ConvergeSouth Presenters
Chris Rabb - Keynote
Chris Rabb is a consultant, social commentator, and "netroots" activist. Read more about Chris Rabb's ConvergeSouth keynote address here.
He has been covered by or featured on C-SPAN, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, various nationally syndicated radio shows on NPR, Air America Radio and XM Radio, having also been an on-air guest on radio shows hosted by Tavis Smiley, Michael Eric Dyson, Bev Smith, and Al Sharpton. A former columnist at the Yale Daily News, Mr. Rabb was also a stand-up comedian while in college and is a trained improvisational comedy performer and group facilitator. He has spoken at conferences, universities, corporations and other venues across the U.S., Europe and Brazil.
Presently, he is a principal with Visceral Ventures LLC, a consultancy focusing on organizational effectiveness and new media strategy. His professional specialties center on effective means of targeting and engaging various constituencies, including: voters, consumers, and other groups within predominantly African-American communities. Read more at Afro-Netizen.
Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble is an influential video podcast pioneer and blogger following the tech industry. Read him at Scobleizer.com.
Before fame struck, Robert Scoble was a marketing executive hired by Microsoft to blog about their products--a position not likely to endear him to an Internet audience. But his unique style quickly won him fans. In June 2006, he left Microsoft; today, his blog, Scobleizer, and his video blog, ScobleShow, are hugely popular. Scoble worked as the vice president of media development at startup PodTech.net, and is the co-author of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.
Pam Spaulding - panelist
Pam Spaulding is the editor and publisher of Pam's House Blend, honored as "Best LGBT Blog" in the 2005 and 2006 Weblog Awards. The Blend, which averages 120,000 visitors a month, was launched in July 2004 as a personal response to the anti-gay state of the political landscape.
A regular contributor to the progressive blog Pandagon.net, Pam has also guest posted/contributed to Americablog, Firedoglake, The Rude Pundit, OurChart.com, The Bilerico Project, Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory on Salon, and written for The Independent Weekly.
With roots in North Carolina and New York City, Pam considers herself to have "dual citizenship" status as a Southerner and a Yankee -- and brings that perspective and voice to her blog, which focuses on current political events, LGBT and women's rights, the influence of the far Right, and race relations. Read more about Pam Spaulding here.
Mathew Gross - panelist
Mathew Gross "rewrote the rules of presidential politics" and "put blogging at the center of the Democrats' nominating campaign" when he left his home in Moab, Utah to launch the first presidential campaign weblog for Howard Dean in March of 2003.
As Director of Internet Communications for the Dean campaign, Gross helped to develop and implement the online strategy that raised more than $25 million online and built Blog for America into one of the top weblogs in the world, attracting more than 100,000 readers per day at the height of the primary season.
During the 2004 general election cycle, he served as the chief internet fundraising and communications strategist for the Erskine Bowles for US Senate campaign in North Carolina, growing the online membership of the campaign by 200% and increasing the total funds raised online by nearly 400%.
In 2006, he served as chief online strategist for John Tester's successful primary and general election campaigns, unseating an incumbent Republican to win the U.S. Senate seat for Democrats in Montana. During the 2007-2008 presidential primary cycle, he served as a Senior Advisor for Online Communications to the John Edwards for President campaign. Also in 2007, he co-founded the premium user-generated advertising site GeniusRocket. He holds a Master of Science degree from the University of Montana, Missoula, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Currently living in North Carolina, he works as a consultant for progressive non-profits, political campaigns, and select private industry firms. He has played founding roles in establishing UNICEF's email outreach program and helping to launch StopGlobalWarming.org and iLoveMountains.org, among numerous other projects. He is the editor of The Glen Canyon Reader and a frequent speaker on the changing landscape of media, technology and advocacy.
Jonathan Bailey - session leader
"I am not a lawyer. I am just a legally-minded Webmaster/Writer frustrated with the plague of plagiarism online and doing something about it."
Plagiarism Today (PT) is a site targeted at Webmasters and copyright holders regarding the issue of plagiarism online. Though it deals with many legal issues, in particular the DMCA and copyright law, it is not a legal blog and is, instead, a blog regarding a societal ill that’s effects may never be fully understood or comprehended.
Ron Jones - session leader
Ron is President/CEO of Symetri Internet Marketing which provides strategic consulting and Internet marketing solutions for mid- to large-size companies since 1998. Ron provides strategic consulting and training for a number of Internet Marketing related disciplines including Search Engine Marketing, Behavioral Web Design and Web Analytics.
Ron is actively involved in the SEM community and speaks at conferences and seminars, as well as hosting regional SEM events where he provides participants SEM training and education best practices. Ron is on the board of directors for SEMPO - Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization and is also one of the authors for the SEMPO Institute Fundamentals and Advanced training courses.
