Board Election 2023

In 2023, two seats are to be renewed: those previously occupied by Cristina Mussinelli (LIA) and Erik Pattenden (Firsty Group).

Self-nomination period: May 17th to June 2nd 2023.

Voting period: June 6th to June 22st 2023 at 1 am (one day before the General Assembly).

By our bylaws, any member in good standing is eligible to self-nominate a representative. Current or past members of the Board of Directors can re-apply for a new period of two years.

Four members candidated for this election:
– Luisa Gaggini (Casalini Libri)
– Valérie Ferrière (Flexedo)
– Cristina Mussinelli (LIA)
– Ian Smith (Firsty Group)

We are very proud to have received such interest for helping on the governance of EDRLab.

Here are the candidate statements we received:

Luisa Gaggini

Dear EDRLab members,

I would like to offer my candidacy as an EDRLab Board of Directors member.

Currently, I am the Head of Digital Division at Casalini Libri ; having covered this role for more than 13 years I have had the opportunity to gain experience in a variety of contexts, starting from scratch a number of services specifically thought for distributing digital academic publications to institutions.

The Casalini Libri online platform, Torrossa, initially specialised in Romance languages titles, now distributes more than 800,000 digital items at granular level (article, book chapter, ebook, journal issue) from 470 international publishers, with a variety of licenses, via dedicated B2C and B2B institutional channels. Our aim is to offer discoverability to small-sized publishers while offering to customers a one-stop point of access to academia-relevant publications.

In the recent years, Casalini Libri started collaborating with Fondazione LIA to ensure accessibility compliancy, and with EDRLab for developing Torrossa Readium LCP-based applications.

Further to coordinating a team of seven where distributing conditions are set, and e-content is received, handled and re-distributed, my responsibility includes mediating conversations between sales&marketing and web developers, testing web developments, overseeing troubleshooting access and authentication issues; participating in groups working for the enhancement of web services to end users.

After some years of being an EDRLab member, I propose as a candidate of EDRLab Board to contribute and give voice to stakeholders who are sometime under-represented in international Boards.

I would be honoured of taking up the challenge of working for the good of defining open standards and interoperability between systems, of participating actively to creating an ecosystem where publishers, distributors and users are all at ease.

Best regards
Luisa Gaggini

Valérie Ferrière

Dear EDRLab members,

As the founder of Flexedo, I would like to offer my candidacy as a EDRLab Board of Directors member.

With 12 years experience working closely with book publishers and distributors, we have both deep publishing and technological perspectives on the book/ebook market, especially with medium and small publishing companies. I can represent these sensibilities and experiences as part of EDRLab Governance. I humbly ask for your vote, and if elected I will serve EDRLab with energy and kindness.

I am the founder and president of Flexedo. For 12 years I have been managing teams of men and women responsible for creating book models, page layout, ebook conversion, XML structuring and websites, while remaining very close to our clients. I’m a strong believer in open standards, automating and accessibility, which we’ve offered since the company was founded. I am also a consultant and trainer and I particularly love providing training in all of these areas.
Before Flexedo, I worked as head of web services and electronic document management, where I was able to create and implement digital strategies, create new services and train teams in digital techniques, within the international Safran group.

Founded in 2011, Flexedo was a challenger as a book publishing service provider and the most innovative e-book provider among French language providers. We’ve created the first French digital ebook library in 2011 and
and the first French strong watermark system for epub and pdf in 2012. We enjoy our leadership role in training accessible ebooks and our role in XML structuring, providing xml for all types of DTD/SCHEMA adapted to all editors’ needs.

Flexedo structures around 1,000 titles per year. Its headquarters are in Paris, France and its digitization offices and multimedia studios are in Normandy, France.

Best regards
Valérie Ferrière

Cristina Mussinelli

I am kindly asking you to support my nomination for re-election in the EDRLab Board of Directors. I am running as Secretary General of Fondazione LIA (Libri Italiani Accessibili).

As Board member I will continue to actively support EDRLab, with my effort, knowledge and relationships, to achieve its mission of fostering the development of an open, interoperable and accessible digital publishing ecosystem in Europe. My presence in the Board as representative of an Italian organization, will also meet the goal of EDRLab of reflecting the European diversity.

