EPUB Summit 2016

The first EPUB Summit was held on 7 & 8 April 2016 in Bordeaux, France. Denis Mollat, president of the Cercle de la Librarie, founding member of EDRLab, offered to host the event in an elegant meeting room near the Mollat bookstore. This room is usually used for conference given by book authors, and fully equipped with a video production system that some TV stations would like to have. A great thank you to Mr. Mollat and his team for their engagement and kindness.

The event was organized in three months, that is a very short term, by Cyril Laborderie and Laurent Le Meur from EDRLab, plus Terence Moscat and Laurence Gauthier from TM Consulting. We also had  a great support from EDRLab board members (Virginie Clayssen, Pierre Danet, Alban Cerisier, members of the SNE, CNL and Cap Digital): we wouldn’t have been able to get all this done without them.

During two sunny days, the room was packed with 130 people from different horizons; it was maybe the first time technical people engaged in standardisation, open-source developers, publishers, e-distributors, reading system vendors, members of associations for print-disabled, i.e. all people interested in EPUB and related tools, were gathering in a narrow space for two intensive days.

And when I speak about horizon, it’s also a geographical reality: we had participants from France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Great Britain, Germany, Netherland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Finland, Greece, the USA, Japan and Korea …

During coffee breaks, lunches and even a wine degustation, all located in the ballroom, there were great discussions, and we hope new opportunities for EPUB as a global standard for document publishing.

This event was also an opportunity to prepare nexts steps for EDRLab:

• Grow European: this is from its membership that an association takes its strength; and we want EPUB to be strong in Europe;
• Start a Readium LCP DRM ecosystem;
• Help EPUB3.1 go to production;
• Properly document the Readium SDK;
• Support illustrated books in Readium;
• Prototype a Readium desktop application, available on Windows, Mac and Linux;
• Prepare a second edition of the EPUB Summit next year, somewhere in Europe where communication about EPUB is especially relevant.

Many thanks again to the Cercle de la Librairie, the Librairie Mollat, the French Ministry of Culture and the Centre français de la Copie (CFC) for their support in the organization of this excellent event.

Some cover in the french news:

• Le premier grand rendez-vous mondial de l’Epub (livreshebdo.fr, 05/02/2016)
• ebook : la bataille de l’ePub3 (livreshebdo.fr, 01/04/2016)
• Le Livre 010101 dans l’Internet Archive pour célébrer l’EPUB Summit de Bordeaux (actuaLitte.com, 07/04/2016)
• L’avenir du livre numérique exposé à Bordeaux (livreshebdo.fr, 07/04/2016)
• L’industrie européenne du livre numérique veut offrir une alternative à Amazon (lefigaro.fr, 07/04/2016)
• La nécessité de l’ePub vérifiée par l’exemple (livreshebdo.fr, 08/04/2016)
• Bilan de l’#EpubSummit : “L’EPUB au-delà du monde du livre” (actuaLitte.com, 11/04/2016)
• La DRM LCP : grands enjeux, risques élevés (actuaLitte.com, 11/04/2016)
• Livre numérique: l’epub, format libre et ouvert, pour contrer Amazon et les géants du web? (Science et Avenir / AFP, 10/04/2016)

A Storify from Virginie Clayssen:

• EPUB Summit – Bordeaux (storify.com, 04/2016)

From Belgium:

• Retours sur l’EPUB Summit – PILen (futursdulivre.be, 04/2016)

In English:

• The EPUB Summit – A Triumph in Bordeaux (EPUBZone, 15/04/2016)

Links to the main presentations:

• Bill Rosenblatt, presentation of Readium LCP, here
• Daniel Weck, Paving the way to inclusive publishing, here
• Ivan Herman, Portable Web Publications, here
• Laurent Le Meur, EDRLab roadmap, here
• Laurent Le Meur, Readium LCP Workshop, here
• TEA, presentation of CARE, LCP Workshop, here
• Nathan, EPUB for Education, here

The EPUB 2016 Summit program

Publishers, authors, bookstores, distribution channels: the publishing world is facing the digitalisation of content. This opens new opportunities to create and distribute ebooks and other digital publications, but it also generates changes into the value chain, that require professionals to collaborate to be at the edge of innovation.

During two days in April, the 2016 EPUB Summit is a unique chance to meet and share opinions, concerns, challenges and key achievements with European publishers, distribution platforms, digital stores, suppliers, and public institutions to get to know the potential of the EPUB format. The digital publishing actors will gather around deep analysis, demonstrations, workshops and collaborative works to share best practices and learn about the latest developments on the format.

EPUB is becoming the reference format for the digital publishing industry, which raises strategic questions to be covered during the first EPUB Summit:

What is the development roadmap of the EPUB standard and its companion Readium open-source software? The creators of EPUB and Readium will be there to describe their progresses and plans.

What is the future of EPUB? Advanced user experiences and W3C Portable Web Publications will be presented to the public.

Which use of EPUB in education? The latest developments of the EDUPUB initiative will be detailed by its main stakeholders.

How to create powerful EPUB publications? Cutting edge editorial tools will be demonstrated on stage.

What about digital distribution of EPUB documents? European publishers and distribution platforms will share their key learnings and future developments.

Throughout those various topics, the issues of content protection, accessibility and mobility will be covered by more than 20 experts, who will share and confront their views and progresses with the leaders of the European Publishing Industry. More about the speakers in the press release.