Bill Binder & Jose Gonzalez — October 2010 Speakers

Come join us! Reg­is­ter now and beat the crowds.

Bill Binder
Bill Binder per­forms and teaches with The Torch The­atre in Phoenix and is the exec­u­tive pro­ducer of the Phoenix Improv Fes­ti­val. He has been per­form­ing impro­vi­sa­tional the­atre since 1994, start­ing with Michi­gan Tech University’s The Troupe.

Jose Gon­za­lez
Jose Gon­za­lez is a Phoenix native who has been study­ing and per­form­ing improv since 2001. One of the founders of The Torch The­atre and a pro­ducer of the Phoenix Improv Fes­ti­val, he has been a sup­porter the down­town and cen­tral Phoenix art scene for nearly 20 years and active in it for the past decade.

Bill and Jose will present Cre­ate, Com­mu­ni­cate and Con­nect at 2:10pm.
Over­com­ing the sprawl of the val­ley to con­nect with your com­mu­nity whether for busi­ness, fun, or progress can be a chal­lenge. Bill Binder and Jose Gon­za­lez will dis­cuss their expe­ri­ences jump­ing into the down­town Phoenix art scene nearly 10 years ago and using improv-inspired ideas, we’ll explore how every­one can bet­ter cre­ate their own path, com­mu­ni­cate it to the world around them, and con­nect with the com­mu­nity to make great things hap­pen.

Drew Manusharow — October 2010 Speaker

Drew Manusharow
Drew Manusharow has a Bachelor’s degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Ari­zona in Fine Arts with an Empha­sis in Visual Com­mu­ni­ca­tions & Graphic Design. His pas­sion for cre­ativ­ity and the envi­ron­ment stemmed at an early age when his par­ents enrolled him and his brother in the Boy Scouts of Amer­ica. Drew has grown to appre­ci­ate life and the envi­ron­ment. Since grad­u­at­ing Col­lege, he has worked in the field of graphic design, project man­age­ment, and has also started a small busi­ness. He con­sid­ers him­self a phil­an­thropist; pas­sion­ate about help­ing oth­ers see the qual­ity of life. Humbly on a tight bud­get, and for­tu­nate enough to travel the world, he has real­ized he wants to bridge his cre­ativ­ity with his pas­sion for sus­tain­abil­ity. Cul­ti­vat­ing edu­ca­tion for peo­ple; Drew would like to help Phoenix, Ari­zona be a more sus­tain­able city. When Drew is not doing some sort of project man­age­ment, or enjoy­ing Phoenix’s Moun­tain Pre­serves, he is fig­ur­ing out a way to help res­i­dents, and busi­ness own­ers reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Drew will be pre­sent­ing Green tips for small busi­nesses at 3:50pm.
This will be an open dis­cus­sion about how busi­ness own­ers can and should pro­mote sus­tain­abil­ity at their office. With an under­stand­ing that in this down econ­omy and tight bud­gets, most busi­ness own­ers are think­ing about the bot­tom line. This dis­cus­sion will give you some tips and incen­tives to con­sider to jus­tify the return on invest­ment. Come pre­pared to change the world!

Catrina Knoebl — October 2010 Speaker

Cat­rina Knoebl
Cat­rina Knoebl gets around greater down­town Phoenix. From the Down­town Phoenix Jour­nal to her busi­ness Urban Affair and Radi­ate Phx to the Cac­tus League, Cat­rina has her hands in just about every­thing urban. She spends her days at Coe House, a his­toric res­i­dence known for host­ing small con­certs and urban­ite get togethers.

Cat­rina will be pre­sent­ing How hyper local works at 3pm.

As large news­pa­pers become out of touch with their com­mu­ni­ties, hyper­local pub­li­ca­tions are fill­ing the void. Smaller audi­ences means less top­ics to draw from, but enables writ­ers to go to depths they’d never pre­vi­ously have time to. This pre­sen­ta­tion will show you how that process works, how it’s dif­fer­ent than tra­di­tional news gath­er­ing and how to make your busi­ness hyperlocal-coverage worthy.

