Hi gang,
I’m out here in beautiful Seattle at the Amazon Seller Conference this weekend. The conference was started several years ago by a group of Amazon booksellers, and has steadily grown to a conference of around 200 sellers this year. Amazon doesn’t directly sponsor the event, but this year they sent a River of 20 or so Amazonians to speak on different Amazon projects. Todays discussions included Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA), Amazon Web Services, Technical Services, and various other Amazon offerings of interest to sellers. There is a vendor area with around 30 or so vendors as well, and some of them gave presentations. Unlike the eBay conference, nobody stood up and started yelling at the Amazon employees!
I have personally really enjoyed this conference. Who knew a bunch of booksellers could be so fun? What I’m normally used to is the tweed jacket wine and cheese guys I find at Cirobe and other Bookseller conventions. Not these guys. Saturday night alone for me was just epic – we all started at Jillians having food and drinks – next thing I knew vendors starting buying tequila shots, and I got to observe the horrific “man shots” ritual, which involves a lime, salt, and tequlia, not really in that order and not necessarily swallowed. I’ll stop there.
So an hour later, the dance floor was filled with lots of people who, I’m guessing, “dance” once a year. You know the type – awkward jolting of bodies and the white mans overbite. All that was missing was – sing along with me – “it’s fun to stay at the YYYYY….M..C…A……!!”
It was a blast!
Tomorrow should be the most interesting part of the conference. We all get to go to Amazon HQ for a half day tour and a few meetings. Jeff Bezos always sticks his head in to say hi, so I’ll see if I can snap a picture of him.
Next up – “How To Forget Your Drivers License and Still Get on the Plane”, or “You want To Swab What?”.
Stay Tuned.
Kevin
http://inflatablemadnessdvd.com
http://buyback.com
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