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Sincere apologies for any cross-postings!!! Best wishes, David Sidman _______________ Hi all, It is with a mixture of anticipation and sadness that I am announcing my resignation from John Wiley & Sons in order to form my own start-up. Wiley has been my home for 4 1/2 years, and has given me a wonderful work experience with lots of successes, including supporting me in my industry-level activities surrounding the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which is in fact the focus of my new venture. I wanted to pass along my new contact info to all of you, and to say a little more about my plans: As most of you know I've been very involved in the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) initiative, starting well before its launch 4 years ago. To date most of the real-world adoption of DOI has occurred in the STM Journals sector, since this was the first of Wiley's markets to go online. But other markets are now beginning to migrate online as well, and between this trend and other recent developments such as the advent of E-Books in traditional publishing and the copyright-protection crisis in music publishing (Napster et al.), I've come to believe with even greater conviction that broader implementation of the DOI would be the single most important step that publishers could take to retain or enhance their position in the value chain of publishing. To that end, I'm intending to start a consulting company which will be 100% focused on promoting the adoption and implementation of DOI across all sectors of publishing, besides the STM Journals sector which has already committed to DOI and is already successfully charting its own course via the CrossRef initiative (which now has 38 publishers participating). In addition to text publishing (Professional, Trade, Educational, etc.), I intend to help implement DOI among all other sectors involved with online intellectual property: music, video, photography, etc. I plan to begin by making the business case for DOI at the executive level in a more formal way than has been done previously, and to move from gaining this high-level buy-in to assisting with actual DOI implementation, at whatever level the customer requires. This could involve, for example, serving as general contractor for the planning and execution of DOI implementation within a publishing company or a particular product line - everything from identifying which content is most likely to give the earliest payback, to assessing what infrastructure development is needed to support DOI tagging on a production basis (e.g. integration with Content Management Systems, Web Publishing Systems, Digital Archives, etc.). It could also involve subcontracting or partnering with other implementation/systems-integration firms, Digital Rights Management (DRM) vendors, and other parties as needed to solve specific problems at the production level, system level, or commercial product level. Finally, it could involve partnering with other consulting firms, since the goal here is to help publishers create a new market, and not only will this require many hands at the plough, but all players stand to gain more from cooperating to make a bigger pie than from competing to maximize their own slice. In many respects, I will simply be continuing the kind of work I've been doing in this area for 4 years, but on a full-time basis rather than a purely "volunteer" or "best-efforts" basis, and with more dedicated resources. The new company will be called Content Directions, Inc., and I can be reached as indicated below. Perhaps needless to say, I will be following up more specifically with many of you whom I've been working with very recently, whether it's because we should be talking in regard to my new plans, or simply to help make sure that you are transitioned smoothly to others at Wiley whom you will be dealing with in my place. Thanks to all of you who have helped me and worked with me to date; I look forward to continuing our relationship. Thanks especially to Wiley for being such a terrific company and for being so supportive of my new plans. David __________________________________ David Sidman CEO Content Directions, Inc. Phone: (212) 792-1847 or (888) 792-1847 Fax: (718) 768-6777 Email: [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%