Digital Book 2011 Conference Speakers and Panelists

Peter Balis

Peter Balis

Director, Digital Strategic Partnerships and Business Development, John Wiley & Sons

Peter Balis is responsible for the account management, sales, distribution and business development of digital content for Wiley, which includes ebooks, enhanced products and mobile applications. Additionally, he is the co-chair of the AAP's Digital Issues Working Group and teaches an advanced seminar at NYU's Graduate Publishing Program.

presentation (PDF)

Beat Barblan

Beat Barbian

Director of Identifier Services, RR Bowker

Beat Barblan serves as Director of Identifier Services at RR Bowker. He is responsible for such identifier asset management and discoverability solutions as ISBN, ISTC, ISNI and DOI. These solutions are renowned for their ability to standardize works across the book industry and content services supply chain, benefitting publishers, self publishers, authors, and other book industry professionals. Bowker is a business unit of ProQuest.

Mr. Barblan joined Bowker in 2007 as Product Manager for the company's Supply Chain business, overseeing new development and maintenance for Pubnet and PubEasy, the publishing industry's premier electronic ordering tools, and PubEasySchool, the new Bowker K12 product. Prior to joining Bowker, Mr. Barblan was Sr. Product Manager at Wolters Kluwer / Ovid where he helped launch the OvidSP platform.

presentation (PDF)

Greg Bear

Greg Bear

Author and CoFounder, Subutai Corporation

Greg Bear has published more than thirty novels, including Darwin's Radio, Eon, The Forge of God,, and Blood Music. His recent titles are Hull Zero Three, Mariposa, and City at the End of Time, as well as Halo: Cryptum. He is a cofounder of Subutai Corporation and a coauthor of The Mongoliad, a new venture in online publishing available via Subutai's PULP, a customizable, multiplatform delivery system designed to help writers and publishers find new readers and reconnect with their traditional audience in a fresh and exciting way.

Mark Bide

Mark Bide

Executive Director, EDItEUR Limited

Mark Bide was appointed Executive Director of EDItEUR in January 2009; he remains a Director of Rightscom, the specialist media consultancy where he has worked since 2001. Mark has worked in and around the publishing industry for 40 years, having been a Director of the European subsidiaries of both CBS Publishing and John Wiley & Sons. He is a Visiting Professor of the University of the Arts London.

EDItEUR is the global trade standards for the book and serial supply chains. Based in London, EDItEUR is supported by 90 members in 20 countries. Probably best known for ONIX for Books, the standard for communication of rich product metadata in the book supply chain which is implemented very extensively in global markets, EDItEUR also develops and maintains a broad range of e-commerce and data standards for both trade and library supply chains. EDItEUR provides management service for the International ISBN Agency, the federation of local ISBN Registration Agencies in 160 countries round the world.

presentation (PDF)

Nick Bogaty

Nick Bogaty

Director of Business Development, Digital Publishing Group, Adobe Systems Incorporated

Nick Bogaty directs business development for Adobe's digital publishing group including the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, a set of services that allow publishers to cost-effectively produce and distribute digital publications to a broad variety of devices. Bogaty is also responsible for Adobe's eBook technologies business.

Bogaty currently represents Adobe as a member of the Board of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the standards organization responsible for the EPUB file format. Prior to Adobe, Bogaty served as the Executive Director of the IDPF and oversaw the creation and approval of EPUB in 2007. He has worked in the field of digital publishing for more than 15 years and regularly speaks on the subject at conferences and with the media. In 2004, he was recognized by the Library Journal for his work with eBooks and public libraries. Bogaty lives and works in New York City.

Peter Brantley

Peter Brantley

Director, Internet Archive
IDPF Board Member

Peter Brantley is the Director of the BookServer Project at the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based not for profit digital library. He previously served as executive director of the Digital Library Federation, and he is a co-founder of the Open Book Alliance.

He speaks regularly in international forums on transformations in organizational and social relationships in the cultural sector.

presentation (PDF)

Ken Brooks

Ken Brooks

SVP, Global Production & Manufacturing Services, Cengage Learning
IDPF Board Member

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, including vice president of digital content at Barnes & Noble, vice president of operations, production, and strategic planning at Bantam Doubleday Dell, and vice president of customer operations at Simon & Schuster. Prior to his entry into publishing, Ken was a senior manager in Andersen Consulting's logistics strategy practice. He holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

presentation (PDF)

Garth Conboy

Garth Conboy

Software Engineering Manager, Google
Chairman, IDPF Board of Directors

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.

