CEO and Founder, Placeblogger.com
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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472
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. We provide custom data for companies interested in tracking emerging online media and do private consulting for clients who are launching online community sites as well as providing advice and services that help grow or manage an existing online community.
In addition to running Placeblogger, I'm a fellow at the MIT Media Lab's Center for Future Civic Media.
I serve on the board of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, and I do a lot of public speaking as well as consulting for private clients.
Prior to Placeblogger, I was involved with a number of startups, including People's Software Company, which was building a product based on social scheduling and geolocation, and H2otown.info, a local community site for Watertown, MA, which became a national model of hyperlocal journalism.
I've worked with Boston.com, the online wing of The Boston Globe, on online community, social networking, and blogging.
Before 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, where I had the opportunity to work with dozens of early stage startups.
I'm married to Evan Williams, who works 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, Drupal, CMS, geolocation, mapping, RSS, online community startups
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 (10 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 (11 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 7 months)
Placeblogger, a winner of the Knight 21st Century News Challenge, is the largest searchable directory of independent local weblogs, which are a rapidly growing source of local connections and local news.
We provide custom data to companies who want to track local online media or craft advertising strategies for emerging local media.
We also do custom consulting for clients who are launching online communities, as well as provide expertise on growing and managing an existing community. On occasion, we have provided hands-on management of an online community in a "train the trainers" capacity or as part of a "community turnaround" in cases where an online community has failed to thrive or developed in a direction the originators of that community did not anticipate or want. -
Co-Founder
People's Software Company
(Internet industry)
May 2008 — January 2009 (9 months)
I was 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 launched in 2005 and became an early and national model for hyperlocal journalism and online community.
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Online Community Strategy
Boston.com
(Public Company; NYT; Online Media industry)
April 2007 — July 2007 (4 months)
I helped The Boston Globe define a strategy that would create greater engagement between the Globe and and its readers, and connect the Globe's readers to each other via a network of locally-focused sites that would also provide a platform for the company to compete for ad dollars with suburban weeklies by providing a compelling destination sites for residents of Boston's suburbs.
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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
(Privately Held; Market Research industry)
1995 — 1997 (2 years )
I studied the market for computer-aided design software that automated the creation of plans for everything from toys to aircraft parts. I wrote reports, designed forecasts, and delivered that information at public speaking events and in private settings for the company's clients.
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, wireframes, specifications, mentoring for startups and nonprofits
Lisa Williams’s Groups:
BlogHer, Berkman Blog Group, Bloggercon, Techstars
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Obama for America -
BlogHer -
Drupal -
Yankee Group Alumni -
TechStars -
Free Agent Jungle -
CIC: Cambridge Innovation Center Clients and Alumni
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
