Mary Hodder founded Dabble, a recently launched company aiming to be ‘the most comprehensive search and social search site on the planet’, by helping users organize, search, tag, describe and promote video. She has a Masters from UC Berkeley’s School of Information and a blog on disruptive technologies.
While we’ve already announced the keynote conversations for mesh ’07, we’ve yet to announce panelists. So over the next few weeks we’re going to start doing just that in a series of blog posts. The posts will set out panelist bio information – more information about the sessions themselves will follow shortly. Panelist bio information will also available on the main page of the mesh site. We’ll start today with a mesh friend from mesh ’06 – Jen Evans of Sequentia.
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Jennifer Evans is a Toronto-based entrepreneur, writer, and technophile and the president of Sequentia Communications, recently ranked as Canada’s 24th (2005) and 27th (2004) fastest growing emerging company by the PROFIT Hot 50.
Prior to starting Sequentia, Jen co-founded DigitalEve International, a not for profit association for women and technology, and served as Executive Director its international and national organizations from 2000-2002. She is the co-chair of the White Ribbon Campaign and a board member of both Computer for Schools Ontario and The Beach School, and sits on advisory panels for the Software Human Resources Council (SHRC) and Women in Film and Television (WIFT). Jen was a two-time finalist for the Canadian New Media Awards and continues to function as a judge for the awards. She is a technology columnist for the Globe and Mail’s online edition and appears regularly on Report on Business television’s Tech Tuesday panel.
Jen has taught at the University of Toronto, York University, Humber College, and Ryerson. She is a graduate of Queen’s University and her international work experience includes Bermuda, Tokyo, the US, South America and Korea. She speaks regularly on women, girls and technology.
Jen’s expertise includes communications and marketing strategy development, online community building strategy and execution. Her favourite online community is Ain’t It Cool.
Jen is currently working on a book examining how customer communities develop online called The Momentum Machine, to be published in the fall of 2007.
At last year’s mesh, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Om Malik in a keynote conversation about The Future of Media. At the time, Om was still with Business 2.0, but while we got not one inkling of it from him at mesh, he was on the verge of announcing the launch of GigaOm as a full-time gig. It’s been a venture that to all outward appearances has been very successful, and was a launch that no doubt gave gumption to lots of Web 2.0 entrepreneurs who followed, like our co-meshie Mark Evans, who made a similar jump by moving from the National Post to become VP of Operations of b5media (and who interviewed Om for that keynote last year).
This year, we’ve been luckier still with our timing. Mike Arrington, who is undeniably the poster-child for Web 2.0’s assault on the battlements of mainstream media, is our media keynote conversation at mesh ‘07 and has just announced that TechCrunch is hiring Heather Harde, Fox Interactive Media’s SVP of M&A, to be CEO of his growing empire (“Heather’s job will be to leverage the opportunities that we have sometimes let slip by, and to manage our organic and acquisition growth going forward.†“Acquisition growth†…. hmmm, our interest is piqued). Mike will focus more on the editorial side, he says.
(And in a nice bit of synchronicity for us here at mesh, Om broke the story.)
Like our friend Tony Hung, we think this makes a lot of sense. Mike’s joint is often referred to as a technology and business blog, but it’s been obvious for a long time that the brand can do much, much more. We are no doubt in for a treat now as he and Heather set about to do just that. And we’ll have even more to talk about with Mike at mesh ’07.
Congratulations, Mike.