Liza Daly

Liza Daly

President, Threepress Consulting
IDPF Board Member

Liza Daly is the president of Threepress Consulting, where she provides strategy and software to the publishing industry, and is a co-founder of Ibis Reader, an HTML5 ereading platform. She is a strong advocate for experimentation, agile development and innovation in publishing. Liza is a board member of the International Digital Publishing Forum and has been active in commercial and open-source EPUB development.

Laura Donnini

Laura Donnini

Managing Director of Edizioni Mondadori

Laura Donnini has a degree in Economics and Business Administration, and is the Managing Director of Edizioni Mondadori, top book publisher in Italy, operating in trade fiction, non fiction and children book markets. She started and developed her career in multinational consumer goods companies, where she worked for more than 13 years in positions of growing responsibility in marketing and sales, also at the international level.

In 2001 she was appointed Managing Director of Harlequin Mondadori, JV between Mondadori and Harlequin, the world's leading publisher in women's fiction. In 2008 she became Chief Executive Officer of Piemme, one of Italy's top four publishing companies, where she reinforced the leadership in children's market thanks to Geronimo Stilton, while developing the trade fiction area with authors like K.Hosseini and M.Connely.

presentation (PDF)

Liz Edelstein

Liz Edelstein

Senior Manager, Digital Marketing, Macmillan Publishing

Liz Edelstein is the senior manager and editor of HeroesandHeartbreakers.com and CriminalElement.com, Macmillan Publishing's romance and mystery communities. Liz is responsible for editorial direction, SEO strategies, e-marketing and list growth, social media, and short story acquisitions for the sites.

Prior to launching the community sites for Macmillan, Liz was a product manager at Netscape Communications and is the author of thirteen romance novels published under the pseudonym Liz Maverick. She received her MBA in marketing and entrepreneurship from UCLA.

Hervé Essa

Hervé Essa

Vice President of International Sales, Jouve Group

Hervé Essa joined the Jouve Group in 2006 and has served as Vice President of International Sales since 2008. He is in charge of the development of the Editorial and Publishing services offer in Europe, North America and Asia.

Working with the leading publishers in the trade, learning and legal verticals, he participated in the creation of a successful service offering for the conversion and the enrichment of content destined for mobile devices and new digital platforms in the US and Europe.

Hervé Essa has more than 12 years of commercial experience in IT services and software editing and was a member of the management committee and head of sales in his previous role at OPEN WIDE (subsidiary of the Thales group).

Hervé Essa has a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Hertfordshire, and an MBA in change management and business strategy.
Markus Gylling

Markus Gylling

CTO, DAISY Consortium

Markus Gylling is the CTO of the DAISY Consortium. Over the past decade he has been engaged in standards and software development efforts related to accessible electronic publishing. Markus has been a voting member of the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 (DAISY/NISO) maintenance committee since 2001, and in September 2007, he was appointed to the role of Technical Lead of this committee. During 2010 and 2011, he was chairman of the EPUB3 Revision Working Group.

Masaaki Hagino

Masaaki Hagino

President, Voyager Japan, Inc.

Masaaki Hagino is the co-founder of Voyager Japan with Bob Stein, Voyager US. Prior to that, Hagino was Executive Director of Pioneer LaserDisc in Japan and had developed countless number of interactive programs for LaserDisc, including back-then ground breaking interactive system using HyperCard with Apple. Originally, he was a documentary film director for one of the Japanese major film studios, Toei.

Voyager was established in 1992 in Tokyo as a joint venture company with Voyager US. Since then, the company has been specializing only in digital publishing for 19 years. Voyager's eBook format for Japanese has been used by most of the major and small to mid-size publishing companies in Japan including Kodansha, Shinchosha, Kadokawa, Gentosha, Chukuma, to name a few. Voyager's mobile comic viewer co-developed and owned with Celsys, BS Reader has become the official application for all the three mobile phone carriers in Japan and now used by more than 90% of all the mobile phone users in Japan. Since May 2010, Voyager has been a member of IDPF.

presentation (PDF)

Jonathan Hevenstone

Jonathan Hevenstone

President, Jouve North America

Jonathan Hevenstone is President of Jouve North America (JNA), a subsidiary of the French-based Jouve Group (www.jouve.fr). Mr. Hevenstone has led JNA's growth into the leading provider of eBook conversion services for major trade publishers, including HarperCollins, Penguin, John Wiley & Sons, Perseus, Harlequin, and many others, as well as for all of the major eBook retailers in the US, including Apple and Barnes&Noble.com. Taking advantage of technologies developed by Jouve and its partners, JNA has rapidly developed into a next-generation end-to-end supplier to the publishing industry, with solutions and services running from full-service and authoring platforms to composition, production, management, conversion, and delivery of multimedia content.

