Community Building in the Age of Facebook

We’re very proud of this wonderful first conference, which took place on December 5-6, 2007.

---

What follows is the original information about the conference: The goal of Web Community Forum Seattle 2007 is to discuss and propose some tentative best practices for community building for business, political campaigns, marketing, and other professional efforts using Facebook and the Facebook platform.

Dates

The 2007 Web Community Forum will take place in Seattle, WA on December 5-6, 2007.

Schedule

Jeremiah Owyang will keynote at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, December 5th. The rest of the schedule can be found here.

Conference Co-Chairs: Steve Broback & Teresa Valdez Klein

Teresa Valdez Klein and Steve Broback do their best to look serious.

Steve Broback and Teresa Valdez Klein are the dynamic duo behind the first Web Community Forum and work together at the Parnassus Group as social media consultants. They have way too much fun at work.

Speakers

Jeremiah Owyang is a well known web strategy and media expert and is sought out by both Fortune 1000 and startup companies. He is currently Senior Analyst at Forrester Research focused on Social Computing. In this role he covers social networks, and broke news about Facebook’s recent Social Ads product. He also writes a daily blog Web Strategy by Jeremiah and speaks at Technology, PR, and Marketing conferences about web and media strategy.

Before Forrester, Jeremiah’s was responsible for the corporate evangelism at PodTech.net, and previously was leading the strategy and development of corporate web programs at Hitachi Data Systems, Exodus Communications, Cable and Wireless, and World Savings (now Wachovia). Jeremiah Owyang holds a Bachelors in in Marketing from San Francisco State University.

Here is Jeremiah’s blog post about keynoting this December.

Nick O’Neill is the creator of AllFacebook.com, owner of Social Interactive LLC and co-founder of the Web Community Forum. A serial entrepreneur at heart, Nick has spent the past 8 years developing creative solutions for individuals on the web. Working from within agencies and startups, he has gained significant experience working with clients and overcoming extreme challenges.

Being highly active in the web and entrepreneurial communities, locally and nationally, Nick helped to bring the first Tech Cocktail to Washington, D.C. With the opening of the Facebook platform, Nick saw a huge opportunity and has become fully dedicated to covering the social networking phenomenon and developing creative applications for clients looking to gain exposure. Here’s an NPR interview with Nick from August 27, 2007.

Rodney Rumford has over 20 years experience in the technology industry. He is a true visionary and has authored books on New Media & Business Blogging. His websites have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0 and numerous Associated Press & Reuters articles. His sites have also been featured in the acclaimed “For Dummies” series of books. He has held senior level management positions in Fortune 100 companies and startups in the areas of Engineering, Project Management and Business Development.

He also sits on the board of several technology companies Rodney has been involved with the Facebook f8 platform since it’s launch. His company provides Business, Strategy and Technology Consulting for leveraging the Facebook Social Operating System. He is the Editor & Publisher of www.FaceReviews.com which rates & reviews Facebook applications, as well as provide news and strategy insights. He is the Founder & CEO of a new media strategy, technology & consulting practice for the past 4 years that has helped many Fortune 100 clients as well as hundreds of small businesses. He currently resides in Solana Beach, CA

Connie Bensen currently serves as Community Manager for ACDSee. In this role, she is the “voice of the customer,” maintaining a constant dialog with photographers and memory keepers to ensure that the company’s products and services are directly in line with the needs of the people who use them. This conversation is fostered through regular engagement in community events, as well as her enthusiastic participation in online social networks. She also shares her passion, ideas and discoveries related to digital scrapbooking and photography through the ACDSee blog. Bensen’s immersion in social media has earned her a high-profile presence in national blog and editorial communities.

Her personal blog is a valued source of reflection upon online social community building, as well as the ways in which businesses can best leverage the latest Web 2.0 opportunities. Her writing has been published in national publications and on multiple websites. She is also the editor of Personal Branding Magazine. Prior to joining ACD Systems, Bensen spent 7 years on the brick and mortar side of community building - public library administration and marketing. Currently in what she describes as her “third career,” her other past professional experiences have been as diverse as U.S. Customs Inspector and high school teacher. She holds Bachelor of Science Degrees in both Math and Physical Sciences, and a Bachelor of Education in Spanish.

