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.
Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble is an influential video podcast pioneer and blogger following the tech industry. Watch him at PodTech.net and 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.
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.
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.
brandon pierce - session leader
Brandon Pierce owns and operates ShifterTV, providing multimedia marketing solutions to companies of the Triad. He received his B.F.A. in Art & Design from UNCG.
Brandon helped found the Greensboro Fringe Festival and was among the original co-founders of the non-profit arts production company, American Distractions. He continues to support the arts as a sponsor of the Greensboro Fringe Festival. And this year ShifterTV is a proud sponsor of the BooBashDash.org race, in the hopes of raising awareness and funding for AT (Ataxia-telangiectasia) research.
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.