Small Steps, Giant Leaps: The Digital Transformation Experience

Stories of innovation marked by changes in workflow and production as well as in markets and customer habits.

Content management plays an increasingly critical role as part of a wider set of smart information management strategies that guide decision-making process and direct technology investments for publishers.

Last week at the 2018 London Book Fair, a panel of editors and technologists shared with CCC’s Chris Kenneally stories of innovation marked by changes in workflow and production as well as in markets and customer habits.

The panel included –

Tom Morris, Co-founder, Ixxus
Tom Morris has spent more than twenty years in IT, as a principal architect in publishing systems integration projects. He joined Ixxus in 2005 and was made CTO at Ixxus 4 years ago and in this role, leads the infrastructure, tech lead, and development practices. In particular, he has a strong interest in the content-data modeling and design of content-centric and knowledge-based systems.

Kathryn Earle, Managing Director, Digital Resources Division, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
At Bloomsbury, Kathryn Earl is responsible for large-scale digital products for the academic library market. Before this, she was Head of Visuals Arts for Bloomsbury and managed the acquisition and integration of Fairchild Books and AVA Publishing. Prior to Bloomsbury, Kathryn was Managing Director of Berg Publishers, which she joined in 1993, leading its management buy-out in 2002 before eventually selling the business to Bloomsbury in 2008. Kathryn conceived of and launched the award-winning Berg Fashion Library. She began her career at the Modern Language Association of America in New York.

Dr Junaid Mubeen, Director of Education at Whizz Education
A research mathematician turned educator, Dr Junaid Mubeen is working at the nexus of education, innovation and technology. As Director of Education at Whizz Education, Junaid oversees the educational strategy and development of the Maths-Whizz virtual tutoring service, which has delivered personalised learning to over half a million students worldwide. Junaid has a PhD in mathematics from Oxford and a Master’s in Education from Harvard. He writes and speaks on a range of EdTech topics.

John Newton, CTO and Founder, Alfresco
John Newton has had one of the longest and most influential careers in content management. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in San Mateo, California and Maidenhead, United Kingdom, Alfresco is an enterprise open-source software company focused on making business flow quickly, seamlessly, and intelligently, by driving the convergence of enterprise content management and business process management. In 1990, John Newton co-founded, designed and led the development of Documentum®, the leader in content management acquired by EMC®. For the next ten years, he invented many of the concepts widely used in the industry today. John has also been an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Benchmark Capital. He was one of the founding engineers at Ingres® where he helped develop the world’s first commercial relational database.

Kiren Shoman, Editorial Director, SAGE London
Kiren Shoman is responsible for SAGE London’s textbook and reference program, and is the strategic lead of the recently launched SAGE Video portfolio. At SAGE since 1995, Kiren has played an instrumental role in the development of both traditional and digital platforms for disseminating SAGE’s book and textbook content. Kiren works closely with colleagues across SAGE to further explore new product innovations within print and digital publishing, and content development within emerging digital streams.