Dave McClure has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over fifteen years as a software developer, entrepreneur, startup advisor, angel investor, blogger, and internet marketing nerd. He is currently an advisor or investor for Mint Software, Spock Networks, Mashery, Simply Hired, TeachStreet, Oortle, CrazyEgg, Eventvue, AppFuel, HealthUnity, and Canopy Financial.

Dave is the conference chair for Graphing Social Patterns, and a co-chair for O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo. He is also a guest lecturer at Stanford University for a new course on building Facebook Apps. Dave is a board member for microfinance accelerator Unitus, advisor to microfinance lender Kiva.org, and a co-founder of the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network.

Adam Loving is a software developer and entrepreneur with over a decade of professional expertise. He started young, with a contribution to the “Good Ideas” column of Lotus magazine while in Middle School. Adam has worked with both Fortune 500 companies - like Microsoft and Nordstrom - and small startups like HelpShare and MOD Systems.

A frequent experimenter with social Web sites, Adam leapt at the opportunity to experiment on the Facebook platform. He calls it “developing in front of a live audience”. Having developed five Facebook apps, his favorites are Zuckerbucks and 2True. Zuckerbucks is a virtual currency used by over 12,000 people. 2True is an ice breaker quiz with over 20,000 community contributed personal facts.

Brian Solis is Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning PR agency in Silicon Valley. Solis blogs at PR2.0, bub.blicio.us, and regularly contributes PR and tech commentary to industry trades. Solis is co-founder of the Social Media Club, is an original member of the Media 2.0 Workgroup, and also is a contributor to the Social Media Collective.

In concert with Geoff Livingston, Solis is released “Now is Gone” a new book that helps businesses learn how to engage in Social Media.

Solis has been actively writing about new PR since the mid 90s to discuss how the Web was redefining the communications industry – he also coined PR 2.0. Solis is considered an expert in traditional PR, media relations, and Social Media. He has dedicated his free time to helping PR professionals adapt to the new fusion of PR, Web marketing, and community relations. PR 2.0 is a top 10,000 Technorati blog and is ranked in the Ad Age Power 150 index of leading marketing bloggers.

Jake McKee is an evangelist for online and offline community building, social media, and customer-company interaction. He has been working with online communities, fan groups, and consumer groups since the early days of the Internet, and has a rich background in Web development, community management, business strategy, and product development.

Jake is the Principal at Ant’s Eye View, a Dallas-based social media and customer engagement consultancy. In a past life, Jake was the Global Community Relations Specialist for the LEGO Company, where he spent five years on thefront lines of customer-company interaction.

Baratunde Thurston is a comedian, author and vigilante pundit who has spent the past eight years moonlighting as a strategy consultant focused on new forms of media and communication. He blogs for several sites including Jack & Jill Politics and Huffington Post, and the top referrer to baratunde.com (after Google) is Twitter. He graduated from Harvard University in 1999 and thus, was one of the original users of The Facebook… when it was in paper and offered much more limited opportunities for poking.

With over 1,100 Facebook “friends,” Baratunde is probably considered a “whale” and has been using the site as an extension of his web presence. When the company broke his ability to communicate with fans, he blogged a scathing “Facebook Follies” critique which fueled a debate between danah boyd and Robert Scoble. Baratunde recently joined The Onion as web editor, but be assured that the views he expresses represent his own opinions and not the opinions of America’s Finest News Source.

Halley Suitt, the founder of Zindicate, a videoblogging start-up, served previously as the CEO of Top Ten Sources from 2005 – 2006. Top Ten was purchased by MeeVee TV in 2007. She is a pioneer in the blogging world, having written her weblog Halley’s Comment, since 2002.

She wrote the first Harvard Business Review case study on blogging in September 2004, called “A Blogger in Their Midst” exploring the assets and liabilities of having a blogger in your company.
She has appeared on Oprah.

Jeremy Pepper is responsible for traditional and social media programs, as well as community outreach and marketing. Jeremy has a decade’s worth of experience in high-technology, consumer technology and consumer public relations, and is one of the world’s earliest and well-known PR bloggers and social media strategists. His POP! PR Jots is one of the most popular PR blogs, writing on topics affecting the marketing and public relations industries.

