Speakers and Advisors

Allen Blue - Co-Founder, LinkedIn

Allen is one of the co-founders of LinkedIn, where he manages the Content and Communities division, covering LinkedIn's Groups, Events, Answers, Communication and Network Updates products.  He was formerly Director of Product Design at SocialNet.com, a social networking service supporting dating, recreational and professional activities, where he was responsible for product design and implementation of SocialNet’s member-data focused business model.

Nova Spivack - CEO & Founder, Radar Networks / Twine.com

Mr. Spivack is CEO and Founder of Radar Networks (http://www.radarnetworks.com), a technology venture located in San Francisco. Radar Networks is developing a fundamental new technology for enriching content that will open up a new dimension of the Web. The company's first product, Twine (http://www.twine.com), is a new service that helps people track their interests, using the Semantic Web and collective intelligence.

In 1994, Mr. Spivack co-founded EarthWeb (http://www.earthweb.com), one of the first Internet companies, where he was Executive Vice-President for Products, Strategy and Marketing. EarthWeb went public in 1999 and resulted in the Nasdaq's largest IPO single-day percentage point gain up to that point, spawning a wave of Tech IPOs. Mr. Spivack left EarthWeb’s board of directors in 1999 and began advising startups and angel investing. During the down-years of the post-Internet-bubble, EarthWeb’s content properties were acquired in 2000 by Internet.com (http://www.internet.com). The company’s Dice.com (http://www.dice.com) property remained a strong stand-alone business until it was acquired for approximately $200 million in 2005.

While at EarthWeb he helped key cultural institutions and businesses develop their first large-scale Web presences, including the New York Stock Exchange, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, BMG Music Club, Sony, AT&T, US West, and others. He also helped to catalyze the adoption of Java technology by leading the production of large on communities for the IT professionals, including Gamelan.com (http://www.gamelan.com), Developer.com (http://www.developer.com), and Datamation.com (http://www.datamation.com).

Thor Muller - CEO & Co-founder, Satisfaction

Thor Muller is CEO & Co-founder of Satisfaction, a startup delivering "people-powered customer service for absolutely everything."

He is also the co-founder and former Managing Director of Rubyred Labs, a San Francisco-based web apps firm. Since its founding in 2005, Rubyred has developed social software for a range of startups and leading portals.

Prior to Rubyred, Thor was a first generation Web entrepreneur, creating Web success stories for companies such as Yahoo, Dell, Bank of America, Intel, Virgin Records, Fujitsu, Discovery Channel, and Sony. In 1995, he started and ran one of the early Web development boutiques, Prophet Communications, later acquired by Frog Design where he served as VP Digital Media. He subsequently founded Trapezo, a venture-funded company that made Web software for syndicating content, acquired by Perfect Commerce in 2002.

Matt Warburton - former Director of Community Management, Yahoo

Matt Warburton, former Director of Community Management at Yahoo, has over 10 years of experience working with online communities.  Matt spent 8 yrs at eBay, where his responsibilities included managing the Voices of the Customer program.  When Matt joined Yahoo he created similar community insight program called the Roundtable program.  These programs positively impacted many areas of the company - product strategy, idea generation, marketing messaging, and policy.

Jen Burton - Community Manager, Digg

Jen Burton is the Community Manager at Digg where she is responsible for engaging and championing Digg's community of over 35 million users. At Digg, Jen drives the services, guidelines and tools to manage Digg's often passionate community. She works closely with the product and marketing teams to ensure that the community's best interests are represented and plays a key role in influencing feature direction. Prior to Digg, Jen was at Slide, the world's largest publisher of social entertainment applications, where she lead product planning, design and development for core products.

Jen has more than a decade's worth of experience in the online and social media space and has held various customer service, product and marketing roles at PlanetOut, Babeland and Amazon.com.

Randy Farmer - Social Media Consultant, MSB

F. Randall “Randy” Farmer has been creating online community systems for over 30 years, and has co-invented many of the basic structures for both virtual worlds and social software. His firsts include: one of the first multiplayer online games; one of the first message boards; the first virtual world; the first avatars; the first online marketplace; the first user newsfeed/friend feed (in Yahoo! 360°); the first multi-purpose reputation platform and grammar; and many other smaller firsts—several of which are documented in the form of various patents which are either granted or in process. He has co-authored numerous papers on the topics of virtual worlds and social media which have been published in books and across the Internet.

