Digital Book 2012 Conference Speakers and Panelists

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Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson

CEO & Publisher, Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery
President, Society for Scholarly Publishing

Kent Anderson is the CEO/Publisher for the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery and is President-elect of the Society for Scholarly Publishing. Kent previously worked in executive positions at the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics. He has been in publishing for more than 20 years, and has worked as a writer, editor, designer, managing editor, and publisher. He runs the Scholarly Kitchen, and has degrees in English and business.

Program: Beyond the Journal as Artifact: New Models for Increasing Reach and Monetizing Digital Content

Bella Andre

Bella Andre

Author

Known for “sensual, empowered stories enveloped in heady romance” (Publisher’s Weekly), Bella Andre’s Spring 2012 release, I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU, debuted as the #1 Romance at Apple UK, Canada, Australia and US. Winner of the Award of Excellence, she also writes “sweet” romances as Lucy Kevin, and THE WEDDING GIFT rose to #4 on the Barnes & Noble Top 100 bestseller list. Having sold more than 560,000 self-published ebooks, her novels have been Cosmopolitan Magazine Red Hot Reads twice and have been translated into 9 languages. The Washington Post has called her “One of the top digital writers in America” and she has been featured on NPR, USA Today, Forbes.com and in The Wall Street Journal. She has also written for Pocket, Bantam Dell and Grand Central Forever. www.BellaAndre.com.

Program: Making it as an Indie eBook Author: Lessons learned a year and 500,000 ebooks later, Report from the Leading Edge: Romance!

Peter Balis

Peter Balis

Director of Digital Development, John Wiley & Sons

As Director of Digital Business Development, Peter Balis is responsible for e-book and digital business development for John Wiley and Sons Professional and Trade division, directing the international team managing all third-party websites selling Wiley product, and directing the global sales and distribution of Wiley e-books, through distributors and third-party retailers..

Peter has been in publishing since 1998, joining John Wiley & Sons in 2001 with the acquisition of IDG Books, the book publishing division of technology-media company IDG, and is a member of the Digital Book World Conference Council and the Book Industry Study Group. In addition to his work for Wiley, he co-chairs the AAP’s Digital Issues Working Group. Additionally, he teaches an advanced seminar for the Master of Science in Publishing program at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies entitled “New Media Technology: From Mobile to E-Books.”

Moderator: Education & Professional track (June 5)

Paul R. Banks

Paul R. Banks

Director of Developmental English, McGraw-Hill Higher Education

Since 1994 Paul Banks has focused his career on driving digital transformation in higher education in a variety of disciplines. For the past ten years, he has worked at McGraw-Hill to develop online applications to teach reading and writing. His most recent projects leverage the power of the latest advances in adaptive learning and reading technology. Products such as Connect Writing and Connect Reading tackle the issue of the variation in college student preparedness head-on by individualizing instruction to improve retention and completion rates.

Program: Mainstreaming Accessibility in Higher-Ed Publishing

Mark Bide

Mark Bide

Executive Director, EDItEUR

Mark Bide is the Executive Director of EDItEUR, the global trade standards organisation for the book and journal supply chains which also provides a management service to the International ISBN Agency. EDItEUR is the maintenance agency for the ONIX metadata standards which are used all over the world. He is also the Project Director for the ACAP Project, and a Director of Rightscom, the specialist media consultancy based in London. He has worked in and around the publishing industry for nearly 40 years, having been a Director of the European subsidiaries of both CBS Publishing and John Wiley & Sons, and has a long-established interest and expertise in identifiers and metadata. He is a Visiting Professor of the University of the Arts London.

Moderator: Technology & Production track (June 5, 9:00 & 9:50 sessions)

Angela Bole

Angela Bole

Deputy Executive Director, Book Industry Study Group, Inc.

Angela Bole was appointed Deputy Executive Director of the Book Industry Study Group, Inc. (BISG) in March 2009, having previously served two years as Associate Director and two years as Marketing and Communications Manager. Working closely with members and non-members alike, she has been instrumental in furthering BISG’s mission of creating a more informed, empowered and efficient book industry supply chain for both physical and digital products.

Angela has English Literature and Gender Studies degrees from Indiana University Bloomington and a Masters Degree in Book Publishing from New York University. She is an active member of the Women’s Media Group, a New York-based nonprofit association of women who have achieved prominence in the many fields of media. She also serves as Treasurer on the International Digital Publishing Forum’s (IDPF’s) Board of Directors.

Program: Getting the Friction out of the Supply Chain

Micah Bowers

Micah Bowers

CEO, Bluefire Productions

Micah Bowers founded Bluefire Productions in 2001 and serves as the UX director. Micah leads the Bluefire project teams and collaborates with clients on content, strategy and experience design.

Micah first became obsessed with interactive media in the late 80’s while at the Evergreen State College. There he worked on interactive video projects (through grants from DSHS) that utilized Hypercard, an early genlock board prototype, and a video disk player.

In 1996 Micah joined Vance Martin and Roland Yamamoto to start up LiveWire Interactive, Inc. There he led the production teams on a wide variety of CD-ROM, iTV and online projects for clients such as Microsoft, Sony, Shell, HP, Fujitsu, etc. In 2000 LiveWire took some venture money, merged with a few other companies in the space, and became Wirestone - which is still going strong today.

Micah left Wirestone in 2001 to start anew with Bluefire doing the things he loves best; hands-on involvment in the creation of great interactive experiences that engage users and deliver solid business results.

Program: eBooks from product to market: soup to nuts

Ken Brooks

Ken Brooks

SVP, Global Production and Mfg., Cengage Learning

Mr. Brooks is senior vice president, global production and manufacturing services at Cengage Learning where his responsibilities include the development, production, and manufacturing of textbooks and reference content in print and digital formats. Prior to his position at Cengage Learning, Ken was president and founder of Publishing Dimensions, a digital content services company focused in the eBook and digital strategy space. Over the course of his career, Ken has founded a Philippines-based text conversion company; a public domain publishing imprint; and a distribution-center based print-on-demand operation and has worked in trade, professional, higher education and K-12 publishing sectors. He has held several senior management positions in publishing at Barnes & Noble, Bantam Doubleday Dell, and Simon & Schuster.

Program: eBooks in Education - Publishers Perspective

Liz Castro

Elizabeth Castro

Author

Elizabeth Castro has been helping people create and publish their own work in print, web, and ereaders since 1987. She is the author of EPUB Straight to the Point: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders and From InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle, among many other computer books and is the host of the popular blog, Pigs, Gourds, and Wikis. She divides her time and her heart between Catalonia, the US, and Twitter (lizcastro).

Program: EPUB 3 Under the Covers

Otis Chandler

Otis Chandler

Founder and CEO, Goodreads

Otis is the founder and CEO of Goodreads.com – the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. Launched in late 2006, the site has since grown to 19 million monthly unique visitors and over 8 million registered members who have added over 280 million books, completely by word of mouth. Goodreads raised a Series A round of funding from True Ventures in the summer of 2009. Along with a passion for creating websites, Otis is also a voracious reader. He started Goodreads as part of a personal goal to read more books, and has found a large community of people that love reading, and have helped drive the direction of Goodreads. He is an engineer at heart, and loves tinkering and listening to customers in order to make the best product possible.

Before founding Goodreads, Otis was a Lead Software Engineer and Product Manager at Tickle.com. Monster Worldwide, the leading purveyor of online jobs, purchased the company in 2004 for $100 million. At Tickle, Otis was in charge of LoveHappens.com, a top ten online dating service. Otis credits all his knowledge of building successful online media websites to his experiences at Tickle. Otis graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, where he always believed he would one day build cars.

