shara karasic - online community

"making media more social since 1995"

contact shara

Hi, my name is Shara. I have over 10 years of experience in online community and social media, as well as user experience/interaction design, product development, e-learning, and web content strategy. I have developed online communities for education and business -- specifically communities for kids, teens, K-12 educators, and small business people/entrepreneurs. The best advice I can give to anyone building an online community is to care deeply about your users. Right now I manage the community for Work.com, the place to find out everything you need to know about starting and running a business and to share your own business expertise. I write the Work.com Small Business Community blog (feed).

I began my Internet career in 1995 working out of a San Francisco garage. There I created cyberteens, an award-winning site lauded by the New York Times and Macromedia and one of the first online teen communities. At Classroom Connect, I started the online community department, and ran the online community for the Quest adventure learning sites. During a Quest, kids around the world collaborated with an expedition team in journeys of scientific and historical discovery. I have been honored to witness students' and teachers' worlds open up through online collaboration, which made me understand its great value.

In 2001, I was a Geekcorps technology volunteer in Accra, where i worked on USAID's EDDI initiative which had the goal of using information technology to support development of democracy and transparency in Ghana. I learned a thing or two about Internet internationalization and localization there, and perhaps broadened my understanding of cultural taxonomies, highlife music, and akpeteshie.

If you want to learn more about online community, see my online community/social media SUPER list

more about shara

clients/employers (current & past):

• Africa Online
• Business.com (B2B vertical search engine - what does that mean?)
• Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation
• Charles Schwab
• Classroom Connect (now find Dan Buettner's Quests at Bluezones.com)
• CMP Media
• Geekcorps
• Journalists for Human Rights
• Snapfish
• SparkTop (for kids with dyslexia and AD/HD)
• USAID
• Work.com (business community sharing how-to advice)

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social networking, blogs, & community sites - find me, or at least my online personas, here:

• del.icio.us bookmarks
• Exit 105: A Jersey Girl's Travels through Time and Space
• flickr - asbury park
• flickr - new jersey autumn
• librarything
• LinkedIn
• MyBlogLog
• myspace
• Work.com
• Work.com Small Business Community blog

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tools & things i've worked with and/or customized:

• content management systems
• email lists/email delivery software
• message boards/forums
• html editors
• image editing software such as Photoshop
• a little Flash & Final Cut Pro

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articles i've written:

• Building an Online Community
• Being a Geek in Ghana: IESC 2001 Annual Report
• last comment on Casey Parks' blog about her West Africa trip: NYTimes.com
• Salon letter to editor: Did the Internet really ruin San Francisco?
• Small Business Blogs
• Twitter for Business
• Web 2.0

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press:

• San Francisco Chronicle: After the Tech Rush Former Dotcommers Give Back to the Global Community
• Small Business Trends Radio Interview: Increase Your Online Visibility Using Work.com

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languages:

• a few naughty things in Ghanaian Pidgin
• Chekhov-short-story-reading Russian
• currently-making-a-fool-of-myself in French
• CSS
• English
• Auntie-Rose-insisted-I-learn-greetings in Twi
• HTML
• impolite-monikers-for-dogs in Balinese
• living-in-LA-should-study Spanish
• mangosteen-buying Indonesian
• taxi-driver Mandarin Chinese

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my heroes:

• danah boyd
• Ethan Zuckerman
• Mary Ellen Mark
• Mimi Ito

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contact shara

interested in an online community/social media/social networking project, consulting, or collaboration? contact shara karasic, los angeles, california, at skarasic[at]yahoo.com or yahoo messenger skarasic.

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this site is dedicated to iamnotgabriel