Bill Kasdorf
Bill Kasdorf is an expert in accessibility, XML/HTML/EPUB modeling, information infrastructure, editorial and production workflows, and standards alignment to future proof content and systems. Past President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), Bill is a recipient of SSP’s Distinguished Service Award, the IDEAlliance/DEER Luminaire Award, and the Book Industry Study Group’s Industry Champion Award.
Active in many standards initiatives, Bill is the Publishing Evangelist for the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C); he serves on the Steering Committee of the W3C Publishing Business Group and is a member of the W3C Publishing Working Group developing the next generation of Web Publications, as well as the W3C’s EPUB 3 Community Group and the EPUB 3 CG’s Accessibility Task Force. He co-chairs NISO’s Video & Audio Metadata Guidelines Working Group. He is a member of the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), which publishes resources for the book supply chain, with a special focus on accessibility and EPUB implementation, serving on BISG’s Workflow Committee. He is a member of the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC), which governs many standards for image and video metadata as well as rights metadata and other standards for the news industry, and of the DAISY Consortium for accessibility.
Bill has led seminars, written articles, and spoken widely for publishing industry organizations such as SSP, W3C, AUP, ALPSP, STM, NISO, BISG, IDPF, IPTC, DBW, AAP, ALA, Publishing Business, Seybold Seminars, and the Library of Congress. He is the General Editor of the Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing and a co-editor of the BISG Guide to Accessible Publishing. He is the author of the chapter on EPUB metadata and packaging for O’Reilly’s EPUB 3 Best Practices and the chapter on EPUB in the book The Critical Component: Standards in Information Distribution, published by the American Library Association in collaboration with NISO. He is a member of the editorial board of the Learned Publishing journal and served as Guest Editor for its January 2018 issue devoted to accessibility.
In his consulting practice, Bill has served clients globally, including large international publishers such as Pearson, Cengage, Wolters Kluwer, Kaplan, and Sage; scholarly and STM presses and societies such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the National Academies Press, Taylor & Francis, the American Psychological Association, the IEEE, the American College of Physicians, the Cochrane Library, and the university presses of Harvard, MIT, Toronto, Cambridge; aggregators such as VitalSource and others; and global publishing and library organizations such as the World Bank, the British Library, the Asian Development Bank, OCLC, and the Publishing Office of the European Union.
Thad McIlroy
Thad McIlroy is a well-established expert in the technology and marketing issues surrounding electronic publishing, he has authored a dozen books and over 300 articles on these topics. McIlroy served for five years as Program Director for Seybold Seminars, the publishing industry’s premier technology conference.
In 2006 he launched www.thefutureofpublishing.com, the most comprehensive source of information on the present and predicted outcomes of all sectors of the publishing industry. In 1990 he co-founded (with Miles Southworth) The Color Resource, a publishing and distribution company devoted to books and training materials on color design, imaging and prepress.
McIlroy’s latest market reports are COVID-19 and Book Publishing: Impacts and Insights for 2021 (January, 2021), An Authoritative Look at Book Publishing Startups In the United States (January, 2017), The Metadata Handbook, 2nd Ed. (January, 2015) (co-authored with Renee Register), and Mobile Strategies for Digital Publishing: A Practical Guide to the Evolving Landscape. He wrote a comprehensive study of the future of Barnes & Noble (2012) as well as Adobe’s Designs on Web Analytics: The Omniture Acquisition (2009).
He serves on the editorial board of the Canadian literary journal Geist. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). McIlroy has spoken at Digital Book World (DBW), the Seybold Conferences, the Association of Canadian Publishers, BookNet Technology Forum, the Gilbane Content Management conference, the Henry Stewart DAM conference, ePublishing (Denmark), the NAPL Top Management Conference, and Prepress Asia.
Bill Rosenblatt
Bill Rosenblatt is a globally recognized authority on technology issues pertaining to intellectual property in the digital age. He has contributed to standards initiatives related to content identification, metadata, and rights. He has testified before and advised public policy entities on digital copyright and technology issues on three continents, and has served as an expert witness in litigations concerning digital media and copyright.
Bill is author of the book Digital Rights Management: Business and Technology (Wiley), technical books published by O’Reilly, and several whitepapers, book chapters and journal articles on technologies related to digital media, publishing, and copyright. He writes the blog Copyright and Technology and is a media and entertainment contributor to Forbes. In addition to the annual Copyright and Technology Conferences that Bill chairs, he has been an invited speaker at conferences worldwide including the World Economic Forum (Davos), Assises du Livre Numérique (Paris), International Copyright Technology Conference (Seoul), Festival of Children’s Content (Singapore), O’Reilly TOC, Seybold, AAP PSP, Digital Book World, Publishing Business Expo, and other events. He is a recipient of the Book Industry Study Group’s Industry Connector Award.
Prior to his consulting career, Bill was Chief Technology Officer of Fathom, an e-learning startup backed by Columbia University. Bill’s publishing industry experience includes stints as a technology executive at McGraw-Hill and Times Mirror Co. Before that, he architected the first digital content service at Moody’s debt rating agency. Bill also worked at Sun Microsystems in business development and market strategy for the media and publishing markets.
