It seemed innocent enough. As Bloomsbury publicist Peter MIller explains,

Last year I was invited to join a discussion at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival about the future of book publishing ….

The publishing panel was organized by colleagues of mine at Penguin publishers, and their invitation a kind of nod to my dual identity in the business. A bit of a rare bird, I work weekdays overseeing the publicity department for Bloomsbury, a midsized Manhattan publisher, and weekends behind the counter of a used bookshop I own in my Brooklyn neighborhood. While others would discuss the marketing and editorial and authorial aspects of the publishing process adapting to the digital upheaval, I would speak on behalf of the promotion and retailing of books.

However, as is now well known, things didn’t go well:

… let’s just say we made a spectacularly bad impression. Perhaps it was the ambitious program name, “New Think for Old Publishers.” Perhaps it was the lack of a PowerPoint presentation instead of our single slide saying “The Internet is the largest group of people who care about reading and writing ever assembled in history. Now what?” Maybe it was the mere presence of “industry” types on stage, extolling the virtues of the publishing process to an audience of cool self-actualizers.

But as each of us cluelessly rattled on behind the comfort of our analog microphones, a flurry of keystrokes below were pounding out a parallel dialogue, one that was playing out live via Twitter feed across the lit-blogosphere and making my colleagues Back East blanch in embarrassment.

That was then, and this post at the Los Angeles Times‘ book blog Jacket Copy is now — and on it, Miller says he’s going back to SXSWi again this year. He’ll be blogging about the experience for Jacket Copy. “I will be looking for the kind of conversation that is about solutions and not about blame,” he says. “My questions about the crowd and cloud publishing remain; hopefully this time I will find the answers.”

We wish him well. Meanwhile, here’s a segement from the infamous 2009 panel: