Stewart Mader

Stewart Mader has helped companies around the world create and market products that increase information value, collaboration, and customer engagement. He is an experienced project manager (11 years), team leader and mentor, dynamic speaker, and author of two books. He earned a B.S. in Chemistry from University of Hartford and an M.S. in Curriculum Development and Instructional Technology from University at Albany.

CFA Institute

Communities of Practice

Transformed fifteen underperforming sections of the website into an editorial site dedicated to business and finance topics that blends CFA Institute-produced content with real-time social media conversation. Created the concept, led development and launch, and hired an associate editor to manage day-to-day content flow.

Enterprising Investor Blog

Developed product roadmap and marketing strategy for a new blog, the Enterprising Investor. Helped hire the editorial team of subject-matter specialists who write for the blog, manage content in each of the Communities of Practice, and oversee topical Twitter lists that highlight people who are consistently sharing relevant, high-quality links and information. The blog is currently averaging 35,000 pageviews/month.

Conference Blog & Social Media Strategy

Consolidated externally-hosted Posterous blogs for four major events onto an integrated WordPress platform. Staff assigned to attend conference sessions, share key insights on Twitter, and write posts summarizing the most important insights and ideas from each speaker. Coordinated with official conference photographer to get high-quality photos of each speaker for use on the conference blog. Posts published and syndicated to Facebook, @CFAinstitute, Financial Times, and Seeking Alpha.

Introduced use of Storify to build a real-time roundup of posts, tweets, and livestream video for the 2011 Europe Investment Conference and 2012 Asia Pacific Conference.

Sources: Omniture, TweetReach, Facebook Insights

Social Media Analytics

Instituted comprehensive analytics to track traffic to blogs and Communities of Practice, as well as content shared on key social media channels. A new analytics dashboard I developed for the CFA Institute intranet makes this data globally available to anyone in the organization.

SAP Integrated Marketing (consultant)

SAP Community Network Social Media Branding Audit and Strategy

Helped the product marketing group at SAP increase awareness of the wide variety of highly valuable content available on the SAP Community Network, the company’s 2.4 million member news and information hub. After conducting extensive user testing, I developed and executed a social media content amplification and metrics roadmap, and trained marketing, editorial, and social media teams to find and highlight case studies, discussions, and articles of greatest value to the network’s members.

Strategic Content Assessment for Sapphire Now Conference

Conducted a content audit and competitive analysis of the online community and marketing activity surrounding Sapphire Now 2010, SAP’s spring conference for customers and partners. The results of this analysis helped the SAP social media team make SCN a more visible source of relevant content and interaction for Sapphire Now, as well as the fall TechEd conference series.

Atlassian Software

Product Evangelist and Online Marketing Lead

Developed the first word-of-mouth, product evangelism-based marketing strategy for Atlassian, makers of the now widely-used Confluence collaboration software and JIRA issue management platform. Represented the company and delivered presentations at industry conferences including Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Northern Voice 2007 & 2008, O’Reilly Tools of Change, Stanford Tech Briefing, and Web 2.0 Expo.

Atlassian Marketing Blog

Helped launch Atlassian Marketing blog and published 96 articles over 18 months on social software adoption, collaboration, and software development to establish the voice of the brand.

Software Adoption Consulting

Delivered adoption strategy and technical consulting for Confluence, Atlassian’s collaboration and content management product for businesses and technical teams. Worked with a diverse group of customers in North America, Europe, and Australia including Adobe, Apple, Fidelity Investments Center for Applied Technology, Johns Hopkins University, LeapFrog Enterprises, MBF Group, Pixar, PwC Australia, Records Management Association of Australasia, and Thales. Gathered product feedback from customer interactions and collaborated with engineering and user support to refine product vision and development cycle.

Wikipatterns

Led the creation of Wikipatterns.com, a knowledge base for collaboration and content management strategies sponsored by Atlassian Software. Developed the concept (sample wireframe), managed development, user testing, product launch, publicity, and customer outreach to build a vibrant community.

The growth and success of the site led to a book publishing contract with John Wiley & Sons for Wikipatterns, which I wrote and published in 2008. I also edited and self-published Using Wiki in Education (2006), a collection of case studies from educators around the world that explores the impact of collaboration tools on education.

