If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now: Civic Engagement Online in a Disconnected America

Lisa Williams, CEO & founder of Placeblogger, the largest searchable index of local weblogs, will be joining us at the Ethos Roundtable in February to talk about what knits geographic communities together online. Please join us!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011
4:30 - 6:00 pm
Charles Hotel
1 Bennett Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge
Featured guest: Lisa Williams, founder of Placeblogger

Here's a little bit about Lisa and the Placeblogger project:

Placeblogger was a winner of the Knight 21st Century News Challenge, which gives out $5 million dollars annually to innovators with projects that aim to define the future of journalism. Placeblogger helps companies who want to start an online community or increase their success with social media; the company also helps media buyers and strategists for political campaigns assess the blog/social media landscape. She recently won the 2009 New Media Women Entrepreneur of the Year award for her work at Placeblogger.

Ms. Williams is also a fellow at the MIT Media Lab’s Center for Future Civic Media. The Media Lab is one of the most well-known university-based technology and innovation centers in the world. The newly formed Center for Future Civic Media focuses on meeting the information needs of humanity over the next 100 years.

Prior to founding Placeblogger, in 2004 Ms. Williams founded H2otown, an online community and news site by and for the residents of her hometown of Watertown, MA. H2otown became a nationally-recognized model for what came to be known as “citizen journalism,” or news created by nonjournalists as a way to create a sense of community in their neighborhoods.

Lisa has worked with the Boston Globe, Dan Gillmor’s Center for Citizen Media, and countless startups and media organizations. She was named Peter Jennings Fellow at the National Center for the Constitution and was recently named one of the “Top 25 Women to Watch in Tech” by AlwaysOn/Stanford Innovation Forum. She lives in Watertown, MA, with her spouse and two children.

At the conclusion of our Ethos Roundtable session, we will stroll down the hall to enjoy the good company, charming venue, and free food at the 501 Tech Club, which is generously underwritten by TechFoundation. The 501 Tech Club is the monthly gathering of technology professionals who work with nonprofit organizations.

All Ethos Roundtable attendees are welcome at the Boston 501 Tech Club, and vice versa.

Please remember that there's never any need to make a reservation to attend Ethos Roundtable events. Just come if you can, and feel free to invite others! However, if you're planning to attend the Boston 501 Tech Club event at 6:00 pm, we ask that you send an email to Kathleen Sherwin of TechFoundation (ksherwin AT techfoundation DOT org). Since TechFoundation is providing the free food, it's both courteous and prudent to let her know how much to order.

See you in February!