Social Networking Platform for Private Online Communities
State Senator Hannah Beth Jackson presents Co-Founders Mark Sylvester and Kymberlee Weil with prestigious award for their 805connect project
SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. (June 17, 2015) – introNetworks’ CEO and Co-Founder Mark Sylvester is pleased to announce that it has received the 2015 California Small Business of the Year award for their 805connect project. [Read more…]
It’s a little bit early to be sounding the clarion bells, but we are just so excited to working with these folks that we couldn’t help writing about them. Alumni Revolution is the next step after Democracy Prep, a network of open-enrollment, high performing, “no excuses” public charter schools operating in Harlem, New York and Camden, New Jersey. The mission of Democracy Prep is to educate responsible citizen-scholars for success in the college of their choice and a life of active citizenship. A simple philosophy guides Democracy Prep staff, students, and alumni alike:
Work Hard. Go to College. Change the World!
The Alumni Revolution is designed to take graduates from Democracy Prep and provide them with mentors to help guide them through the challenges of College life. When the founder, Seth Andrew, of AR first talked to us we felt like we were a perfect fit – and figured that out in less than ten minutes. That conversation led to the creation of MentorMatch, launching in February 2014.
Over the past few weeks we have been working diligently with Seth and his team to fine tune our Visual Matching Engine to accurately capture the aspirational dreams, experiences, skills and hobbies of the scholars (They call them Revolutionaries) and mentors that are being recruited to help in this effort.
The site will take advantage of two powerful capabilities of the platform. First, it will capture information in multiple dimensions that will assist in automating the matching process itself. Second, the network will allow for any mentor or Revolutionary to be placed at the center of the network so that Alumni Revolution can broker the very best pairing for both people.
By way of background information, Seth showed me his TEDx talk where he described the mission that Democracy Prep is all about. After watching it, I became one of their newest fans and this project instantly became one of the jewels in the crown, as the impact it will make won’t be measured for years to come, yet, the potential to help them find and match perfect mentor/mentee pairs is amazing. Take a look at his talk and you will see how much passion he has and how this project has become so successful.
We are proud to be working with Alumni Revolution and look forward to the launch of their site in February.
Visionary Executive Brings Extensive Track Record of Strategic Business Growth to Leading Relationship Visualization Technology Company
introNetworks today announced that David Nour has been appointed to its Board of Directors. Nour brings over two decades of experience in working with technology companies. He will help guide introNetworks’ growth with a focus on expanding its relationship visualization platform partnerships and maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of its go-to-market strategy.
“Relationship Economics is exactly what our platform has delivered to past clients such as TED, NASA, Xerox and the Clinton Global Initiative, and I can’t think of a more appropriate expertise to join us at this stage of our company’s evolution,” said Mark Sylvester, introNetworks CEO. “I’m pleased to have David’s thought and practice leadership in strategic relationships join our Board, and am excited for our team’s opportunity to work with him.” Nour is currently CEO of The Nour Group, Inc. focused on enterprise growth through strategic relationships, disruptive technologies, and adaptive innovation. He has pioneered the phenomenon that relationships are the greatest off-balance-sheet asset any organization possesses, large or small, public or private.
“introNetworks is the definitive leader in visualizing intelligent and highly-relevant relationships,” said Nour. “All indications are that they will continue on a growth trajectory, and I look forward to bringing a strategic and relationship-centric growth perspective at the Board level to help manage and leverage emerging opportunities.”
Nour is a senior leadership advisor to clients such as HP, Siemens, Amerinet, and KPMG. He is the author of several books including the best selling “Relationship Economics” (Wiley), “ConnectAbility” (McGraw-Hill), “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Raising Capital” (Praeger) and “Return on Impact” (ASAE). His unique perspective and independent insights on business relationships as well as social and mobile innovation have been featured in a variety of prominent blogs and publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Knowledge@Wharton, Associations Now, Huffington Post Business, Medium, Entrepreneur and Success magazine.
