Re: Let's introduce ourselves

Hello everyone:

I am Assistant Professor of Multimedia Design at Nashville State Community College in Nashville TN. I teach digital content creation, including front-end coding. I know that HTML, XML, CSS is the underlying technology of ePub.. Since my students are content creators, not programmers, I am introducing them to the idea of self-publishing. I am a member of the Alliance for Independent Authors ( https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/ ) .  Having attending Digital Book World several times (I’m friends with Bradley Metrock), I know there are markets for physical books, eBooks, audio books, and the emerging interactive audio, e.g. Alexa. I intend on retiring from full-time teaching in the next couple of years. Then I will move into self-publishing to supplement retirement.

I know that standards are developed by people that “show up” so I began investigating how individuals can get involved in ePub. Since I’m a content creator and eLearning Developer part of my desire is to do a deeper dive in understanding how to create ePub documents so I’m not dependent on an authoring programs. Being able to wrangle the code always gives us more control. That investigation lead me to discussion groups and eventually to this group. I am not a mover and shaker in this community. I am a creator in the trenches. But I’ve been around long enough to have lived through the browser wars. I see the same thing happening in the eBook community with different venders wanting to create their own platform (I’m looking at you Amazon -- .mobi).

There are members here far more adept in the understandings of the technology than I am. My goal is first to learn the technology, use it, build a second career, teach others, and if I notice a limitation, have a voice in pushing it forward. I’m glad to be part of the community and hope I can contribute in some way.


Best regards,

Dale

Dale R Rogers, M.Ed, CIW
Instructional Designer, eLearning Developer
Assistant Professor
Web and Interactive Multimedia Design
Nashville State Community College
College: dale.rogers@nscc.edu<mailto:dale.rogers@nscc.edu>
Personal: dale@dalerogers.me<mailto:dale@dalerogers.me>
Web: dalerogers.me<https://dalerogers.me/>



From: Zheng Xu <zxu@gardenia-corp.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2022 at 10:43 AM
To: W3C EPUB 3 Community Group <public-epub3@w3.org>
Subject: Let's introduce ourselves
Hi folks

Some of you might have noticed that I started to ask new joined members to introduce themselves shortly.

Actually I think maybe it's also a good time to introduce ourselves to new members and each other as well since the CG started to be active during covid and I think a lot of us did not know each other and might have missed some of the PCG meetings (which is totally fine).

Ok, I will run a quick introduction of myself.

My name is Zheng Xu. I am located in Ottawa (Canada) and founder of Gardenia Corp (a digital reading system firm).
I joined PCG because I hope I could help with prototyping new reading experiences, test new concepts and most importantly - make them into a real product or spec to benefit digital book readers.


Cheers,
Zheng