Two impressions stand out. First, the number of people who said it was the busiest and buzziest LBF they could remember (and not just by way of comparison to last year's ash cloud depleted event). I don't think it was just the good weather; this was genuine optimism.
Secondly, in discussions on digital of which there were many, the overwhelming emphasis was on the opportunity of innovation and not the obstacle of infringement.
Conversations focused on how the digital market is growing, how publishers are already meeting consumer demands - indeed have been for very many years - and how the online market is throwing up interesting challenges around skills. There was optimism too around the related questions of how digital publishing could help improve the levels of diversity in the work force and lead to an increase in accessibility to published works for the print-disabled.
As a backbeat to this optimism, there were also conversations about the need to tackle copyright infringement online. This will grow as the legitimate digital market increases, and tools like the PA's copyright infringement portal, and those of a number of private companies who were exhibiting at LBF, will become more important. But the tenor of the sector's approach is one of a grim determination to see off the threat, rather than defensiveness or fear.
Of course, there will always be our sector's equivalent of "deficit deniers" - people (usually academic self-appointed copyright experts) who tell us that there will not be a depletion of revenues from infringement, or if there is then it is the fault of the creative sector itself. They believe that copyright is the cause of infringement - a position which owes more to rhetoric than to evidence. As an aside, it's fascinating to see how their tactic of grossly mis-representing the views of rightsholders, something I encountered frequently when in the music business, is still, sadly their weapon of choice in debates.
Most of all, what my first experience of LBF showed me is that the publishing sector is in vibrant health and is neither blindly optimistic nor fatefully pessimistic about its future.