Ron is one of the SEM expert columnist for Search Engine Watch and writes the SEM.edu column. Sign up here.
anil dash - panelist & session leader
I'm a Vice President at Six Apart and a writer/geek/New Yorker. I'm best known for having been involved with blogs since the early days of the medium. Six Apart is the biggest and best blogging company in the world, and we make TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal and Vox. There's a brief biography of me on this page, or you can look at my Wikipedia bio for a slightly odd perspective. Feel free to just email me at anil@dashes.com for more information. You can find out about Six Apart on our company website.
As you can probably tell, most of my professional life and much of my personal life revolves around weblogs, or blogs. I maintain several, with my primary weblog being named after myself, Anil Dash. I contribute professionally to the blogs that make up the Six Apart website, and I've helped thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies get started with their own blogs.
You can see a list of recent press mentions and quotes on Google News, and most recent articles mentioning Six Apart are available on the Six Apart press page. Some notable coverage includes a profile in New York Magazine from November 2003, a Wired News story from July 2004, this New York Times piece from June 2005, and in featured articles in the September 2006 and March 2007 issues of Wired.
Tom Lassiter - Session Leader
Tom Lassiter has earned his living with words and pictures (still and moving) since graduating from college in the last century.
He once worked as a newspaper reporter, photographer and editor and now writes for consumer and trade magazines, manages communications projects for corporate and non-profit clients, and produces videos as often as possible.
He posted his first Internet video somewhere around 1995 and was the first streaming media columnist for Television Broadcast magazine.
He would like to find more video on the Internet worth watching.
Ed Cone - Conference co-coordinator, moderator
Ed Cone is serving as the main panel moderator this year, his fourth consecutive year working hard at ConvergeSouth.
I live in Greensboro, North Carolina with my wife, Lisa, our two children, and our dog, Luna.
I am employed as a senior writer at Ziff Davis Enterprise and write an opinion column for the News & Record, the monopoly daily newspaper in my home town.
I have worked as a contributing editor at Wired, a staff writer at Forbes, and a freelancer for a wide variety of magazines and papers.
Anthony Piraino - session leader
Anthony has been designing and coding websites since the height of the dot-com bubble. He's currently an icon artist at The Iconfactory where he happily toils away drawing little pictures all day long, as well as doing much of the front-end HTML and CSS markup for The Iconfactory's various websites. Some of his artwork can be found at One-Button Mouse, his online portfolio and sketchbook. He also runs Plead the First, a blog where he posts occasional articles on local and national topics, and his political cartoons which ran in the Greensboro News and Record from 2006 - 2008. Read more about Anthony here and here.
Janet Roberts - session leader
Janet Roberts has been working in the publishing universe longer than some of the participants in this conference have been alive and has spent most of the last 21 years of her line communicating electronically.
Presently, she prepares marketing communications for clients in email and Web publishing industries and is investigating virtual worlds and social networks for their marketing potential.
Jim Schlosser - video walking tour leader
Jim Schlosser recently retired after 41 years with the News & Record, although he still writes a weekly feature for the newspaper. He has covered events ranging from the Super Bowl and national political conventions to interviewing ordinary people with interesting stories to tell. Many stories have a downtown setting.
The Greensboro Bicentennial Commission this year published a book, "The Beat Goes On'', edited by historian Gayle Fripp, that is a collection of more than 100 history-related stories that Schlosser wrote for the News & Record over a four-decade period.
Ruby Sinreich - session leader
Ruby Sinreich is the founder and editor of OrangePolitics.org, a progressive multi-author weblog with a vibrant community discussing local issues around her hometown of Chapel Hill, NC. Professionally, she specializes in strategies that connect people to each other, sometimes known as “network-centric advocacy,” “Web 2.0,” or “grassroots organizing,” depending upon what type of geek one is.
Ruby’s professional experience includes social network analysis, blogger outreach, organizer capacity-building, web site design and development, online communication strategy, and all manner of trainings. Ruby has helped hundreds of progressive nonprofits use technology more effectively in service of their educational, movement-building, and political missions. She has worked with organizations of all sizes and scopes including local women’s centers, statewide advocacy organizations, and national and international institutions such as Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Greenpeace International, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Ruby is also an engaging and informative public speaker and workshop facilitator. She has led sessions or served on panels at South by Southwest Interactive, Harvard’s Berkman Center, NetSquared, IPDI’s Politics Online Conference, N-TEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, and many other events for nonprofits and advocacy organizations.
Ruby earned a BSPH from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1993, and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University in 2000. She has volunteered on a variety of nonprofit and local government boards and commissions including the Chapel Hill Planning Board, which she currently chairs. Ruby practices Engaged Buddhism. She lives in a townhouse on the edge of Bolin Creek with her husband Brian Russell and two cats.