Program: How Consumers Discover Books Online

Liz Castro

Richard Charkin

Executive Director, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

He is responsible for Bloomsbury's adult publishing activities in UK, USA, Australia and Germany (through Berlin Verlag). He is also a non-executive director of the Institute of Physics Publishing. He is Chairman of the International Advisory Board of Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals in Doha. He is a member of the Institute of English Studies Advisory Board; Chairman of the Centre for Manuscript Studies at the University of London; a member of the UK's Literary Heritage Group; a Trustee and former Chairman of Common Purpose International; Council member and former President of the Publishers Association; UK representative to the Federation of European Publishers and the International Publishers association; and Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts London. He was formerly Chair of the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art Gallery; Chair of the Society of Bookmen; Chairman of xrefer.com; a director of the Centre for Creative Business at the London Business School; Adviser to World Health Organisation, Copenhagen; and non-executive director of Melbourne University Publishing.

He has held senior positions at Macmillan (CEO worldwide including being Chairman of Nature Publishing Group and Macmillan India), part of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (Director) ; Current Science Group (CEO); Reed Elsevier (CEO Reed International Books); and Oxford University Press (Managing Director Academic and General Divisions); Pergamon Press (Senior Publishing Manager, Life Sciences.

He has an MA in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; was a Supernumerary Fellow of Green College, Oxford; and attended the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.

Program: Publishers Roundtable

George Coe

George Coe

President, Library & Education, Baker & Taylor

George joined Baker & Taylor in 2000 as President of the Library & Education division, serving public, academic, corporate and law libraries worldwide.

George has been instrumental in developing Baker & Taylor’s Customized Library Services, Digital Media and eContent Platform Delivery Services and outsourcing capabilities in the Collection Development Services

He has more than 32 years of library industry expertise. Previously, he served as Vice President and General Manager of Brodart’s books, library and school automation divisions.

George serves on the Board of Visitors for the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science and the Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations, which is a division of the American Library Association.

He has also served on development committees for ALA, Public Library Association and Urban Library Council. George earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Lycoming College and his Master of Science degree from Bucknell University.

Program: Libraries and eBooks Panel

Samantha Cohen

Samantha Cohen

Director, Digital Content Development, Simon & Schuster

Samantha Cohen is the director of the Digital Content Development department at Simon & Schuster, where she has been working on all aspects of digital publishing for five years. Under Sam’s direction, her group develops ebooks for all of S&S’s adult and children’s imprints with emphasis on quality and innovation.

Program: High-Design & Children’s eBooks: Business Opportunities and Distribution Platform Realities

Garth Conboy

Garth Conboy

Software Engineering Manager, Google

Garth Conboy is a Software Engineering Manager at Google, working in the area of content standards and rendering. He is also Chairman of the Board of the IDPF and serves as vice-chairman of the EPUB 3 Working Group.

Prior to acquisition by Google, Garth was co-founder and President of eBook Technologies, Incorporated (ETI). The ETI team played significant roles in pioneering the eBook market, releasing the first commercial eBooks in 1998. Garth is inventor or co-inventor of seven issued eBook-related patents; technologies include: cryptography and secure content distribution, eBook UI, and optimal paginated document presentation.

Program: EPUB 3: Future Directions for the Global Open Standard (Specs, Readium and other Open Source efforts, and more)

Moderator: Technology & Production track (June 4)

Dave Cramer

Dave Cramer

Content Workflow Specialist, Hachette Book Group

Dave Cramer is a Content Workflow Specialist at Hachette Book Group, where he develops standards, workflows, and tools for both print and eBook production. He started working with eBooks in 2001, while working for Stratford (now Jouve). This led to an interest in XML-based automated typesetting systems and an ongoing fascination with XSL. He created the first commercial EPUB files for Hachette, and has been heavily involved with EPUB ever since. Dave is a member of the IDPF EPUB 3 working group, and was co-editor of the specification on fixed-layout eBooks. He also chairs the Fixed Layouts for eBooks Working Group for the BISG Content Structure Committee, and is active in the AAP DIWG.

Program: UPFRONT XHTML: For Workflow, Not Just the Web

Liza Daly

Liza Daly

Vice President of Engineering, Safari Books Online

Liza Daly is Vice-President of Engineering at Safari Books Online and an experienced software engineer in web applications and digital publishing. Previously she founded Threepress Consulting, a publishing software company, and in 2010 released Ibis Reader, the first HTML5 mobile ereader. She is on the board of directors of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).

Program: Streaming Digital Books

Phil Darrin

Phil Darrin

Dean, Academic Affairs, South Kent School

Phil Darrin, Dean of Academic and Student Affairs at South Kent School, is a key player in one the country’s most digitally progressive preparatory schools. South Kent boasts a 92% digital ebook adoption rate across all grade levels. Darrin’s expertise has been overseeing the faculty and curriculum development parts of the digital classroom switch. Darrin, working in tandem with South Kent’s Chief Information Officer Gonzo Garcia, has been advising schools around the country looking to making the switch to digital. Darrin holds a sociology degree from Purdue University. He has studied Primary Education as part of a Graduate Diploma program at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and is completing an MA in Curriculum & Instruction at Fairfield University.

Program: Case Study: A Windows Into the E-Future the World’s First School to Go Full E-Only

Kent Freeman

Kent Freeman

Chief Operating Officer, Vital Source Technologies Inc., an Ingram Content Group Company

A 28-year Ingram veteran, Mr. Freeman is well known in the industry for his supply chain and e-textbook and e-book expertise. Kent has served as Senior Vice President of Business Development, and Chief Technology Officer, for Ingram Book Group and Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer for Ingram Digital, in addition to his current role of Chief Operating Officer, Vital Source Technologies. As a thought leader, Kent has been requested to speak at numerous global industry events. Past events Kent has spoken at include Book Expo America (BEA), the American Library Association (ALA), the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) events, London Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair and the London Booksellers Association. Mr. Freeman has served as the Chair of the Book Industry Study Group, a non-profit organization that provides research and standards development for the book industry and as Chair of the Book Industry Systems Advisory Committee.

Program: Mainstreaming Accessibility in Higher-Ed Publishing

Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman

CEO and Co-Founder, Open Road Integrated Media

Jane Friedman is CEO and Co-Founder of Open Road Integrated Media, a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road has published ebooks from legendary authors including William Styron, Pat Conroy, Alice Walker, James Jones and Virginia Hamilton. In 2011, Friedman was named one of Fortune Magazine’s 10 most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.

Friedman served as President and Chief Executive Officer of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, one of the world's leading English-language publishers from November 1997 through June 2008. Friedman came to HarperCollins from Random House, where she was Executive Vice President of Random House Inc.

Program: Publishers Roundtable

Gonzalo Garcia

Gonzalo Garcia

CIO, South Kent School

Gonzo Garcia, Chief Information Officer at South Kent School, is the technological leader in one the country’s most digitally progressive preparatory schools. With only 9 months of preparation, the school converted from a traditional learning environment and now boasts a 92% digital ebook adoption rate across all grade levels. Garcia’s expertise has been overseeing many of the details of the deployment from upgrading the network infrastructure to faculty and student training and developing a deployment roadmap and program website. Garcia, working with Academic Dean Phil Darrin, has been called upon to advise schools around the country as they make the switch. Garcia, a 1995 graduate of South Kent School also holds a Bachelors of Arts from Moravian College.

Program: Case Study: A Windows Into the E-Future the World’s First School to Go Full E-Only

Seth Godin

Seth Godin

Author

Named one of the top 21 speakers for the 21st century by Successful Meetings magazine, Seth Godin is a best-selling author, businessman and marketing pioneer. He has written 14 books that have been translated into more than 36 languages, every one of which has been a best-seller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and most of all, changing everything.

