Rick Smolan Elected to Democrasoft Board
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New York and Sausalito-based entrepreneur, publisher and photographer Rick Smolan has been elected to the Democrasoft Board of Directors, bringing the number of directors to five.
Smolan, who has owned shares of the company for nearly ten years, is best known as the creator of the “Day in the Life” series of coffee table books. His corporation, Against All Odds Productions, Inc., specializes in the design and execution of large-scale global projects that combine compelling storytelling with state-of-the-art technology. Many of his books have been New York Times best-sellers and have been featured on the covers of Time, Newsweek, Fortune and U.S. News and World Report. Today more than five million of his books adorn coffee tables around the world; titles include America at Home, UK at Home, 24 Hours in Cyberspace, The Power to Heal, Passage to Vietnam, One Digital Day, From Alice to Ocean and the award-winning Blue Planet Run. Fortune Magazine selected Against All Odds as “One of the 25 Coolest Companies in America.”
Smolan has been a pioneer in the world of global crowd-sourced projects and employing practical new uses of technology, including orchestrating the Internet’s largest real time international poll (The Planet Project), the first commercialization of custom cover technology (America 24/7), creating the first book to include an award winning interactive CD-ROM (From Alice to Ocean) and producing the first large-scale solely custom published coffee table book (The Obama Time Capsule).
Because all of his projects have been made possible through collaboration with corporate sponsors, Smolan is extremely familiar with the benefits of sponsor funding, one of the monetization options being employed with Democrasoft’s Collaborize Classroom product.
“Our schools and our teachers are being challenged by budget constraints every day,” Smolan said. “I’m very excited to be working with Democrasoft to bring its Collaborize Classroom online learning platform to hundreds of thousands of kids across the country, in part through the use of Democrasoft’s unique sponsorship model.” A frequent guest on television programs including The Today Show, Martha Stewart, Good Morning America and similar programs, Smolan has recruited sponsorships from Fortune 500 companies including Apple, Google, Facebook, Intel, Hewlett Packard, eBay, IKEA, Kodak, Federal Express and Adobe.
“Rick will bring a wonderful new dimension to our Board,” CEO Richard Lang noted. “He knows how to create practical uses for new technologies and he knows how to make a profit — both very helpful traits. We are very excited that he will be active in helping to enhance our shareholder value by making our Collaborize products successful.”
To see the official Rick Smolan Press Release on Market Wire, please visit http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Rick-Smolan-Elected-to-Democrasoft-Board-1382067.html.
