Life as a beta geek

Well, Tools of Change is over, and I’m sitting at the Hachette offices in New York waiting to get some lunch before I fly home. The conference was absolutely terrific, and I feel enthused and better informed on a whole range of subjects. Thanks to everyone who has read or commented on my conference notes — please keep any comments or questions coming.

There are some terrific photos of the conference on Flickr from photographer James Duncan Davidson.

Some general observations about the conference:

• The quality of the presentations was excellent — I can’t remember the last time I went to an event where the standard was so consistently high.
• I’ve never seen so many iPhones — in fact, it seemed that there were as many iPhones in the room as BlackBerries.
• I’ve long been used to the fact that everyone in British publishing is individual enough to use Moleskine notebooks; it’s reassuring to see that the same is true of our American colleagues. In fact, iPhone, MacBook Pro and Moleskine seemed to be the default productivity set-up.
• My Asus EEE really came into its own for blogging the conference, though it did highlight that battery life is a major issue. I’ve heard talk of aftermarket batteries with greater endurance: they can’t come soon enough.
• The EEE was also a hit with everyone who saw it: I had complete strangers coming up and asking questions about it several dozen times a day, everywhere from the conference sessions to the hotel bar. It was really good to have so many conversations about it — one has never felt so popular.
• The Sony PRS-505 e-book reader is very shiny — more on which anon here.