Want to help out bookish folks coming to NYC for BEA?

I’ve only been to BEA once.  And that was pre-Twitter.  So if I get to go this year (I’m working on it), it’s gonna be exciting.

BEA, for those of you who don’t work in publishing, is Book Expo America, the largest book convention in the country.  It brings together booksellers and publishing houses and rights people and book-y media and media escorts and pretty much everyone who has anything to do with book publishing (except, apparently, me).

Anyway, while I’m waiting to see whether or not my BEA visa comes through, I thought I’d jump in on the action.  Since a lot of people will be traveling to New York for the conference and since about 99.9 percent of publishing people are based in New York, I thought we could perhaps offer our guests some help getting around the city.

It’s pretty simple — you just need Twitter.  Here’s how it’ll work:

If you’re a BEA attendee coming to New York and need information about the city — directions, hotels, restaurants, bars, etc. — type in your question on Twitter using the hash tag #nychelp.

If you work in publishing and are willing to help provide information about NYC (in 140-character chunks), please check #nychelp between now and Sunday, May 31 and answer whatever questions you can.  The more people we get checking in and answering questions, the more people we’ll be able to help. 

A few things to note:

1. #nychelp is not intended for questions about BEA itself.  (The BEA website provides a substantial amount of information, as does the printed guide.)  It is intended for questions about New York in general — for example, if you’re standing at the corner of the Javits Center and are trying to figure out how to get to the New York Public Library.  Or if you want to know how to get to Prospect Park from the Brooklyn Marriott.  Or if you want to know where to get good sushi.  Or if you’re looking for someone to run the Central Park loop with you.  That kind of stuff.

2. I won’t be able to guarantee the accuracy of the information on #nychelp (although I do hope people will be as honest and as accurate as possible) so my recommendation would be to use #nychelp in conjunction with another source like a map (or a website or a guy on the street).

3. It’s entirely possible that someone else has already started something like this.  If you know of something similar, let me know and I’m happy to close up shop and join forces with them.

4.  And lastly, feel free to forward this post / link to it and encourage your publishing colleagues / BEA attendees you know to use the hashtag.