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Events: IDPF Voting: Board Nomination |
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Eli Willner (Green Point Technology Services), Board Nomination
Statement Dear IDPF members, Digital publishing has evolved considerably from the days of my first
involvement with it - about a dozen years ago. Once a niche platform for
technical documentation and academic materials, it is now an essential
distribution mechanism, and the notion that e-publishing may overtake paper as
the medium of choice is no longer considered outlandish. This evolution is due
in large part to the development of tools, processes and standards that
facilitate the creation, rights management and distribution of electronic
materials. Where we once had SGML, esoteric and hard to work with DTDs, and
primitive or unfriendly tools, we now have XML, schemas that were developed with
ease of authoring and data conversion in mind, and tools to make the creation of
intelligent electronic content almost as straightforward as creating a Word
document. Where we once had a proliferation of competing standards, we are now
converging on a uniform set of standards that will enable publishers to
repurpose their content in a variety of different ways - including print -
without the expense and management nightmare of multiple workflows. When I served as Chief Technologist of the Barnes and Noble Digital Content
Division this convergence was in its infancy, the early ebook standards lent
themselves only to the creation of ebooks, and ebook workflows were typically
post-production - separate not only from print workflows, but also from other
electronic workflows. It has been gratifying to see the expansion of this
organization's mandate (along with its name change), its increased level of
cooperation with other standards bodies, and its active recognition of
"electronic life beyond the ebook". As an IDPF board member I will work aggressively to continue in this
direction. I believe we will be providing maximum value to publishers of all
kinds when we can honesty show them a standard, along with tools and processes,
that will enable them to achieve in a straightforward manner all their
e-publishing objectives, including ebooks on various platforms, material for
aggregators, and archive-ready material, while integrating smoothly into their
existing workflows. I will also work aggressively on the evangelical front. IDPF as an
organization needs greater exposure, and greater active involvement from the
wider publishing community - for example, it is time, ironically, to turn to the
techdoc and academic publishers - the original purveyors of electronic content -
and direct their attention to the benefits of our organization and its efforts. In the years I've been involved in e-publishing I've been active in technical, managerial and marketing capacities. I was Director of Marketing and, later, Director of Technology at Data Conversion Laboratory, Chief Technologist of the B&N Digital Content Division, AVP, Project Analysis at Innodata and currently, President and CTO of Green Point Technology Services, a BPO firm serving the publishing community. I believe I have the right combination of skills, experience and industry knowledge to be the right candidate for this position, and respectfully request your vote.
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