Bill’s publishing industry clients have included Adobe, Association of American Publishers, Associated Press, Baker & Taylor, Brother, Christian Science Publishing, Consumers Union, European Digital Reading Lab, Houghton Mifflin, HP, IDPF, IEEE, McGraw-Hill, Massachusetts Medical Society, Pearson, Quark, Readers Digest, Rodale, Sony, Taylor & Francis, University of Phoenix, and Wolters Kluwer.
He holds a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, and he has had executive education at Harvard and USC business schools. He is a member of the Book Industry Study Group and the Copyright Society of the USA.
Steve Sieck
Steve Sieck is an accomplished strategy consulting and market research professional with a strong specialty in business, professional, and academic markets for publishing and information services. As an information industry analyst, research/advisory firm executive, and strategic management consultant he has helped many leading global providers of information content, services, and enabling technologies to develop new products, enter new markets, make strategic investment decisions and align resources with business objectives.
In the past, Steve has led consulting services and developed new research products as managing partner for Electronic Publishing Services, Ltd, a London-based information industry advisory firm. Earlier, he led the global Media & Entertainment practice at web integrator iXL (now Publicis Sapient) and headed the strategy consulting discipline at its flagship New York office. For several years, Steve managed high-profile strategy engagements for major publishers and directed knowledge capital initiatives in the Information, Communications & Entertainment practice of PwC’s management consulting division. He began his career helping to lead pioneer interactive media research/advisory firm LINK Resources from startup to major division of IT research leader International Data Corporation.
Steve has consulted to leading players in business and professional publishing such as Corporate Executive Board, IDG Communications, McGraw-Hill, Reed Elsevier, SAI Global, Thomson Reuters, and Wolters Kluwer, and scientific/technical/medical and educational publishers including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, Association for Computing Machinery, ASTM, Cengage, EBSCO, OCLC, ProQuest and SAE International. He has served as the elected vice chairman of the Software & Information Industry Association’s Content Division board of directors, and as a board member of Wanted Technologies, a publicly-traded “big data” company acquired by CEB.
Ken Brooks
Ken Brooks is a digital transformation COO and advisor focused on helping publishers scale product development, go-to-market, and supply chain operations through the application of technology, supplier capabilities, process innovation and data science.
Ken is a frequent speaker at publishing industry events on the implementation of XML-driven workflows, supply chain topics such as forecasting, inventory planning and digital print solutions along with the cultural change required for effective digital transition. He has participated at board level in the Book Industry Study Group and IDPF (now W3C), and was one of the designers of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) standard.
As a consultant, Ken has helped firms with digital strategy, product development, content management, technology and business operations serving clients including McGraw-Hill Education, Wiley, Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperColllins, Hachette Book Group, Sony and CourseSmart (now part of Ingram Book Group).
Ken was previously the Chief Content Officer for the Academic & Professional Learning division of Wiley where his responsibilities include development and production of higher education, reference, test prep and trade titles in print and digital formats. Prior to Wiley he was the Chief Operating Officer of Macmillan Learning where he oversaw implementation of process, technology and organization changes related to product development, eCommerce, business systems and supply chain functions. He has held senior positions at McGraw-Hill Education, Cengage Learning, Barnes & Noble, Simon & Schuster, and Random House. Over the course of his career, Ken has founded digital services companies both in the US and abroad; a public domain publishing imprint; and a distribution-center based print-on-demand operation. He has worked in trade, professional, higher education and K-12 publishing sectors.
Ken holds bachelor and master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering and a master’s degree in Computer Science from Georgia Tech, where he also mentors graduate students in Educational Technology.
Advisor: Bill Trippe
Bill Trippe is a Boston-based publishing consultant and author. In addition to his consulting work, Bill was formerly Director of Technology at the MIT Press, a leading academic publisher of books and journals. In this role, Bill oversaw software development, digital products, database management and analytics, and server and systems management. Prior to joining MIT Press, Bill was Vice President and Lead Analyst for the Gilbane Group, a division of Outsell, Inc., Director of Publishing Systems at ZDNet, Manager of Content Development at Houghton Mifflin, and Manager of Editorial Systems Support at Xyvision.
Bill’s areas of focus span the wide range of publishing technologies, including workflow, print and web production, content and asset management, web content management, eCommerce, and digital rights management. As both a technology leader inside of publishers and as a consultant, Bill has led the development of XML-based workflow solutions, content management and digital asset management implementations, and customer-facing applications such as subscription-based products and eCommerce-driven sites for books journals, and custom publishing. Bill is a recognized expert in XML for both print and digital production and has helped clients digitize and publishing collections of books, journals, and other high-value content.
Bill has written broadly on publishing technology. He contributed to Bill Rosenblatt’s book on Digital Rights Management, coauthored a book on SVG, and has written extensively for trade publications and newsletters. Bill is a past board member of the Book Industry Study Group and a frequent presenter at industry events. Bill is a long-time adjunct professor at several Boston-area colleges, primarily teaching writing but also specialized courses in book and magazine publishing, XML, and other aspects of digital publishing.
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