I've just returned from SSP, where I enjoyed some great presentations, a drink or two, and catching up with some friends in the industry - especially since the move to the States.
The circuit sure can be tiring but kudos goes out to the organising committee on this one. I attended a couple of really excellent sessions & presentations. Pride of place really needs to go to the pre-conference session on Web 2.0. Sure, I appreciate that you can't attend a conference without there being a session on this topic, but this was genuinely interesting and illuminating. I don't want to name names (grin) but I tip my hat to Leigh Watson-Healey (Outsell), Andrea Powell (CABI), Toby Green (OECD), Leigh Dodds (Ingenta) & Geoff Bilder (CrossRef): all excellent presentations and all expertly marshalled by Louise Tutton (Ingenta).
Later during the event I saw a great presentation on accessibility with an outstanding presentation from John Gardner (President, ViewPlus) who demonstrated the latest version of his innovative software. As always, I was amused to see peoples' reaction to the text-to-speech reader that John was using; especially given that he seemed to be using it at super-high speed, which made it appear that a chipmunk was reading his text for him :)
During the conference I was also invited to attend a meeting of the STM FutureWatch Committee - some smart people them! However, it wasn't that so impressed me, but rather the willingness that people have to share ideas, innovation and 'thinking'. Something, by the way, that I love about the whole industry: it never ceases to amaze me that given the temptation to be all secretive and refer to how competitive we must all be I find pretty much everyone open to having a talk with me. It was David Marques who impressed me here. I'd never met him previously but, wow, what an enthusiast. My head was pretty much ready to burst after a rapid (and way too short) 60 mins or so.
You can tell by the piccie that I had some delicious comestibles while I was in Boston too :-) Rather splendid curry at Kashmir and the AIP Dinner at Sasso (where I managed only half of the rather excellent lobster & spaghetti - shame on me).
