Todd Eckler has more than 15 years of executive management, sales, business development and international experience in technology companies serving the publishing and media space.  Throughout the past decade, Mr. Eckler’s efforts have helped drive the adoption of next-generation technologies that serve as the backbone for today’s digital publishing systems.

In his role as Executive Vice President, Mr. Eckler is spearheading the growth for the company’s ground-breaking TeleScope Publishing Platform. Mr. Eckler has served in management rolls for LibreDigital, Marcus Technology and Archetype, Inc.
 

Keith Fahlgren is the Publishing Technology Engineer at O’Reilly Media. He’s been involved with a wide variety of electronic initiatives there, from developing the open-source DocBook-XSL ePub Stylesheets to integrating content into Safari Books Online to building infrastructure around the Atom Publishing Protocol. He’s a member of the OASIS DocBook SubCommittee for Publishers, a group trying to make the DocBook XML standard more accessible for a wide range of professional publishers, and has played a key role in extending O’Reilly’s use of DocBook & ePub.

Leslie Hulse, VP Digital Business Development, HarperCollins Publishers

In 2005, Angela James joined Samhain Publishing, Ltd, a small press company focusing on digital publishing, as its executive editor, where she has played an instrumental role in building the company from the ground up. In her executive position at Samhain, Angela is responsible for managing the publisher’s editorial services division. Her responsibilities include the management of editorial staff, quality oversight, networking and marketing efforts at regional, national and international writing conferences to promote the digital publishing industry as well as Samhain. Angela’s mission is to dragging readers (and authors) to the digital dark side, one reader at a time.

 In addition to her administrative duties and promotion of digital technology, Angela continues to edit more than 50 authors including national bestselling authors Lucy Monroe, Lilith Saintcrow, Ilona Andrews, and Deidre Knight.

Bob LiVolsi is CEO and founder of BooksOnBoard.  BooksOnBoard is a reseller of eBooks, downloadable audio books, and eBook Readers such as the Sony Reader and the Cybook.   With its first full quarter of revenue in the winter of 2007, BooksOnBoard is now one of the largest eBook retailers.    It was the first retailer to sell ePUB titles from the major publishers, introduced Qik Clik technology to the iPhone in February 2009, and among the first to offer MP3, DRM-free audio books.

Bob spent many years in the high tech field before founding BooksOnBoard, being the VP of Sales and Marketing for two storage networking companies that achieved # 1 market share and built successful initial public offerings, Colorado Memory Systems and Crossroad Systems.  Bob was also the global vice president for mini-cartridge tape drive sales and marketing at Hewlett Packard, and director of global business development and alliances at SAP.   He also was the VP and General Manager of the Exabyte Eagle division which designed and manufactured storage hardware.   He has been on the board of the Quarter Inch Cartridge Committee and of the Storage Networking Industry Association and was an early supporter of IDPF.

James graduated from Brunel University in 1979, London he holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science, a BSc in Aeronautical Engineering and he is a Chartered Engineer CEng. James is Managing Director of EvolvedGroup a Tech Investment company a company he formed in 2004 and is Chief Exec of Easypress Technologies Limited a company he acquired in 2005.  James is leading the businesses growth into the eBook EPUB markets with their Atomik technology which can create EPUB files for the digital book markets for any reader directly from Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress and MS Word.

Prior to that, James was a founder and Main Board Director of Sopheon Plc in the UK and held the post of Senior VP of Global Business Development in the US.  His role consisted of spearheading Sopheon’s growth and strategic direction in the USA, leading the company’s vision, innovation and development in the field of Innovation Software.  He was also responsible for strategic partnerships to assist Sopheon’s expansion and growth he was also part of the management term which raise $30m funds in 2000 and acquired Orbital Plc for $22m in 2001. 

Tyler Ruse has been with Ingram Digital since February 2008. Leveraging his more than a decade of digital publishing experience, Mr. Ruse is building technologies and partnerships to ensure that the CoreSource digital asset management and distribution platform maintains its world-class level of service. In addition to CoreSource, Mr. Ruse is charged with leading content ingestion across all Ingram Digital platforms

    Prior to joining Ingram Digital, Mr. Ruse led the technology and product development groups at codeMantra, LLC. There Mr. Ruse built digital publishing tools and workflows as well as content distribution systems focused on helping the publishing community bridge the gap from traditional print to both print and digital products.

Mr. Ruse also spent over five years building content ingestion systems for digital book, journal, and audio content for OCLC NetLibrary, helping publishers build digital products in the industry’s infancy.
Mr. Ruse holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
 

Sameer Shariff is founder and CEO of Impelsys Inc. Impelsys is a leader in providing e-publishing solutions to global publishing market. Its revolutionary products and solutions help publishers large & small to create new online products & revenue streams without significant investment. Customers include leading publishers like McGraw-Hill, Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Benchmark Education, Marshall Cavendish and Houghton Mifflin among others.

Impelsys is Sameer' second start up after Medisite Inc. As Chief Strategic Officer, he helped Medsite become one of the largest Internet pharmaceutical marketing companies in the United States. Under his direction, Medisite increased sales from $0 to $20 million. In 2006, Medisite was sold to WebMD for over $40 Million.

Sameer is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his BS degree in Entrepreneurial Management from the Wharton School of Business. He has served as a guest speaker at several industry events including Delhi Book Fair, O’Reilly TOC Conference 2009 and American Medical Publishers Association; and has been featured in Forbes, India Today, CMS Wire, Professional Publishing Report, Gilbane, Seybold Report and Silicon India among other publications.
 

By day Sarah Wendell is mild mannered and heavily caffeinated. By evening she dons her cranky costume, consumes yet more caffeine, and becomes Smart Bitch Sarah of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. The site specializes in reviewing romance novels, examining the history and future of the genre, and bemoaning the enormous prevalence of bodacious pectorals adorning male cover models. In April 2009, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels was born, published by Touchstone Fireside and co-authored by Sarah and her partner in nefarious deeds, Candy Tan. Sarah has spoken at Romance Writers of America’s national conference, at the Romantic Times BookLovers’ Convention, and at several RWA chapter conferences and meetings. Her writing has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Tango Magazine, and in the SmartPop book Grey’s Anatomy 101: Seattle Grace, Unauthorized. Sarah has also been quoted in The New York Times, The New York Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Metro:New York, and Publishers Weekly.