Network

Ruben has shaped the direction of analytics for online media. As head of Analytics for both Metaresolver and SAY Media he lead teams of data scientists and analysts focused on building data-driven solutions to optimize digital advertising performance, both online and mobile. Through his work at Yahoo! in search analytics and Gaia in game analytics he played a pivotal role in guiding product strategy for mass market online services. At Nielsen NetRatings he led research integrity, developing reporting methodologies and standards that shaped online media measurement as we know it today.

Leveraging this expertise in both audience insights and digital advertising analytics, he has launched Padron Analytics to help businesses mine, interpret, and take action based on vast amounts of data. Specialties include building data solutions that guide and optimize product strategy, including user segmentation, lifetime value predictive modeling, and user funnel optimization. Clients include digital publishing platforms, mobile app developers, as well as digital advertising players.
http://padronanalytics.com

Dr. Marc A. Smith, Chief Social Scientist, Connected Action Consulting Group

Focus Area: Marc Smith is a sociologist specializing in the social organization of online communities and computer mediated interaction. Smith leads the Connected Action consulting group and lives and works in Silicon Valley, California. Smith co-founded the Social Media Research Foundation (http://www.smrfoundation.org/), a non-profit devoted to open tools, data, and scholarship related to social media research.

Smith is the co-editor with Peter Kollock of Communities in Cyberspace (Routledge), a collection of essays exploring the ways identity; interaction and social order develop in online groups. Along with Derek Hansen and Ben Shneiderman, he is the co-author and editor of Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world, from Morgan-Kaufmann which is a guide to mapping connections created through computer-mediated interactions.

Smith’s research focuses on computer-mediated collective action: the ways group dynamics change when they take place in and through social cyberspaces. Many “groups” in cyberspace produce public goods and organize themselves in the form of a commons (for related papers see: http://www.connectedaction.net/marc-smith/). Smith’s goal is to visualize these social cyberspaces, mapping and measuring their structure, dynamics and life cycles. While at Microsoft Research, he founded the Community Technologies Group and led the development of the “Netscan” web application and data mining engine that allowed researchers studying Usenet newsgroups and related repositories of threaded conversations to get reports on the rates of posting, posters, crossposting, thread length and frequency distributions of activity. He contributes to the open and free NodeXL project (http://www.codeplex.com/nodexl) that adds social network analysis features to the familiar Excel spreadsheet. NodeXL enables social network analysis of email, Twitter, Flickr, WWW, Facebook and other network data sets.

The Connected Action consulting group (http://www.connectedaction.net) applies social science methods in general and social network analysis techniques in particular to enterprise and internet social media usage. SNA analysis of data from message boards, blogs, wikis, friend networks, and shared file systems can reveal insights into organizations and processes. Community managers can gain actionable insights into the volumes of community content created in their social media repositories. Mobile social software applications can visualize patterns of association that are otherwise invisible.

Smith received a B.S. in International Area Studies from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1988, an M.Phil. in social theory from Cambridge University in 1990, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA in 2001. He is an adjunct lecturer at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Smith is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Media-X Program at Stanford University.

Michael Tchong is a managing partner with SCG.

Focus area: Trends in consumer-culture-cool market shits and business’s leverage of them in growth strategies.

Michael is a high-energy, passionate speaker who has devoted his career to help propel trends that reinvent markets. His trademark motto: “I help you catch the next wave before it catches you.” His speaking career took off during the 90s Internet boom and the founding of his third start-up, ICONOCAST, an online marketing media company. He has addressed more than 300 audiences worldwide, inspiring them with remarkable insights into business, lifestyle, social media, marketing and technology trends.

An innovation catalyst, Michael motivates attendees by dissecting opportunities that leverage market shifts, in particular massive “ubertrend” waves. His talks showcase brands, products and individuals who are leading the charge to innovate industry sectors by harnessing emerging societal and technology trends. Michael is founder of Social Revolution, a start-up that aims to reshape our future by applying next-generation technologies and consumer insights to help spur innovation. He is also the author of Social Engagement Marketing, an expert guide to the world of social media. His analysis can be found at Ubercool.com.

Whitney Vosburgh is a managing partner with SCG.

Focus area: The Art of Brand + Design Strategy

Whitney worked as an executive for a cross-section of market-making organizations, domestically and internation- ally, from American Express to Merrill Lynch to Chevron to Ogilvy & Mather to Interbrand in the areas of branding, marketing, strategy, and management. He also worked as interim CMO and VP of Marketing for a number of startups that he successfully positioned and marketed leading to profitable sales, mergers, IPOs, and market leadership.

His focus is creating breakthrough value-creation brand strategies and stories by peeling back the barrier between the impossible and the possible. He does this through engaging stakeholders and experts who don’t usually work together in conversations they’ve never had, creating a shared vision of a future they all want to see happen, and aligning around the actions that create real brand value for the organization and its stakeholders. He uses a variety of methods that break down barriers, challenge assumptions, open avenues for innovation, and foster collaboration.

http://consultwhitney.com/

Dr. Natalie is a managing partner with SCG.

Focus area: She provides guidance to both companies who buy software and to software companies who want to sell to those customers.

For the technology evaluation side, as a business strategist, Dr. Natalie guide companies / brands to create a short list of vendors, choose the right software and determine how to use the software to reach business goals. In her role as an agency executive, she provided guidance on how to go beyond the “Like” and obtain real, sustainable brand engagement as well as measure the value and ROI of PR, Marketing, Customer Service and Product Innovation by using software.

On the software side, Dr. Natalie has evaluated hundreds of software companies, authored 6 WAVES and provided guidance to CEO-level as well as product engineers, marketers, analyst relations– on product roadmap, vendor messaging and the criteria customers use to create a short list of target vendors. As a former Forrester Analyst, Dr. Natalie led the pack by writing the world’s 1st social media ROI model for social software. Her ROI models now cover all disciplines– PR, Marketing, Customer Service…

As a sought after thought leader, Dr. Natalie’s work is featured in Huffington Post, USAToday, Adage, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal; is the subject of four books including Like My Stuff: How to Monetize Facebook; dozens of best practice white papers and makes her a top choice as a TV commentator. As an accomplished keynote speaker at Gartner and Forrester and on her radio program, TheSocialNetworkShow.com, Dr. Natalie enlightens, empowers and inspires listeners. Her videos social media ROI videos have set the precedent for businesses to take social media seriously:
http://www.drnatalienews.com/

Brandon Miller, Video production Director

Brandon is a long time friend with deep skills in both videography, art direction, video editing, production, and video format optimization and photography. For commercial videos, product and company promotion, music videos (live or studio), Brandon is the answer. http://bmillerproductions.com/