Ex Ordo, the online events platform built for scholarly and professional societies, is pleased to announce that it has appointed Paul Peters as Non-Executive Board Chair. Having previously led the Open Access publisher Hindawi, Peters brings his vast experience in scholarly publishing, the development of online tools and services to support scholarly researchers, as well as innovative partnership models aimed at collaborating with scholarly societies and other non-profit organisations.
Peters spent 16 years at Hindawi, initially leading the company’s business development and strategy functions before becoming CEO in 2015. During his time as CEO, Peters established Hindawi’s teams in the UK and Romania as leaders in both Open Access publishing and Open Source technology development, eventually leading up to Wiley’s acquisition of Hindawi in 2020. Peters has also served in a number of non-executive leadership roles, including as a Founding Board Member and President of the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association, the Board Chair for CrossRef, and a founding Board Member for the OA Switchboard.
Ex Ordo was founded in 2011 when student Paul Killoran was tasked with helping his supervisor organise an academic conference. Unable to find any suitable software to manage the abstract submission and review, he coded his own solution. As of today, Ex Ordo works in close partnership with many leading societies to provide a seamless and delightful conference experience by supporting the entire conference lifecycle, from the initial calls for papers and manuscript submission, to hosting dynamic events for large numbers of participants, both in person and online.
Over the last two years, the way learned societies engage with their communities has changed dramatically, with many events moving to an online or hybrid format. Ex Ordo has risen to the challenges faced by academic event organisers, and is now geared up to develop new technology solutions to support societies as we move into a new era of scholarly events in the years ahead.
Over the past few months, Ex Ordo has strengthened its product development team through the appointment of Giuliano Maciocci as Chief Product Officer and Nick Duffield as Lead UX Designer, both of whom bring extensive experience in developing innovative solutions for scholarly researchers from their previous roles at the Open Access publisher eLife Sciences.
Killoran, founder and CEO of Ex Ordo, remarked that, “It is a great pleasure to welcome Paul Peters to our growing team. We are exceedingly proud of our achievements at Ex Ordo. And I am sure Paul’s experience and leadership will help us continue with our mission to help scholarly and professional societies engage with the communities they serve, by providing a delightful conference experience both in person and online.”
Peters expressed his enthusiasm about joining Ex Ordo’s team by saying, “This is a really exciting time for scholarly conferences, with the opportunity to rethink the technology that supports these events and develop more dynamic formats to support academic communities. I was fortunate to begin my career in scholarly publishing in the early days of Open Access and worked closely with a passionate group of publishers, librarians, and researchers to advance the way scholarly research is published. I now look forward to supporting Ex Ordo’s team as they help to connect scholarly communities by delivering inspiring events in a variety of new formats.”