Blog Indiana 2008
From BlogIndiana
Local bloggers from across Indiana gathered at the IUPUI Campus Center on August 16-17th, 2008, for Blog Indiana 2008, a 2-day blogging and social media conference that aimed to promote education, innovation and collaboration among Indiana’s fast-growing blogging community. The conference's title sponsor was the IU School of Informatics.
Blog Indiana 2008 was for both experienced and new bloggers alike. Sessions included topics such as blogging for beginners, using blogs in your business, monetizing your blog, political blogging and more advanced topics. Blog Indiana 2008 brought a low-cost, high-value conference to Hoosier bloggers.
Contents |
Speakers
Andrew Paradies
Over the course of his career, Andrew has had a variety of roles that have contributed to making him a well-versed speaker with a diverse background. At Fort Washington Capital Partners, Andrew was a venture capital investment professional, working with 45 portfolio companies across a variety of industries, focusing on technology. He is currently the CEO at Photrade.com and is responsible for Photrade’s strategic direction.
Andrew has a deep interest in social media and technology stemming from his career in technology. Andrew has also worked in 6 technology startups and is actively engaged in social media and leveraging new media to promote companies. Andrew blogs both on his personal site, and contributes to Photrade's corporate blog as well as hyperphocal.
Bil Browning
Bil Browning is a long-time LGBT activist and writer. He is the co-owner and Publisher of The Bilerico Project. He and his partner, Jerame Davis, live with their teenage daughter in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Bil has fought for gay rights since coming out in high school in rural Indiana. He followed the Clinton campaign across America with ACT UP in 1992 and has organized many protests and direct actions over the years since. Bil has led several grassroots coalitions including the one to pass an inclusive human rights ordinance in Indianapolis and has served in the leadership of quite a few LGBT organizations.
As the original “bilerico,” he is thrilled at the response to his dream of a free space where everyone could interact around LGBTQ issues. Little did he know that ten years later a word he invented would stand for equality, dialogue and community. From his personal homepage to a state-level LGBT politics blog and now in a national arena, Bil has guided bilerico.com through its evolution into The Bilerico Project.
Bob Burchfield
Bob is the owner and publisher of http://AroundIndy.com, LLC, an events Web site that publishes day-by-day listings of things to do in Indianapolis, central Indiana, and across the state. He teaches computer classes at the University of Indianapolis in the School for Adult Learning, where he has been employed since 1984.
Chris Baggott
Co-founder of Compendium Blogware, Chris Baggott was a religious blogger, but a frustrated one. Sure, his email marketing best practices blog had won some notable awards, but the road there was long and painful due to serious usability issues. From his own personal experiences, Chris saw the opportunity to create a user-friendly blogging tool. And better yet, to create it in the mindset of an organization that wants to use blogs in order to accomplish real goals such as higher lead generation and revenues. Prior to co-founding Compendium Blogware, Chris was co-founder and CMO of ExactTarget, a leading on-demand email marketing company.
Chris Hardie
Chris is a community builder and technology consultant living in Richmond, Indiana. He’s the co-owner and principal of Summersault, LLC, a website development firm headquartered in Richmond. Since its founding in 1997, the firm continues to grow as it works with a variety of organizations to build highly customized database driven websites. Summersault’s mission is “to build and sustain communities using the technologies of the Internet.” This also reflects Chris’s personal interests as he works with a number of alternative media projects, sustainability movements, and community building organizations.
Chris’s personal website and blog can be found at http://www.chrishardie.com.
Douglas Karr
Douglas Karr has been in the Advertising and Marketing Technology space for over two decades. The clients that he’s worked with directly are an impressive and diverse collection of companies throughout North America, Europe, and Australia. Specifically, Douglas has worked for and with ExactTarget, Wild Birds Unlimited, The Home Depot, Icelandair, United Airlines, Hotels.com, The Indianapolis Colts, The Toronto Globe and Mail, The New York Times, Gannett and dozens of other corporations to assist in acquisition, retention strategies using direct marketing, database marketing, search, social media and email marketing.