Mr. Hevenstone's current role includes development and implementation of market and business development strategy, development of new product and service offerings, and management of JNA's professional services and customer service organizations.

Mr. Hevenstone's operational expertise includes publishing technology, eBook production, content digitization, XML conversion, print on demand, development of XML content strategies and workflows, composition, customer service, and outsourcing/offshoring.

Justo Hidalgo

Justo Hidalgo

CoFounder and Chief Product Officer, 24symbols

Justo Hidalgo is co-founder and Chief Product Officer of 24symbols, a service that offers readers the ability to read and share digital books in the cloud, working in any reading device with internet connection and that gives users access to an international and multi-publisher's catalogue. He also teaches Product Strategy and Innovation at Nebrija University in Madrid, Spain. Justo is a member of the Internet Society and Mentor at the Startupbootcamp accelerator. Prior to 24symbols, Justo was VP Product Management and Consulting at Denodo Technologies, leading worldwide presales and product management. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of A Coruña, Spain, a B.S. in Computer Science from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain, and has received training in Product Management, Product Marketing, Innovation and Creativity in the universities of Stanford and Berkeley, CA. He blogs at FutureBook.net.

presentation (PDF)

Theresa Horner

VP of Digital Content, BarnesandNoble.com

Theresa Horner is currently the VP of Digital Content at BarnesandNoble.com. Theresa's team is responsible for all the digital books and editorial programs that feed the NOOK ecosystem which includes NOOK, NOOKColor and NOOK software applications as well as PubIt!, Barnes & Noble's self-retailing platform. Theresa has worked in the digital book business since 1999 initially for several years with HarperCollins setting up their e-book and d-audio book business and then a brief stint with Microsoft's Live Search Book/Live Search Academic programs.

presentation (PDF)

Bradley J. Inman

Bradley J. Inman

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Vook

Founder and CEO of Vook, Bradley J. Inman is a visionary entrepreneur with a wealth of experience starting and running Internet businesses that successfully move industries and consumer experiences forward. Vook is the leading mixed-media e-book publisher. Prior to Vook, Mr.Inman founded TurnHere, Inc, a leading platform for online video production that deploys 12,000 professional filmmakers across more than 50 countries. A former journalist, Mr. Inman is also the founder of Inman News, the leading online real estate trade publication and online real estate company HomeGain, which he sold to Classified Ventures in 2005.

Bill Kasdorf

Bill Kasdorf

Vice President, Apex Content Solutions

Bill Kasdorf is General Editor of The Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing and Vice President of Apex Content Solutions, a leading supplier of consulting, data conversion, editorial, production, and content enhancement services to publishers and other organizations worldwide. Past President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), Bill has led seminars and spoken widely for publishing industry organizations such as SSP, ALPSP, O'Reilly TOC, NISO, AAP, AAUP, STM, Seybold Seminars, and the Library of Congress.

He currently serves on the IDPF Working Group updating the EPUB standard (and is coordinator of its Metadata Subgroup); the BISG Digital Standards Content Structure Working Group (and is chairing its Standards Survey subgroup); and the IDEAlliance working group developing the nextPub standard for delivering content to print, online, mobile, and tablet technologies (chairing its EPUB-to-nextPub/PRISM Mapping committee).

presentation (PDF)

Dianne Kennedy

Dianne Kennedy

Vice President of Emerging Technologies, IDEAlliance

Dianne Kennedy is the Vice President of Emerging Technologies for IDEAlliance. Ms. Kennedy oversees and guides the development of emerging technology specifications and best practices to support platform agnostic, cross media publishing. Her responsibilities include nextPub, PRISM, XMPInterop and other IDEAlliance eMedia technical initiatives. Ms Kennedy is the Director for the IDEAlliance eMedia Professional Certification Program and develops other emerging technology training programs. She participates in the Ghent Work Group and the International Digital Publishing Forum.

presentation (PDF)

George Kerscher, Ph.D.

