Dear IDPF Members,

Reasons for running
As the President and CEO of LibreDigital, I enjoy working with the visionaries and leaders in the publishing and technology space.  These are the leaders that are setting and evangelizing the standards in this new digital era.  I am running for a board position not to help bring together and educate the people reading this nomination, but to help grow the organization outside of the existing visionaries and leaders.
If you are reading this, you are already a part of the solution.  It’s now time we pull together to get the people that are not members and are not joining in the standards discussions to join in. Over the next two years we are going to realize the success and confusion that happens when digital distribution comes into an industry.  The IDPF message and vision must grow outside of our group to all the publishing companies looking to increase revenue while controlling their content and the technology providers that have finally realized that content is king.

Qualification
My first introduction to the publishing industry was in college when one of my grandfather’s publishers went out of business.  Unfortunately, they would not let him out of his contract, even though their doors were shut.  I picked up one of my legal books, wrote a few letters and got the rights back for my grandfather’s autobiography – I did not realize then that I would spend the next 20 years helping content owners secure, control and safely distribute their content.  After leaving Oracle and helping start a pre-.com B2B software company, I wrote the patents on licensing Intellectual Property online.   I then started RightsLine to help content owners manage, track and monetize rights to their content while increasing digital distribution.   I helped set the digital specifications that became the standards in the music and video world and am now looking to do the same for the publishing industry.   I have run three different digital content distribution companies through rapid growth.  I was also the President of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) in Los Angeles where I led and helped grow the volunteer CEO network with over 150 CEO’s in Los Angeles and 6,000 globally.  I have ten years of board facilitation and strategic planning experience and would be able to leverage my digital standards and technology experience with my publishing and board leadership skills to help IDPF succeed.

Vision
The opportunity for IDPF is not to not only be a forum for discussion, but to help bring together content with distribution for the benefit of the consumer.  With standards, we can help lower costs while increasing margins, enabling everyone to win.  In our lifetime we will see all published works available on digital devices.  We cannot do this unless IDPF is successful in growing outside of our current membership and interested parties.  With the right board, IDPF has the opportunity to put more content in more consumers hands.
 
Sincerely,
 
Russell P Reeder
President and CEO
LibreDigital, Inc.