Godin has also founded several companies, including Yoyodyne, which pioneered permission marketing and Squidoo, which is among the 100 most visited websites in the United States. Find his blog by typing “seth” into Google.

Program: The Attention Economy

Theodore Gray

Theodore Gray

Founder and Creative Director, Touch Press

An innovative software developer, author, and popularizer of science, Theodore joined Stephen Wolfram in the creation of Mathematica in 1987. He has guided interface strategy at Wolfram, and pioneered the concept of Mathematica notebooks, which serve as the main interface to Mathematica and have made possible the creation of millions of interactive computable documents.

He is a Contributing Editor at Popular Science magazine, and has authored its Gray Matter column since 2003.

Theodore is also the author of Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home–But Probably Shouldn’t, and the best-selling coffee table book The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, which was the first groundbreaking interactive book published by Touch Press.

Programs: Ignite BEA – “Enlighten us… but make it quick!”; High-Design & Children’s eBooks: Business Opportunities and Distribution Platform Realities

Markus Gylling

Markus Gylling

CTO, DAISY Consortium

Markus Gylling is the CTO of the IDPF and the DAISY Consortium. Through his work with DAISY he has during the past decade been engaged in the development of specifications, tools and educational efforts for the realization of inclusive publishing on a global scale. Markus is the chair of the EPUB 3 Working Group, and during 2010 and 2011 he lead the development of the EPUB 3 specification. Markus lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.

Program: EPUB 3: Future Directions for the Global Open Standard (Specs, Readium and other Open Source efforts, and more)

Eric Hellman

Eric Hellman

President, Gluejar Inc, unglue.it

Eric Hellman, President of Gluejar Inc. , is a technologist, entrepreneur, scientist and writer. After 10 years at Bell Labs in physics research, Eric became interested in technologies surrounding e-journals and libraries. His first business, Openly Informatics, developed OpenURL linking software and knowledgebases, and was acquired by OCLC in 1996. At OCLC, he led the effort to productize and expand the xISBN service, and began the development of OCLC's Electronic Resource Management offerings. After leaving OCLC, Eric began blogging at Go To Hellman. He covers the intersection of technology, libraries and ebooks, the Semantic Web and Linked Data. Eric has a B.S.E. from Princeton University, and a Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. His current focus is unglue.it, a website that will crowd-fund creative commons ebooks.

Program: Disruptive Business Models

Leslie Hulse

Leslie Hulse

SVP, Digital Business Development, HarperCollins Publishers

Leslie Hulse is the SVP of Digital Business Development for HarperCollins Publishers where she helps develop digital strategy for HarperCollins worldwide. In addition she is Co-Chair of the Association of American Publishers’ Digital Issues Working Group which is a forum for education about digital publishing. In 2009, Ms. Hulse was named one of the Top 50 Women in Book Publishing by Book Business Magazine.

Moderator: Business & Marketing track (June 5)

François-Xavier Hussher

François-Xavier Hussher

CEO, Gutenberg Technology

After 15 years of a successful track record in the Internet industry, François-Xavier founded Gutenberg Technology. François-Xavier, 39 years old, holds a PhD in economics (on the business model of the Internet industry). He has conducted some research at MIT and taught in France.

Passionate about the Internet, he then worked for Wanadoo the biggest portal in France and became VP Sales in charge of advertising & paid content services (Wanadoo Portails — now Orange).

He then became director of Internet activities for Mediamétrie. In his porfolio, he was in charge of Mediametrie//Netratings, a joint venture between Netratings quoted on the NASDAQ and Médiamétrie.

As an author, he wrote 5 books about the Internet. In 2006, he joined Benchmark Group (12 M of visitors/month) as associate Director to focus more on the content side of the internet business.

Also highly interested by the field of education, he decided to create a company Gutenberg Technology that will provide textbooks’ publishers (and other non-linear books) with an end-to-end streamline solution to publish simultaneously on a tablet (Kindle, iPad), on the web, on smartphones and on paper.

Program: Content-Centric Publishing Workflows

Bill Kasdorf

Bill Kasdorf

Vice President, Apex Content Solutions

Bill Kasdorf is General Editor of The Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing and VP of Apex Content Solutions. Active in many standards initiatives, Bill was Metadata Subgroup Lead of the IDPF EPUB 3 WG and is active on the Indexing WG; chairs BISG’s Content Structure Committee and the PSV-to-EPUB Mapping Committee of the nextPub WG; and is active in NISO’s eBook SIG. Past President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), Bill has written and spoken widely for publishing industry organizations such as SSP, O’Reilly TOC, NISO, BISG, IDPF, AAP, AAUP, ALPSP, STM, IDEAlliance, Seybold, and the Library of Congress.

Program: UPFRONT XHTML: For Workflow, Not Just the Web

Brady Kroupa

Brady Kroupa

Senior Architect, Barnes & Noble Digital Products

Brady Kroupa is a Senior Architect in Barnes & Noble’s Digital Products Group. At Barnes & Noble he created NOOK Comics. He is now driving the next generation of interactive kids content. Brady is a member of the IDPF and an active participant in the ongoing development of EPUB 3, especially in regards to fixed format, comics and manga. Brady’s career includes a lengthy tenure at Adobe Systems where he helped build Photoshop Express Mobile and Contribute, a web publishing application.

Program: EPUB 3: Future Directions for the Global Open Standard (Specs, Readium and other Open Source efforts, and more)

Erica Lazzaro

Erica Lazzaro

General Counsel & Director of Publisher Relations, OverDrive

Erica Lazzaro is OverDrive’s General Counsel and Director of Publisher and Retail Partner Services departments. She leads OverDrive's licensing, content acquisition and business development efforts, helping booksellers and publishers worldwide find success with multichannel digital distribution. Erica also works closely with OverDrive’s executive team on strategic relationships and has negotiated agreements with Amazon, Pottermore, Nokia, and other leading companies in the digital media industry.

Program: Libraries and eBooks Panel

Matt MacInnis

Matt MacInnis

Founder and CEO, Inkling

Raised in rural Nova Scotia, Matt attended Harvard University where he earned a degree in Computer Engineering and Chinese Language. He moved to California and pursued an eight-year career at Apple where he managed the company’s international expansion into international education markets. During that time, Matt saw a lot of misuse of technology in the classroom, and in 2009 his frustration drove him to start Inkling. His technical foundation, coupled with his experience with Apple, positioned him well to start and grow the company. With a vision for reinventing publishing, Matt has led Inkling into partnerships with the world’s largest publishers, building engaging, interactive learning content from the ground up for iPad. Both Matt and Inkling are based in San Francisco, CA.

Program: Natively Digital

Liisa McCloy-Kelley

Liisa McCloy-Kelley

VP, Director, eBook Production, Strategy, & Ops, Random House

Liisa McCloy-Kelley is VP, Director of eBook Production Strategy & Operations at Random House, Inc. where she has been an eyewitness to an evolution in the way that books are produced, marketed and sold for more than 20 years. She currently leads the team responsible for eBook development and production and keeps Random House on a focused strategic path for digital product development. She has spoken at a variety of conferences and has taught at Wellesley, NYU and Yale. As a digital book evangelist, she has given up reading in print form to become an expert in the variety of digital reading systems and the ways they can present content.

Program: High-Design & Children’s eBooks: Business Opportunities and Distribution Platform Realities

Bill McCoy

Bill McCoy

Executive Director, IDPF

Bill McCoy is Executive Director of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the trade and standards group responsible for the EPUB standard interchange and delivery format for eBooks and other digital publications. Mr. McCoy was previously General Manager, Digital Publishing at Adobe Systems. McCoy has been involved in publishing technology for over 20 years, and has contributed to the establishment of numerous industry-standard platforms including EPUB as well as PDF, OpenType, and PostScript.

