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Q & A with George Baier IV, Media Industry Principal, Dropbox

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George Baier IV is Media Industry Principal at Dropbox, responsible for communicating the company’s unique perspective on how Dropbox can transform work and IT infrastructure for customers in the media vertical. George works closely with customers to deliver product features and solutions that meet specific media customer needs.

Westchester:  George, Westchester is excited about our partnership with Dropbox which has resulted in several positive developments including upgrades to our internal technology, and further enhancements on our Client Portal. Can you share with readers a little about your background in publishing, and how that led to your current role with Dropbox?

George: I’ve worked in the publishing and media industry for over a decade, across different leadership roles involving technology, content, and design. Prior to Dropbox, I served as a VP in IT at Macmillan, where I helped deploy tools that the organization’s teams and employees still use today. One of those tools was Dropbox, which consolidated the applications people organically brought to work, and gave teams the freedom to collaborate under a common platform. Seeing employees get excited about technology like Dropbox ultimately led me to the role I currently hold — Media Industry Principal — in which I help even more media customers deploy tools to help them do their best work. 

Westchester: What makes you so passionate about publishing in particular, and how does that inform the work Dropbox is doing with companies in the media sector?

George: Trade publishing continues to evolve but its business model still operates on the creation of content, and the consumption of that content by readers that are willing to pay for it. Unlike other forms of media, the straightforwardness of the relationship between publishers and audiences is something I’ve always found appealing. In this spirit, Dropbox helps creators move their process forward, and is designed for any author to use as a means to enable creativity at scale. It’s also part of the reason we continue integrating with tools that are industry-standard within publishing while seeing increased adoption overall.

Westchester: What is the potential Dropbox sees in the media space – specifically in publishing, during the next couple of years?

George: Teams and users in the publishing, media, and entertainment space created and saved more than a billion files in Dropbox last year. Every day those teams — especially in publishing — are under pressure to create more content in less time. As a result, there’s a growing need to manage complex projects at scale, as content often becomes trapped in silos and spread across teams, tools, and devices. We see an opportunity for Dropbox to continue serving as a home for content and the collaboration around it. 

In parallel, we see an opportunity to support authors through a platform that unifies documents, rich media, and the exchange of ideas. Those with talent and creativity should be enabled to tell stories with less friction, wherever and whenever inspiration may strike. I observed firsthand at Macmillan how unique tools like Dropbox can be additive to an author’s creative toolkit, which ultimately led me to Dropbox itself — I wanted closer involvement in helping other organizations benefit from our platform.

Westchester: We came to Dropbox with several situations we needed to resolve – including upgrading our own internal infrastructure, working with our operations teams around the globe, version control, handling large files, and the development of our Client Portal.  Walk us through the approach Dropbox took to evaluate our requirements and propose specific solutions.

George: We worked closely with several stakeholders at Westchester to offer guidance on a Team Folder system that met their needs and matched their investment in our product’s deployment, while ensuring no data loss occurred throughout the migration and deployment process. In general, our approach was to make a transition to Dropbox as seamless as possible, helping them maximize the full benefit of our platform to support large volumes of content and launch their Client Portal. This also involved listening to input from production, editorial staff, and ensuring we could follow through on the capabilities promised as part of our deployment. Interestingly, as we continued working together, we uncovered even more ways that Dropbox could support Westchester, whether it be handling large files, version control capabilities, or expanded Dropbox previews of file types like ePub. 

Westchester: Are the challenges that we brought to Dropbox consistent with what you see from other media firms? What other types of issues do you and your team help resolve for companies in the media industry?

George: Westchester is a great example of organizational vision and execution facilitating the full promise of Dropbox, from start to finish across migration and deployment phases — adoption, integration, workflow enablement and, ultimately, transformation. We weren’t surprised how quickly Westchester did it, given the strong leadership and cross-functional partnership, but it became clear that Dropbox was additive to Westchester’s holistic philosophy to technology, content management, and infrastructure migration. Our goal is help replicate the success of Westchester’s IT maturity model for other customers that want to mature their business through the capabilities of our collaboration platform. 

Westchester: Many publishers have their own in-house architecture or use other file transfer and archival systems. How does Dropbox differ in its ability to support the ways publishers handle projects with multiple stakeholders, versions, and large files?

George: Over the past few years, we’ve evolved from a place to store your files to a place where collaboration gets easier. We’ve released several new products and features like Paper, Smart Sync, Showcase, and Team Folders that have made it incredibly easy for publishers to adopt our platform, specific to projects involving multiple stakeholders, versions, and large files. These build upon our core product capabilities including best-in-class file sync/share, previews, and unlimited file size uploads. 

