The New Robert Scobles: Seven Leading Corporate Social Media Evangelists Today - ReadWriteWeb

Robert Scoble blazed a big trail by blogging and producing video as a technical evangelist for Microsoft from 2003 through 2006. No longer at Microsoft, Scoble now produces media for media’s sake at FastCompany.tv. Others have followed his lead, knowingly or not, and job titles like "social media evangelist" are no longer nearly as rare as they used to be.

Still, many companies wonder what kind of work an employee like that could do for them. We asked around and found seven shining stars engaging in online social media at work.

…

Aaron Fulkerson and the MindTouch Team

MindTouch, the makers of the DekiWiki platform, is a social media company that eats its own dog food very publicly. Every member of the team contributes to the company blog, discussing not just product developments but also general interest industry news.

The company’s active developer forums are filled with media that users are able to repurpose for their own evangelism. The company integrates with a substantial number of other developer-level social media technologies.

They also use the sophisticated Viddler video platform so their videos can be tagged and commented on…

As a result of all this material being made available and the company’s high degree of visibility in several social media fora, the marketability of the widely appreciated wiki software is further amplified. Mindtouch says their enterprise wiki software is downloaded 3,000 times every day.

Great job MindTouch! Everyone on this list is someone I respect. We all should be very flattered to be included. I know I am! Although, I don’t know that I qualify as a Scoble I think collectively we might. And by collectively I mean MindTouch and the community that has organized around the technology MindTouch develops. It’s the community of users and customers that continues to propel MindTouch to new heights. Thanks all. And, of course, thank you Marshall Kirkpatrick.

Join the guys from MindTouch and OBM to celebrate Geek style at Bogart’s Lounge and Tech Pub.
The beer starts flowing at 8pm and might not stop!!

Catch a ride over to Bogart’s in the MindTouch/OBM stretch Escalade. Rides start at 7:30pm in front of the Hyatt.

Follow www.twitter.com/Mindtouch for updates!!

- Free Drinks
- Shuttle Service (Stretch Escalade)
- Great Company
- Tech Trivia
- iTunes Jukebox

Bring your MySQL conference pass for admittance.

With the announcement of Google App Engine, the final piece for the Cloud Software revolution is now in place. I’m excited to see how Cloud Software will foster innovation at large and especially around MindTouch Deki Wiki. Let me quickly explain what element of the cloud ecosystem Google App Engine is now filling.

The chart on the right shows the three building blocks for Cloud Software: storage, engine, and processing.

Cloud Storage: Amazon has been the early pioneer with its Simple Storage Service (S3), which offers cheap, large scale storage in the cloud. Others have since followed suit and the cloud storage model has been evolving from binary data (S3) to messages (Amazon Simple Queue Service) to structured data (Amazon SimpleDB, Google BigTable). These services enable others to store and handle large volumes of data on demand and at incremental cost. However storage services do not provide behavior around data: information is simply retrieved, updated, and deleted. That’s it. Nonetheless, without this foundation, Cloud Software would not be happening today.

Cloud Engine: Google is the first company to provide a scalable request-driven application engine. Google App Engine (GAE) is perfect for creating web-services and application front-ends, which constitute the large majority of online destinations. However, Google App Engine has its limitations. For instance, it is not possible to create your own crawler or web-analyzer, as this class of software requires something that Google App Engine lacks: processing power. On the flip-side, with a request-driven model, the application only consumes resources when needed and therefore cost is linear to use.

Cloud Processing: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) fills the need that Google App Engine lacks: autonomous processing power. Since EC2 provides full-fledged servers, these can be used to crawl content, compress video, and analyze vast amounts of data. Multiple EC2 instances can be launched for distributed computing using Hadoop map-reduce algorithms to crunch through data in record time. However, with EC2, you pay for processing power even when you’re not using it, hence the need for Google App Engine.

For MindTouch customers and community, it’s probably obvious why I’m excited about this. Cloud Software is the model that we have embraced with Deki Wiki, which is a true web-oriented application integration platform. Already today, Deki Wiki provides the ability to store file attachments on Amazon S3 regardless if you host it online or behind the firewall. Furthermore, MindTouch provides an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) of Deki Wiki that launches a new instance in seconds. The image is pre-configured with all prerequisites installed and can even update itself when needed. Since Deki Wiki crawls and indexes content autonomously, it needs a full processing environment such as EC2. Finally, Deki Wiki extensions are web-services that are equally at home on an intranet or the internet. Since extensions only rely on XML and HTTP, they are completely platform agnostic (meaning, you can chose your favorite programming language). Google App Engine is the perfect environment to host Deki Wiki extensions and as the service gets rolled out to more developers, MindTouch will make sure to provide the tools to easily add new functionality to Deki Wiki using Google App Engine.

The sun is quickly rising on Cloud Software and I can’t wait to see the opportunities it will bring to our customers and our community!