BookMachine, a U.K.-based social media-driven publishing skills exchange, is kicking off the launch of its online platform, BookMachine.me, with a Global Publishing Event that will bring together six professionals in six different cities speaking about and celebrating the culture of collaboration. The event will be held simultaneously in six cities, New York, London, Toronto, Barcelona, Oxford and Brighton on September 25.
Founded by Laura Austin and Gavin Summers in the U.K., BookMachine is a social media platform—the venture hosts a regular schedule of real world meetups in the U.S. and Europe—grafted onto a professional skills exchange that allows anyone to find publishing veterans with a range of skills from editorial to production. In a Skype call with Austin, she said that BookMachine.me is currently in beta and has signed up about 2,500 professionals whose skills can be searched for in the BookMachine database.
The Globel Publishing Event will kick off the launch of BookMacine.me. Speakers include Julia Kingsford (CEO, World Book Night), Brett Sandusky (Bdigitl Media Labs), Eric Huang (Made in Me), Sophie Kahan (Kobo), Emma Barnes (CEO BiblioCloud/Snowbooks), Julietta Lionetti (consultant). Charly Ford (Project Manager at Osprey Publishing) will host the Oxford event for the fourth time.
“The speakers will discuss how they use collaboration in their work,” Austin said, “and people can log on to BookMachine.me and meet other publishing people and come away from the event learning something useful. It's not just corporate speak.”