George Kerscher, Ph.D.

Secretary General, DAISY Consortium
President, IDPF Board of Directors

"In the Information Age, access to information is a fundamental human right."

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, the EPUB Maintenance working group and the W3C's Steering Council for the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). George also serves on the USA National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) Board.

presentation (PDF)

James Macfarlane

James Macfarlane

CEO, Easypress Technologies

James graduated from Brunel University in 1979, London he holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science, a BSc in Aeronautical Engineering and he is a Chartered Engineer CEng. James is Managing Director of EvolvedGroup a Tech Investment company a company he formed in 2004 and is Chief Exec of Easypress Technologies Limited a company he acquired in 2005. James is leading the businesses growth into the eBook EPUB markets with their Atomik technology which can create EPUB files for the digital book markets for any reader directly from Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress and MS Word.

Liisa McCloy-Kelley

Liisa McCloy-Kelley

VP, Director of eBook Production Strategy & Operations, Random House, Inc

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.

presentation (PDF)

Bill McCoy

Bill McCoy

Executive Director, International Digital Publishing Forum

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.

presentation (PDF)

 

Abraham Murray

Abraham Murray

Product Manager, Google Books

Abraham Murray is a product manager on Google's Books team responsible for the launch of Google eBooks and general front end features. Prior to Books he worked on Google Maps where he launched the US Voter Info product to answer user questions around [where do I vote] for the 2009 elections.

Prior to joining Google, Abraham was co-founder and CTO of Web 2.0 start-up doodleboard inc., where he directed offshore development and worked on marketing, sales, and fundraising. Earlier, he was a product manager at BAE Systems, where he worked on unmanned aerial vehicles for the Department of Defense.

Abraham earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Rhode Island, where he graduated summa cum laude. He has a master's degree in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he also graduated summa cum laude, and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Cristina Mussinelli

Cristina Mussinelli

Italian Publishers Association
IDPF Board Member

Since 1992, Mussinelli has been involved in the digital and multimedia market. Since 1988 she has been responsible for the technological innovation and digital publishing areas within the Italian Publishers Association, the trade association representing more than the 90% of the Italian book publishing market, where she manages European and international projects, the digital publishing professional training course program, the Editech conference and the Permanent Observatory on Digital Content, realized in collaboration with all the main trade associations representing the content industry (FIMI, ANICA, AIDRO, Cinecittà Luce, UNIVIDEO, PMI) and with Nielsen Italy. Since 2010 Cristina has been a member of the Board of IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum).

 

presentation (PDF)

Richard Nash

Richard Nash

CEO/Founder, Cursor, and Publisher, Red Lemonade

Richard Nash is an independent publishing entrepreneur, presently launching Cursor, a start-up portfolio of social publishing imprints the first of which, Red Lemonade, will launch in May 2011 with a new story collection from Lynne Tillman and debut novels from Kio Stark and Vanessa Veselka. For most of the past decade, he ran the iconic indie Soft Skull Press for which work he was awarded the Association of American Publishers' Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing in 2005. Books he edited and published landed on bestseller lists from the Boston Globe to the Singapore Straits-Times; on Best of the Year lists from The Guardian to the Toronto Globe & Mail to the Los Angeles Times; twice on the cover of the New York Times Book Review; the last book he edited there, Lydia Millet's Love in Infant Monkeys, was selected as a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist. In 2006, Publishers Weekly picked him as one of the ten editors to watch in the coming decade. 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.

Bob Nelson

Bob Nelson

Executive Vice President for Global Business Development, Baker & Taylor

Bob Nelson joined Baker & Taylor in 2008 as Executive Vice President for Global Business Development and was promoted in 2010 to President of our new Digital Group. Bob has more than 25 years of experience as a senior executive and has run businesses in the United States and abroad.

Bob's Digital Group is focused on winning new business contracts and managing digital services implementation for targeted device manufacturers, mobile carriers and retail clients worldwide. The Group's strategy is to provide an outsourced digital media infrastructure for these customers with services that include content aggregation, e-reader software application via Blio and fully merchandised digital media retail storefronts.

