Hanging Out at the Women's Leadership Conference with Carly.

As we do every year about this time, today Boswell sold books at the UWM Women's Leadership Conference. The opening speaker was Erin Brockovich, but go figure, she doesn't actually have any books in print at this time. For the lunch, the lead was Alison Levine, author of On the Edge: The Art of High-Impact Leadership., and goodness, was she dynamic! Nowadays you wonder how these offsite events are going to go, but the attendees were crazy over her talk and the call to buy was very strong. Publishers Weekly wrote: "In her assured, personable debut, Levine-team captain of the first American Women's Everest Expedition and a former associate at Goldman Sachs-takes lessons learned on the slopes of the world's tallest mountains and applies them to everyday business challenges for executives at all levels, as well as politicians, educators, and students."

Another attendee was Bonnie Marcus, the author of The Politics of Promotion: How High-Achieving Women Get Ahead and Stay Ahead. We had a little mix-up with the publisher and our order sat in their in-box instead of being processed. Fortunately we were able to get copies from our wholesaler Ingram at the last minute and in another shout out, our UPS driver adjusted his root today so that we could get our delivery a bit earlier. I offer Lois Frankel's quote today, as we sold a copy of one of her books at the conference: "If you're one of those nice girls who thinks politics is a four-letter word, think again. From promotions to perks to plum assignments, savvy women know the path to success is paved by politics. "The Politics of Promotion" will help you to make workplace politics an integral part of your skill set without feeling as if you've compromised your integrity."

Our focus for the event, besides selling books, was getting the word out atbout Jessica Hagy's event on April 27 for The Art of War Visualized: The Sun Tzu Classic in Charts and Graphs. I made a special quarter-page flier, and handed it out to anyone who showed interest in either The Art of War Visualized or her previous book, How to Be Interesting (In Ten Simple Steps). Hagy does a great job; we had a wonderful program with her last time. One person bought out our stock of Interesting, and headed to Boswell to buy more. It's a good book; I hope she shows up for the event.

I haven't been reading too many business books of late (The Great Beanie Baby Bubble is more of a business narrative than a how to, but one book I'd read through and particularly appreciated the program (which we saw at Winter Institute) for is Yes, And: Lessons from Second City, by Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton. The authors use the model of Second City Works, the training unit of the famed comedy operation in Chicago and Toronto, to show how the rules of improv can improve communication, team-bulding, sales, and more for corporations, nonprofits, schools, and other organizations.