Internet Advocacy Roundtable: Winning with Widgets

Ralph Sklarew owns Working Widgets. He is a technologist and entrepreneur. He has a Ph.D. in physics, a dozen patents, and half a dozen startups--with one sold to duPont and another VC funded. His previous fields of interest include environment, emergency response, highway traffic, online slide shows, space industrialization, eLearning, remote operations, MEMS, and wind power. Currently, he is developing widgets for business and establishing an online working office capability in a virtual world (Second Life). Ralph enjoys working at the technological edge to develop solutions to problems he encounters in clients' businesses. Widgets are part of an evolutionary wave in the Internet going from users being stuck with accepting or rejecting the total offerings of vendors to users "having it their own way"---grabbing, customizing and using many small loosely connected parts, or widgets. He developed an events notification widget for a website that was designed for customization and major bands picked it up and their fans from them... now the website company has dropped its website but provides the service for free to hundreds of groups and hundreds of thousands of people and makes money from ticket purchases linked in the widget.

Peter Corbett is CEO of iStrategy Labs. Peter comes to iStrategyLabs with a breadth of knowledge and experience perfectly suited for his role, which focuses on moving clients businesses forward. Peter's true passion is working with clients to engage consumers using interactive tactics and fusing these methods with an integrated approach. From web site creation to online media campaigns, mobile marketing and social media, Peter has the experience and understanding to help marketers wrap their minds and business models around the interactive space. Peter has a degree from Emory University's Goizueta Business School with a focus on operations, management and entrepreneurship. He is also a board member of the Goizueta Business School and the Art Director's Club of Metropolitan Washington.

Bill Thornton heads up Product Development for iBelong, bringing a mix of product and management skills born from a fascination with publishing and technology and refined over a 12-year career. Above everything else, Bill's passion is in enabling Internet users to find the information they need, when they need it, in the format they need. He's worn many hats over the course of his career as a technologist. As entrepreneur, he brought Stephen King and Nicholas Sparks official sites to the Internet and was responsible for architecting the back-end that allowed King to experiment with self-publishing, ebooks, and the honor system. As a principal product manager for AOL's Search product, Bill was responsible for revolutionary products including the platform that will algorithmically maximize highly relevant page views within AOL content channels while also maximizing the revenue potential, as well as the technical aspects of the FullView product, which was later emulated by Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, and Google. At iBelong, Bill is responsible for translating product ideas into deliverable projects, coordinating the efforts of the development teams, and overseeing the evolution of the iBelong platform that powers the Business Development team's Private Network efforts as well as the Product Management team's consumer product. He also makes a mean pot of coffee.

Michael Hackmer is the Online Marketing Manager at BIA Financial Network and its divisions including ActiveAccess, Dataworld, and SpectraRep. Michael provides social networking strategies for marketing and lead generation, develops web sites and online content, and creates strategies for expanding BIA's corporate brand and market presence. Michael also blogs on behalf of ActiveAccess on technological and social media trends and how they impact the television, radio, and newspaper industries, as well as political and non-profit organizations. Michael has over 10 years experience in marketing, sales, public relations, and government affairs, and has successfully managed marketing campaigns for the world's leading technology companies, as well as developed public relations and government affairs strategies for the nation's leading retail corporations. Prior to join BIA, Michael implemented marketing strategies for VitalSpring Technologies, a technology company in McLean, VA, and Computer Marketing Associates, a marketing firm specializing in the public sector in Tysons Corner, VA. Michael also has worked on numerous political campaigns and occasionally blogs and posts articles on various political sites across the spectrum.

About the Internet Advocacy Roundtable
The Internet Advocacy Roundtable is a monthly forum brought to you by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. We feature in-depth discussions about digital technology strategies for advocacy and policy campaigns. We strive to help the advocacy community use digital technology more effectively and provide a gathering for those working in this space to network and learn from their peers. Our speakers are drawn from experts in the field and our audiences typically include many other experts, as well as people new to the field. The format is designed to maximize discussion time. As a result, we have consistently lived up to our reputation that our speakers will learn as much from the audience as the audience learns from the speakers. The Internet Advocacy Roundtable was started in August 2005 and now carries on the tradition of our earlier Online Progressive Advocacy Network (OPAN) series.

Note: The event is on Thursday, December 20, not on December 17 (as incorrectly indicated in the email).