Prior to The Point, Jeremy worked at Weber Shandwick with clients across the board on the development of social media campaigns and strategies; such companies included Cisco, BEA Systems, General Motors, MasterCard International, Verizon Wireless and VeriSign.

Prior to joining Weber Shandwick, Jeremy founded POP! Public Relations in Scottsdale, AZ, worked in-house as Public Relations Manager at Ofoto, and at Shandwick International on the Eastman Kodak and Compaq teams. Jeremy’s past public relations campaigns have won the IPRA/United Nations Grand Award for outstanding achievement, the IPRA Golden Award and two Silver Anvil Awards of Excellence.

Tris Hussey is the editor for blognation Canada, Technical Partner for One By One Media, and social media consultant. He was one of Canada’s first professional bloggers and has been blogging for nearly four years including contributions to Business Blog Consulting and the b5media network.

Tris covers and consults on Web 2.0, Social Media, and tech that makes him say “whoa!” A budding photographer, Tris often seen with a camera in his face when he isn’t planted in front of his laptop.

His blogs include blognation Canada and A View from the Isle.

Jason Beckerman is Founder and CEO of Teach The People, and also founder and consultant to Dank Apps, makers of the Facebook application The Lotto. Since the age of 16, he has been heavily involved with application development and hosted internet applications, and has a deep knowledge of Web 2.0 and ways to use the social graph to execute complex business models. Jason has worked for various financial institutions and startups throughout his career including Merrill Lynch, Paytrust, Island ECN, Instinet, Albridge Solutions, Siebel, and Salesforce.com. In his time at Salesforce.com, Jason managed the release process for the largest on-demand CRM roll out in the history of SAAS. Jason holds a BS in Entrepreneurship and Information Systems from Quinnipiac University and a Masters in Organizational Leadership from Gonzaga University.

http://teachthepeople.wordpress.com
http://www.dankapps.com
http://apps.facebook.com/thelotto
http://apps.facebook.com/besanta - launching nov 23
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=28204724

Lee Lorenzen is a successful entrepreneur with more than 26 years of technology & investing experience. He is currently President, CEO of Altura Ventures. Prior to Altura Ventures he founded SHOP.COM and as CEO/Chairman led the company to becoming one of the largest shopping sites on the web. Lorenzen’s first start-up was Ventura Software where he co-wrote Ventura Publisher, later licensed to Xerox. Lorenzen founded Altura Software in 1990 and created the Mac2Win software which was used to port Mac applications to Windows.

Altura has generated over $15M in revenue, and reached Softletter’s Top 100 list. Lorenzen also founded Fractal Design Corporation, which went public in 1995 before being acquired by Corel; and he co-founded PGSoft which was sold to Novell. Lorenzen has also worked at Xerox and Digital Research. Lorenzen graduated valedictorian from SMU with a BS in Computer Science and holds on patent as co-inventor of the universal shopping cart used by SHOP.COM.

Todd Sawicki is a geek from Seattle and with close to 15 years of experience with online startups, media companies and everything in between. With senior management experience with early stage startups to emerging venture backed companies, Todd survived the dot com boom to participate in the rise of web 2.0 while hopefully learning a thing or two about online marketing along the way.

Currently as VP Marketing for Lookery, he’s helping build and launch the first demographic marketing service that goes beyond the walls of existing social networks. Todd also runs Sawickipedia - his marketing consultancy and blog - where he works with innovative startups including Loomia, Nirvanix, blist, Ripl and JamGlue. Previously, Todd has led marketing at Zango, Spock, and Loudeye. Todd also co-founded SimplyTV.net, an early player in online video. Prior to co-founding SimplyTV, Todd worked at the Disney Channel. Todd is currently on the advisory boards of Others Online and Facebar.

Mónica Guzmán is the Seattle P-I’s first online reporter and the main contributor to its new online project, the Big Blog.

Mónica joined the P-I in January as a Hearst Newspapers Fellow, covering the culture of technology in a weekly column and a blog, Net Native.

A product of her wired generation, she obsesses over her Facebook profile and can’t really remember what life was like before e-mail and Instant Messenger. She has dual citizenship with her native México and calls it a good afternoon when she can tinker with her piano and her sleek white Ibanez guitar. She can’t cook, but she’s trying. A huge film fan, Mónica will often cry at movies people have no business crying in and has been known to get moody if she doesn’t see at least one movie in a theater every week.

