This year’s SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing) annual meeting, “A Golden Opportunity,” started on Wednesday, 2 June 2010. The evening’s “networking reception” in the exhibition space was buzzing, creating great expectations for the next couple of days’ actual sessions. And although librarians, assorted publishing types, web hosts, and providers of all manner of publishing related services may on the surface perhaps conform more to the cliché of “quiet types,” the number of dynamic “mavericks” who have been shaping the US scholarly publishing landscape for quite a few years is not inconsiderable—and neither are they particularly quiet. Thursday afternoon’s session, “Lessons learnt and lessons learning,” gave a few examples of such outstanding individuals and their career paths (all of whom seem to have started out doing a fair amount of copyediting, later acquiring business skills). The take-home message? Don’t assume that there is a job in publishing that has your name on it. Keep learning, keep expanding your skills, and embrace change. more…