social software enthusiast, co-founder @ lefora, organizer of the silicon valley newtech meetup
San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- co-founder & product guy at lefora
- Founder at SiliconValley NewTech Meetup
- Past
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- Network Engineer at RISConsulting
- Management Information Systems at National Arbitration & Mediation
- Newspaper Boy at Carnels Stationary
- Education
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- Boston University
- Recommended
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13 people have recommended Vincent - Connections
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500+
connections
- Industry
- Internet
- Websites
Vincent Lauria’s Summary
Vincent Lauria is the co-founder of lefora.com, a free forum hosting service for communities on the web. As VP of Product, Mr. Lauria steers the product line through the ever-dynamic consumer marketplace. Additionally, Mr. Lauria runs a monthly New Technology Meetup group in Silicon Valley, featuring over 3,000 members and 100+ companies that have demoed their product since 2006.
Prior to starting lefora, he was VP of Product Strategy at meetro.com, a location aware IM client. Prior to Meetro, Mr. Lauria held a number of roles in IBM's Business Consulting Services during his four years with the company, including serving as Community Leader of the Social Networking Community of Practice. Mr. Lauria helped shape how IBM was approaching social software as an emerging and in some cases, disruptive technology.
Mr. Lauria graduated Boston University with a B.S. in Computer Engineering and a minor in Business Administration. His career started as early as high school where he co-developed a web-technology to facilitate online settlements of arbitration cases.
He spends much of his time following the trend of social software and its cultural impact on society. Outside of work, he has taken on a number of adventures, including live webcamming a tour of the southern United States, backpacking a summer across Europe, and taking the helm of an open cockpit biplane.
With a strong interest in social software and building communities, Mr. Lauria views social software technologies transforming much of our culture and driving a new age of communicative methods, affecting the way we interact with others.
Publications:
Intro to RSS, IBM developerWorks article
* http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-rssintro/
Web Data Access Developer, IBM Extreme Blue project
* http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/webdev
For more info -> http://www.vinnie.net
Vincent Lauria’s Specialties:
Forums, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Community Building, LBS, Location Awareness, Blogging, Teaching, Innovating, Communities, Collaboration, Communication, Internet Technology, Web Technology, Technologies, Problem Solving, Free Culture, Copyleft, Open Content
Vincent Lauria’s Experience
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co-founder & product guy
lefora
(Internet industry)
February 2007 — Present (2 years 6 months)
Forums made easy.
lefora is a free forum hosting service that allows anybody to get up and running with their own forum in less then a minute. We're the blogger of forums. -
Founder
SiliconValley NewTech Meetup
(Internet industry)
January 2006 — Present (3 years 7 months)
The Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup (SVNT) is a monthly event for entrepreneurs to demo their latest products to an audience of 150 - made up of other entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers, and tech enthusiasts. Their are 1,900 members in the group. Companies small to large have demoed, many of which have matured quite successfully.
It's an excellent networking event and free to join for folks in the bay area: http://newtechmeetup.org.
The mission of the meetup is to allow early'ish stage companies to demo their product to an active and interested audience while creating an environment of eager entrepreneurs looking to meet similar folks, learn new ideas, and hopefully form some valuable relationships (professional and friends.) The Valley has a lot of churn, so it's very valuable to for both newbies and seasoned pros to meet each other. -
VP of Product Strategy
Meetro
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
January 2006 — February 2007 (1 year 2 months)
Meetro is a location-aware IM application that allows users to meet people 'nearby.'
We're turning traditional IM on it's side. Meetro is photo and profile driven around your location, designed to facilitate real-time meetings with people locally (new and old friends.) -
innovation catalyst
IBM
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; IBM; Information Technology and Services industry)
August 2002 — December 2005 (3 years 5 months)
I held many roles within IBM including Product Development within IBM Research and leadership roles in two global IBM communities around Open Source Software and Social Networking.
I was a strong promoter of social software as an asset to a business and encouraged the use of blogs, wikis, and community building across the many arms of IBM.
Product Development
* Explored new IBM market opportunities and created the go-to-market strategy.
* Presented to IBM executives and different business units.
Community Leader
* Hosted community calls and local community networking events
* Wrote monthly newsletters for 6,000+ member community
Project Management & Product Analytics
* Maintained deliverability schedules, project timelines, risks assessments, resource management, quality assurance, documentation, and system test plans. -
Software Engineer
eGlean Inc.
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Insurance industry)
May 2001 — January 2002 (9 months)
eGlean was a startup in Boston with around 20 employees, we developed software for Insurance firms.
Before Google Maps, Microsoft had a decent product called MapPoint. Using the MapPoint API I built a program to generate density maps on the web of demographic information to insurance companies and actuaries. -
Network Engineer
RISConsulting
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Insurance industry)
May 2000 — April 2001 (1 year)
* Worked with a small team of risk analysts at a Risk Management Firm as the Networking Engineer.
* Implemented Internet security policies and authentication by building a Linux firewall using ipchains
* Installed Windows NT Terminal Server and Citrix Metaframe to allow external clients to run applications directly on the firm’s secure network, increasing customer satisfaction and decreasing the firm’s cost. -
Management Information Systems
National Arbitration & Mediation
(Public Company; 51-200 employees; Alternative Dispute Resolution industry)
June 1997 — January 2000 (2 years 8 months)
While still just in high school, I worked part-time as a network engineer at the nation's largest firm for dispute resolution (settling cases outside of the U.S. court system.) I connected their remote offices around the country with ISDN lines - it was cutting edge speeds at the time and a pain to set up.
Shortly after joining, we set out to build a litigation system on the web. It was a blind auction system similar to ebay between insurance providers and people trying to settle their claims. The traditional model moved very slowly and was very costly, we made it simple and slightly 'fun.'
Tags: NAM, NAMC National Arbitration and Mediation Corp. -
Newspaper Boy
Carnels Stationary
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Consumer Goods industry)
January 1989 — January 1993 (4 years 1 month)
I spent my Saturday and Sunday mornings putting together copies of The New York Times, Newsday, and The Daly News. Up before the crack of dawn, my hands would be black with newspaper print by breakfast time... All in the name of child labor! The highlight of the morning was our break to play video games, where we were given 4 quarters each to play games like Street Fighter and NBA Jams... and all the candy we could grab in two fists!
Vincent Lauria’s Education
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Boston University
Bachelor's of Science , Computer Engineering, Business Administration , 1997 — 2002
* Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering
* Minor in Business Administration
Additional Information
Vincent Lauria’s Websites:
Vincent Lauria’s Interests:
On the fun side:, Traveling, Living in different cities, and Sunny Days in Dolores Park., On the professional side:, Collaboration and Communication tools, Social Networking, & Social Computing, Blogging, Wikis, Social Bookmark Tagging, (Folksonomy), Search & Collaborative filtering, Machine Intelligence, Pervasive devices, The Free Culture movement, (Creative Commons), GNU/Linux, and Open Source software
Vincent Lauria’s Groups:
New Tech Meetup,
The Free Software Foundation,
The Electronic Frontier Foundation,
Wikipedia
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The Greater IBM Connection: IBM's alumni program for past and present IBM employees -
NetSquared -
Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup
Vincent Lauria’s Honors:
* Demoed Meetro at "Under The Radar" in March 2006
* Presented at the 2006 "O'Reilly Emergening Tech Conference" on Rich Local and Social Experiences
Vincent Lauria’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
