W3C and IDPF: Better Together?

I am both an insider and an outsider. I now work for the “big five” trade publisher Hachette, but I started working with ebooks fifteen years ago, and have made thousands over the years. Of course, there were things about EPUB that were maddening, but that’s just the way it was.

I vaguely knew that actual humans made the specs, but I didn’t think much about it. But eventually the company I worked for joined the IDPF, and I joined a conference call or two out of curiosity. It was totally intimidating, and I understood nothing.