The hosts of Netscape Community Forums, Netscape's online community, have been chosen for their expertise in each field as well as their ability to keep discussions flowing.
Although she tried for years to cultivate more "upscale" interests, Seana Baruth has finally accepted that she'll never prefer Biography to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Perhaps growing up in a backwater southern town caused her predilection, which persists after ten years of residence in a cultural capital (and ten years of therapy). Seana graduated from college in 1988, and then left the South to pursue a career in the music industry. After many fruitless years trying to change the music-biz beast from the inside, she gave up and chose to work in the less established (ergo, more flexible) world of web publishing.
Brooke Shelby Biggs is a freelance writer who focuses on new-media business and culture. She writes a column for ABCNews.com about the culture of Silicon Valley and a column on online journalism for HotWired. She has worked as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines, and online publications since 1988.
A child of hippies who lived in a commune, Caleb Clark has worked as a carpenter, bike mechanic, sailor, pilot in training, bartender, Hollywood set production assistant, scriptwriter, and freelance newspaper hack. More recently, he's taught multimedia studies, freelanced for Wired magazine, and done a stint as a webmaster at an advertising agency. He continues to facilitate a web developers' group and mailing list while studying at San Diego State, in its educational technology program.
Claude d'Hermillon has taken a circuitous route to the world of financial journalism, writing about everything from prosthetic limbs and ladies footwear to software and IRAs. He's currently a senior producer at Internet portal Snap! Online, where he focuses on financial- and business-oriented topics. He got his start on the web in 1996 writing thumbnail site reviews for FreeLoader, a push-based outfit long since shuttered. Before that, Claude did a stint writing on-air anchor copy at CNN in Washington, D.C., where he also cut his teeth fielding flack in the Clinton-Gore press office.
Believing employment is a key tool in achieving self-actualization, Priscilla Eshelman is passionate about helping people find satisfying work. Having been something of a chameleon in the workplace herself (with careers in human resources, marketing, and sales in industries as varied as high-tech, advertising, and retail), she believes most people benefit from stretching themselves and are happiest on an appreciable learning curve. You won't hear her advise you to take the exact same job down the street, because what's the point?
Caterina Fake has been on the Net and participating in online communities since 1988. As a creative director and designer, she has worked on web sites for Sun Microsystems, Kimberly-Clark, Levi's, and dozens of other companies. She is currently art director for the critically acclaimed Salon magazine and creator and publisher of Wench, an online feminist magazine.
Fawn Fitter, a freelance writer whose work has appeared in dozens of publications ranging from Cosmopolitan to Computerworld, knows well the pleasures and pitfalls of working from home - after almost eight years of self-employment, she still occasionally gets asked when she's going to get a real job! In addition to writing, editing, and teaching, she's been an active member of The WELL since 1992 and has cohosted the Byline conference for freelance writers since its inception in 1995.
M. E. Frochtzweig is a Lithuanian/Teutonic psuedonym derived from the names of three prominent Silicon Valley CEOs. The picture on the left is a graphically enhanced composite of five male high-tech bigwigs and one female venture capitalist. The host behind the facade is a San Francisco-based writer and new-media producer for an elite core of unsuspecting technology corporations. Netscape Community Forums reluctantly authorizes M. E. Frochtzweig's use of anonymity as a necessary component for a thriving rumor forum.
Emily Gertz is a freelance web designer, artist, and writer living in Portland, Oregon. She has been online in one form or another since 1989, from email to ASCII bulletin boards to web-based conferencing. She currently cohosts several conferences on The WELL and has been active on EcoNet. Emily has been designing for the web since 1995 in her business guise of Slipstream . She has a master's degree in interdisciplinary environmental studies from the University of Oregon and has had artwork exhibited in galleries in Portland and New York City.
Steve Glaser is the principal of Steve A. Glaser Communications Services. He's also creative director, secretary, bookkeeper, file clerk, and janitor. He produces business and marketing materials, magazine articles, educational matter, and copy for sundry web sites. Steve has been active in various online communities since the mid-1980s and was longtime host of America Online's Authors Lounge. As a computer user, he loathes cutesy WAV files, generally has his speakers turned off, and most often runs Netscape Navigator with the Auto Download Images option turned off.
Mikki Halpin is a guide for the Small Business Source forums. She has worked for small businesses in a variety of ways: within an independent film production company, a zine (Ben Is Dead), and a CD-ROM production house (Voyager) - all before going to work for the Prodigy Deathstar in 1997. She is now a freelance writer and consultant.
Janet Harrison has been online since 1989. In addition to hosting the Work and Gay conferences on The WELL, she hosted the Kasparov versus Deep Blue event at Electric Minds. Originally a social worker at a children's home in Nashville, Tennessee, she has been word processing department supervisor and network administrator for two law firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recently she has done QA testing and technical writing for Well Engaged, the software that enables online conversations for Netscape Community Forums.
Kristen Huntley earned her geek credentials as the producer for WebTools, CMP Media's web developer site. She is currently hard at work on the next incarnation of Byte Online. Kristen, who holds degrees in philosophy and English, insists that her numerous "typos" are actually intentional meta-statements on the arbitrary nature of linguistic constructs. She's no longer ashamed to admit that she has become the kind of woman who puts pictures of her cat online.
Daryl Lynn Johnson ran away to San Francisco when she was but a whippersnapper. Her whip-snapping days are over; now she spends her time at women.com as the community manager and on The WELL as host of the Plumage and Sexuality conferences. She lives in Oakland with her dog, boy, and cats and falls asleep with the television on every night.