For almost 5 years Randy worked as the community strategic analyst for Yahoo!, the world's largest Internet portal, advising Yahoo properties on best practices for construction of their online communities. Randy was the principal designer of Yahoo's global reputation platform and the reputation models that were deployed upon it and was also a co-author of the Yahoo Open Strategy initiative. Randy is in high demand as a freelance community systems design consultant and public speaker, and his online publications and interviews are widely read and cited. He is currently coauthoring a book for O'Reilly entitled: Building Web 2.0 Reputation Systems - which is being written 'unbook' style at http://buildingreputation.com.

Erica Kuhl - Community Manager, salesforce.com

Erica Kuhl is the Community Manager at salesforce.com where she is responsible for creating a leading edge community environment for over a million subscribers. With her 8 year tenure at salesforce.com, she engages her passionate community with best practice content, thriving user groups, platform innovation and networking opportunities.   

Erica developed blogging, content and discussion boards strategies which leverage cross-functional teams to deliver the best possible content to the customer community. Erica is constantly pushing the envelope for community within salesforce.com and looking for ways to continue driving engagement with a growing customer base.

Sylvia Marino - Executive Director Community Operations, Edmunds.com Inc.

Sylvia Marino is the Executive Director of Community Operations & Social Media for Edmunds, Inc. the premier resource for automotive information. Ms. Marino oversees all aspects of community strategy and operations including tools and implementation; member management and business operations with respect to user-generated content efforts around the Edmunds.com brand. Her purview includes social network features, forums, blogs, social Q&A and reviews across the four web sites within Edmunds Automotive Network - Edmunds.com, Inside Line, CarSpace and Auto Observer - in addition to social media activities and programs across a variety of social networks and applications.

Ms. Marino began working with Edmunds since 1996 when the company launched its online community. Before joining Edmunds as a full-time employee, Ms. Marino was an industry consultant who provided guidance on how to build, manage and maintain online communities to meet both customer and business needs. Former clients include Intuit’s QuickBooks, E*TRADE, CBS SportsLine, Forbes, AOL, The Wall Street Journal and Kaiser Permanente. She has been a keynote and presenter at online community conferences around the world.

Rachel Makool - former Sr. Director, Community Development, eBay

Rachel Makool is an experienced Marketing professional specializing in Community/Social Media strategy and implementation. Rachel’s most recent experience is at eBay, heading the Community and Events group. Rachel and her team led efforts to build and sustain the relationship with eBay’s customers through consistent engagement and communication.

Rachel’s career has included experience in sales and marketing in the Photography and Consumer Software industry. She also has extensive knowledge of the Collectibles industry.

Barbara Lewis - President and Founder, MarQuant Analytics / MarQuantAnalytics.com

In 2003 Barbara Lewis and her partner founded MarQuant Analytics, which provides analytical tools and services to measure marketing effectiveness.  With tens of marketing activities, including social media, it’s difficult for companies to figure out what’s working and what’s not working.  Her client list includes leading Fortune 200 companies in most industry sectors. She and her team assist companies in determining their optimal marketing/media mix and marketing resource allocation across customer segments, products, regions and marketing activities.  Barbara teaches at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she obtained her MBA.  She holds a black belt in karate and is the author of the book, “Get a Black Belt in Business” (blackbeltinbusiness.com).  Barbara began her career as a journalist writing for The Wall Street Journal, as well as a number of other magazines, newspapers and trade publications. 

Sonali K. Shah – Assistant Professor, University of Washington Business School

Sonali K. Shah is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.  Her research focuses on understanding and harnessing community-based innovation – that is, innovation by individuals who voluntarily come together to produce new produce and services outside the walls of firms and research institutions. Communities are the source of important and frequent innovation in a number of industries - ranging from software to sports equipment to medical devices to automobiles.  She works closely with firms and non-profit organizations interested in tapping into and contributing to communities.  Her work has received numerous awards, including a 2008 Industry Studies Fellowship and the 2006 Best Paper Prize from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the 2008 Thought Leader Award from the Academy of Management.  She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds B.S.E degrees in Finance and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Sindy Braun - Director, Web Marketing and Communities , VMWare

Craig Warner - Senior Manager, Google

Mike Rowland - President, Impact Interactions

Diane Davidson - Director, Customer Success and Community, Cisco