ALEXANDRIA, Va.- Jan. 31, 2002--IDEAlliance and Allette Systems, producers of information technology events for more than 15 years, announce a new conference for North America. Open Publish 2002 is the premiere conference for those who work in all stages of the publishing process: from design to print to plate to web to e-book to wireless. Following the successful launch of the Open Publish Conference Series in Sydney, Australia in July 2001, Open Publish 2002 will take place at the Westin Hotel in Seattle, Washington, March 11-14, 2002. Featured opening keynotes presenters at this first-time event will be Paul Beyer, Group Product Manager, Professional Publishing for Adobe Systems Inc. and Kyle Quinn, Director of Information Technology, Boeing Customer Support, The Boeing Company. Also featured as a closing keynote presenter will be Mark Walter, Senior Analyst, Seybold Publications, a Key3Media company. These experts will share their ideas, strategies, and technologies that are helping to transform and shape the future of the publishing industry. Developed out of a need to understand all of today's converging and evolving processes in the publishing arena, Open Publish will explore the various media being used and how we can meet the growing needs of all media formats. "Common formats, languages, and systems will be critical to the future of creating, managing, and distributing information,'' says Nick Carr, Allette Systems, chair of Open Publish Australia. "Open Publish provides the forum for users and developers to put their heads together for practical solutions.'' This year's inaugural event in Australia exceeded expectations and as a result, the event is being brought to the United States. "IDEAlliance is the only major nonprofit association with membership spanning all segments involved in the printing and publishing industries. We are excited to bring this event to North America and further our membership participation in developing and coordinating viable standards and solutions for cross-media publishing'' states David Steinhardt, President, IDEAlliance. Open Publish is targeted to those who need to understand the latest developments in standards in the traditional and electronic publishing process. Areas of interest will include: standards for publishing, content syndication standards & technologies, cross-media publishing, digital rights management, color management issues, customized publishing technologies, e-book technologies and standards, PDF for printers, SGML/XML and publishing markup languages, as well as many other of today's most important issues.