Digital Publishing Company

We come from the publishing and technology industry. Meet the key members of the team.

Graham Duffill
A journalist by training and worked for The Daily Mail, The Times, where he ran the news department from 1994–97, and The Sunday Times, where he still runs the news desk on a Saturday evening for old time’s sake. Graham moved into online in 1997 when he set up his first business which he sold in 2000, was editor of The Sunday Times online and publisher of a group of travel price comparison sites before setting up The Digital Publishing Company in 2004.

Graham researched the providers of digital edition technology and decided Olive Software offered the best. “We approached Olive from a customer’s perspective and we remain 100% customer-focussed,” Graham says. “We are not here to sell you a technology, we are here to help you achieve your goals, to satisfy your readers and your business goals.We are very lucky that Olive provides a great software and gives us fantastic support.”

Abie Helberg
As our Director of Technology, Abie provides answers to all of The Digital Publishing Company’s customer’s requirements that necessitate development around Olive Software or integration with the software. “Probably 90% of our customers are doing only ‘flat-production’ in Olive—ie, taking a print publication and producing a facsimile digital edition,” says Abie. “These are also usually free-to-air with no restrictions on who can view them. Beyond making sure that our hosting environment is secure, backed-up, the servers are optimised for speed and reliability–ensuring maximum uptime—and that publications are integrated into the statistical analysis service, giving clients information on how their publications are being used, I don’t need to get involved with these.

“It’s the other 10% where I play an active role: securing publications so that readers are authenticated in some way; building reporting mechanisms and interfaces for clients to manage their own controls on publications; integrating new features like shopping carts; creating different XML outputs from the publications including things like RSS feeds. “Increasingly we are seeing publishers be more creative with digital editions and realising that the flat digital edition is just the starting point and one of many ways of delivering digital content.”

Abie is a Microsoft certified professional specialising in application development and databases. He has been involved in the IT industry for more than 8 years, initially as a networking and support technician but more recently applying his skills to analysing, designing, developing, and hosting enterprise level applications and websites. He currently holds a diploma in datametry at the University of South Africa, Pretoria, and is constantly adding further modules to his repertoire.

Andrew Bell
Heads the production team and is the main day-to-day contact with most of Digital Publishing Company’s clients. “My job is to keep the wheels turning, make sure we deliver to our client‘s deadlines and keep everybody happy,” explained Andrew. “This is a service industry and the customer always comes first.” Andrew knows what that means for most publishers as he came to the Digital Publishing Company from The Lancet (Reed Elsevier) where, as Senior Production Editor, he was responsible for ensuring quality and timely delivery of this renowned weekly medical journal. In 2006, the team was honoured at the ALPSP/Charlesworth Awards to Learned Journals (Design Category) and, in 2007, won a Business Magazines Award as Publishing Production Team of the Year at the Quality in Print Media Awards.

Andrew’s background is varied. He gained a degree in zoology at the University of Manchester and, following post-graduate research in the history of medicine, stumbled into publishing initially as a researcher. He went on to sell advertising space, write and edit B2B newsletters and, in 1997, was asked to set up a DTP-based production department from scratch. “The important thing for most of our customers is that I know exactly what is going on from their perspective. I have spent over 10 years in their shoes and that, I hope, means that I can make 100% certain we give them the service that they are expecting.”

Jarek Tomaszewski
The Digital Publishing Company’s first production operative and, many thousands of publications later, his expertise in creating digital editions is probably unsurpassed outside of Olive Software. Jarek explains: “Production is rarely a straightforward process, there is usually a little problem to solve somewhere. We can change quite a lot of variables in the publication when we are setting it up, altering compression for instance to optimise the best download speed and picture resolution. Embedding rich media like flash animation, movies and audio is quite a fiddly and technical process. Sometimes I can spend hours trying to get one movie optimised. Many of our clients first ask if they can buy software and do production themselves. They can, of course, but I remember the first six months were pure problem solving and after doing this all day, nearly every day, I am still learning a lot of new tricks"

Jarek comes from small village in Poland called Popowo Koscielne. He has diplomas in IT engineering and financial accountancy and has been studying music and audio production for many years. “Being into music helps a lot when it comes to publishing online, as there are many sound and media related problems that I need to solve every day. Rich media has opened an enormous communication channel with the end-user, but at the same time demands a lot from people engaged in its realisation—from technical to artistic skills that need to be well coordinated. As music writer I can assure you that you will get the most of your rich media on the audio/music level.”