Kirk Yuhnke — October 2010 Speaker

Kirk Yuhnke
Kirk Yuhnke is a morn­ing news anchor for ABC15 Day­break and the news/talk show Now@9. He’s worked as a jour­nal­ist in var­i­ous states across the coun­try includ­ing Ohio, Michi­gan and Utah. Kirk spe­cial­izes in tech­nol­ogy and social media. He lives in Phoenix with his wife, son and brand new daughter.

Kirk will be pre­sent­ing The busi­ness of local news: How we decide what’s a head­line and how dig­i­tal media is chang­ing every­thing at 3:50pm.

Kirk has spent the past 10 years work­ing as a news reporter/anchor and will share some of his insight into what makes the busi­ness of news tick. If you’ve ever won­dered how a news­room decides what to cover, how sto­ries become the head­lines and how you can get your event cov­ered, now’s your chance to hear it from some­one who is a part of that process. As one of 4 anchors on a new news/talk show that revolves around social media, Kirk will also dis­cuss how dig­i­tal media and social net­works are turn­ing the broad­cast news world upside down.

Jonathan Kressaty — October 2010 Speaker

Jonathan Kres­saty
Born in Wis­con­sin and trans­planted to Ari­zona at the ripe ol’ age of 11, Jonathan grad­u­ated with a degree in Eco­nom­ics from ASU in Decem­ber of 2009. After start­ing Rip­styles (a media con­ver­sion and con­sult­ing com­pany) at the age of 18, Jonathan deter­mined that work­ing in cor­po­rate Amer­ica would never be for him and con­tin­ued on his path of start­ing, man­ag­ing, and grow­ing small busi­nesses. When not play­ing trom­bone and gui­tar or eat­ing at all the great restau­rants in the Val­ley, Jonathan spends his time at Gang­plank work­ing on Betwext, a small tech startup focused on devel­op­ing incred­i­ble SMS mar­ket­ing tools. You can learn more about Jonathan by vis­it­ing jonathankressaty.com

Jonathan will be pre­sent­ing You’re not Mill Ave. Embrace it — How to get 20-somethings in the door at 3:50pm.
Call­ing all down­town busi­nesses — you’re not on Mill Avenue, and you need to embrace it! Twenty-somethings are vis­it­ing down­town bars, restau­rants, and shops more and more often, and there are lots of things you can do to try and attract this crowd with­out chang­ing much (if any­thing) of your busi­ness. Bring lots of ques­tions and a will­ing­ness to try some new strate­gies!

Chad Swaney — October 2010 Speaker

Chad Swaney
Chad Swaney is cur­rently com­plet­ing his doc­tor­ate in edu­ca­tional tech­nol­ogy, with an empha­sis on social media, at Pep­per­dine Uni­ver­sity and is part of the social media team at a national retailer. He’s a big sup­porter of local busi­ness, social jus­tice, and col­lab­o­ra­tive tech­nol­ogy. You can find his work at ChadSwaney.com.

Chad will be pre­sent­ing Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Yelp at 3pm.
Few things strike fear in the hearts of small busi­nesses like the busi­ness review site Yelp. Tales of busi­nesses destroyed by neg­a­tive reviews seem to pass from small busi­ness owner to small busi­ness owner, not unlike a twisted com­bi­na­tion of Sleepy Hol­low and Tele­phone. There is good news, though. You can har­ness the power of the engaged, pas­sion­ate user com­mu­nity on Yelp to build your busi­ness. In this ses­sion, Chad will show you the char­ac­ter­is­tics of busi­nesses that suc­ceed on Yelp, and tell you what to avoid to make sure that you have the Yelp com­mu­nity on your side.

Kevin Spidel — October 2010 Speaker

Kevin Spi­del
Kevin Spi­del is the Com­mu­nity Archi­tect at Gan­net­t­Lo­cal who builds com­mu­nity devel­op­ment and cus­tomer cul­ti­va­tion for small and medium sized businesses.