Before coming to Baker & Taylor, Bob held various positions with RR Donnelley & Sons Co., a print services provider. As President of Global Document Solutions, he was based in London. He has also held executive positions with Moore Wallace Inc., Moore Corp., EnfoTrust Networks and World Color. Bob earned his Bachelor of Science in business administration at the University of Southern California.

presentation (PDF)

Yoshinobu Noma

Yoshinobu Noma

President and CEO, Kodansha Ltd.

Yoshinobu Noma was born in Tokyo in 1969. He is President and CEO of Kodansha Ltd. and Chairman of the Board of Kodansha USA Inc. He is also a Representative Director of The Electronic Book Association of Japan.

Kodansha is one of Japan's largest publishing houses. The company celebrated its centennial in 2009. In 2005 Noma launched Kodansha Beijing Culture Ltd., and in July 2008, Kodansha USA Inc.—enterprises that expand the scope of Kodansha's publishing and international-licensing activities. Though Kodansha's main business is magazine, book, and comic book publishing, the company is also actively involved in film productions and digital publishing.

presentation (PDF)

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.

presentation (PDF)

Steve Paxhia

Steve Paxhia

President, Beacon Digital Strategies

Steve Paxhia is the President of Beacon Digital Strategies, a consulting practice focused upon the strategies and technologies employed by commercial and enterprise publishing professionals. He assists publishing technology companies in turning their ideas into profitable businesses and helps publishing companies in assessing their strategy and current performance and helping to accelerate their growth. Steve has worked with more than 30 companies by helping refine their strategic plans, raise capital, devise go-to-market plans, and make and integrate acquisitions. He has authored comprehensive studies covering Digital Book Publishing strategies, Digital Magazines and Newspapers, and on Collaboration and Social Computing. He is actively involved in primary research projects that measure consumer and student usage of digital media and the emergence of new platforms, standards, and devices for the proliferation of digital content.

presentation (PDF)

Steve Potash

Steve Potash

CEO & President, OverDrive, Inc.

Steve Potash is the President and CEO of OverDrive, Inc., a company he founded in 1986. Under his leadership, OverDrive has become the leading provider of eBook technologies and Digital Rights Management solutions for publishers, retailers and libraries. OverDrive is a key technology supplier and distributor to Random House, Microsoft Corporation, AOL Time Warner, HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill and hundreds of US and international trade, education and academic publishers and retailers for their digital products. Steve launched OverDrive's flagship content distribution service in 2000, creating a global network that today serves libraries, schools, retailers, OEMs, and publishers in more than 20 countries. OverDrive's catalog now features digital content in more than 50 languages and houses one of the largest catalogs of EPUB eBooks in the world.

Dominique Raccah

Dominique Raccah

CEO and Publisher, Sourcebooks

Dominique Raccah is the CEO & publisher of Sourcebooks, the largest woman-owned trade book publisher in the country; producing everything from bestsellers in fiction, to number one titles in baby names and college guides, fifteen New York Times Bestsellers and over twenty national bestsellers.

Sourcebooks' publishing culture is one of innovation. This attitude led into pioneering a line of cutting edge, bestselling mixed-media titles (MediaFusion) and resulted in an early involvement in digital book projects, iPhone and iPad apps, enhanced eBooks and several exciting digital partnerships. Dominique also currently serves as co-chair of the Book Industry Study Group.

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.

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.

Ronald Schild

Ronald Schild

CEO, MVB Marketing

Ronald Schild, 40, studied business administration in Germany, France and Great Britain.

He began his career as a product manager in the consumer goods business in London. In 1997, he moved to Frankfurt to head the new e-business division of the German branch of Lexmark. This led to him taking over as Chairman of the Board of EMB AG, a firm of management consultants that specializes in e-business, and in 2005 becoming head of Amazon's partners' program Merchants@.

Since 2006, Ronald Schild has been Managing Director of the MVB Marketing, an economic subsidiary of the Börsenverein, the German Publishers and Booksellers Association.

presentation (PDF)

Evan Schnittman

Evan Schnittman

Managing Director Group Sales and Marketing, Print and Digital, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Evan Schnittman is Managing Director Group Sales and Marketing, Print and Digital, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. He splits his time equally between Bloomsbury's London and New York offices and is in charge of all sales, marketing, publicity, rights and technology across Bloomsbury's group companies. Evan spent 8 years at Oxford University Press as vice president of corporate & business development. He was responsible for digital partnerships and licensing across OUP's various content divisions. Evan has over 25 years of publishing related business experience having held positions as Executive Vice President at The Princeton Review, Senior Editor at Little, Brown, and editorial and sales positions at FA Davis. Evan started his publishing career at Barnes & Noble's main store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.