He annually delivers 50+ global keynotes at leading industry association conferences, corporate meetings, and academic forums. Nour is often a guest lecturer at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and Georgia Tech’s College of Management. He is currently an active member of the Society of International Business Fellows (SIBF), the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), and the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG).
A native of Iran, David came to the U.S. as a teenager with a suitcase, $100, limited family ties, and no fluency in English. He earned an Executive MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and a BA degree in Management from Georgia State University.
The National Education Technology Plan, Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology, calls for applying the advanced technologies used in our daily personal and professional lives to our entire education system to improve student learning, accelerate and scale up the adoption of effective practices, and use data and information for continuous improvement.
Watch Tutorial Videos created for edConnectr’s users. Created by @snbeach and @MarkSylvester
The 2010 National Education Technology Plan demonstrates the importance of educators becoming more connected to resources, tools, colleagues, experts, and learning activities, both within and beyond schools. Participation in online communities of practice is a key way educators connect. Robust online participation contributes both to individual excellence and to the vitality of the profession as a whole. The Connected Online Communities of Practice project has stewarded a scalable, sustainable ecology of online communities in education to improve teacher and leader effectiveness, enhance student learning and increase productivity. [Read more…]
Is this you? Your team is getting ready to invest in a Business Social Network. You realize that this platform has the potential to become a major asset for your enterprise, and you want to set your Network apart from competitors’.
You know all of the buzzwords. You know that you’re going to have to:
You know that you’re going to have to provide an environment that holds consistent value for your community; one that keeps them coming back in, and you know that you’re going to need to continue feeding new and relevant content into your Business Social Network.
It’s a lot to think about, and it seems like a lot to manage. In fact, building a Business Social Network can seem very overwhelming at first. That’s okay though, don’t worry so much about that.
As we’ve built, launched and grown almost 400 online communities to date and observed the industry of online communities grow over the last ten years, we’ve learned a thing or two along the way. We’ve seen what works, what doesn’t and what the consistent trends are that spell success, and what the consistent trends are that spell failure.
We have collated some of our learning and here, we’ll present to you the pitfalls we’ve observed over the years in order to save you from doing the same. Whether you become a client of ours some day or not, we care about you and don’t want you to make these mistakes!
Simply fill out the form below to download our resource guide, entitled: 5 Devastating Mistakes That Can Lead To Online Community Failure.
We are thrilled to be working with SIGGRAPH to provide a platform for an initiative that is now in it’s third year, the SIGGRAPH Business Symposium. The event is held the first day of the annual SIGGRAPH conference and draws executives from the various businesses that attend this tradeshow and educational conference dedicated to Computer Graphics. This year there will be a focus on mentoring and collaboratively working to address key industry issues that are affecting all of the attendees. The organizing committee was looking for a platform that would assist them in the matching of mentors and decided that introNetworks Visual Matching Engine inside of the eventNet would work.
“As the leaders in the Computer Graphics industry, our attendees have either ‘made it’ or ‘seen it’ so they demand the highest level of production values and functionality. The introNetworks way of visualizing connections is unique and something we believe will engage, delight and encourage them to make connections that will last long after the Symposium.” – Evan Hirsch, SIGGRAPH Business Symposium Chair.
We worked with the organizers to fine-tune the Visual Matching Engine to address the need for matches that would be tailored to business and issues related to the enterprises represented as opposed to computer graphic related terms.
The community will be up after the conference to serve as a reference and area for conversation related to topics that are kicked off at the day long Symposium.
Ironically it was just over ten years ago that we attended SIGGRAPH (our first one was in 1984) and it will feel good to be back around people that are passionate about the business of computer graphics. Our focus now is on information visualization as it serves real humans as opposed to creating tools to build virtual humans.
Note: Before introNetworks, I co-founded Wavefront Technologies, which became Alias|Wavefront which is now owned by our good friends Autodesk, who continue to innovate the software now called Maya.
Video sent to the attendees:
