
Blogging Leader at annarbor.com
Greater Detroit Area

Blogging Leader at annarbor.com
Greater Detroit Area
Community organizer, specializing in lunch based professional community development, and in the use of mobile technology to assist busy, frazzled people.
Organizing lunch; making and sending postcards; public transit planning and routing; innovative, inexpensive paper reference materials; impromptu speaking; small applications delivered by mobile phone or minimalist web browser.
(Newspapers industry)
June 2009 — Present (2 months)
(Hospitality industry)
August 2006 — Present (3 years)
Every single Thursday I host a lunch series at Eastern Accents in Ann Arbor, MI. In the course of an hour I talk to and introduce people from a variety of fields including technology, librarianship, social work, marketing, computer systems, teaching, research, and politics.
As of April 4, 2009 there have been over 150 lunches organized and about 4000 meals served. The first meeting had 4 people for lunch; the most recent high mark had 38 in attendance.
Lunches are organized with the assistance of Carol Sun, owner of Eastern Accents in Ann Arbor.
(Non-Profit Organization Management industry)
April 2001 — Present (8 years 4 months)
The Cisco Alumni Association is an unincorporated and unfunded assocation of former employees of Cisco Systems, Inc (CSCO). As founder of this group, I recruit new members, manage an online presence, and test and develop supporting technologies for corporate alumni management.
As of this writing there are about 2500 people in a LInkedIn group, about 900 people on a Yahoo Groups group, and about 25 new additions to the LinkedIn group weekly. A Django site ties things together.
http://cisco-alumni.org
(Internet industry)
February 1998 — Present (11 years 6 months)
The Vacuum Group is a one-person LLC with colleagues in Ann Arbor and around the world. I make connections and get things done.
I have talent for identifying a need, forming a group to meet it, finding leaders and giving them the tools they need to organize online and offline.
I almost always do contract work through other organizations that provide proposal development and project management services.
(Internet industry)
November 2006 — April 2008 (1 year 6 months)
As Director of Social Media for this online marketing firm, I did web and blog analytics and reporting, social media account management, and Adwords account management.
(Educational Institution; 10,001 or more employees; Higher Education industry)
March 2006 — December 2006 (10 months)
As Research Associate at the University of Michigan School of Information, I served as Program Manager and community organizer for the Kellogg Foundation funded Community Information Corps project.
The University of Michigan School of Information has been a leader in ensuring that innovations in information science and technology are brought to bear in service of the public good. The Community Information Corps (CIC) is at the heart of that effort. CIC serves as focal point for students, faculty, alumni and community members from across disciplines to explore the changing role of information and technology in civil society.
(Non-Profit; Libraries industry)
May 2005 — August 2005 (4 months)
As a member of the Ann Arbor District Library's volunteer Technology Advisory Board, I provided feedback to product development and patron relations. I publish a weblog, Superpatron, as a part of this effort.
http://vielmetti.typepad.com/superpatron
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)
January 2003 — July 2005 (2 years 7 months)
I am a founder of the company. We started after a few rounds of email spun off into a long phone calls, and the itch to build tools was compelling enough to start business planning. We didn't all meet until later.
As VP Customer Service, I brought my experiences of working with a distributed team. We pushed the envelope in an intense initial phase of working together without the luxury of funding.
Socialtext is a enterprise wiki platform.
http://www.socialtext.com
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer & Network Security industry)
August 2001 — October 2002 (1 year 3 months)
I managed technology integration of Arbor's product line with hardware from Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks as part of a business development organization, leading up to a successful Series B round.
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; CSCO; Computer Networking industry)
February 1998 — April 2001 (3 years 3 months)
Corporate consulting focussed on network security and integrity. Worked with product development and with key customers on development of product features and requirements. Advised business development on technical aspects of acquisition and investment plans.
(Public Company; 51-200 employees; FVHI; Financial Services industry)
September 1995 — December 1997 (2 years 4 months)
First Virtual Holdings had the first Internet-based electronic money transfer and payments system, long before people were buying things en masse on the Internet. I was employee number 20 and did a variety of things, including running a distributed team providing customer service to tens of thousands of customers, day to day management of a software development and systems test team, and integration of a Unix payments and accounting system with a remote job entry system.
(Internet industry)
February 1991 — February 1995 (4 years 1 month)
I was founder and VP Research at this pioneering internet service provider in Michigan. We bootstrapped this ISP by building out a statewide data network, beta tested all kinds of early dialup access equipment, and hosted early (Gopher based) internet applications like the Online Career Center jobs database.
I was featured in a Forbes Magazine column by Dan Churbuck in 1993.
MSEN is still in business (as of 2008), and some of my first customers still have the same email address they had when we started up. I no longer have a stake in the company.
(Marketing and Advertising industry)
1989 — 1991 (2 years)
OTA Limited Partnership traded options on its own account on the Chicago and American exchanges. I did systems and operations administration, and wrote some code to handle ticker feeds. We had an Internet connection to the floor of the CBOE in 1989.
(Educational Institution; 10,001 or more employees; Higher Education industry)
1987 — 1989 (2 years)
I was systems administrator for the campus-wide email gateway from the Internet to the Michigan Terminal System, with responsibilities that included Usenet News and domain name servers. When the Morris Worm hit in 1988, I was watching log files, and got my smiling face on television a few days later.
After that, I ran a network of Sun and Dec workstations for the Math and Statistics departments in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, and contributed to campus-wide Unix deployments.
B.A. , Economics , 1982 — 1988
It took six years to get a four year degree, and I had a year's head start. I paid my own way with scholarships and by working at the Computing Center.
Mathematics 1981 — 1984
I took mathematics classes (3 semesters of calculus and linear algebra) while I was in high school, and had 2 credits of Latin over a summer.
1978 — 1982
Walking, lunch, analog to digital conversion, history of technology, history of the Internet, the telegraph system, the railroad network, reading to my kids, digital to analog conversion, cooperative networks (and how they grow).
Slater Scholar, James B. Angell Scholar, Branstrom Book Prize Award. Michigan Math Prize Award. National Merit Scholar.