Leading Off...With the Clean-Up Batter.

You know, for quite a few years I had given up on major league baseball. This was due in large part to the players' strike of 1994. Living in Phoenix however has changed all of that with the expanding Cactus League and spring training, we are now the host city to more than a handful of MLB teams the first part of each year and the hype is very contagious. Of course there is also the fact that the D-Backs have started the year out right and as of today are on a seven game streak with a sweep of the NLCS-champion Colorado Rockies!

So, what does any of that have to do with PUBu? Hmmm, well nothing other than the baseball analogy was necessary to talk about our latest addition to this year's schedule. Each year we like to open our event with a "heavy hitter", someone who can speak from a broader industry perspective.

So, for this year's opening night keynote speaker we have lined up Carolyn Reidy, President and CEO of Simon & Schuster. Here is the bio blurb about Ms. Reidy from the S&S website:

"Ms. Reidy was named one of "The 50 Women to Watch" by the Wall Street Journal in 2007, and has also been cited as "100 Most Powerful People in Entertainment" by Entertainment Weekly. She is on the Boards of Directors of the Association of American Publishers, the National Book Foundation, and Literacy Partners Inc. In 2003, Ms. Reidy was the recipient of the Matrix Award from the New York Women in Communications.

Ms. Reidy was born in Washington D.C. on May 2, 1949. She graduated from Middlebury College in 1971, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Russian. She earned her M.A. in 1974 and Ph.D. in 1982 in English from Indiana University. She lives in New York with her husband."

The Missing Piece

We have now landed our final Community Leader for PUBu 2008! David Webb is the Executive Editor - Fiction for B&H Publishing Group. David has graciously stepped in to fill the important role for the Editorial Community. If you have any thoughts relative to content in this area for this year's PUBu, please feel free to share them here. Welcome David!