Moderator: Plenery track, Education & Professional track (June 4), Technology & Production track (June 5, 11:00 & 11:50 sessions)

Hugh McGuire

Hugh McGuire

Founder, PressBooks

Hugh McGuire is a technologist, who has been exploring new book publishing models since founding LibriVox.org — the largest free public domain audiobook library in the world — in 2005. His current focus is PressBooks, a simple but powerful online book production tool, but he also works on some other projects including Iambik Audiobooks – a commercial version of LibriVox. Hugh is the co-editor with Brian O’Leary of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto (O’Reilly), a collection of essays about the future of publishing, and a member of the Media Hacks podcast team. He can be found on Twitter at @hughmcguire.

Program: Content-Centric Publishing Workflows

Madeline McIntosh

Madeline McIntosh

President: Sales, Operations and Digital, Random House Inc.

Madeline has worked on and off at Random House since 1994, in positions ranging through technology, sales, and publishing. She is currently responsible for Random’s digital and print sales, operations, fulfillment, IT, digital product and business development, corporate marketing development, and third party distribution.

Program: Publishers Roundtable

Peter Meyers

Peter Meyers

Author and Consultant

Peter Meyers writes about and helps companies create reader-friendly digital books. He’s the author of “Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience” (O’Reilly). He co-founded one of the first multimedia textbook publishers (Digital Learning Interactive, sold in 2004 to Thomson Learning) and has written for many publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Salon, and the Village Voice.

Peter’s undergraduate degree is from Harvard, where he studied American history and literature, and he has an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives with his wife and two daughters in “upstate Manhattan” (aka Washington Heights). Peter blogs at www.newkindofbook.com and can be found on Twitter @petermeyers.

Program: Breaking the Page: Designing for Infinite Canvases

Richard Nash

Richard Nash

VP of Community and Content, Small Demons

Richard Nash is VP of Community and Content of Small Demons. He ran the iconic indie Soft Skull Press for which work he was awarded the Association of American Publishers’ Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing in 2005. He left in 2009—the final book he edited was a Pulitzer Prize finalist—to found Cursor, now an open-source community publishing project and to run Red Lemonade as a pilot for the Cursor project. Last year the Utne Reader named him one of Fifty Visionaries Changing Your World and Mashable.com picked him as the #1 Twitter User Changing the Shape of Publishing.

Program: Preparing for Life After the Download (“Wait, But We’ve Only Just Started?!”)

Laura Hazard Owen

Laura Hazard Owen

Staff Writer, GigaOM

Laura covers book publishing, paywalls and magazines for GigaOM, and has a particular interest in e-book pricing and e-singles. She was previously the editor of Publishing Trends, a website and newsletter for the book publishing industry, and served as a staff writer for paidContent. Laura writes from the GigaOM East office in Manhattan.

Program: The e-Shorts Phenom: Monetizing Content Nuggets

Sriram Panchanathan

Sriram Panchanathan

Senior Vice President, Digital Solutions, Aptara

As the head of Aptara’s Digital Solutions Group, Sriram is responsible for eBook creation and conversion services, and XML-based content transformation and digitization solutions. Sriram joins Aptara from Amazon, where he managed mission critical teams supporting the Kindle content store, and was responsible for operations, process excellence, vendor management, and technology development. Prior to Amazon, Sriram was a Management Consultant with PRTM, a premiere strategy consulting firm, advising Fortune 500 clients on product strategy and innovation, and a Principal Engineer at Webtrends. He holds a Bachelors degree in Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in India, a Masters in Transportation Operations Research from the University of Delaware, and an MBA in Finance and Strategy from Cornell University.

Program: Making Enhanced Content, Profitable Content

Dominique Raccah

Dominique Raccah

CEO and Publisher, Sourcebooks

Dominique Raccah is the CEO & publisher of Sourcebooks, the company she founded in 1987 which is now the largest woman-owned trade book publishing company in the country. From the start, Raccah has directed a continuously growing entrepreneurial company that has morphed into a general trade house, happily producing twenty five New York Times Bestsellers, #1 category leaders that range from baby names books to college guides, and a publishing company that many consider on the leading edge of the digital transformation. Most recently, Dominique has managed the launch of the new cutting-edge education division, Sourcebooks EDU.

Dominique currently serves as co-chair of the Board of Directors of the Book Industry Study Group.

Program: Data-driven Book Publishing

Sol Rosenberg

Bill Rosenblatt

President, GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies

Bill Rosenblatt is president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies a consulting firm whose clients include content providers and digital media technology companies. He brings content providers expertise in areas such as digital rights management, content management and distribution, cross-media strategy, and content monetization, and he provides technology vendors with market strategy, business development, and product management services.

 

Bill is author of the book Digital Rights Management: Business and Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2001) and white papers including Rights Information Management: The Key to Flexible, Scalable Commerce in Digital Content, Integrating Content Management with Digital Rights Management: Imperatives and Opportunities for Digital Content Lifecycles, and The New Content Monetization Opportunities for Publishers: Best Practices, Strategy and Architecture. Bill is also an author of technical books for the publisher O'Reilly & Associates. He is a guest lecturer on digital copyright at leading universities and law schools, publishes the blog Copyright and Technology (copyrightandtechnology.com), and chairs the Copyright and Technology conferences.

Bill has a B.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, and executive education from Harvard and University of Southern California business schools.

Program: The Landscape of Content Protection Technology: Implications for Digital Publishing

Sol Rosenberg

Sol Rosenberg

Vice President, Business Development & Content Acquisition, COPIA Interactive, LLC – a DMC Company

Mr. Rosenberg is Vice President of Business Development and Content Acquisition for Copia Interactive – the first social e-reading platform. At the forefront of ebooks and digital content for more than a decade, Sol Rosenberg is a leading expert in the world of ebooks, digital publishing & marketing strategies.

He was a co-founder of the ebook pioneer Versaware and has helped major publishers with their digital initiatives – companies like McGraw-Hill, Cengage, Taylor & Francis, Simon & Schuster, Jones & Bartlett, Encyclopedia Britannica and many others.

This blending of communications and high-technology began when Sol created the first nationally-syndicated computer-focused radio show. He also introduced the first consumer computer with a built-in CD-ROM, was a pioneer in multimedia and emerging digital technologies and then active in the sphere of digital content for global publishers.

Program: Disruptive Business Models

Ernie Sander

Ernie Sander

Executive Editor, GigaOM

Prior to GigaOM, Ernie was executive editor of paidContent and ContentNext Media, which he joined in 2008 as managing editor. He also served as deputy editor in the Media and Technology Group at The Wall Street Journal, where he helped launch two new sections of the paper — Personal Journal and the Saturday edition of Weekend Journal. Prior to that, Ernie was based in Hong Kong for Dow Jones, where he was the Page One editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal. He started his career as a reporter and editor at The Associated Press.

Program: Emerging Models for Content Monetization

Vikram Savkar

Vikram Savkar

Publishing Director of Nature Education, Nature Publishing Group

Vikram Savkar is Publishing Director of Nature Education, a division of Nature Publishing Group (NPG), a leading publisher of science and medical information. Vikram joined Nature Publishing Group as Senior Vice President and Publishing Director to launch Nature Education in January 2007. Prior to NPG, Vikram held a number of management roles in digital and textbook publishing over a 10-year career at Pearson Higher Education, a higher education publisher that includes brands such as Addison-Wesley, Allyn & Bacon, Benjamin Cummings, Longman, Merrill, and Prentice Hall. Prior to Pearson Higher Education, Vikram served for 3 years as Assistant to the Conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Vikram received degrees in Physics and Classics from Harvard University.

