Last week I spent time at the New Communications Forum. It was fantastic. I’ll have more posts on it throughout the week. Two of the biggest highlights for me were meeting Katie Paine (KD Paine) and Shel Israel. I also enjoyed meeting Stephan, Jeremiah and Nicole Simon, as well hooking up with Neville Hobson, Shel Holtz, Jory Des Jardins, Jeremy Pepper (who’s as crazy as ever) and a tonne of others. I also met lots of great folks from the PR industry.

But, as I said, one of the biggest highlights was meeting Shel.

To be honest, I was kind of uptight about meeting him before I went. I mean, he wrote a competing book (which is doing very, very well), got a great deal on it, is getting tonnes of press and is just a juggernaut in tech PR. Mainly I was stressed about meeting the guy who effectively ‘beat’ me in the business blogging book game (if there can be such a thing when two great books on the subject come out, both of which are totally complimentary).

Now, I don’t blog specifically about people I meet. This is largely because I meet *lots* of great people, and each one deserves highlighting, so I generally make it a policy not to highlight anyone. Besides, who wants to have a blog full of “here’s what I thought of [x]“?

However, on rare occasions, certain people spark something in me that I can’t help but blog about. Marc Orchant is one. Scoble is another. Renee Blodgett is another. Will Pate was one.

Shel Israel is the latest.

It was really, really great to meet Shel. I’d popped into one of his conversations early in the evening to say hi, then floated over to some PR folk, then caught up with Neville and chatted to Katie Paine for an hour or so. Then Shel caught up with me again and was apologizing profusely for “blowing me off” (or something to that effect). I didn’t feel that way at all, but it was a nice gesture anyways ;-)

Anyways, Shel and I probably talked for half an hour about books, blogging, life, speaking, being authors and all kinds of things we would have talked about if we weren’t ‘competitors’. Before meeting him, I often said that we weren’t competitors, while still feeling incredibly jealous by each mention they got in the press.

I’ll be honest, I felt offended. Really, and deeply, offended. Which sucks, because I’m not that kind of person. So I felt guilty too.

The reality is that they deserve every bit of praise they’ve received. It is a fantastic book. Shel is a kickass author. And they are answering the market’s need for high quality business blogging material.

Sure, I”d love for our books to sit side by side. I really would. I believe theirs is a fantastic (I mean that) “why” book. I believe mine is a pretty decent “how” book.

Thankfully, I’ve gotten over my pettiness. I think. We’ll find out tomorrow, as I’m flying out to Toronto. While there I’m going to a blogging dinner at which Shel is the guest of honor. I’m looking forward to it. Shel is a fantastic guy. Great sense of humor. Very engaging. Holds up his end of the conversation, and is very, very, very good at making you walk away from a chat with him smiling. I watched him do it all night long.

A great guy, that Shel.

Now, I’ll stop doing the whole “hater to lover” pendulum swing and go to bed so I can be at least half coherent for the dinner tomorrow. I love travelling. I just hate jet lag, time differences and the actual act of flying ;-)