All in all, it is a good thing—and not just in terms of mortgage payments and tuition fees—that the work through DRG Publications has been so engaging.
Assignment highlights include:
- Serving as Senior Analyst for Outsell, Inc. (and before the acquisition by Outsell, Inc., Gilbane Group), I contributed to a number of big projects, including:
A Blueprint for Book Publishing Transformation: Seven Essential Processes to Re-invent Publishing, as main author and lead analyst, as well as lead sponsor prospector; this study describes the multitude of strategic decisions facing the entire industry, and its 277 pages, includes 5 chapters (including Industry Forecast), 6 case studies, Industry Directory, and over 50 tables and figures.
Enterprise Rights Management: Implementation Imperatives & Business Readiness, as contributing author and analyst; this report presents the most comprehensive publicly available research on the ERM market ever undertaken. ERM: Business Imperatives and Implementation Readiness is backed by qualitative and quantitative research on general awareness of ERM, the current state of ERM deployments or plans to deploy (or decisions to avoid the technology), and target applications.
- I analyzed publishing market survey results and wrote up the findings for one of the leading ebook and electronic publishing out-source vendors, and developed and participated in a webinar presenting these results.
- For SoftLock.com/Digital Goods Inc., I wrote and project managed a white paper explicating their business repositioning from DRM technology supplier to direct content marketing service.
- For InterTrust Technologies Corporation, I researched and wrote various strategic technology and market development reports on digital cable set-tops, online music, and privacy, as well as writing and editing strategic marketing collateral.
- As Senior Advisor, Strategic Research for Fuse Products, Inc., I researched CE/home network software market and strategic business development opportunities and produced technology briefings.
- For New Millennium Publishing, Inc., I authored and edited white papers and researched backgrounders, articles, and reports in support of clients (ASTM, Cahner’s Manufacturing.net, CAP Ventures, Classwell Learning Group, ContentGuard, ContentRules.com, eGrail, Enigma, Inc., Houghton Mifflin Co.).
- As Associate Editor, The Gilbane Report (Bluebill Advisors, Inc.), I authored the following analyses:
“Editorial Interfaces & Enterprise-enabled Content” (Volume 9, No. 7)
“Privilege Management & Rights Management for Corporate Portals” (Vol. 9, No. 3)
“XHTML: What You Should Do About It & When” (Vol. 9, No. 1)
“XML: The State of the Union” (Vol. 8, No. 10)
“E-Books: Technology for Enterprise Content Applications?” (Vol. 8, No. 9)
“Syndication, Actionable Content, and the Supply Chain” (Vol. 8, No. 7)
“Digital Rights Management: It’s Time to Pay Attention” (Vol. 8, No. 6)
- I wrote business plan and carried out market research and funding meetings with potential sponsors for Disc/Web, a B2B portal concept for the optical disc and connected content vendor and professional user communities.
- Over the past 14 years, I’ve produced conference programs, track programs, presentations, and tutorials for various conferences, including, among many others, (BISG Making Information Pay, Gilbane Group Content Management Conference, CAP Venture Dynamic Content, GCA XML 2000, AIIM/GCA/Bluebill Advisors Enterprise Content Management Series, DVD World, MacWorld, and CD-ROM Expo.
My post-EMedia Professional career has been rather interesting, and my efforts have extended well beyond my work through DRG Publications. I got back to art making—which is fun, but, not surprisingly, not too lucrative!—and my attention to Arch Art, from a practical perspective, has to be a secondary priority.
It’s been something of a balancing act between my professional work and Arch Art, especially since our move from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Housatonic, a village in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in southern Berkshire County, where a good chunk of time on and off over the course of the last half-dozen years was spent on rebuilding the plus-100-year-old house. Much of the work of renovation led to my starting a new company, RetroSheath, which took over much of my spare time from 2010 onward, including a provisional patent application sent in the fall of 2011.So far RetroSheath—which is a system for recladding the exterior of existing homes to improve insulation and air sealing—has failed to result in tickertape parades for me, and RetroSheath remains a secondary priority in terms of my making a living.
I’ve even gotten involved in local development projects, and, especially in the effort to bring new use to many of the mill buildings that I can see from out my front windows, by helping get information out about the project using my writing and web content management skills (www.monumentmills.com). By the way, the redevelopment is moving forward, albeit slowly, as the effort to garner historic tax credits grinds on.
But it can’t be said that I don’t keep myself busy!