Candidate Statement - Ron Martinez

I’d like to volunteer to join the Readium Foundation board, and provide this background in support of that goal.

About Me

I’m the founder of Invention Arts, LLC and its services Aerbook.com and Aer.io Native Retail Network. My LinkedIn profile contains other information and references to written and software development work I’ve done over the last several decades.

In my role at Invention Arts, in addition to its book and publishing projects, I’ve undertaken large scale innovation projects for the World Economic Forum (e.g. Rethinking Personal Data for which Invention Arts laid the foundational premises of user data-as-asset class), and the Finnish government innovation agency, Finpro (their Suomi 3.0 project, envisioning opportunities for the Finnish economy post-Nokia, undertaken in 2009), and others.

Prior to Invention Arts and Aerbook I served for four years as global Vice President, Intellectual Property Innovation at Yahoo!, where I drove and managed the development of hundreds of patent applications and resulting product innovations,. My title also included Content IP Strategy and Operations. In this capacity, for example, my team and I developed a global Rights Engine that made rights for the disparate forms of content in the Yahoo! ecosystem available in machine readable form, greatly speeding deployment of new properties. I as also in and developed expertise in DRM systems, and in particular successfully advocated, along with operational leads, for loosening of complex controls in our Music group. The experience and relationships I have in the DRM/intellectual property world can, I believe, be particularly helpful in projects involving DRM.

I’ve been awarded approximately fifty patents covering a range of increasingly interconnected fields that includes media, mobile, social, advertising, and commerce. These days, I have stepped back from patenting new inventions in order to more fully support unfettered experimentation in the cultural marketplace. But I do have a lot of expertise and relationships in patents that can potentially contribute to the mission.

Over the years, have written, designed, or coded interactive fiction, graphic adventures, realtime massively multiplayer games, eCommerce and payment systems, pathway paperbacks for young readers, and educational software. Though I don’t code so much anymore, designing and building a range of consumer software products now serves me well in seeing what can be done, what should be done, and what should instead be assigned to the “Project for a rainy lifetime” file.

Support for Readium

Support for Readium, in the context of the activities above, has been a natural and sensible act. We are closely aligned with the mission, and moreover fully support (in software as well as in words), the creation of rich media, extended functionality on the page and within the packaged book.

Our development has supported and I believe embodies the organization’s mission. There is Readium.js in wide release now within Aerbook services, linked to by some of the most influential publishers and authors in the world. At the same time, we understand that no change in marketplace dynamics can be accomplished overnight, and that all players have a right to bring their best to the table, no matter how proprietary that best may be. Nonetheless, a distributed, decentralized marketplace is increasingly understood as an economic, business necessity by publishers and authors. I believe that it is self-evidently a cultural necessity, as well, and happy to discuss that at length.

The work of the Readium Foundation is, well, foundational in achieving this goal. I would appreciate the opportunity to serve in any capacity in the organization where I can be of service.

Current Work

My companies, Aerbook and Aer.io Retail Network are dedicated to realizing a diverse and decentralized cultural marketplace, particularly focused on books. As someone who is primarily self-taught and whose life was changed by a bookmobile, I’m personally dedicated to this mission.

As I’ve written elsewhere, Aerbook makes it easy to share, preview, and sell books within any mobile/social stream or app, or anywhere else on the web. A link to an Aerbook shared on a social network expands to the “native post” format of that network, making it display richly in the social stream where the potential reader has found it.

Tapping on a link further expands the Aerbook into a browser-based reflowable (or fixed layout) ebook preview that’s equipped with marketing, commerce, and social sharing capabilities. The Aerbook has been specifically designed as a fully responsive (at least for reflow) experience for mobile, tablet, or desktop, and has made use of an early version of Readium.js , heavily modified to support our particular commerce and social requirements.

Aer.io Retail Network, now in late Beta, extends the Aerbook core functionality to make it possible for any individual, company, or organization to create and curate a bookstore that can be dropped on any site with a line of code. It can be used by indie brick and mortar retailers, individuals who’d like a “personal bookstore,” and media properties who’d like to offer books to their self-selected, interest-identified audiences.

Aer.io can and will also be used by organizations, schools, and others to generate revenue from books that can be cycled back into the organization’s mission, whether that is library collection development, or supporting literacy or other programs. We wee the book as an element, the payload, really, of a virtuous economic circle, rather than simply a commodity to be sold at rock bottom prices.

Recent Press and Writing

Futureboook: Aerbook’s ‘native commerce’ for publishing

Publishing Perspectives: Aer.io from Aerbook Lets You Curate Your Own Online Bookstore

Article published in August that set forth a lot of the principles now live in Aer.io. HarperCollins Press Release