Business Developer, Social Media Strategist
Greater Seattle Area
- Current
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- Partner at Social Kapital, Beijing
- CEO at Modus Cooperandi
- Cooperator at Cooperation Commons Open Source Think Tank
- Founder / COO at Gray Hill Solutions, Inc
- Education
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- Meikai Daigaku
- Michigan State University
- Recommended
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7 people have recommended Jim - Connections
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348
connections
- Industry
- Computer Software
- Websites
Jim Benson’s Summary
My career path has taken me through government agencies, major corporations, start ups and owning my own company. Through all this, my passion has been applying new technologies to work groups - how can we use new tech to collaborate and cooperate more effectively?
I love ideas, creation, and building new futures. I love working with teams who are passionate about the future. I love pushing the boundaries. I love inclusion.
I spent many years with the title "planner": Growth Management, Community, Transportation, Technology - planner. Later this title morphed to other things like project manager, product manager, biz dev lead, and so forth.
With Gray Hill, I have been able to take the newest collaborative, social media and social networking technologies and combine them with the latest UI , web , and work flow tools to create highly collaborative tools for government. It's been exciting and rewarding.
Outside of Gray Hill, I have had several independent social media consulting clients and have had the good fortune to work on project like Cooperation Commons. These experiences have greatly broadened my understanding of how people use technology alone and as an extension of human interaction.
With the Agile Project Leadership Network, I have enjoyed the extension of lean manufacturing and agile software practices to the management of groups and projects. The streamlining of process to its core elements and leaving project participants with maximum time and vision fascinates me.
My goal with all these technologies is to increase beneficial contact between people and reduce the bureaucratic noise which so often tends to destroy creativity.
Jim Benson’s Specialties:
Collaboration, Cooperation, Web 2.0, Business Development, Bureaucracy, government systems, geographic information systems (GIS), ESRI platforms,intelligent transportation systems, mapping, statistical analysis, business logic, asset management, transit, traffic, web design, transportation planning, urban planning, extreme programming, program management, project management, telematics
Jim Benson’s Experience
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Partner
Social Kapital, Beijing
(Computer Software industry)
2007 — Present (1 year)
This is a startup based in Beijing. It's in stealth mode. So all I can say is its name.
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CEO
Modus Cooperandi
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)
2007 — Present (1 year)
At Modus Cooperandi we use lean systems thinking, agile management and social media to help our clients communicate and manage their distributed teams. In our short history we have worked with several companies in the Fortune 100 and a few in the Fortune 10.
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Cooperator
Cooperation Commons Open Source Think Tank
(Non-Profit; Computer Software industry)
2005 — Present (3 years)
Cooperation Commons is an open multidisciplinary study of cooperation. http://cooperationcommons.com. Guided by Howard Rheingold and Stanford University's Institute for the Future, the site is an effort to have a distributed study of a core aspect of human existence and survival: cooperation.
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Founder / COO
Gray Hill Solutions, Inc
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)
January 2001 — Present (7 years 11 months)
Was responsible for all business planning, business development, and conceptual software design. Closely managed all HR, fiscal mangement, and strategy.
We specialized in the creation of GIS enhanced management software for governments and private clients. We created asset management and real time status applications most often for Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Our projects included:
A five jurisdiction communications bridge in Illinois
traffic.511.org - a real-time traffic information web application, the BayArea
BusSpeak - a transit signal priority management system
BusCarte - a transit web interface for riders
TreePro - urban forestry management software
We have completed dozens of customized projects for clients over the years as well. Current projects include customized embedded GIS application, XML data transfer mechanisms and an advanced traffic management system.