Kevin’s work can be seen at Gan­nett Local and KevinSpidel.com

Kevin will be pre­sent­ing on Cus­tomer Loy­alty 2.0, the new Small Busi­ness Brand­ing at 2:10pm.
Cus­tomer Loy­alty 2.0 is an evo­lu­tion from not just pro­vid­ing loy­alty pro­grams, but engag­ing your cus­tomers as word of mouth mar­ket­ing agents. Empow­er­ing your cus­tomer base to re-market for you. Build­ing cus­tomer loy­alty and putting tools in the hands of your cus­tomers to become brand advo­cates is the next evo­lu­tion in small busi­ness brand­ing.

Gary Campbell — October 2010 Speaker

Gary Camp­bell
Gary Camp­bell is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­ager for ASU’s Office of Pub­lic Affairs and serves as exec­u­tive edi­tor of ASU News. A for­mer print jour­nal­ist, Gary has led the tran­si­tion from print to dig­i­tal media for the uni­ver­sity news ser­vice through a robust con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem, enhanced video and photo usage and social media. Along with ASU News, Gary’s team man­ages the ASU home­page and a vari­ety of related sites. He is also a mem­ber of a vari­ety of uni­ver­sity boards pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship and plan­ning in social media, video stan­dards and dis­tri­b­u­tion and the over­all web envi­ron­ment at ASU. He has been at ASU for the last 12 years.

You can find Gary at ASU Com­mu­nity Con­nect or at his pri­mary effort, ASU News.

Gary will be pre­sent­ing Uni­ver­si­ties 101 — What you need to know at 3pm.
Try­ing to con­nect with your local uni­ver­sity? Inter­ested in find­ing interns, com­mu­nity resources or new cus­tomers? Here’s a chance to learn about some of the many resources at your dis­posal and how to make valu­able con­nec­tions to ben­e­fit your busi­ness and community.

Bill Wyman — October 2010 Speaker

Bill Wyman
Bill Wyman is the founder and edi­tor of the blog PHX­ated, which cov­ers the valley’s media, cul­ture and polit­i­cal scenes. He is a long­time jour­nal­ist, most recently an assis­tant man­ag­ing edi­tor at National Pub­lic Radio, in Wash­ing­ton D.C., where he over­saw the network’s arts, enter­tain­ment, media and dig­i­tal cov­er­age. Before that he was arts edi­tor of Salon.com, the pio­neer­ing inter­net mag­a­zine. His work has appeared in Enter­tain­ment Weekly, Rolling Stone, the Wash­ing­ton Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Jour­nal.
Find him at Phxated.com and hitsville.org.

Bill will be pre­sent­ing Cura­tion in the mod­ern news cycle at 2:10pm.

Kathy Jacobs — October 2010 Speaker

Kathy Jacobs
Kathy Jacobs is a social media geek who loves to con­nect peo­ple with who and what they need. She is active on the social web as “Cal­lKathy”. Pro­fes­sion­ally, Kathy speaks, writes, and answers ques­tions on social media, com­mu­nity, OneNote, Pow­er­Point (when she has to), and other com­puter top­ics. She and her hus­band run Geek4ADay, a com­pany that lets you hire a geek for the day and have them work to solve the prob­lems you can’t. She is the main soft­ware and social media geek, while her hus­band is the hard­ware and sup­port geek. In her spare time, Kathy is an active mem­ber of the Pod­Cam­pAZ team, the Vice Pres­i­dent of APCUG (the Asso­ci­a­tion of PC User Groups), and a reg­u­lar speaker at user groups around the Val­ley of the Sun.
Find her at VitaminCH.com/blogs and Geek4aday.com

Kathy will be pre­sent­ing Social Media isn’t just for the young at 1:20pm.
Think you are too old to learn all the social media tips and tech­niques? Come hear how baby boomers and retirees are using social media to do more than just play games and con­nect with the grand kids. You too can learn to keep your head in the game and your busi­ness in front of people’s eyes!