(July 8, 2003) IDEAlliance (International Digital Enterprise Alliance) has named Dianne Kennedy Vice President for Publishing Technologies and Membership. Kennedy, a leader in publishing technologies and a long-time IDEAlliance member, will head the IDEAlliance Publishing Technologies group. In this role, Kennedy will provide project management to IDEAlliance standards Working Groups, enhance the association's collaborative tools to support standards development and communications, launch new online services to members and the industry, and extend new programs to better link advances in information technologies with print media. In addition to naming Kennedy to this new position, IDEAlliance also announced that Vice President Marion Elledge will take the role of Vice President for Information Technology Alliances and Conferences. "Today, the need for standards and best practices in the publishing industry is greater than ever as technology advances, media continues to converge and evolve, and economic pressures require publishers to develop new efficiencies" said Kennedy. "I feel that IDEAlliance is positioned to provide a menu of innovative member services to meet the evolving needs of our membership." Dianne Kennedy has a long history in publishing, beginning with her experience as an editor/writer for the textbook division of Doubleday. She began working with IDEAlliance (then the Graphic Communications Association) in 1984, when she was one of the first tutorial instructors for their SGML tutorial series. In 1992, she founded her own consultancy and since then has focused on providing publishing systems design services. Kennedy was employed as Chief Technical Consultant for IDEAlliance in 1996, served as Editor of the XMLFiles, conference chair for the XML 1998-2000 Conferences, and is a current co-chair of the IDEAlliance Open Publish Conference series. David Steinhardt, President and CEO of IDEAlliance, said "IDEAlliance seeks to be the industry leader in publishing technologies. Dianne Kennedy, with her wealth of experience and expertise, will advance our objective to meet the needs of the publishing industry. We believe that this step heralds a renewed emphasis on the part of IDEAlliance to aggressively provide new member services by leveraging the latest online technologies."