A Sunny Day at BEA

Tomorrow, Ingram Publisher Services is going live with Firebrand's Title Management software and Eloquence Metadata services. This is strategically important for both IPS and Firebrand, and we have been working away for the past several months to bring the project together.

I think the most interesting aspect of this project is the marriage of the industry leading services of Ingram - with IPS and it's sister companies - and Firebrand's leading solutions in Title Management and Eloquence Onix services. Like Barnes & Noble, Ingram trusts our Eloquence service to make it a central conduit to send IPS title information not only to the industry, but through to Ingram Book as well.

This morning as I write this, I am at BEA 2009 and we happen to be across the aisle from the Ingram Acre (my words) and their palatial 'Booth', abuzz with activity. Despite the effort required to pull a show like this together, I am always pleasantly reminded that, at the end of the day, this show for us is about getting together with the many different people we have worked with in the past and present, and hope to work with in the future.

A late afternoon chat with Mark Ouimet and Karen Cross from Ingram was a perfect example. There was a bit of house-cleaning to discuss about the Title Management project, but it was more focused on ideas and what we can do in the future to help make IPS publishers more successful. These conversations are simply fun.

So as I prep for a sunny Sunday in Javits, I pump myself up and simply remind myself that I just like people in book publishing, and enjoy catching up with old and new friends. Despite the sunny weather outside.