Interested in meeting members of the Sony Reader product team in a relaxed environment? Next weekend, April 28-29, they will be at UCLA for the LA Times Festival of Books (http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks/exhibitorslist.html ), which is billed as "America’s largest book festival."

According to the web site, Sony Electronics will be at booth #723.

If you come, please share your MobileRead site name, so they know who you are!

Darn... wrong coast for me...

Wrong side of the wrong continent for me :grin:.

Sounds great, Bob. If you go, be sure to pass on our "wish lists" for improvements!

Unfortunately, I'm on the "wrong" coast also. I wish I could go.
But I'm still hoping we have some folks near LA that might be able to stop by.

I too am on the opposite coast. They need to hold things where we can actually get to them.

Perhaps our West Coasties aren't out of bed yet. :wink:

Being on the Southern Coast, I won't make this one, but (after the Bloggers' Day, and the Texas Book Festival) I'm hardly in a position to complain about being left out. Anyone who stops by, though, tell 'em NatCh says hello! :nice:

Say, anyone know of a similar large East coast festival that Sony might go to? I hear the L.A. one is supposed to be 120~130k attendees. If there's a big East coast (or anywhere else) one they could be planning to go and we just haven't figured that out yet. :shrug:

Off hand, I haven't heard of other events...I found them last year and it made getting the ereader almost a nobrainer.

Well, there is the 2007 Frankfurt Book Fair (http://www.frankfurt-book-fair.com/en/portal.php) of course which may be a bit "too much" East for most of you. But it's the largest book fair in the world, I've heard, and it would be cool if Sony could make an appearance there this year (October 2007). I know I'd be there ;)

List of other exhibits:
http://www.combinedbook.com/trade_show_schedule_2007.php
http://www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/bookfair.html

Also: Book Expo 2007 New York: http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/

Biggest one on the East Coast is Miami. (November 15th-ish.)

Second-biggest is Baltimore, end of September.

NY has a small press show in December, but Sony'd have to be more interested in meeting independent publishers than Reader buyers. There's BEA, but that's not free to the public...

Cool, silkpag, do you know the names of those fairs off-hand?

@Alex: That might be just a bit farther east than I was asking about, but I still think Sony should hit it too. :grin:

I'm curious if this will be the Sony folks or the Kinoma developers...

I expect it'll be the Marketing folks -- that's who was at the Texas Book Festival back in October, anyway ....

As soon as they come to Roswell, New Mexico, I'm there! Maybe they'll come to our UFO Festival. As soon as they start marketing in Europe they should think about the rest of the galaxy. :vulcan:

Cool, silkpag, do you know the names of those fairs off-hand?

@Alex: That might be just a bit farther east than I was asking about, but I still think Sony should hit it too. :grin:
There, they could shake hands with the iRex team... I am sure they will be present the Frankfurt book fair considering how close it is to their HQs.

Let's see:

Baltimore Book Festival

http://www.bop.org/events/eventdetail.aspx?eventId=3642

Miami Book Fair.

http://www.miamibookfair.com/

And of course I'm leaving out Chicago as well

http://www.chicagotribune.com/extras/printersrow/

Last year, I met the Sony team at Texas:

http://www.texasbookfestival.org/

And there was a rumor that Sony was at the Aurora, IL fair a couple years ago.

http://www.midwestliteraryfestival.com/

The Festival of Books is put on every year by the LA Times at UCLA. It's a great event!!! It's huge and draws big crowds. I've actually got a lot to do this weekend but if I would love to try and stop by. Thanks for the note on the Sony booth...

It was certainly worth showing up with my reader:) Decent shade, a cool drink and a booklight!

Hey, that's great! Did you run across any other MobileReaders?
Any interesting thoughts from the Sony team?