Program: From Textbooks to Interactive Learning Materials: Principles of Biology

Woody Sears

Woody Sears

Founder, Zuuka

Woody’s knowledge of the consumer and mobile technology industries has proven essential to the growth of the company’s digital publishing platform. After co-founding FrogDogMedia, the company’s iStoryTime digital publishing grew tremendously, leading to a merger with Germany-based zuuka GmbH, resulting in the world’s largest publisher of mobile children’s books. Under the name zuuka, the newly formed company utilizes the largely successful iStoryTime name as its flagship label and joint brand.

Prior to zuuka, Woody Sears served as an experienced and entrepreneurial technology sales and marketing executive. He worked as a successful regional sales manager for Vettro Corp. where he was responsible for selling a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) based integrated suite of mobile enterprise applications to Global 2000 companies. Previously, Woody was a Global Account Manager and top performer with AT&T Mobility where he was responsible for consultative sales of wireless solutions to Fortune 500 companies. Woody earned an M.B.A. from Pepperdine University and a B.A. from the University of Colorado. Woody spends his weekends playing with his three kids on the playground, sand or snow… and changing diapers.

Program: High-Design & Children’s eBooks: Business Opportunities and Distribution Platform Realities

Ian Singer

Ian Singer

VP, Group Publisher, Library Journals

Ian joined Media Source in April 2010, bringing over 17 years of experience in the information/content services profession. Ian is VP, Group Publisher of Library Journals, a unit of Media Source, Inc., where he is responsible for identifying and developing new product and business line extensions, leading the Company’s evolving digital strategies, and expanding content licensing opportunities. Prior to joining Media Source, Ian served as VP, Data Services at R.R. Bowker, a division of ProQuest, where he managed the Books in Print data operations, online products and its Online Public Access Catalog enrichment service, Syndetics. In 1996, Ian co-founded eComp, an executive compensation database providing pay data on every US publicly traded company, which was acquired by Aon Corp in 2002. He has a B.A. from The George Washington University and a J.D. from The New York Law School.

Program: Libraries and eBooks Panel

Evan St. Lifer

Evan St. Lifer

Vice President, Scholastic Library Publishing

Evan St. Lifer is Scholastic Library Publishing’s Vice President of Digital Initiatives, which includes Grolier Online, BookFlix, TrueFlix, and FreedomFlix. He is instrumental in Scholastic’s continued efforts to ensure that all children benefit from access to quality books and online resources both at the library, in school and in the home, with a particular emphasis on Family Engagement and Early Learning.

St. Lifer is currently engaged in dialogue with many of the nation’s largest school districts about their emerging digital content needs and how best to meet them. St. Lifer was instrumental in the conception and creation of both BookFlix and TrueFlix, Scholastic Library Publishing’s first foray into more vertical, contextual online learning resources. During his tenure at Scholastic, St. Lifer has been responsible for the creation and launch of products and services for the Early Childhood, After School, and Family Literacy Markets.

St. Lifer has also been a primary contributor to Scholastic’s advocacy efforts regarding the important role libraries play in supporting and improving school readiness as well as student achievement. St. Lifer joined Scholastic from School Library Journal (SLJ) where he served as Editor-In-Chief. While at SLJ he launched a number of successful ventures including Curriculum Connections, the SLJ Leadership Summit, and SLJ’s next-gen web site. He possesses an unparalleled expertise and commitment to supporting teachers and librarians in their contributions to learning and student achievement.

Program: eBooks in Education - Publishers Perspective

Joshua Tallent

Joshua Tallent

Founder/CEO, eBook Architects

Joshua Tallent has been an eBook developer since 2002. He is an acknowledged expert on the Kindle and ePub formats, and the author of Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide. eBook Architects, Joshua’s eBook design and consulting business, provides services to both publishers and authors, specializing in complex projects and enhanced eBooks. He regularly teaches at conferences and workshops about building and designing eBooks, and he is a vocal advocate for beautiful, functional, accessible eBooks. He can be found online at www.ebookarchitects.com and on Twitter @jtallent or @ebookarchitects.

Program: eBook Production Jumpstart: EPUB 3, KF8 and more

Michael Tamblyn

Michael Tamblyn

EVP Content, Sales & Merchandising, Kobo

At Kobo, Michael is responsible for sales, publisher and industry relations, content acquisition, and the merchandising experience across all of Kobo’s web and mobile services. He co-founded Canada’s first online bookstore Bookshelf.ca, which was purchased by Indigo Books & Music in 1998, where he served as vice president of online operations. Most recently, Michael was the founding CEO of the supply chain agency BookNet Canada, where he launched the national sales reporting service BNC SalesData and authored the publishing technology call-to-arms, “Six Projects That Could Change Publishing for the Better.” Michael has a Masters in Business Administration from University of Western Ontario.

Program: More Better Faster: The Global Race for International eBook Retail

Kiyo Toma

Kiyo Toma

Senior Product Manager, InDesign Product Team, Adobe

Kiyo Toma is a Senior Product Manager with the InDesign product team at Adobe Systems. He’s been involved in design, publishing, and technology for 24 years, setting his first line of type on a 512K Apple Macintosh computer. While mastering early versions of Quark and Pagemaker, Kiyo eventually tired of washing toner from his hands and focused his career on technology. He then proceeded to learn a number of markup languages (HTML, SGML, and XML) but just as he was tiring of typing angle brackets, he was lucky enough to find employment at Adobe Systems, where he has been working for 14 years.

Program: A Pragmatist's Guide to InDesign CS6 and EPUB 3

Tom Turvey

Tom Turvey

Director, Strategic Partnerships, Google

Tom Turvey is Director, Strategic Partnerships, in the Search Services group at Google in support of Google Books, Google Scholar, and other Google products digitizing magazines and newspapers. Google Books launched in October 2004 and now contains the searchable full-texts of more than 15 million books, over 2M contributed directly from over 30,000 of the world’s most important book publishers.

Turvey and his team were responsible for signing the majority of the world’s largest book publishers for Google Books and for striking the majority of relationships with journal publishers for Google Scholar. More recently, Turvey’s team added thousands of ebooks to Google’s new ebookstore which launched in December 2010. Lastly, Turvey is also responsible for Google’s library partnerships globally.

Mr. Turvey came to Google having spent nearly 20 years in book publishing, book-based eCommerce, and institutional content licensing. Previous to Google, Mr. Turvey was Vice President, Content & Business Development for ebrary, a publisher-funded content aggregator. Prior to ebrary, Mr. Turvey was the founding Director of the Publisher Relations & Merchandising Analysis group at Barnes & Noble.com.

Turvey has spent much of his career growing the book business in new channels. Before joining Barnes & Noble.com, he was Director, Online Sales & Marketing at HarperCollins Publishers (the first job of its kind in the book industry), where he pioneered the online bookselling channel as early as 1996. At HarperCollins, he established trading terms and relationships with Barnes & Noble.com, Amazon.com, Borders and many other online retailers. Turvey was also general manager for several bookstores in Manhattan of different kinds and niches.

Mr. Turvey holds a B.A. in political science from Oklahoma State University.

Program: Google Play, and Google Books Going Global

Len Vlahos

Len Vlahos

Executive Director, Book Industry Study Group, Inc.

Len Vlahos is the executive director of the Book Industry Study Group, a national not-for-profit trade association whose mission is to create a more informed, efficient, and empowered supply chain. Prior to joining BISG, len spent nearly 20 years at the American Booksellers Association, where has served as ABA’s communications director, e-commerce director, education director, and most recently, Chief Operating Officer. Len has worked for Internet marketing pioneer Yoyodyne, and for Kratz & Co. public relations. Prior to joining ABA, he worked in independent, chain, and university bookstores. He lives in Connecticut with his wife Kristen, and two sons, Charlie and Luke.

