Afternoon update from Toronto: Just had lunch–salad, soup, cornbread–at a soul food place on Queen Street West called Harlem. Good wifi. Kinda funny, coming from NYC to eat here, but it just shows we do live in a global village, and that NY’s reach as a cultural touchstone remains strong.

It’s a warm sunny day in Toronto. Despite getting back to my room late and managing less than five hours sleep, I woke up excited and ready to roll.

My first activity was breakfast with Speakerfile CEO Peter Evans. He met in my hotel lobby and we walked to a little place nearby. It’s Peter’s vision that’s fueling this new web platform that connects event planners and conference organizers with authors, experts and thought leaders. With discoverability being the primary challenge for authors and publishers today, Speakerfile promises to be a discovery engine that puts authors in front of avid audiences. It’s significant that even amid the struggling economy of the past few years, conferences continue to grow in frequency and in the numbers of those who attend them. To me this shows that even with a greater percentage of the population working on their own, people remain hungrier than ever to connect in person with peers and colleagues, and make new contacts. It’s a parallel and key concomitant to the growth of social media.

Following on the successful work Peter and I did at BEA last week–introducing Speakerfile to many publishers, literary agents, authors, and indie publicists–this morning the two of us focused on a number of new initiatives we’ll be working on together. I’m more excited than ever to be sharing word of this extremely useful discovery tool with my many publishing friends and contacts, and will be stopping at his office Friday morning to meet his colleagues, and speak with them about how I see Speakerfile helping authors and publishers in their efforts to build their careers and sell more books. If you want to find out more about the platform, pleae click on the Speakerfile box at the upper-right corner of this site, and click through to their website.

NXNE, of course, is largely a rock ‘n roll crowd so festival activities won’t commence until later today. I’m excited about seeing more bands tonight, including possibly Boxer the Horse at El Mocambo on Spadina near my hotel; Baby Eagle, which features Daniel Romano, who is also playing solo later, and Julie Doiron, all at the Great Hall on Queen Street West; Belle Star at the Dakota Tavern; and Zulu Winter, at the Rivoli. Now, if I could just work on being in two places at once, I’d be all set!