Brown University

iTunes U Pilot with Apple

Selected by Apple to lead one of the first six large-scale pilot tests of iTunes U to capture lectures for on-demand access via iOS devices. Tested and refined functional prototypes for batch upload, metadata, audio, video, and image organization, and analytics. Developed, tested, and refined a workflow for automated recording, metadata capture, and uploading of lecture audio and video files that was designed so that any instructor could capture their own lectures with as little effort and external assistance as possible.

Chemistry Language Project

Co-developed the Chemistry Language Project, a tool designed to help Brown University graduate students from non-english speaking countries strengthen their understanding, pronunciation, and use of scientific terms. Developed a reusable content structure for displaying information about each scientific term, including a definition, images associated with the term, information about its syllable structure and stress pattern, and text and audio examples of use in a scientific and non-scientific context. His work on this project is detailed in Chapter 20 of the recently published book Authenticity in the Adult Language Classroom and Beyond (TESOL Press, 2009).

Other Projects

Elevator View

Elevator View is New York, photographed from elevated perches throughout the city. I started Elevator View in January 2011, not long after I began working on the 22nd floor of an office building in Midtown Manhattan. The views from this vantage point include Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Burberry Building, Palace Hotel, St. Bartholomew’s Church, Park Avenue, and Madison Avenue (with glimpses of the rising 4 World Trade Center). After photographing these views, I started bringing my camera along anytime I knew I would be in a building with elevated views of the city – to business meetings and social events – and at the invitation of people who learn about the project and offer me the opportunity to photograph their vantage points.

Future Changes

From 2005-2010, served as editor of Future Changes, a widely-read blog on information design, content strategy, wikis, and collaboration that has been cited by The New Yorker, The Guardian, CIO Magazine, InfoWorld, InformationWeek, and The New York Times.

The Science of Spectroscopy

Secured multiple rounds of grant funding and in-kind contributions from NASA, the Jet Propulsion Lab, and the Space Telescope Science Institute to build an online community for teachers to share and collaboratively develop educational content. Defined the product strategy, led development and rollout, and conducted user testing to gather feedback for ongoing refinement. Produced two companion documentary films, Seeing the Scientific Light and Skysight, that have aired on PBS stations.

Education

• M.S. Curriculum Development and Instructional Technology – University at Albany
• B.S. Chemistry – University of Hartford

Awards and Recognition

• Award for Excellence in External Fundraising, 2002, University of Hartford
• NASA Research Citation, 2001, 2002
• Official Citation from Connecticut Lieutenant Governor, 2001, 2002
• American Chemical Society Award for Outstanding Accomplishment, 2001
• Alpha Chi, National Honor Scholarship Society, 2001, University of Hartford
• Marc. W. Feldmann Memorial Organic Chemistry Award, 1998, University of Hartford

Presentations

Building a Social Media Plan for Your International Event

Professional Convention Management Association – 56th Annual Meeting
January 9, 2012 – San Diego, CA

Designing for Collaboration

Traction Software User Group – Closing Keynote
October 14, 2009 – Providence, RI

Six Ways to Use a Wiki for Team Collaboration and Project Management

Sacred Heart University – Digital Learning Lecture Series
October 28, 2008 – Fairfield, CT

How Do You Grow Wiki Adoption?

MIT – Confluence User Group
June 21, 2007 – Cambridge, MA

Quotes

“A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that’s what drives us — a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better.”
Jonathan Ive

“Clean and thoughtful design can win converts to a new way of doing things.”
Nick Bilton

“If you do something, and it turns out pretty good, then you should just do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.”
Steve Jobs

“A healthy product company is, confusingly, one at odds with itself. There is a healthy part which is attempting to normalize and to create predictability, and there needs to be another part that is tasked with building something new that is going to disrupt and eventually destroy that normality.”
Michael Lopp

“Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy it will make you strong.”
Bruce Springsteen

“Newness, novelty and the next thing are all encouraged by small-scale opportunities.”
Ada Louise Huxtable

“Tech can make our lives simpler in magnificent ways but if it makes you look dorky, it’s out.”
Lauren Leto

“Being there lets you hear what people are saying. It makes you discoverable and accessible to a host of different users. And once you’re there, listening to others helps you figure out what you have to add.”
Rachel Blatt