Program: Getting the Friction out of the Supply Chain

Andrew Weinstein

Andrew Weinstein

Founder, AW Media LLC

Andrew founded AW Media LLC in July 2011 with the goal to develop strategies and solutions to deliver what is next for publishing.

Prior to founding AW Media, Andrew spent 11 years at Ingram Content Group, most recently as Vice President and General Manager, Retail Solutions. During his 11 year career at Ingram Content Group, Andrew was fortunate to have been one of the change agents for two of the largest trends in book publishing, ebooks and print on demand. Andrew helped Ingram’s Lightning Source launch its ebook business in 2000 and evangelized Ingram’s print on demand business to publishers and sales channel partners up until mid-2005.

In late 2005, he joined the newly created Ingram Digital Ventures company and led Ingram’s M&A strategy and new product development efforts. Results included acquisitions of Vital Source Technologies and MyiLibrary (part of Coutts Information Services), and the development and launch of CoreSource® Digital Asset Management Services.

Prior to Ingram, Andrew was co-founder of JNMedia, Inc., a start-up that developed services to help authors get published and distributed through physical book and ebook sales channels faster and cheaper that alternatives at the time. Ingram’s Lightning Source (Lightning Print at the time) purchased the assets of JNMedia, Inc. in 2000.

Prior to JNMedia, Inc. Andrew was Associate Director, Marketing, Planning and Analysis, for BMG Direct, the largest direct mail music club at the time, and managed a database marketing group profiling and forecasting consumer purchasing behavior based on various music preferences and membership attributes.

Andrew has a BA in Economics from Brandeis University and an MBA in Finance and Marketing from New York University - Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Moderator: Business & Marketing track (June 4)

John Wheeler

John Wheeler

Vice President, Strategy and Emerging Technologies, Spi Global

John Wheeler is an industry veteran with over 20 years experience in publishing and expertise in the development and deployment of ePublishing, eLearning, and Multimedia solutions, bringing a unique perspective to the discussion having worked on both sides of the business. As VP for Strategy and Emerging Technologies, he works closely with SPi Global’s operations team in developing technology-enabled solutions that offer higher-value services and position the company as a strategic partner to its clients.

Prior to joining SPi Global, John was with Elsevier for more than six years as Director, Multimedia Production where he was responsible for the production of all electronic products supporting Elsevier’s global publications.

Program: Making Enhanced Content, Profitable Content

Delano Williams

Delano Williams

Student, Class of 2012, South Kent School

Delano Williams, South Kent School class of 2012. Delano has been a four year student at South Kent, and he has seen many changes and has helped in many of the new initiatives. As a sophomore Delano was named president of the school’s Advanced Media Group, the youngest ever. AMG has been the leader in student lead broadcasts of campus events. Delano has helped propel the group in great new directions and has set the bar high for those that follow him. He was also instrumental in the first Digital Communications course which created a student website. Delano is very excited to be attending Lynn University this next fall, where he will surely benefit from his extensive experience working in the digital learning environment.

Program: Case Study: A Windows Into the E-Future the World’s First School to Go Full E-Only

Ignite Speakers

Henrik Berggren

Henrik Berggren

Founder and CEO, Readmill

Henrik Berggren is founder and CEO of Readmill - a platform connecting books with the web. Readmill makes it easy for people to share highlights from books with friends and followers. They support a range of devices and their platform is being used in over 40 countries. The company was founded 2010 and is backed by Index Ventures and Passion Capital.

Andrew Brenneman

Andrew Brenneman

Founder and President, Finitiv Corporation

Andrew Brenneman is Founder and President of Finitiv Corporation. Since 2008, Finitiv has provided digital publishing consulting and technology services. Finitiv has recently launched a cloud services platform, FinitivPCS, The Publishers Cloud Suite.

Andrew has led pioneering digital media initiatives for over 25 years, in both technology and publishing organizations, including The Thomson Corporation, The University of Chicago Press, and Applied Learning / NETG.

Andrew is a graduate of Oberlin, holds a Master’s Degree in Communications and Technology from New York University, and is a monthly columnist at Book Business Magazine.

Brian Felsen

Brian Felsen

President, BookBaby / CD Baby / HostBaby

Mr. Felsen helms BookBaby, which digitally distributes the works of independent authors, poets, memoirists, and publishers, making their eBooks available to digital retailers worldwide (including Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble.com, Sony’s Reader Store, and Amazon.com). He also is the President of CD Baby, the world’s largest online distributor of independent music. Previous activities include founding and running one of the largest independent music conferences in the world, composing several classical music works, creating art photography, poetry, and plays, and producing an award-winning documentary film about Turkish military coups d’état.

Theodore Gray

Theodore Gray

Founder and Creative Director, Touch Press

An innovative software developer, author, and popularizer of science, Theodore joined Stephen Wolfram in the creation of Mathematica in 1987. He has guided interface strategy at Wolfram, and pioneered the concept of Mathematica notebooks, which serve as the main interface to Mathematica and have made possible the creation of millions of interactive computable documents.

He is a Contributing Editor at Popular Science magazine, and has authored its Gray Matter column since 2003.

Theodore is also the author of Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home–But Probably Shouldn’t, and the best-selling coffee table book The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, which was the first groundbreaking interactive book published by Touch Press.

Justo Hidalgo

Justo Hidalgo

Co-founder, 24symbols

Justo Hidalgo is co-founder of 24symbols, a cloud and social reading service that uses a freemium subscription model. He also teaches Product Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Nebrija Business School in Madrid, Spain, and is a mentor at the pan-european startup accelerator Startup Bootcamp and at Tetuan Valley Startup School. Justo holds a PhD in Computer Science from the university of A Coruña, Spain, and has received training in Product Strategy and Innovation at the universities of Stanford and Berkeley, CA. Prior to 24symbols, Justo was Vice President at Denodo Technologies, leading the product management and sales engineering areas worldwide.

Caleb Mason

Caleb Mason

Founder & Publisher, Publerati

An entrepreneur at heart, Caleb has been part of teams that have launched a start-up book publisher, new digital photography services, and award-winning software and consumer electronics’ products. Caleb began as a bookseller before working at Little, Brown in both marketing and editorial capacities. He left to join the start-up Salem House Publishers, where he acquired and edited many titles and sold rights to the major book clubs.

Caleb’s book The Isles of Shoals Remembered was published in 1992 and he also contributed to BOOM, a marketing book. He is passionate about creative writing and the difficult work involved in crafting memorable fiction.

Kat Meyer

Kat Meyer

Conference Chair, O’Reilly Media

As conference chair/community guidance counselor for O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change, Kat works with some of the coolest, smartest, and nicest folks in the publishing and tech communities. Her background includes editorial and marketing experience with a number of regional and national trade and academic publishers, among them: HMH, Communication Skill Builders, the University of Arizona Press, and Rio Nuevo Publishers.

Prior to joining O’Reilly, she dabbled in the social media arts, acting as Chief Content Wrangler for her company, Next Chapter Communications - crafting campaigns for clients including SourceBooks, NetGalley, AllRomanceE/OmniLit, Adaptive Blue, the University of Arizona Press, Poisoned Pen Press, BookSwim, and a little company called O’Reilly media!

Also co-hostess of #FollowReader, a weekly twitter chat on books, reading, publishing, and things of that nature...check it out!

