech told of a phenomenon in Japan called cell phone novels. These novels are quite literately written on cell phones by young girls who send piece by piece to their friends until they have a full and complete story. These stories then become viral with a website such as Figment.com where these girls can publish, share, or work on their stories. It challenges the intimacy of publishers in the US compared to those in Japan. It reminds me very much of when I was in high school. We didn’t have the technology of today so my friends still received page and after page of my story on paper. My friend Diana still recalls the assembly line formation we used to sit in. I was at the head writing and as soon as I completed a page I’d send it down the line and as each friend finished reading it, they would pass it along to the next. Even now I wonder, am I too old to try this cell phone novel thing out now? Maybe.

The fourth speaker was Nick Bilton who spoke primarily of technochondrea – the fear of technology. He discussed the next generation and how they simply won’t have the same fear as the older generations about privacy and e-books. As I said in the previous post, there was a noticeable gap between generational comfort levels with social media, so I thought this speech was very enlightening towards the old-fashioned publishers in the crowd. However, he brought up one topic that I have to wonder, is it really a good thing? He said we are becoming an acronym society. Nick states that the new generation who write things such as the following are simply developing a new form of narrative…

DEEZ YUNG FOLKS PUT THEY EVERY MOOD, EVERY THOUGHT,JUST..EVERYTHING ON (FB).... LMBO LUV U... ITT...I SAY...LOL

((Taken from a friend’s FaceBook page and abbreviated. I have no idea what this is saying at the end.))

Apparently, this type of narrative development has been around for generations and its how languages change and develop. He showed us a slide with some formal, proper names of things compared to what we call them now. None of which I thought to write down at the time. So, I can see his point in how the language has developed. But has no one thought this is going too far? I mean, we don’t even teach proper grammar in schools anymore. The FCAT is only concerned with reading comprehension and vocabulary. Does anyone in middle or high school know how to point out the subject of a sentence anymore? Is it still important to know? Was it ever?

Justin Taylor and Eva Talmadge were the fifth and sixth speakers. They were partners in a new book that called for pictures of literary tattoos. So, naturally their slides were of pictures. They called it physical literature and they showed some very interesting quotes or pictures etched forever into people’s bodies. However, beyond that there wasn’t much to say. They were the worst pair of speakers at the conference. It was as if they just said, let’s just go up there and wing it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what they did too.

Clay Shirkey finished the seven speakers with a very interesting history lesson. Apparently the printing press was created by the Catholic church in order to create more “indulgences” which where basically “get out of hell free cards” for sinners. With one of these indulgences, you could commit any sin and it wouldn’t count against your immortal soul. They created it in order to command a better hold on the people. However, after indulgences, bibles were the next thing to be printed. And with the wide spread knowledge that brought, (you know… literacy) people began to think for themselves rather than rely on the church to do their thinking for them. This allowed for the Protestant revolution, blah, blah, etc. His point was that “abundance breaks more things than managing scarcity.” Basic supply and demand issues; Low supply = high demand; High supply = low demand.

He was cautioning the creation of e-books through publishers. Questioning how long these companies will have a future if everything is too readily available online; but at the same time, trying to get them to understand that people will find a way to upload the copies themselves. So, publishers need to come up with a way to manage things quickly.

He was also trying to sell his “reading is sexy” t-shirts. I want one.

Overall, this was one of the most informative and creative lectures I’ve been too in a long time. It presented ideas to think about while showing the audience new trends in the industry.