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| PANELISTS | ||||
| CAROL DEVINE Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Gravity Switch |
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| As Gravity Switch’s Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Carol Devine is completely immersed in the world of Internet marketing. Responsible for developing and managing a broad range of integrated solutions for her clients, Carol brings a multi-disciplined approach that combines marketing, technology and business strategy. During her years at Gravity Switch, Carol has gained an expertise in web design and user-interface engineering by managing a number of major redesigns for clients such as Five Colleges, Inc., The Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council, The New England States Consortium, Smith College Libraries, Real Log Homes and American Farmland Trust, among others. She has also analyzed the effectiveness of various websites for the insurance, healthcare and higher education industries. Prior to joining Gravity Switch, Carol spent 15 years working with media giants such as MTV, CBS, VH-1, Nickelodeon, and Disney; along with global training and development firms Blessing/White and Decker Communications, Carol graduated Magna cum Laude from Boston University with a B.A. in Marketing. Gravity Switch is an award-winning interactive media firm that designs custom technology solutions delivered via the web and CDROM. Based in Northampton, MA, they've worked with national companies like Honda, Polaroid, Sega and Hartford Life; colleges such as Smith, UMass, & Mount Holyoke; and numerous non-profits, local manufacturers and service organizations. You can learn more about them from their website at www.gravityswitch.com |
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| SHEL HOROWITZ Author and Owner of frugalmarketing.com |
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| A marketing consultant and copywriter with an international clientele, Shel Horowitz specializes in ethical, affordable, and effective marketing strategies and materials. Shel is the owner of frugalmarketing.com and the author of six books. The two most recent are Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World. Both these books have won awards, and Principled Profit made a brief appearance on the Amazon.com best seller list. Shel Horowitz has been marketing online all the way back to an AOL account in 1994. He joined his first e-mail discussion list in 1995, and put up the first of five websites in 1996. His company started as a typing service all the way back in 1981, with an initial marketing expenditure of $12 and a total capitalization of $200. He rapidly moved into resume writing, and the business became viable when he got his first computer in 1984. In the 1990s, more of his business began to be focused on helping others create marketing materials. About half of Shel’s clients are in the publishing industry, and the other half are retail, service, direct mail, dotcom, etc. etc. The Internet brings him over 80% of his marketing clients and about half his book sales. His largest source of new clients is participation in various internet discussion groups. |
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| ROB LAPORTE CEO, DISC |
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| Rob Laporte began his marketing career in the mid ‘80s as a market researcher for top Boston advertising agency Maslow, Gold & Rothschild. Later, Rob was appointed Project Director for PERT Survey Research, a market research firm servicing large corporations. He then worked in the marketing department of REN Electronics, a division of a Fortune 500 company INSILCO, and a maker of mainframe parts. In 1995 Rob founded DISC (www.2disc.com) while teaching at the University of Massachusetts. The success of DISC prompted Rob Laporte to discontinue at the university, except for occasional guest lecturing in e-commerce, and focus instead on making web sites make money. Rob Laporte’s background in both marketing and linguistics enabled him to see the essentially linguistic nature of the web and the value of search engine marketing (SEM) long before SEM became the mainstream, flourishing field it is now. Rob is well known within the SEM profession, having contributed articles to such key organizations as SEMPO (the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (www.sempo.org), to the I-search discussion list, and to various newspapers and magazines. DISC’s first full time employee, Jessie Stricchiola, learned so much at DISC that she has gone on to become the youngest speaker at the prestigious international Search Engine Strategies Conference series, where Rob Laporte is a regular VIP guest. DISC’s Karyn Wergland, a truly brilliant professional, has worked with DISC for over 4 years. The rest of the DISC team is also exceptionally talented, educated and experienced, and has been with DISC for over two years. DISC has worked with clients nationwide, ranging from Barnes and Noble and Smith & Wesson to one person businesses. In search engine marketing, all work results in industry standard reports and server statistics that prove the effectiveness of the work done, and DISC has years of such proof and of client references that attest to its absolute mastery of search engine marketing. DISC performs other web marketing, as well as site design and building, but the focus is on SEM because that earns the highest ROI for DISC’s customers. |
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| MICHAEL FRANCOEUR President, Joining Technologies LLC |
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| Michael Francoeur spent the past twenty-five years in the welding and precision joining business. In 1985 after pursuing an education in metals engineering, he started his first company, Dynamic Electron Beam Corp., in Waterbury, CT. In 1992 he reformed a new company, Energy Beam Labs, Inc. In 1998, Joining Technologies was formed. The company currently employs over twenty people and services aerospace, sensors and microelectronics, semiconductor, medical devices, energy systems, and military and defense industries with high tech laser welding. When Michael set out to start his first precision welding business in the mid eighties, the strategic portion of his business plan was non-existent. He plunged into an over saturated market segment with players that had dominated the industry for over thirty years. Most of his competitors were multi-generation family owned businesses, with deeply rooted connections in industries requiring costly certifications in order to do business. Earning a piece of the market meant three things: perseverance, perseverance, perseverance. In 1992 he started a new company and developed a business plan with a long-term strategic goal. The goal was to develop the new company as a top contender in its industry. The strategic plan was typical of an overly eager entrepreneur and the reality at that time was that it probably wouldn’t be feasible without a small miracle. Then the internet appeared. He quickly realized an opportunity for a level playing field and immediately sought out talent to help him implement a web-based marketing plan. His first website was designed in-house on Apple computers in 1993. As it turned out, his was the first company in its field to have a web presence. The company has never looked back, and today still enjoys a strong reputation as a dominant web savvy marketer in its field. It has been successfully closing business with clients like, Motorola, Boeing, Martin Lockheed, Applied Materials, GE, Cray Computer, Boston Scientific, National Labs, and government defense contracts. In 2001 Joining Technologies accepted the prestigious Gold Medal for Quality and Improvement through the Connecticut Quality Improvement Partnership. In August 2003 Joining Technologies celebrated the launch of it’s fifth website in its ten year history. The event was marked by a gala launch celebration with over seventy-five special guests attending the festivities. “At Joining Technologies, we take our web presence seriously and it shows.” (www.joiningtech.com) |
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