Team

Laura Fitton, Principal

Laura “@Pistachio” Fitton is leading the charge of sussing out intelligent and productive business uses of emergent technologies like Twitter, where she is read by thousands of community members. The first to publish a white paper on “Enterprise Microsharing” (popularly called “Internal Twitter”) she also writes for an runs the TouchBase blog and is an early beta tester of Seesmic and Qik. She re-launched Pistachio Consulting in September 2008 to connect businesses to new ideas and innovations using all the tools of microsharing. Pistachio comprises the TouchBase blog (covering business use of microsharing), the TouchBase Link Blog (stream of Twitter and microsharing articles for businesspeople, wherever they are published), serves clients like Johnson & Johnson, Ford Motor Corporation, PeopleBrowsr, The Sister Project, Transplant-1 and CommuNteligence, and is writing Twitter for Dummies for Wiley publishing, due July 2009.

Laura’s innovative use of social media has gotten the attention of the top minds in technology, as profiled by Naked Conversations author Shel Israel for his Global Survey. Her work is featured in five books published in 2008 including Seth Godin’s Tribes, Liz Lynch’s Smart Networking, Paul Gillin’s Secrets of Social Media Marketing, and Julio Ojeda’s Twitter Means Business. Laura has also been widely quoted in the press including The New York Times Magazine, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, The LA Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, NPR, NECN, Newsweek.com, Inc.com, CIO Magazine, CNET, ZDNet, ComputerWorld and many other magazines, publications, web shows and blogs. She speaks on business use of microsharing for private clients and at technology conferences. Guest lectures on social media and Twitter for Business include Harvard Business School, Bentley College, Clemson and Emerson.

Laura is a magna cum laude graduate of Cornell University’s eclectic College Scholar program. In “past lives” she studied science writing with Carl Sagan, rock climbed, sailed on a schooner, raised a niece, ran a hobby farm, traveled and lived abroad.

Today she lives in Boston with two toddler daughters and a giant Leonberger. She practices Ashtanga yoga and plays ice hockey in her “spare” time, and is a stroke survivor dedicated to raising awareness.

Marcia Conner, VP Enterprise (@marciamarcia)

Marcia Conner works at the intersection of social messaging and workplace learning, focusing on the trends, markets and dynamics shaping a distributed, collaborative and multi-generational business culture. A former Fortune 500 learning exec, coauthor of Creating a Learning Culture: Strategy, Technology and Practice and cocreator of the Pistachio Consulting Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison, she writes the Fast Company blog “Learn At All Levels.” Her latest book, The New Social Learning, will be out in May 2010. Marcia was Information Futurist and Vice President of Education for PeopleSoft, Senior Manager of Worldwide Training at Microsoft and Editor in Chief of Learning in the New Economy magazine. She brings an insider’s perspective to the fields of enterprise technology, corporate community building, human capital development, distributed leadership and education. She has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, CIO Magazine, PCWeek, Information Week, and has appeared on ABC World News This Morning. She is a Batten Institute Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business Administration and a 2009 Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research. Learn more at www.marciaconner.com.

Tamar Weinberg, Editor in Chief, TouchBase Blog (@tamar)

Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast and freelance writer with a passion for all things tech and productivity. She is well known across a wide range of online communities and industries for her work at her own site, Techipedia, as well as her contributions to other major technology and social media blogs. She provides consulting in internet marketing and blogs for numerous online publications, most notably Real Simple Magazine, Lateral Action, Search Engine Roundtable, and Mashable. She is also a former Lifehacker contributor.

Tamar specializes in social media consulting and strategy, blogger outreach, reputation management, and search engine marketing (SEO, link building, and Pay Per Click Marketing). She has been involved in the Internet since the early 90s and has dabbled in social online interactions for more than fifteen years. Tamar has been working nearly exclusively with Internet Marketing side since 2006, though she also has experience with web hosting and technical support and can handle complicated WordPress installations and configurations with ease.

Leslie Poston, Senior Writer, Twitter for Dummies and TouchBase Blog (@geechee_girl)

ADVISORS

Steve Mann (@stevemann)

For over 20 years, Steve Mann has led successful and profitable high-tech strategic organizations and businesses. Steve currently leads SAP’s Social Media efforts to leverage Web 2.0 in driving greater customer intimacy, co-innovation on products and services and superior demand for its solutions. Steve also leads SAP’s Total Customer Experience initiative and their  competitive strategies office. In this capacity he creates and executes on strategies to positively impact SAP by raising barriers for competitors to enter given markets and supporting the defense of SAP market strongholds. Mr. Mann and team drive the assertive positioning and syndication of marketing and field-ready tactics to help SAP win repeatedly in the market.

Mr. Mann previously led SAP’s Competitive and Market Intelligence team. In this capacity he was responsible for delivering market insight on competitors and market trends to inform SAP’s strategic planning teams, product portfolio process and customer engagement strategies. His team had unique capabilities to assess both market conditions and competitors and delivers these insights as a service to the corporation.

Prior to joining SAP, Mr. Mann was a principal with the BRM Group, a Jerusalem based Venture Capital firm. As an executive-in-residence, he was responsible for driving and managing strategic venture investments on behalf of BRM. Mr. Mann’s vision and strategies were essential to reduce time-to-market for companies in the BRM portfolio. Prior to joining BRM, Mr. Mann was the vice president of product strategy, for Computer Associates.

Mr. Mann holds bachelors degrees in history and psychology from Emory University, a Masters degree in experimental psychology from NYU, and is a PhD candidate in psychobiology at the City University of New York.

Michael Gruen (@gruen)

Michael Gruen has earned significant respect in the corporate sphere and within the startup community as a trusted advisor since 2003. In many cases, he has fulfilled the role of interim Chief Operations / Chief Technical Officer with several organizations in need of innovative leadership during crucial developmental periods. In 2006-2007, Michael briefly joined Morgan Stanley as an Analyst.

Currently, Michael is CTO of a Venture group in “stealth mode” and CFO/COO at NOM, a Digital Services Agency. He still serves as an advisor to several small businesses, and on the board of directors on Hamilton Ventures. In addition, he’ll be receiving a co-author credit on the soon-to-be-released “Twitter for Dummies”.

Michael graduated Cum Laude from Hamilton College as a Senior Fellow with a BA in Computer Science. He has published his work on Wireless Security in Mobile Embedded Systems, and received grants for his research with Immersive Technologies for Pedagogical Applications, and for Bluetooth-based Secure Data Synchronization.

Dan Martell (@danmartell)