Douglas is a founder of SmallerIndiana.com, owner of NavyVets.com, a member of the 2012 Super Bowl Bid Committee, and the Director of Technology for a young startup in Indianapolis, Patronpath - a premier marketing and ecommerce company within the Restaurant Industry. You can find his blog, The Marketing Technology Blog at http://www.douglaskarr.com
Erik Deckers
Erik Deckers has been a writer for 14 years, with a variety of publications and productions to his credit. He publishes a weekly humor column in eight newspapers around Indiana. He has been a blogger for three years, and mentor to new bloggers. Erik is also the director of sales and marketing for a direct mail company, and a regular contributor on Smaller Indiana.
Jennette Fulda
Jennette Fulda is author of Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir, a book that sprung from her popular blog PastaQueen.com which chronicles her life, 200-pound weight loss and occasional Krispy Kreme binges. The blog and book have been featured in NBC’s Today Show, CBS’s The Early Show, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and other media outlets. Jennette is a proud IUPUI alumni, Indianapolis native, and receives umpteen press releases each week – most of which hit the virtual trash can.
When she is not working her ass off, she works locally as a web developer. If you can spell her name correctly, you can see what she’s up to at jennettefulda.com
Materials from her presentation, "How to reach bloggers (without pissing them off): Effective and ethical marketing" are available at http://pastaqueen.com/blogindiana/
John Ramey
John is a successful web and marketing entrepreneur of over 10 years. After starting a dot-com in the late 90’s, he founded Lythargic Media, a digital marketing and technology consultancy for small businesses. Prior to isocket, John co-founded Maven Ventures, which developed direct marketing software for real estate investing. John has a background in computer science and is well versed in market trends and innovative technology. He attended Indiana University for degrees in Business Economics and Entrepreneurship. John is the Co-Founder & CEO of http://isocket.com
Joseph Kerschbaum
Joseph is the Senior Search Marketing Consultant at Hanapin Marketing, a marketing firm specializing in web design and search engine marketing. At Hanapin Joseph manages search marketing campaigns for a wide array of clients and he also coordinates, edits and writes articles for their company blog, PPC Hero. PPC Hero is a blog that focuses on paid search advertising (pay-per-click), but with a heroic flair. As of June, 2007 PPC Hero had over 1,200 daily subscribers.
Joseph doesn’t just write for PPC Hero (even though he loves it!): since 2002, he has published three books of poetry and received grants from the Bloomington Area Arts Council, and the Indiana Arts Commission and NEA. He teaches poetry at the John Waldron Arts Center, and during the summers he teaches a poetry course for Ivy Tech’s ‘College for Kids.’ This fall he’ll be teaching a search engine marketing course at Ivy Tech Community College.
Krista Neher
Krista Neher has been repeatedly commended for her engaging and enthusiastic style during her 10+ years of public speaking. Over the course of her career, Krista has had a variety of roles that have contributed to making Krista a well-versed speaker with a diverse background. At Procter and Gamble, Krista worked in several functions including sales, finance and marketing roles. She is currently the Vice President of Marketing at Photrade.com and is responsible for Photrade’s marketing strategy and execution.
Krista has a deep interest in social media and is actively engaged in social media marketing and leveraging new media to promote brands and companies. Krista blogs both on her personal site, www.kribaby.com and on Photrade’s corporate blog, blog.photrade.com.
Pat East
Pat East is Founder and President of Hanapin Marketing in Bloomington, IN. Hanapin specializes in web design and search engine marketing and recently won a 2007 growth award from inVenture (Bloomington’s business incubator) for Innovative Business of the Year. Revenue has nearly quintupled since their inception in 2004. He previously worked at AuthorHouse, where he played a key role in growing revenue from $6M to $20M in just four years.
Pat is active in the Bloomington community, volunteering with the Chamber of Commerce on their communications task force and with the Red Cross, working the annual book fair fundraiser, donating blood, and offering a pro-bono website redesign for the Monroe County chapter. He sits on the business development board for Irwin Union and is an adjunct professor at Indiana University, teaching one of only a handful of SEM curriculums in the United States. Pat is actively involved with his alma mater, Wabash College, serving as Class Agent, sitting on the national alumni association’s board of directors, and co-chairing Wabash Day, the College’s day of volunteerism. He and his wife, Jamie, have one son.