Daihei Shiohama

Daihei Shiohama

Head of International Business, Voyager Japan, Inc.

Daihei Shiohama serves as the Head of International Business for Voyager Japan. Shiohama has nearly 30 years of successful corporate and entrepreneurial experience in media, entertainment and international business in Japan, Asia, U.S. and Europe. No stranger to the media and entertainment business, Shiohama has worked with many international brands and media companies. Since joining Voyager in 2009, he has been serving to develop international business for the company and also responsible for corporate strategy. Daihei Shiohama is based in San Diego, California.

Dan Stasiewski

Dan Stasiewski

Lead Library Advocate, OverDrive

Dan Stasiewski is public relations manager and library advocacy lead for OverDrive. He is a key spokesman on OverDrive outreach efforts, executive editor of OverDrive blogs for Digital Library and Digital Distribution, and participates with library partners and associations in ongoing discussions regarding library eBook lending features, models and strategies. Dan has also presented to librarians and publishers on the benefits of multichannel digital distribution.

presentation (PDF)

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

Author and CoFounder, Subutai Corporation

Neal Stephenson is the author of several bestselling novels including Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, Anathem, and the upcoming REAMDE, as well as various shorter nonfiction works. He has also worked in several technology startups. He is a coauthor of The Mongoliad and a cofounder of Subutai Corporation, as well as serving as the Corporation's chairman and Grand High Poobah. Subutai Corporation is the maker of PULP (Personal Ubiquitous Literature Platform), a pioneering transmedia creation, management, and publishing platform.

Joshua Tallent

Joshua Tallent

Founder and CEO, eBook Architects

Joshua Tallent has been an eBook developer since 2002. He is an acknowledged expert on the Kindle and ePub formats, and his book, Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide, has been praised as the most thorough explanation of the Kindle format available. Joshua founded eBook Architects, his eBook design and consulting business, in 2008, providing services to both publishers and authors, with a focus on complex projects and enhanced eBooks. He regularly teaches at conferences and workshops about building and designing eBooks, and he is a vocal advocate for accessible, well-designed eBooks. Joshua can be found online at www.ebookarchitects.com and on Twitter @jtallent.

Michael Tamblyn

Michael Tamblyn

EVP Content, Sales & Merchandising

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.

 

presentation (PDF)

 

Mary Tripsas

Mary Tripsas

Associate Professor, Harvard Business School

Mary Tripsas is an Associate Professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School where she currently teaches an elective called Leading Innovative Ventures. Before coming to Harvard, Professor Tripsas was on the faculty of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Tripsas earned her Ph.D. from the Sloan School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her MBA from the Harvard Business School, and her B.S. from the University of Illinois at Urbana. Professor Tripsas' research examines how radical technological change transforms industries, exploring both innovation in established firms, and entrepreneurial opportunities. Her recent work focuses on the socio-cognitive processes that people engage in as they make sense of radically new technology. She explores these issues through in-depth, longitudinal industry studies and is currently studying technological change and industry evolution in the context of publishing and digital imaging. She served on the Board of Directors of Lexar Media, a leading producer of digital film and other solid state storage products, prior to its acquisition by Micron.

 

presentation (PDF)

Kiyo Toma

Kiyo Toma

Senior Product Manager, InDesign Team, Adobe Systems

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 23 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 and developer fluid 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 13 years. Kiyo holds a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of Arts. He is known to still twitch at bad kerning and keeps a Mac Plus for sentimental reasons.

Malle Vallik

Director of Digital Publishing, Harlequin

Malle Vallik is the Director of Digital Publishing for Harlequin. She ensures strategic alignment and consistency between the print and digital publishing programs in North America. She is also responsible for Carina Press, Harlequin's digital-first imprint. Malle leads digital content innovation including multi-media content as well as playing a leadership role in the development of digital self-promotion skills for our author base.

Previous positions include editorial, sales and public relations. Malle is also the author of seven romance novels published under the pseudonym Molly Liholm. She is currently on the board of directors of the International Digital Publishing Forum and the National Association of College Textbook Stores New Media Solutions.

