Based in Palo Alto and Cambridge, MA, Merced Group has provided clients with a broad range of online services including blogging, online communities, social media, website redesign and user experience, new product development, product marketing and web and social media business models.
We have also worked within the enterprise to promote collaboration and enhance business processes through new social tools and practices. Merced Group's clientele ranges from startups to global Fortune 100 companies that address markets in search marketing, SMB onine business services, online financial services and enterprise networking technology.
Catherine Shinners is an advocate for the potential for social business tools and practice to transform the way people work, companies partner and service customers, and organization address the potential for social change. Catherine brings collaboration knowledge, expertise and technology background to bear in her practice. She has been a blogger and speaker a conferences and webinars on enterprise collaboration topics. She has helped clients successfully position and market new products, build authentic customer relationships through online community and create compelling online user experiences for productive collaboration.
Based in Palo Alto, Catherine has held senior director positions in product management, product marketing, business development and marketing at Integral Development Corporation, WebEx, Compaq and Tandem. She has developed new lines of business in enterprise software for internet infrastructure solutions for the financial services and telecommunications markets, led go-to-market efforts for Web-based business solutions, identified and structure business and technology partnerships and successfully launched Web 2.0 and SaaS online services for collaboration software.
Catherine holds a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin. She blogs at Cathexis, is on Twitter @catshinners, is at http://www.linkedin.com/in/catherineshinners -- and also grew up in New Orleans.
Bill Ives grew up in New Orleans and then spent most of his adult life in the Boston area with short stints in Toronto, London and New York. Bill has sold and led both large and small-scale consulting engagements in a variety of industries and locations within the US and across Europe. He currently provides enterprise collaboration and social media consulting. Bill is a frequent speaker at conferences and webinars, and creates white papers and guest blog posts covering enterprise 2.0 and related topics.
He draws on over 25 years of experience as a consultant in business uses of emerging technologies, including knowledge management and learning, and over five years' experience in business uses int he new social media, both inside the enterprise and on the Web.
He led the Accenture Knowledge Management and Enterprise Portals Client Practice within the Human Performance Service Line, developing many large-scale projects including industry award-winning implementations for innovation and effective knowledge sharing. At the Renaissance Strategy Group and Spectrum Interactive, he developed knowledge management, performance support and multi-media learning systems. At both Accenture and Renaissance he developed methodologies for firm-wide use in knowledge management engagements.
Bill holds a Ph.D in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto, and Ed.M in Human Development from Harvard University and a B.A. in Sociology from Tufts University. He conducted post-doctoral studies at Harvard looking at the effects of media on cognition. Widely published, Bill has also been blogging at Portals and KM since May 2004, and his blog is syndicated through a variety of sources - Social Enterprise Today, Lexus Nexus and Social Media Today. He also does social software reviews at the AppGap blog. Bill is found on a number of industry lists of top influencers in enterprise collaboration. When he is not working, Bill tries to find time for his painting. He can also be found on Twitter @billives and at http://www.linkedin.com/in/billives.