There are different opinions about President Charles de Gaulle of France. But there can be little argument that right now the airport named after him has turned itself into a premiership class rotten airport. The present design involves huge distances for travellers, impenetrable signage, unhelpful staff, lousy acoustics. Chennai was a place of peaceful efficiency in comparison. Is there or should there be a good airports guide so that people can plan their trips around avoiding particular black spots such as LAX, Lagos, and now league leader Paris. Incidentally, the PC in the lounge has only some of the keyboard working and no way of linking to another site - so please forgive lack of hypers and any spelling mistakes.

This comes to you from Chennai (formerly known as Madras) which is the headquarters of our Indian operations. It was the Annual General Meeting this afternoon after a series of exceutive and Board meetings this morning. We now employ more than 3000 people in India and it is our fastest growing market. The shareholder issues today included complaints about the colour of the paper in our annual report, the lack of takeaway presents for attendants and the lack of a bonus shares or a share split. On the other hand there was enthusiasm for our strategy and our brilliant and diligent Indian team.

During the courese of the day I came across some wonderful words and phrases. I particularly like:

Blamestorming - a meeting to decide who to blame for bad performance.

PDCA - plan, do, check, act - the antithesis of most publishing procedures.

Strategy without action is daydreaming; action without strategy is a nightmare.

And as I left the meeting an ex-employee grabbed me and said that the difference between Indian and American (or British) business is that the Indians don't 'go with a smile'. My experience says the opposite.

Back to the plane - incidentally free advice, avoid Delta Airlines.

Jonny Geller is a well-known literary agent working at (or is it 'with'?) Curtis Brown. He is well known for being 'cool' and 'sharp' and getting good deals for his clients. What isn't so well known is that he trained as a rabbi and is publishing his own book later this year. I was very keen for Macmillan to publish it but Jonny, being used to getting the top deal for his clients, managed to get great contracts from Bloomsbury in the USA and Penguin in the UK. I still reckon he should have come to us for the best if not the top deal. Nevertheless the book should be read and enjoyed as widely as possible and here is a link to a blog Jonny has created as a taster for the book.

Of course Jonny's advance didn't compare to Alan Greenspan's $8.5m from Penguin but as he says: This much money for a jewish banker? Can this be good for the jews? I'm worried..

Enjoy.

'Anon’ commented on this blog yesterday that the first law of blogging is that ‘all blogs before too long stop addressing the issues for which the blog was established and start talking about the act of blogging.’ Apparently this makes me a ‘true blogger’, a label which I happily accept. And I suppose that like any ‘type’, we bloggers do like to discuss and debate the very activity to which we are so committed. But I hope it doesn’t indicate that this blog has become a navel-gazing exercise in any way. The thing that continues to motivate me to blog is the chance to talk about the issues and challenges of publishing today and to engage with others who are excited and challenged by the same things.

Speaking of which, one of the things challenging most publishers right now is how we continue to provide services and products that ensure we are relevant and useful to the communities we serve. One such initiative is Macmillan Medical Communications (MMC), which launches this month. A strategic medical communications agency, MMC is set up to provide customized products and services for partners in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and biotechnology industries. It uses the full range of communication and publishing strategies to develop high impact campaigns and services including novel internet-based approaches.

MMC will specialize in the creation and localization of content for target audiences throughout the world, including some of the fastest growing pharmaceutical markets such as Far East Asia, India and Latin America.  MMC will offer a broad range of services including local language reprints of Nature Publishing Group (NPG) articles, website development, targeted supplements, seminars, and strategic consultancy on publication and information dissemination strategies.

As the division of the Macmillan Group servicing the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, MMC has exclusive access to some of the world's leading journal content, including journals from our own Nature Publishing Group <http://www.nature.com/>  (NPG), publishers of Nature <http://www.nature.com/nature/>  the international journal of science, Nature Medicine <http://www.nature.com/nm/> , the Nature Clinical Practice <http://www.nature.com/clinicalpractice/index.html>  series of journals, and a large number of major medical society titles.

MMC’s first live service is an experimental collaborative medical news site called Dissect Medicine (www.dissectmedicine.com), developed as a joint initiative with Nature Clinical Practice.  MMC’s activities will also include identifying local language sponsorship opportunities for Nature Clinical Practice titles, organizing seminars and conferences in regions where MMC teams are active. MMC will also work with some of NPG’s society journals to help develop special projects outside the regular publication of their journals. These may include training and advocacy related projects. MMC will also run the production of local language editions of existing titles such as Kidney International, which is currently published in Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese.

 

Yesterday's blog generated a few comments about the purpose of blogging itself. Do give them a look.

This morning's work has been focussed on planning with our Mexican colleagues. The trouble is nobody knows the result of the July presidential election - or at least I hope nobody knows the result in advance of the poll.

Mexico seems to be following the rest of the democratic world in having a neck and neck contest - think Germany, USA, Italy. The two candidates are politically miles apart but are equally likely to win according to the pollsters. The result affects many things in Mexico not least the direction of publishing. The uncertainty is compounded by the likelihood of the third candidate's votes being split equally between the front runners.

If you're interested in this election do check out this article and in particular note the health warnings.

Disfruten!

This blog started as an in-house newsletter on email. The IT department complained that it was causing too many people to hold large amounts of data in their in-boxes thus slowing down the system. Then someone suggested I do it as a blog. Then the question as to whether it should be internal to Macmillan or open to the world. We decided to go public on the grounds that if I wrote anything of interest someone would forward it to the trade press anyway!

Having decided to go this route I then tried to justify it post hoc as a means of learning about modern communication. So what have I learned?

How to type letters with accents. Café olé.

How to hyperlink.

How a social network operates.

How to respond to a comment.

How to upset people.

And a few other things I dare not mention.

Today is business plan day for Latin America - so head down to scrutinise the numbers.

For an amazing collection of various schools and types of art do go to Thyssen Bornemisza Museum. We went there for a reception and dinner last night and shivered over tapas outside - I thought Madrid was meant to be hot hot hot.

As I write Brazil have just scored against Australia. Up to that point Australia looked the equal of the might Brazilians and my prediction of an unlikely Australia England world cup football final a little more likely - but now?

I seem to have upset my good friend Anne from the Federation of European Publishers with yesterday's remarks about EU commissioners. Sorry, Anne, I can't help disliking centralism of any sort.

Dateline 17 June... staying at the formidable Westin Palace Hotel for the annual Georg von Holtzbrinck management meeting. Last year was in Trier where we were treated to EU propaganda from a European commissioner for information and culture. What I remember best was that the reason given for France and Netherlands voting against the proposed European Constitution was the ignorance of the electorate. And that the EU was intending to remedy this by setting up marketing offices throughout the Community. What an excellent way of spending citizens´taxes.

Restaurant tip - go try Botin de Madrid if you´re into black pudding, pigs´trotters, baby lamb and peppers. Fantastic.

As we´re in Madrid we´ve taken the opportunity of showcasing our Spanish and Latin-American operations which have been growing at a startling rate.

Off to work now...