More specific to file transfer and archival systems, we see patterns of work that still rely on inefficient methods of content transfer — FTP, email, file attachments — across businesses today. The products and features I’ve mentioned, especially Showcase, can help modernize those legacy tools, the use of which can result in lost time and focus away from the content itself. In addition, Dropbox also integrates natively in digital asset management (DAM) tools like Widen, nicely complementing archival systems of record that store IP. This integration facilitates our larger platform strategy, in which Dropbox can work with tools and systems customers have already purchased, as opposed to creating another ‘walled garden’. 

Westchester: We’re excited about the new release of our Client Portal, because it uses the Dropbox API integrated with the DBX platform to provide clients with a secure, cloud-based file management, and communications hub for their projects (see video). How do you see our ability to extend the use of the Dropbox platform to clients as a change in the way publishers of all sizes are able to interact with their vendors?

George: The Client Portal is an impressive example of leveraging the power of DBX Platform to customize specific publishing workflows for both internal and external audiences. As more and more content is produced, it often goes through key stages of creation, feedback, and distribution — which can, unfortunately, lead to lost time searching for the latest versions, or “work about work” if not properly managed. Ultimately, we think our APIs can serve as the connective tissue for collaborative work among Dropbox, publishers, and vendors, facilitating a unified home for work across the entire content lifecycle.

Westchester: Tell us more about the new features that Dropbox has rolled out recently that would be of interest to our clients and publishing partners.  Are there additional developments on the horizon that you’re able to share with us?

George: Recently, Dropbox announced expanded partnerships with Canva, Final Draft, Frame.io, Getty Images, Shift.io, Marvel, and Widen to bridge content silos, in support of teams that continue creating content at an exponential rate. These integrations complement core Dropbox product capabilities like best-in-class file sync/share, no-download shared links to protect IP, expanded preview capabilities like EPUB, ZIP, RAR, and enhanced previews of PPT and PDF. Especially as rich media and visual assets become ingrained in traditional and digital publishing, we’re focused on giving authors and teams more flexibility to bring Dropbox closer to the tools they already use. In the future, we’ll be looking for more ways to expand our relationship with those seven partners, and other publishing-optimized tools like Scrivener, that integrate with our collaboration platform meaningfully.

Westchester: For publishers interested in exploring the solutions Dropbox can offer for their own particular challenges, what’s the best way to reach you?

George: You can always connect with me on LinkedIn (George Baier IV), or check out our Flow Together eBook if you’d like to learn more as well.  

Westchester: George, thank you for taking the time to share your insights about publishing and technology. For clients and prospective partners interested in learning more about our Client Portal, and our editorial and production services, please Contact Us.

by Kevin J. Gray, Managing Director, Westchester K-12 Publishing Services

We launched the K-12 division just over a year ago, debuting at the AAP Content in Context forum. Westchester K-12 was founded on the belief that educational publishers deserved a higher level of product development support than they were receiving, and I was confident this fledgling division could deliver on that promise.

Over the course of the past year, Westchester K-12 has grown from a group that highly leveraged the assets of our academic, journal, and trade group into a freestanding division that is a significant part of the company footprint. Our team of dedicated, experienced professionals built impressive careers with other successful publishers and vendors before joining Westchester K-12 to lead content development, art, design, and production in all subject areas for our clients. We’ve added processes and resources unique to the needs of educational publishers while retaining the best practices of our parent company.

Members of the Westchester K-12 team are located throughout the country, so last week, we brought our geographically dispersed workforce into our Dayton, Ohio K-12 headquarters for our first WPS K-12 Summit. The summit provided team members an open forum to review what’s working, while also determining how we sustain that model as we continue to grow. There were two full days of workshops with an emphasis on reflection and planning, examining who we work with, what seats we’ll need to fill, what processes need to be codified, and how we tend to the nascent culture we’ve established, ensuring its scalability and continued relevance. The meetings were collaborative and the team left energized, taking with them both a shared vision and concrete steps for implementation that will lead to continued success.

You may be wondering what it all means to you. I share news of this summit so that you have a better understanding of Westchester K-12’s commitment to the high quality work we create and to continuing the positive experiences of our customer base. As we grow, we expect to hold these summits regularly, allowing us to make conscious decisions about how we retain the core vision from which the organization sprung. I’m proud of what our division has accomplished in its first year and I look forward to what the next 12 months will bring.

