Reflections: EPUB Summit 2017

The second EPUB Summit, held in Brussels March 9-10, showcased the latest technological developments. With more than 150 attendees from different countries, it has become the not-to-miss European gathering for the Digital Publishing industry.

The EPUB Summit is organized by EDRLab to promote EPUB, the publishing standard used all around the world. EPUB is in a good position to become the format of choice for online and offline publications.

Interoperability was the central theme: using EPUB as a publishing format to let readers choose how they want to read (choice of device) to enjoy the best reading experience.

Following the recent combination of the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), work is now starting at the W3C. The EPUB 3 Community Group under W3C is open to all interested parties.

EPUB for Education, the EPUB 3 profile dedicated to the Education sector,  was also part of the discussion. Several interesting proposals were made, advocating a close collaboration between the W3C and a relaunched “EDUPUB Alliance” around a new profile based on EPUB 3.1. Laurent Le Meur has posted a comprehensive summary of the EPUB Summit 2017 to the EDRLab website.