Talking Through My Hat

Hugh McGuire is co-founder and Executive Director of the Rebus Foundation, the founder of Librivox, and the founder of Pressbooks, which helps publishers and authors easily create professionally designed print and ebook editions of their books. Before that, he worked in the world of electric power and alternative energy, but he's been trying to bring the world of the book together with the (better) world of the web since about 2005. He's particularly driven by the intersection of book publishing, open licensing, and distributed collaboration. In this episode, we talk about the idealism that led to (and fed from) his founding of Librivox, and how his experiences with PressBooks and Rebus differed from that initial example. Also, how for-profit and not-for-profit organisations differ, how his vision for the future of the web has developed, and the support mechanisms that a 'vision' person like Hugh needs to put in place to ensure that things actually get done!