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

Though it took a long time getting to the East Coast this year, I really enjoy the spring season because it’s a time of optimistic renewal that generates a positive attitude in almost everyone. As all of us at Westchester look ahead to the events that will be taking place over the next few months, I hope you’ll take a moment to catch up on a few of our highlights from the first quarter of 2018:

Westchester K-12 opens office in Dayton

The Westchester K-12 Publishing Services division began the year by completing their move into an office located in downtown Dayton, Ohio. As Kevin J. Gray, Managing Director, K-12 Publishing Services noted, “Dayton is a perfect location because of the deep well of educational publishing talent in this region and its proximity to the midwest offices of many of the publishing houses Westchester K-12 serves.”

Westchester and Learnosity form an alliance

In February, Westchester announced we’ve entered into an agreement with Learnosity, an assessment platform firm based in Ireland. Westchester K-12 Publishing Services is the first company to join Learnosity’s newly created Custom Content division, providing a beneficial resource for educational publishers who need content creation services along with a flexible assessment platform which can integrate with their current systems.

 

Hitting the road, Westchester style

The year got off to a busy start, as we headed out to sponsor and exhibit at conferences including ALPSP UP Redux, IPG Spring Conference, and PubTechConnect. If you’re wondering where Westchester will be this spring, keep reading…

 

Where in the world is Westchester going now?

Westchester recently attended the London Book Fair, and highlights from this trip can be found here. Other shows Westchester is sponsoring or attending in the coming weeks include NCTM (National Council for Teachers of Mathematics) at the end of April, in Washington, DC, the Council of Science Editors conference in New Orleans at the beginning of May, and the Society for Scholarly Publishing conference in Chicago later in May. Visit the Conferences and Trade Shows page on our website to see a complete listing, and subscribe to our blog so you can be up-to-date about all things Westchester!

 

Turning a new page

In March we bid a fond farewell to Lynn Taylor, who expertly led our Journals division over the last several years. Lynn decided to retire so she would have more time to enjoy with her family and friends. While Lynn will be missed at Westchester by colleagues and clients alike, the Journals division is now in the equally capable, and competent stewardship of Celeste Bilyard, Production Manager, Journals Services.

At Westchester, we welcome the opportunity to meet with clients and prospective partners throughout the United States, the UK, and beyond. If you’re interested in learning how we can help you more effectively manage editorial, design, and production requirements like we have done for your peers, please contact us to find out more.

Tim Davies, ALPSP UP Redux, Stationers’ Company – and more

By Tyler M. Carey – Chief Revenue Officer

Sign outside The British Library, site of the 2018 ALPSP UP Redux Conference

Westchester’s year is off to a great start, especially with the growth of our work in the UK market. As you may have seen a couple of weeks ago, we have brought on Tim Davies, formerly of The History Press and Oxford University Press, to help us grow our business in the UK.  Tim’s expertise running publishing companies, and his previous experience with American firms such as Baker & Taylor and Author Solutions has him uniquely positioned to help Westchester not just grow our client base, but also to identify any areas where we should grow. He is currently actively engaged in expanding our bench of copyeditors in Great Britain to help us stay ahead of the curve in our copyediting capacity as we grow.  And boy, are we glad Tim is doing that! At ALPSP’s UP Redux conference, there was a tremendous level of interest from the UK’s university presses about the work that Westchester does with many of their peers in the US, as well as more and more work with UK-based publishers.

Our friends at UCL Press hosted the recent ALPSP UP Redux, which was a well programmed conference for the university press and academic publishing spaces. The show had an international feel as a result of old friends from the States including Duke University Press and The MIT Press sending staff, giving the conference a set of contrasts to draw from for sessions and discussion. The US presses that came gave helpful, proven insights on where the US university press space has been and where it’s going; The MIT Press’ Amy Brand’s Keynote was particularly effective in exploring these areas. Timothy Wright (Edinburgh University Press), David Prosser (RLUK) and his panel, and Bloomsbury’s Richard Charkin also contributed quite a lot of perspective about where academic, university press, and library programmes have been headed. Andy Redman from Oxford also provided a very practical walkthrough of how a larger university press has embraced XML-first production to handle its large legal list, tying in nicely with the later panel on “buy vs. build” regarding tech platforms.

From the UK perspective, the use of Open Access as a mechanism to help grow presses rapidly was covered by UCL Press and other UK based presses, as well as JSTOR’s Frank Smith who added to the global perspective by talking about how Open Access has helped put scholarly content into the hands of scholars and consumers in emerging markets. There was some debate on this topic, but based on the successes of smaller start-up university presses in the UK – as well as those like UCL Press that have experienced growth fueled by open access – it was impossible to challenge the use of Open Access as a way to launch a program. The debate did continue though, as it pertains to the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s (HEFCE) position that all UK monographs need to become open access in the near future. You can read more about publishers’ concerns regarding HEFCE’s stance in this article by The Bookseller.