Russ Klein is an electronic-commerce and transaction-technology consultant based in San Francisco. He has built global trading systems and integrated secure payment systems that carry millions of dollars in daily transactions. He works for Studio 32 Corporation developing Internet applications, commerce software, smart-card technologies, and related products.
Jodi Levin is the associate features editor at the alternative newsweekly the San Francisco Bay Guardian. There she edits Adult Education, Travel, Fashion, and other features. She is also a professor of journalism at New College of California and a freelance writer and editor.
Elizabeth Lewis is a freelance writer and researcher living in rural central Illinois. She has been online since the early 1980s and involved with online communities ever since. She's hosted forums and conferences, professionally and informally, on The WELL, Electric Minds, ILink, America Online, Brainstorms, and the River, and she ran her own BBS for five years. Elizabeth is a cyberculture and Internet editor for Amazon.com. Her writing credits include Wired, SmartComputing, C Novice, SGI IRIS, and an Francisco Focus. Before going freelance, Elizabeth worked as a technical writer, software trainer, computer-based training developer, marketing and sales writer, historic preservation researcher, and when she was young and idealistic, youth minister.
Elizabeth McLachlan has extensive experience hosting and participating in online forums. In her real life, she is an independent network architect/analyst. She has over ten years of experience doing systems administration, support, and technology teaching. Elizabeth is a big Netscape dweeb. She uses, administers and comments on just about every product Netscape releases. One day, Elizabeth hopes to end her stint as a megageek and become a full-time tomato farmer.
Julie Polito is a San Francisco-based writer. She is a former editor at PC Computing magazine, where she wrote and edited reviews of a variety of computer products and edited the magazine's Pulse and Soho sections. She has also written for noncomputer magazines, including Parenting and Frisko.
Jennifer Powell has more than 20 years of experience with community organizing, mediation, and facilitation and has spent the last few years as an online host for such organizations as The WELL (cohost of Women on The WELL), the River (cohost of the Earth conference), and Electric Minds (cohost of the IBM Big Blue chess match). Jennifer has participated in environmental research for The Nature Conservancy, and writes science fiction in her spare time.
Christian Ruzich is Associate Program Manager for Community Development at Netscape. He got his start in community at the late, lamented Electric Minds, after years as a member of The Well. He has also done online community at Bayinsider.com and ZDNet, as well as hosting forums at Edmund's and CBS Sportsline. When he's not online, he's probably watching a movie or wondering why the Cubs are so bad.
Britt Schoenhoff has been working in publishing for the past four years and spent the last year as the entertainment editor at Surface, highlighting the most talented up-and-comers in the film and fashion industries. She's currently the managing editor at Siren, a nervy magazine for women who are sick of reading about thin thighs and cellulite creams. Her writing has appeared in the aforementioned publications, as well as in Interview, Paper, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Mar Smith works as a chat host and forum sysop for ZDNet and as a help desk sysop for ZDNet's online university, ZDU. She has just started her own business for computer and Internet consulting. After a very diversified background in everything but computers, Mar finally found her niche in life on the Internet. She is an advocate of educating others on the Internet, its uses, and some of the things and people found online - both good and bad.
Molly Wright Steenson cut her teeth on the web in 1994. Since then she's written, edited, and produced dozens of major sites and participated in numerous online communities. She's the cocreator and editor of Maxi, a site for young women, and EstroNet, the original network of estrogen-powered web sites. Her freelance writing has appeared in the High Five Review, Addicted to Noise, Wired News, Tripod, and The Onion.
Debbie Stoller holds a Ph.D. in the psychology of women from Yale University. She worked for eight years as an employee of Nickelodeon, where she worked her way up from administrative assistant to director of multimedia. She recently left the comfortable world of corporate employment to develop BUST magazine - a New York-based feminist magazine that she founded, publishes, and edits along with two partners. In the meantime, she is working as a freelance writer and freelance multimedia producer for a variety of clients and is completing a book for Viking/Penguin called The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order.
Martha Stoodley is excited to facilitate the cross-pollination of ideas from human-resource professionals, recruiters, and hiring managers and provide an online forum for them to give their opinions, receive advice, complain, tell each other their favorite resources, and mentor newcomers. Martha is a self-employed consultant who acts as an executive coach, conducts organizational surveys, and provides management training. She has five years of experience in recruiting and placement, and her book, Information Interviewing: How to Tap Your Hidden Job Market, was published by J. G. Ferguson in 1997. Martha's education includes an M.S. in educational psychology.
Tom Tompkins is the arts and music editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Besides music, he likes sports, particularly hoops and bicycling, and he teaches an exercise class at the Oakland YMCA. His favorite music is R&B, hip-hop, and jazz, and he has listened to way too much music for way too many years.
After being raised in the bra-burning counterculture of Santa Cruz in the mid-1970s, Stephanie Vollmer became a freelance copywriter in San Francisco. Her previous day jobs have included stints at Wired magazine, HotWired, LAN Times, and Pacific Publishing. She says that she learned the art of selling while in graduate school, where she hawked discount watches at Costco to pay her rent. In her free time, she writes restaurant reviews for The Good Life, a San Francisco-based insider's guide to the Bay Area.
Although he originally hails from Ohio, Kurt Wolff has been a writer and editor in San Francisco since 1987. He spent six years on staff at the Bay Guardian and has since written for the San Francisco Chronicle, Raygun, New Country, No Depression, Spin, Bluegrass Unlimited, The All Music Guide, and other local and national publications. In addition to music he also writes about beer, film, and travel. He's currently writing The Rough Guide to Country Music.