Kathy Meis

Kathy Meis

President, Bublish

Kathy Meis is president of Bublish, a social book discovery platform. Meis is a writer, editor and editorial manager with more than twenty years of experience in the media and publishing industry. She started her career as a television news reporter for a CBS affiliate then moved to print and became a founding editor of Forbes MediaCritic. She ghostwrites business books and is a frequent blogger on the subject of book promotion and discoverability. Meis recently won the People’s Choice Award at the Startup Showcase at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change Conference. She studied Journalism and English at Indiana University.

Andrew Rhomberg

Andrew Rhomberg

Founder, Jellybooks

Andrew is the founder of Jellybooks, a start-up focused on exploring, sampling and sharing ebooks. He previously worked at txtr (white label ebook retail platform), Skype (internet telephony), Reciva (internet radio), gate5 (now Nokia Maps), and Shell (oil). He holds a science Ph.D. from MIT. Follow him on Twitter at @arhomberg.

Matthew Robertson

Matthew Robertson

Software Architect, Evident Point

Matthew Robertson is a Software Architect at Evident Point, a software development company in Richmond, BC, Canada specialized in digital publishing technology. He is currently the lead developer of Readium, an open source project for displaying EPUB3 in the web browser using HTML5.

Nick Ruffilo

Nick Ruffilo

CTO, Aerbook

Nick Ruffilo has been involved in technology for many different industries before landing in publishing. Jumping between startups and large corporations, Nick has always attempted to leverage his breadth of technology development knowledge to adapt to the issues facing publishing today. After 3 years with BookSwim.com, launching eBookFling, a brief stint with Vook, he is now creating revolutionary technology at Aerbook.

Miral Sattar

Miral Sattar

Founder and CEO, Bibliocrunch

Miral Sattar is founder and CEO of BiblioCrunch, a services platform for authors and publishers who want to seamlessly publish their stories in eBook format. The platform brokers the interaction between a community of rated and reviewed publishers, authors, designers, editors, proofreaders, conversion specialists, marketers and enhanced eBook experts to help create exceptional digital books. BiblioCrunch published its first interactive eBook available on Amazon, New York City’s Crowdsourced Dessert Guide. Miral has worked in the media industry for 11 years, most recently at TIME where she launched several digital initiatives including an iPad and mobile site, mobile apps, eBooks, a video and podcast channel, blogs, and SEO. Her writing has been featured in TIME, CNN, NY Daily News, among other media publications. She has a MS in Publishing (Digital + Print Media) from NYU and a BS from Columbia University in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. You can follow Miral on Twitter @BiblioCrunch.

David Wilk

David Wilk

Head Trickster, Booktrix and Founder, Creative Management Partners

David Wilk has worked successfully in almost every aspect of publishing and writing. His Creative Management Partners provides a range of clients with a complete suite of publishing services, including ebook and print production, marketing (with emphasis on social media) and distribution. In addition CMP provides consulting services to publishers, media companies, and individual writers.

Websites include booktrix.com (blog, publishing services, book marketing and consulting), livewriters.com (author and book videos), writerscast.com (podcasts), armorynewmedia.com (digital publishing), and newbookmedia.com (digital publishing event calendar).

Connecting writers with readers is his primary work. Writing and editing words in any media remains his primary passion.

Charles Wyke-Smith

Charles Wyke-Smith

Chief Executive Officer, Bublish

DavidCharles Wyke-Smith is CEO of Bublish, a social book discovery platform. In the mid-80s, Wyke-Smith founded San-Francisco-based PRINTZ Electronic Design, an early all-computerized design studio, and has continued to be a pioneer in interactive media development. He has worked in management and consulting roles at Wells Fargo, ESPN Videogames and Benefitfocus, where he was Director of User Experience. Prior to joining Bublish, Charles was Vice President of Strategy at PeopleMatter, focused on development of its human resources HR platform for the services industries. He is also the author of three best-selling web design and development books: Stylin’ with CSS, Codin’ for the Web, and Scriptin’ with JavaScript and Ajax. His next book, “Visual Stylin’ with CSS3” will be published in July 2012. Wyke-Smith studied Economics at Trent University in England.

Table Topic Experts

Bella Andre

Bella Andre

Author

Known for “sensual, empowered stories enveloped in heady romance” (Publisher’s Weekly), Bella Andre’s Spring 2012 release, I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU, debuted as the #1 Romance at Apple UK, Canada, Australia and US. Winner of the Award of Excellence, she also writes “sweet” romances as Lucy Kevin, and THE WEDDING GIFT rose to #4 on the Barnes & Noble Top 100 bestseller list. Having sold more than 560,000 self-published ebooks, her novels have been Cosmopolitan Magazine Red Hot Reads twice and have been translated into 9 languages. The Washington Post has called her “One of the top digital writers in America” and she has been featured on NPR, USA Today, Forbes.com and in The Wall Street Journal. She has also written for Pocket, Bantam Dell and Grand Central Forever. www.BellaAndre.com

Luc Audrain

Luc Audrain

Head of Digitalization, Hachette Livre

A graduate from Arts et Métiers engineer school, Luc Audrain has always been working on information processing in publishing environment. Audrain held executive positions in French companies such as Encyclopeadia Universalis where he built the content information system leading to the digital versions on CD-ROM.

Mr. Audrain joined Hachette Livre in 2001 in a position of technical expert bringing support to all publishers of the group for their content digitalization. Also involved in the company information system, he promotes understanding and usage of standards, from tools experimenting to production implementation.

Mr. Audrain represents Hachette Livre in various associations, including: French publishers association (standards working group of the digital commission), EDItEUR for the ONIX standard, IDPF for EPUB and Readium. He also teaches XML and digital workflow at Lille University.

Graham Bell

Graham Bell

Chief Data Architect, EDItEUR

Graham Bell is Chief Data Architect at EDItEUR, the trade standards organisation for the global book, e-book and serials supply chains best known for the ONIX family of metadata standards. He joined EDItEUR in 2010, and he focuses on the continuing development and application of ONIX for Books, and on other EDItEUR metadata standards.

Graham previously worked for HarperCollins Publishers in the UK where he was Head of Publishing Systems. He led the development of bibliographic and digital asset management systems, and was involved with the launches of many recent HarperCollins digital initiatives including e-audio, e-books and print-on-demand programmes. Prior to HarperCollins, he worked as an editor and in IT roles within the magazine industry with Redwood Publishing.

Yong-Sang Cho

Yong-Sang Cho

National Standards Coordinator, Smart Media

Dr. Yong-Sang Cho was appointed National Standards Coordinator (NSC) for Smart Media by Korean government in April 2011, and has organized convergence technologies between digital publishing, learning, and web area. Prior to his role as NSC, he has been researching standardization works to support nationwide online education service and digital content in fields of K-12 as well as higher education in Korea over 15 years.

He has been serving convenor role for both learning and digital publishing committees in ISO/IEC. In particular, he has focused on standardization of EPUB3 at ISO/IEC and collaboration with IMS Global Learning Consortium to develop digital textbook as a killer application on smart media.

Laura Dawson

Laura Dawson

Product Manager, Emerging Identifiers, Bowker

Laura Dawson is Product Manager, Emerging Identifiers at Bowker. Previously she was at Firebrand, a developer of software and technology solutions for the publishing community, where she served as Content and Communications Chief. Laura is a 25-year veteran in the publishing/content distribution industry and has worked in all fields from publishing to bookselling, to Internet merchandising and libraries.

Her previous employers include Muze, Sirsi and Barnes & Noble as well as her own consulting firm, LJNDawson.com which provided consulting services to publishers, library vendors, booksellers, ecommerce sites and trade associations regarding data standards, systems implementation, and content/product development.

Laura lives in Staten Island with her partner Bernardo Pace, their four daughters, and a bunny named Lucy.