Another highlight for me was once again visiting Stationers’ Hall for the New Members evening at The Stationers’ Company. While I’m still very much a new recruit myself, it was great to speak with other publishing professionals who are interested in joining the Company, as well as seeing old friends who have been members for years. Of special focus during the evening’s open presentation was a focus on the Stationers’ Academy and other charitable programmes run by the Company. It was inspirational to hear members speak of the mentoring work they do to help children better navigate their education and early professional development. There is truly a commitment at the Company to help others, while also ensuring that publishing continues to remain a viable path for young graduates, keeping up the Company’s more than 600 years’ worth of work growing the industry.

During the remainder of my trip to London, Tim and I took the opportunity to meet with existing partners. We also took time to plan for the upcoming IPG Spring Conference (if you haven’t registered yet, mention Westchester when you do) and the London Book Fair.  Westchester will have stands at both conferences and we’re eager to talk about all the great work we are doing with publishers in the US, and increasingly in the UK and Europe.  Please contact us to arrange a meeting to discuss your publications program and ways we can help.

By Nicole Tomassi, Marketing and Conference Manager

In 2017, Westchester Publishing Services enjoyed several significant accomplishments, and we’re already hard at work to build upon those successful initiatives in 2018.

These achievements are possible thanks to the efforts of our employees, along with the trust placed in us by our valued clients. Together, they made 2017 a year we look back on with pride, and we hope 2018 will be an equally successful year for all.

Conferences, tradeshows, and events, oh my!

In 2017, Westchester significantly increased our sponsorship and attendance at conferences and events in publishing, including  Council of Science Editors, Association of American University Presses, Publishers Weekly Star Watch, and National Council of English Teachers among others.

Increasing the growth of our client list

Throughout the year, Westchester Publishing Services became the provider of editorial or composition services to several more publishers, including signing multi-year agreements with prestigious publishers  The MIT Press and Rutgers University Press.

Meanwhile across the pond…

We further expanded our presence in the UK during 2017, sponsoring and attending conferences including London Book Fair, The Bookseller Children’s Conference and FutureBook. We also became a member of the Independent Publishers Guild, which has been an advocate for independent publishers for 55 years.

Expanding into new markets 

In May, we launched our  K-12 Publishing Services division, led by Managing Director, Kevin Gray, who has an experienced and talented team to meet the demand for high-quality content development our clients require.

PW Digital Solutions in India Special Report

Each year Publishers Weekly looks at the developments and innovations in digital production in their Digital in India supplement. We received significant coverage in the July 3rd issue and are proud of being the only US employee-owned company profiled who has full ownership and hands-on management of our production facilities in India.

Strategic partnerships

Shortly before the  EdNET conference this past September, we announced our collaboration with the well-respected digital content provider FableVision Studios. More exciting developments are on the horizon with FableVision Studios as well as other companies in the ed-tech industry, so stay tuned!

Better by design

In November, Westchester Publishing Services brought  Mark DaGrossa on board as our Director of Creative Services. Mark’s extensive knowledge and resources allow us to significantly increase the design capabilities we are able to provide publishers for their titles.

An updated website and Client Portal

On the digital front, we gave our website a makeover, which made it more functional and user-friendly. We also unveiled a new version of our Client Portal

New faces and milestone anniversaries

Westchester Publishing Services has been growing steadily in recent years, with approximately one-quarter of our team joining the company since 2014. We are also fortunate to have employees who have been with us for 20 years or longer, including Roger Mahaffey and Sue Shaw, who each recently celebrated 25 years with Westchester. Bill Foley joined the company in 1976, making his impressive tenure second only to our Founder and CEO Dennis Pistone. Congratulations to all on your careers with Westchester!

Lending a helping hand

Being involved in our local community is important to us at Westchester Publishing Services. In addition to providing a financial donation supporting the efforts of the Connecticut Food Bank, some of our employees also gave of their time to help fill backpacks of food for distribution to area schoolchildren. These backpacks ensure families in need have access to nutritious food when school-based resources are not available. Feeding America has information on how you can support a foodbank in your local area.

A look ahead: 2018 conferences and trade shows

In 2018 Westchester Publishing Services will be involved in more industry events than ever before. We have made sponsorship and attendance commitments for several conferences and tradeshows in the US and the UK, including:

Visit our events page for a complete list, and contact us to set up a convenient time to talk! We look forward to learning more about how we can help you resolve your editorial, design, or production challenges in the year ahead, so you can fully focus on growing your company in 2018 and beyond.