T.J. Waters

T.J. Waters

CoFounder, Autography LLC

T.J. Waters cofounded Autography LLC with Robert Barrett last year. Prior to that he spent four years as a Senior Consultant for U.S. Special Operations Command's Intelligence Operations Division. He previously served as a Sr. Counterintelligence Analyst for U.S. Central Command, a Central Intelligence Agency officer, and Vice President for a private intelligence consulting firm. He is an adjunct professor in the Intelligence Management and Analysis program at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. He's the author of two nonfiction books; 'Class 11' (Dutton, 2006), 'Hyperformance' (Wiley, 2010), a debut novel entitled 'Secret Signs' (Gallaudet University Press, 2010), and one ebook exclusive called "Prior To the Snap" (Amazon Digital Publishing, 2010). He has recently completed a musical called "Coral Reefer Madness" based on the life and tunes of Jimmy Buffett.

Allen Weiner

Allen Weiner

Vice President, Gartner

Allen Weiner is a research vice president for Gartner's Media IAS service. Mr. Weiner has more than 25 years of experience as an analyst, writer, editor, publisher and broadcaster. Since 1978, he has worked in the publishing and broadcasting sectors and has written about media trends in daily newspapers and magazines as well as serving as a chief analyst and architect of Gartner Dataquest's Internet/E-Commerce/E-media cover from 1994 to 1999. Prior to re-joining Gartner in August 2003, Weiner joined the startup team at NetRatings as vice president of analytical services, a position he held until February 2002.

Mr. Weiner also wrote weekly columns for Forbes.Com, ZDNet and MSNBC. Mr. Weiner joined Dataquest in November 1994 (prior to Gartner's acquisition in December 1995) to develop and implement the company's Internet research strategy. During his time at Gartner Dataquest, Mr. Weiner spoke worldwide at a number of company events as well as top industry events including keynotes at Internet World. Mr. Weiner was among the industry's most quoted analysts and appeared regularly on CNN, CNN-FN and CNBC. Previous to his experience at Gartner Dataquest, in 1993, Mr. Weiner was general manager of new media for the San Francisco Chronicle & Examiner.

presentation (PDF)

Andrew Weinstein

Andrew Weinstein

Vice President & General Manager, Digital Retail Solutions, Ingram Content Group Inc.

Andrew Weinstein joined Ingram Digital Ventures, the predecessor company to Ingram Digital, in September 2005. Previously, Mr. Weinstein spent five years at Lightning Source Inc., as Vice President of Channel and Publisher Development.

Mr. Weinstein came to Lightning Source through the acquisition of JNMedia, Inc., a leading developer of publishing technology. Before co-founding JNMedia, Inc., Mr. Weinstein was an Associate Director at BMG Direct, where he managed the financial/marketing analytical group and developed many of the analytical models used to evaluate the music club membership's purchasing trends. In addition, he actively contributed to and managed the development, measurement, and deployment of all new online initiatives.

Mr. Weinstein received his B.A. in Economics from Brandeis University and his MBA in Finance and Marketing from New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

presentation (PDF)

Mitchell Weisberg

Mitchell Weisberg

Lecturer, Sawyer Business School of Suffolk University, and Managing Director, Lumen, Inc.

Mitchell Weisberg is a thought leader in Technology Disruption and Business Transformation. He is a Lecturer at Sawyer Business School of Suffolk University and Managing Director of Lumen, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in Business Transformation. His research, teaching, and consulting focus on how digital technology is disrupting the publishing industry and how industry participants must respond to succeed. He is currently researching and writing a book on the strategies and emerging business models for success in the rapidly changing publishing and media industry. Mr. Weisberg has over 30 years of experience advising organizations on addressing the impacts of new technologies.

presentation (PDF)

Bob Young

Bob Young

Founder and CEO, Lulu.com

Bob Young is the founder and CEO of Lulu.com, a premiere international marketplace for digital content on the internet, with more than 2 million published titles and more than 15,000 new creators from 80 different countries joining each week.

In 2003, Young purchased the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League and currently serves as the league's vice chairman. In 1993, Young co-founded Red Hat, the open-source software company. Before founding Red Hat, Young spent 20 years at the helm of two computer-leasing companies that he founded. He is the author of "Under the Radar".

presentation (PDF)

Secondary menu