Mónica has worked previously at the Houston Chronicle, the Midland Daily News in Michigan and Foster’s Daily Democrat in New Hampshire, covering police and breaking news, higher education and arts and entertainment.

She got into journalism after she designed and ran her own movie review site in high school and became her college paper’s movie critic. She still occasionally reviews flicks on a freelance basis.

Mónica holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

Justin Smith is the Product Manager at Watercooler, a developer of sports and television entertainment Facebook applications.

Millions of Facebook members have joined Watercooler’s applications since the Platform launched.

Justin is also the editor of InsideFacebook, the first Facebook-focused blog, covering the business of Facebook and the Facebook Platform.

Justin has a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University.

Christian Anderson is director of corporate communication for Jobster, Inc.  In his role, he is responsible for PR and marketing. Dubbed the career network for the digital generation, Jobster has the largest careers application on Facebook.  Since launching its Facebook application, Jobster has connected hundreds of thousands of Facebook users with recruiters at the companies they’d like to work for.

Christian is proud to be called a web and gadget geek. He is an insatiable blog reader and occasional blog contributor.  Facebook on Blackberry is by far and away his favorite app.  Prior to Jobster, Christian was with PR firm Waggener Edstrom Worldwide where he led traditional and new media campaigns – helping clients tell their stories and build communities.

While Christian was working for Jefferson County Schools in Colorado helping the school district leverage technology to build and strengthen communities, he was a key member of an award-winning communications team that managed all district communications and facilitated numerous, high visibility events in the wake of the tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

Teresa Valdez Klein is a twenty-something social media professional and Web geek. She’s been blogging since 2003 at TeresaCentric where she rants about politics, religion and other inflammatory topics. Teresa first joined Facebook in January 2006 after her girlfriends from college got mad at her for not keeping in touch. There has not been a day since when she has not logged in at least once.

She has worked for Parnassus Ventures — the team behind Web Community Forum — since the fall of 2005. She cut her chops in editorial development for technology conferences with the 2005 and 2006 Blog Business Summit conferences. She’s eager to tackle the exciting topic of Facebook as a community building tool. Teresa graduated from Pomona College with a B.A. in Psychology in 2005. She has been quoted in The New York Times, Fast Company, Business Week, and The San Francisco Chronicle. She thinks that’s pretty cool for a punk kid.

Jason Prestonis a professional blogger, blog consultant, and internet handyman. He also spends his spare time blogging at his own blog, which should tell you something about his personal life. No, really, if you read his personal blog you’ll find out more about him.

At Parnassus Group, Jason has worked on a variety of web-based community management and marketing initiatives, from learning the ins and outs of Facebook to growing blog readership and promoting the Blog Business Summit and Web Community Forum.

Jason graduated from Occidental College in May 2007 with a major in Diplomacy and World Affairs (DWA), which is a grab-bag of economics, business, politics, and international relations. He’s worked on the Blog Business Summit team since 2005, and has kept a blog in some form or another since 2001. Although he hasn’t yet been quoted in all those fancy-shmancy publications like Teresa, he HAS been quoted. Somewhere. For real.

Unconference Sessions

The conference schedule features three unconference sessions. The first session will be determined by attendees via online session proposals and voting. The voting mechanism is live and available to registered attendees only.

The second and third sessions will be determined by attendee voting at the conference. We’ll do this second round of voting Seattle Mind Camp style by posting pieces of paper with the session ideas on the wall.

Each attendee will have one sticker to affix to his/her favorite proposed session. All the sessions that were proposed online and did not get the first-day slot will be automatically entered into this second round of voting.

Venue

Location: The Bell Harbor International Conference Center Date: December 5-6, 2007

Hotel: Both the Edgewater and the Mariott Hotel are fantastic places to stay, adjacent to and across the street from Bell Harbor Conference Center:

Edgewater Hotel
Adjacent to Bell Harbor
edgewaterhotel.com
800.624.0670

Marriott Seattle Waterfront
Across the street from Bell Harbor
seattlewaterfrontmarriott.com
206.443.5000

Pricing

Registration for both action-packed days costs $490.

Contact:

Our list of company contact names, numbers and e-mail addresses can be found here.

Welcome to our community! If you like what you see, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed!