Knight Challenge Fellow at MIT Media Lab/Center for Future Civic Media
Greater Boston Area
- Current
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- Knight Challenge Fellow at MIT Media Lab/Center for Future Civic Media
- Board Member at New England Center for Investigative Reporting
- Founder at Placeblogger.com
- Past
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- Co-Founder at People's Software Company
- Founder and Editor in Chief at H2otown.info
- Online Community Strategy at Boston.com
- Project Leader, Frontiers in Innovation at Center for Citizen Media
- Director, Enterprise Applications Group at Yankee Group
- Senior Analyst at Daratech
- Education
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- Emerson College
- Recommended
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1 person has recommended Lisa - Connections
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403
connections
- Industry
- Online Media
- Websites
Lisa Williams’s Summary
I'm the founder and CEO of Placeblogger.com, the largest searchable directory of local weblogs and winner of the Knight 21st Century News Challenge Award. Placeblogger has been covered by many media outlets including Wired, USA Today and the Washington Post. In addition to running Placeblogger, I serve on the board of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting and do consulting for an array of media clients.
Over the summer of 2008, I participated with my friend and business partner Susan Mernit the TechStars, an intensive three-month program in Boulder, Colorado, aimed at seed-stage startups. Our project focused on social scheduling and geolocation.
Before Placeblogger, I launched H2otown.info, a nationally recognized example of a citizen journalism community site, covering and talking about Watertown, MA.
I've worked with Boston.com, the online wing of The Boston Globe, on online community, social networking, and blogging.
Prior to moving into online local media, I was director of the Enterprise Software research group at Yankee Group, a Boston area technology analyst firm, where I grew that business to one of the largest revenue producers for the company. Before working at Yankee Group, I worked at Daratech, where I studied and wrote about the CAD/CAM software market. I had the opportunity to work with dozens of early stage startups, which was a blast.
In addition to the many tech conferences I spoke at during my career as a technology analyst. My most recent speaking engagement was as a keynote at the Future of Civic Media conference hosted by the MIT Media Lab. I love public speaking and I'm happy to take requests for panel discussions.
I'm married to Evan Williams, who's currently working at ITA Software in Cambridge, MA. We live in Watertown, MA with our two kids.
Lisa Williams’s Specialties:
blogging, citizen journalism, online community, hyperlocal, forecasting, citizen media, placeblogs, podcasting, video, social media, analyst, product management and marketing, Facebook, iPhone, drupal, CMS, geolocation, mapping, RSS
Lisa Williams’s Experience
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Knight Challenge Fellow
MIT Media Lab/Center for Future Civic Media
(Public Policy industry)
February 2009 — Present (6 months)
I'm a Knight Challenge Fellow at the MIT Media Lab's Center for Future Civic Media. Faculty and students work together at the Center researching and doing experiments to investigate how a changing media landscape will affect our ability to be informed and empowered citizens.
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Board Member
New England Center for Investigative Reporting
(Online Media industry)
January 2009 — Present (7 months)
I'm proud to be a member of the board of the newly-formed New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University. Created by Joe Bergantino and Maggie Mulvihill and funded in part by a grant by the Knight Foundation, the Center will undertake investigative projects at a time when investigative reporting in the Boston area and beyond is threatened by shrinking newsrooms. I hope to help the Center experiment with new ways of gathering and distributing vital civic information via the Internet.
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Founder
Placeblogger.com
(Privately Held; Computer Software industry)
May 2006 — Present (3 years 3 months)
Placeblogger.com is a searchable directory of hundreds of locally focused weblogs across the US. Placeblogs arise from a fiercely non-generic America that's not about big-box retailers or blunt, 30,000 foot style reporting that results in bland, red vs. blue trend stories. Placeblogs are about the lived experience of a community -- some of which is news and some of which isn't. Placeblogger is my attempt to give to others the delight I've had in discovering and reading these sites, to help placebloggers connect with one another and make their own sites better, and to give real insight into what's really happening in citizen journalism in the U.S. at street level.
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Co-Founder
People's Software Company
(Internet industry)
May 2008 — January 2009 (9 months)
I'm a co-founder of People's Software Company, a social scheduling and peer-to-peer messaging company that is one of ten TechStars 2008 companies.
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Founder and Editor in Chief
H2otown.info
(Online Media industry)
February 2005 — May 2008 (3 years 4 months)
H2otown is a bottom-up news source for the residents of Watertown, Massachusetts, pop. 32,000, a dense, urban suburb of Boston, MA. H2otown has 350 members and a midweek peak of 3,000 daily readers. H2otown celebrates what's authentically unique about Watertown, from its food to its people, and often breaks news in town. H2otown is taking the summer of 2008 off while I participate in the TechStars startup incubation program in Boulder, CO.
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Online Community Strategy
Boston.com
(Public Company; 501-1000 employees; Newspapers industry)
April 2007 — July 2007 (4 months)
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Project Leader, Frontiers in Innovation
Center for Citizen Media
(Non-Profit; 1-10 employees; Online Media industry)
May 2006 — October 2006 (6 months)
The Center for Citizen Media supports and studies the rise of citizen engagement in the news media. The Center is headed by Dan Gillmor, author of We The Media, and is affiliated with the journalism school of the University of California at Berkeley and The Berkman Center for the Internet and Society of Harvard Law School.
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Director, Enterprise Applications Group
Yankee Group
(Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Telecommunications industry)
October 1997 — June 2002 (4 years 9 months)
I held several positions at Yankee Group, culminating in being the director of this technology analyst firm's group devoted to researching business software.
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Senior Analyst
Daratech
(Computer Software industry)
1995 — 1997 (2 years)
Lisa Williams’s Education
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Emerson College
1988 — 1992
Additional Information
Lisa Williams’s Websites:
Lisa Williams’s Interests:
weblogs, rss, placeblogs, local media, local websites, online mapping, long distance and transportational cycling, geolocation, urban orchards and gardening, open-ocean kayaking, fitness, child development and literacy, real estate, facebook, web product design and product management, hiring and recruiting, parenting, women in technology
Lisa Williams’s Honors:
2008 TechStars.org seed funding and venture incubator selectee for People's Software Company
2007 Fellow, Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution
National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, PA
Winner, Knight 21st Century News Challenge, 2007, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Lisa Williams’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