In particular, I will do all my best to collaborate with the EDRLab management to define our main priorities for the next years and to achieve the following goals:

• support a wider and faster adoption of open standard as EPUB, by publishers for all different kind of publications (school texts, illustrated books, enhanced books, and complex layout books in general) with the provision of updated and timely information on the standard in general and on the activities of the working group, also through dedicated event or seminars, such as the Digital Publishing Summit or participation to European call for funding as we have already done in Creative Eu with the ABELab project
• continue the commitment in the field of the accessibility of digital publishing contents for print impaired persons, especially taking in consideration the adoption of the EU Accessibility Act and chairing the Accessibility Interest Group
• continue to develop reference open-source reading engine on every device platform available as the basis for developers to be able to provide good reading applications compliant with open standards.
• create awareness on the importance of standard adoption and related interoperability issue in the whole publishing value chain and in the international and European institutions involved in defining the policy for the publishing market.
• make a specific plan to foster the growth of the European and international membership.

  My role in Fondazione LIA, a non-profit organization that promotes the adoption of accessibility in the publishing industry through awareness-raising events, research on digital accessibility, training courses and consultancy activities, where I am also coordinating many activities at EU and international level will be particularly relevant for EDRLab. LIA’s initiatives are, in fact, strictly in line with the EDRLab commitment in the field of accessibility as they aim at expanding the access to editorial products of visually impaired readers: LIA encourages the integration and active participation in the cultural world of people with visual impairment, allowing to choose how, when and, above all, what to read.

  Furthermore, Fondazione LIA is an organization created by AIE (Associazione Italiana Editori), one of the major EU trade associations, where I am also responsible of digital publishing activities. This could continue providing EDRLab a strong support in the European market to achieve its goals, thanks to consolidated relations with the most relevant European institutions and a long-lasting knowledge of the European publishing market. European publishers are investing in digital production processes, products and services and the attendance in the European market of the main international players is growing thus our focus on open standard definition issues, will be fundamental for the growth of on European market of digital contents, for fair competition and for the reduction of technological lock-in risks for consumers. AIE is one of the founders of FEP, the Federation of European Publishers, and is also part of the General Confederation of Italian Industries, it is member of IPA (International Publishers Association), EDITEUR, ISBN International Agency and ABPTOE (Association of Booksellers and Publishers Training Organizations in Europe). Finally, AIE devotes particular attention to the development of publishing standards, manages the Italian ISBN agency and the multilingual European DOI Registration Agency.

  I am also co-chair of the W3C Digital Publishing Business Group, the international community developing and maintaining the Web standards, invited expert in the ‘OT UNI/CT 014/SC 04 “Automazione e documentazione” where I am involved in the standardization process of EPUB and of LPC, member of the Steering Committee of the Daisy European Inclusive Publishing Forum and member of the Accessibility Steering Committee of the ABC Consortium WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization). I will be able to support the EDRLab activities in these organization too.

  Best regards
  Cristina Mussinelli

  Ian Smith

  Please support my nomination for election to the EDRLab Board of Directors. I am currently the Group COO of Firsty Group (Newbury, UK).

  Firsty Group is a Software development company specialising in eCommerce, direct digital fulfilment, and print fulfilment solutions across the publishing industry. Clients include Many of the top ten global publishers, including Macmillan, Springer, Hachette and Bonnier, and Large independent publishers like Atlantic, Quarto, Faber & Faber, and University Press Organisations such as Yale, Princeton, Fordham and the University of West Indies.

  I am responsible for the delivery and support of our Glassboxx solution.

  Glassboxx is a platform that enables publishers, content providers and retailers to sell and deliver eBooks and Audiobooks directly to readers underpinned by Readium LCP for Digital Rights Management (DRM). Glassboxx has built iOS, Android, Mac and Windows applications incorporating Readium LCP.

  As well as providing an efficient fulfilment solution for digital content, Glassboxx acts as a toolkit, with sales insights, consumption analytics and marketing features such as vouchers and subscriptions available for institutional, corporate, and individual clients.

  Being flexible and open source, Firsty sees a significant long-term future for LCP and is keen to contribute to its direction and evolution.

  Before joining Firsty Group, I was in Global IT Delivery and Professional Services. I also successfully ran several major transformation programmes and held several executive and senior management positions for several household name companies in Banking, Media, Cyber Security and Retail.

  Best regards
  Ian Smith