Don't let the vision be shot through with holes, but be damn sure some of your best and brightest are shooting at it -- with bazookas as well as sniper's rifles.

Authors and publishers want fair compensation and a means of protecting content through digital rights management. Vendors and technology companies want new markets for e-book reading devices and other hardware. End-users most of all want a wide range and generous amount of high-quality content for free or at reasonable costs. Like end-users, libraries want quality, quantity, economy, and variety as well as flexible business models.

Integrity may be about little things as much or more than big ones.

A passive approach to professional growth will leave you by the wayside.

A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.

We must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.

Forget all the conventional 'rules' but one. There is one golden rule: Stick to topics you deeply care about and don't keep your passion buttoned inside your vest. An audience's biggest turn-on is the speaker's obvious enthusiasm. If you are lukewarm about the issue, forget it!