Iris Febres

Iris Febres

Production Editor, O’Reilly Media

A friend to #eprdctn, Iris Febres is a graduate of Emerson College, where she earned her master’s in writing and publishing, with a focus in electronic publishing. During her time at Emerson, she completed a master’s project where she wrote, illustrated, and coded a graphic novella into EPUB and MOBI for reading on the Barnes & Noble Nook, Amazon Kindle, and Apple iPad. In May 2012, she was one three recipients of the Bookbuilders of Boston Scholarship. Iris currently works as a production editor at O’Reilly Media in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She can be found on Twitter at @epubpupil.

Barbara Freethy

Barbara Freethy

Author

Barbara Freethy is a #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of 30 novels ranging from contemporary romance to romantic suspense and women’s fiction. Traditionally published for 20 years, Barbara began independently publishing backlist and original work in January of 2011. In 17 months, she sold over 2.1 million books across 19 titles. In 2011 nine of her books appeared on the New York Times and USA Today Bestseller Lists for a total of 41 weeks. Barbara has had three titles translated into French, German and Spanish and has begun producing audio versions of her books. More info: www.barbarafreethy.com

Theodore Gray

Theodore Gray

Founder and Creative Director

An innovative software developer, author, and popularizer of science, Theodore joined Stephen Wolfram in the creation of Mathematica in 1987. He has guided interface strategy at Wolfram, and pioneered the concept of Mathematica notebooks, which serve as the main interface to Mathematica and have made possible the creation of millions of interactive computable documents.

He is a Contributing Editor at Popular Science magazine, and has authored its Gray Matter column since 2003.

Theodore is also the author of Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home–But Probably Shouldn’t, and the best-selling coffee table book The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, which was the first groundbreaking interactive book published by Touch Press.

Markus Gylling

Markus Gylling

CTO, DAISY Consortium

Markus Gylling is the CTO of the IDPF and the DAISY Consortium. Through his work with DAISY he has during the past decade been engaged in the development of specifications, tools and educational efforts for the realization of inclusive publishing on a global scale. Markus is the chair of the EPUB 3 Working Group, and during 2010 and 2011 he lead the development of the EPUB 3 specification. Markus lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.

Lloyd Jassin

Lloyd Jassin

Attorney

Lloyd Jassin is a publishing and intellectual property attorney. Before turning to the law, he was Director of Publicity for the Simon & Schuster Reference Group. A graduate of Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School, he sits on the advisory board of The Beacon Press, America’s oldest indie press, and is counsel to the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). He is also an adjunct professor at NYU, and coauthor of The Copyright Permission & Libel Handbook (John Wiley).

George Kerscher

George Kerscher

Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium
President of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)

George Kerscher began his IT innovations in 1987 and coined the term “print disabled.” George is dedicated to developing technologies that make information not only accessible, but also fully functional in the hands of persons who are blind or who have a print disability. He believes properly designed information systems can make all information accessible to all people and is working to push evolving technologies in this direction.

As Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium and President of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), Kerscher is a recognized international leader in document access. In addition, Kerscher is the Senior Officer of Accessible Technology at Learning Ally in the USA. He chairs the DAISY/NISO Standards committee, and serves on the USA National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) Board.

Vladimir Levantovsky

Vladimir Levantovsky

Senior Technology Strategist, Monotype Imaging Inc.

Vladimir Levantovsky is a senior technology strategist at Monotype Imaging Inc. and currently serves as a chair of the W3C Web Fonts Working Group and a chair of the ISO SC29/WG11 ad-hoc group on font format representation. Vladimir is a contributing member to many industry organizations including IDPF EPUB working group, W3C Advisory Committee and CSS working group, and many others. He has been involved in the work of various industry consortiums and standards organizations since 2002, and is passionate about advancing typographic capabilities on CE and mobile devices and on the Web. He has been an active contributor to the development of various technology platforms, including hardware-accelerated vector graphics (OpenVG), Java ME profiles for mobile devices (JSR-271 and JSR-287), DVB Multimedia Home Platform, OMA Rich Media Environment and core font technology standardization at ISO/IEC.

Rebecca McDonald

Rebecca McDonald

Founder, Library for all

Rebecca McDonald is the founder of Library for all, an online library for the developing world. Library for all’s vision is to 'unlock knowledge' and make it available for free to registered libraries, schools and universities serving the poor across the developing world.

In 2010 Rebecca and her husband Barry moved to Haiti to help rebuild after the devastating earthquake. In Haiti Rebecca observed first hand the knowledge poverty that pervades Haiti and other developing nations. She visited schools with less than 30 books between hundreds of students. These books were so precious that they were kept under lock and key and rarely viewed and never allowed to be taken home. In July 2011 the Library for all project was born, with a vision to create a library for the worlds collective resources so the poor can gain the knowledge to take them selves out of poverty.

Having been a long term ambassador for Opportunity International a leader in the micro finance world, Rebecca knew the key to individual and community transformation was empowerment. The poor don’t want charity they want a chance. Give them a chance and they will take themselves out of poverty. The library for all project is not a band aid to poverty its a genuine distribution mechanism for profound transformation.

From 2008 to 2010 McDonald served as Program Manager responsible for the delivery of a 1 billion dollar stimulus plan for the Australian Government (QLD).

Chintu Parikh

Chintu Parikh

CEO & Founder, SachManya

Chintu Parikh is the CEO & Founder of SachManya, the creators of Kite Readers—interactive children’s eBooks and apps creation and distribution platform. SachManya’s KitePress suite of proprietary technologies makes the creation of children’s fixed layout picture eBooks faster and cost-effective for the publishers.

Previously at Yahoo as the business lead for emerging advertising businesses, Chintu led successful launches of a niche publisher ad-network and a mobile advertising platform globally. He brings ten plus years of professional experience backed by an MBA, Enterprise Award with Distinction, from Carnegie Mellon University and graduate and undergraduate degrees with high honors in engineering.

Matthew Robertson

Matthew Robertson

Software Architect, Evident Point

Matthew Robertson is a Software Architect at Evident Point, a software development company in Richmond, BC, Canada specialized in digital publishing technology. He is currently the lead developer of Readium, an open source project for displaying EPUB3 in the web browser using HTML5.

Bill Rosenblatt

Bill Rosenblatt

President, GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies

Bill Rosenblatt is president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, a consulting firm whose clients include content providers and digital media technology companies. He brings content providers expertise in areas such as digital rights management, content management and distribution, cross-media strategy, and content monetization, and he provides technology vendors with market strategy, business development, and product management services.

Bill is author of the book Digital Rights Management: Business and Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2001) and white papers including Rights Information Management: The Key to Flexible, Scalable Commerce in Digital Content, Integrating Content Management with Digital Rights Management: Imperatives and Opportunities for Digital Content Lifecycles, and The New Content Monetization Opportunities for Publishers: Best Practices, Strategy and Architecture. Bill is also an author of technical books for the publisher O’Reilly & Associates. He is a guest lecturer on digital copyright at leading universities and law schools, publishes the blog Copyright and Technology (copyrightandtechnology.com), and chairs the Copyright and Technology conferences.

Bill has a B.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, and executive education from Harvard and University of Southern California business schools.

David Wilk

David Wilk

Founder, Creative Management Partners

David Wilk has worked successfully in almost every aspect of publishing and writing. His Creative Management Partners provides a range of clients with a complete suite of publishing services, including ebook and print production, marketing (with emphasis on social media) and distribution. In addition CMP provides consulting services to publishers, media companies, and individual writers.

Websites include booktrix.com (blog, publishing services, book marketing and consulting), livewriters.com (author and book videos), writerscast.com (podcasts), armorynewmedia.com (digital publishing), and newbookmedia.com (digital publishing event calendar).

Connecting writers with readers is his primary work. Writing and editing words in any media remains his primary passion.

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