Emily Harris - session leader
Emily Harris is a professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at North Carolina A&T State University, where she also advises the award-winning weekly newspaper. She joined the faculty in 2007 and came to A&T the copy desk at the News & Record (Greensboro). Although this is her third ConvergeSouth conference, she is an amateur blogger.
Kelby Carr - session leader
Kelby Carr is a blogger, writer, SEO expert, foodie, social networking guru, travel junkie and former biz-cops-political-investigative newspaper journalist turned hardcore mommy blogger. She is the publisher of a network of parenting web sites that are each a mix of multi-author blog and social network. She has been geeking it out on computers since she was 10 (and you had to use an audio tape to run software), and she has been web publishing and networking since the early 1990s (when she had to create pages from code in Notepad, and the main place to network was on your local BBS). Kelby Carr's blog is at kelbycarr.com, and she operates TypeAMom.net, Dadosphere.com, FoodieMama.com and momShare.net, a Digg-like site for moms.
Miles Travis - session leader
Miles Travis is an avid blogger and a graduate student in digital history at George Mason University, where he has experienced the ups and downs of using new media in the classroom.
He has worked as a research assistant at the Center for History and New Media and as an intern at the Shodor Education Foundation, both of which are leaders in using new media and technology to promote effective instruction in a wide range of subject areas and educational levels.
Bora Zivkovic - session leader
Bora Zivkovic grew up in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, where he majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, trained horses, and pursued studies in Veterinary Medicine. He then received a Masters degree in Zoology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Bora, better known online by his moniker 'Coturnix' has been blogging for four years and, more recently, running a science blog 'A Blog Around The Clock" hosted by the Seed Media Group. He is the Online Community Manager for PLoS ONE, the Open Access science journal published by the Public Library of Science and is a vocal proponent of Open Access model of publishing. He lives in Chapel Hill with his wife, son, daughter, cat and 2 dogs.
Brian Carter - session leader
Brian Carter is the Director of Search Marketing at Fuel Interactive, a full-service digital marketing agency in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. He is responsible for the SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Online Reputation Management programs at Fuel and its partner traditional agency Brandon Advertising & Public Relations. Brian blogs passionately and makes semi-humorous jokes on the Fuel Interactive Blog and his twitter account.
Brian Carter is an AdWords Qualified Individual, SEOmoz pro member, SEM 2.0 Group contributor, and all-around good guy that your mom, dad and grandma would like. He derives great joy from being a blogger, author, radio guest, media resource, rock climber, practical joker, and scary bad driver. You can find out more than you'll ever need to know about him at www.briancarteryeah.com.
Tamrat Mereba - session leader
Greta Lint - session leader
Greta Lint provides contract labor to attractions, festivals, events, downtowns, chambers of commerce, state agencies, destination marketing organizations – all elements of the tourism industry. Her career has migrated from television, radio and newspaper to sales and marketing, public relations and product development. She is no stranger to the classroom, having taught at Pembroke State University, Lenoir-Rhyne College, several community colleges and is giving classes for the North Carolina Rural Center. She is a strong advocate for small attractions, town and organizations with small budgets to incorporate blogging into their promotional strategies.
Her tourism background spans the North Carolina Zoo, Greensboro Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, Chinqua-Penn Plantation and the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, where she was the executive director. While there, she earned national recognition for her public relations efforts. The North Carolina Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus awarded her five times for her promotional accomplishments. In 2005, BIZLIFE Magazine named her a “Mover and Shaker.” Since forming her business in November 2003, Greta has helped small downtowns, attractions, festivals and tourism agencies increase their awareness and revenues.
Kirk Ross - session leader
Kirk Ross
Kirk Ross is a longtime journalist and the editor and co-founder of The Carrboro Citizen, a weekly newspaper and Web operation.
He blogs about North Carolina politics at Exile on Jones Street and music and cooking on his band Lud’s blog iLUD.
At ConvergeSouth, he’ll be discussing the changing news cycle and styles of news gathering.
Wayne Sutton - session leader
Wayne Sutton is a community content manager for MyNC.com, a hyper-local news wbsite produced by WNCN, Channel 17, the NBC television affiliate serving Raleigh-Durham, N.C. He monitor user-generated content for the site. Sutton will demonstrate various forms of citizen media, citizen journalism and micro-blogging.
Wayne Sutton considers himself the social media lead car on the Autobahn of the Internet. For more than four years, he's provided counsel to business leaders ranging from founders of small start-ups and representatives of non-profit organizations to CEOs of large and small corporations. For some, understanding the social media landscape is difficult. Wayne enjoys helping industry leaders maneuver through the lanes in the ever-changing Internet environment.
Currently Wayne blogs at blogs at 30THREADS.com which is an blog aggregation site with online videos highlighting the triangle and you can find Wayne on twitter as @WayneSutton.