Experience

It was in the early 1990s when I was first involved in an online community. This was part of a Compuserve forum, Without much forethought, but quite naturally, I soon found my niche as an informal community organizer. In fact, through that forum we raised up a singles group which resulted in the first online marriage, as reported on NBC Nightly News, by Tom Brokaw. From there, my strengths in leadership, technology, and journalism have created a natural affinity towards online community management and social media evangelism.

During this time frame, I was involved in a project with the Oregon Health Division that sought to create and develop the first prehospital/EMS patient care report database. As co-chair, my role was to travel throughout Oregon and build support among the various fire, EMS/rescue, and government agencies. The political and logistical hurdles were huge, but through it all, Oregon was the first to successfully accomplish this monumental task.

As the Internet became established in our corporate culture, intermediaries, like Compuserve and AOL became obsolete. An unfortunate side-effect was the loss of collective community forums – for awhile. The tool of choice during that time was email and published websites. For several years, I managed various email lists and websites, with weekly communication to over 500 people in one organization, and 1200 in another. Both of these lists started small and grew organically through careful, value-added nurturing and quality information.

Offline, I have created and developed several communities. The most successful being a grassroots, service community in Colorado. Starting with no one in 2002, there were almost 400 participants when we left in 2007. In addition, we had an online community of over 100 people.

During the last two years, I have established online communities for three different organizations, and advised several others. One of these has a rapidly growing Twitter following (200+) and is gaining recognition as a leading news source in their field. My own personal community continues to grow, on Twitter, Facebook, and other venues. My personal blog has about 100 readers a day. A popular local social media video-podcast host, who interviewed me last year, claimed that I have “one of the largest social networking footprints” in the Portland-Metro area.

Because of my affinity, experience, success, and vision for social media, I am well suited to lead others into this realm. As we see traditional print media losing its way, it is important for organizations to take more control of their own media, marketing, and message – online social media allows great opportunities, if handled well. I am ready to help others achieve their objectives in this arena.