Renee Wilmeth
Renee Wilmeth is the author and editor of Feed Me/Drink Me, a popular Indianapolis food and wine blog with more than 25,000 local readers each month. As a content specialist and publishing consultant, she specializes in content development, author branding, promotional integration, and virtual community. With more than 15 years experience in trade book publishing, she has served as senior acquisitions editor for Alpha Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), publisher of the popular Complete Idiot’s Guide line of how-to books. She has also acquired and edited titles for Webster’s New World, Macmillan (USA), and Ziff Davis Press. As an entrepreneur, she co-founded Literary Architects, a hybrid trade publisher in 2005.
Coming of professional age in the early days of the Internet content and web boom in San Francisco, Wilmeth has deep experience in content design, book, magazine, newspaper, and blog writing, editing, and management. Over her career, she has consulted and provided strategy for Silicon Valley companies including Niehaus Ryan Haller, Yahoo! and Organic Online. In addition to Feed Me/Drink Me, Wilmeth writes on food for Indianapolis Monthly and serves as a judge for Indianapolis Dine magazines. She is a member of the fine dining society Conferie de la Chaine des Rotisseurs and sits on the Program Advisory Committee for the International Culinary School at The Art Institute of Indianapolis and she sits for her first level sommelier exam in September 2008.
Wilmeth is currently co-authoring her first trade book with voting machine technology experts Barbara Simons and Douglas W. Jones due in hardcover in 2009.
Scott Abel
Scott Abel is a content management strategist and structured content evangelist, whose strengths lie in helping organizations improve the way they author, maintain, and deliver their information assets. Scott’s blog, TheContentWrangler.com, is a popular online resource for technical, medical, and marketing writers and other content professionals with an interest in content management. Scott’s social network, The Content Wrangler Community, is the fastest growing global network of content professionals with members from 30 countries.
A founding member of Content Management Professionals, Scott previously served as Executive Director of the organization. A frequent contributor to magazines and trade publications, a popular webinar host, podcast interviewer, and speaker at information technology and content events, Scott is also a blogger for O’Reilly Media’s XML.com site. He also runs a series of popular content industry conferences, including the Web Content Conference Series and Documentation and Training Conference Series.
Shawn Smith
Shawn Smith is one of the new operators of IndyMojo.com, the local social network that focuses on getting people out from behind the computer screen in order to meet, interact, and befriend each other in real life. He and his partner have formed NetStuffers, LLC which is the controlling company selling the advertising and promotions that ultimately fuel the website. As the President of Operations and Technology, he works behind the scenes to boost local membership and user loyalty and uses demographic information to set advertising prices.
Shawn has a B.A. in Computer Science from Earlham College and prior to investing in IndyMojo, he worked as the Public Relations Director for the Advanced Media Network (now Kombo.com) and the Marketing Director for a local printing company. Over the years he has become versed in the art of selling internet advertising to skeptical businesses who still rely on traditional media.
Tom Britt
Tom Britt is currently the President and founder of Britt Interactive LLC (http://brittinteractive.com), a local publishing company based in Indianapolis, Indiana. In addition, Britt has served as the Director of Author Development for AuthorHouse. Britt owned a publishing company for nine years and started an Internet portal company in 1998 that was deemed the “TV Guide of the Internet”. His background in offline and online publishing has landed him several keynote engagements around the world speaking on the topics of interactive television, search engine marketing, self-publishing, and the future of book publishing.
Here is a link to Tom's presentation on "Community Portals: How to Engage the Public to Report on the News (and make money at it)" http://show.zoho.com/public/atgeist/Blog%20Indiana
Steve Dalton
Steve Dalton is owner of Green Pointe Partners, a NW Indiana consultancy working with small businesses on business development and strategic planning. He is also involved in home building, mortgage lending, and commercial real estate having owned and operated a home building company for 8 years. Blogging was merely an outgrowth of a desire to comment on the daily news, when four years ago he began providing commentary daily on mostly political and some international news.
Steve now contributes to over 30 blogs, most personal and some multi-author format. Political activity is a key component, with sites http://reasonbellpundit.blogspot.com and http://hoosiersformccain.blogspot.com both featuring conservative authors and posts daily. He was chairman for Mayor Jon Costas' campaign in 2003, and an advisor in Jon Costas' failed attempt to become Indiana Attorney General.
The best way to follow Steve's posts and conversations would be to follow Daltonsbriefs on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/daltonsbriefs
