On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey, and yours truly, Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.
The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT), from the Paley Center for Media, New York City.
SXSW Interactive is just around the corner, so it's time to make your party plans for Austin, Texas! ReadWriteWeb's SXSW party - in partnership with PBS, NPR, and others - is happening on Sunday, March 14, from 9pm at KLRU's legendary Austin City Limits Studio. There will be shuttles to and from the Austin Hilton.
We invite you to enjoy some tex-mex, margaritas and live music with us! Also you'll network with the smart, cool people attending SXSW from ReadWriteWeb, PBS, NPR, Frontline, ITVS and Futurestates. This event is free to attend for all SXSW Interactive or Film badge holders.
You can register your interest at the event Facebook page.
We're really excited to announce the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app! The reading and sharing experience was key for us, so we kept the functionality smart and simple. As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we've made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook. We've integrated with Read it Later and Instapaper, so that you can mark things to read later. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app.
We invite you to find out more details about the ReadWriteWeb iPhone app and download it now from iTunes.
We're pleased to announce the launch of ReadWriteWeb's third subsite: ReadWriteCloud. This channel will cover Cloud Computing and Virtualization, focusing on the strategic business and technical implications. ReadWriteCloud is sponsored by Intel and VMware.
We've hired a couple of experienced practitioners of cloud computing as our daily writers for ReadWriteCloud. Mike Kirkwood is a seasoned Enterprise Architect from Berkeley and has been a Sr. Manager supporting large consumer applications. Tim Hastings is a hands-on Technical Architect of web services, based in England. In addition, ReadWriteEnterprise editor Alex Williams will oversee the site and be a contributing writer.
I'm pleased to announce a new executive appointment to ReadWriteWeb, our new Chief Operating Officer Sean Ammirati. Based in Pittsburgh, PA, Sean has been an occasional writer on ReadWriteWeb since March 2007 and hosted our podcast show ReadWriteTalk. Prior to becoming ReadWriteWeb's COO, Sean was Co-Founder & CEO at venture-backed startup mSpoke. He's also been a research fellow at Carnegie Mellon's Software Industry Center.
Sean will assume responsibility for sales, business development and operations. You can reach him at sean@readwriteweb.com. Sean is at the Supernova conference this week in San Francisco, so if you're there too then feel free to greet him in the hallways.
We're very pleased to announce the launch of ReadWriteWeb's fourth country channel: ReadWriteWeb Spain. It joins our existing three country channels: France, China and Brazil (which launched last month).
Our Spain channel is edited by Ignacio García Ramos. Ignacio and his team will combine translation of ReadWriteWeb posts with original posts about Spain's Web market. Like the mothership ReadWriteWeb, the Spain channel will focus on Web trends and products.
We're very pleased to announce the launch of ReadWriteWeb's third country channel: ReadWriteWeb Brazil. It joins our existing two country channels, France and China. ReadWriteWeb Brazil is written in the Portuguese language, one of the world's major languages with up to 230 million native speakers. Brazil has by far the largest online population in Latin America, with an estimated 26.2 Million users of age 15 or more (according to comScore).
Our Brazil channel is edited by Diego Gomes. Diego and his team will combine translation of ReadWriteWeb posts with original posts about Brazil's emerging Web market.
Today we're debuting two new writers on ReadWriteWeb. Steven Walling is our new writer for the Enterprise channel, while Dana Oshiro takes the reigns of ReadWriteStart. Both of these fantastic new hires will be focused on our channels. Steven becomes lead writer for the still nascent ReadWriteEnterprise, which unfortunately had a false start a month and a half ago. You can expect to see a few posts a day from Steven; also we'll be introducing a re-design of RWEnterprise soon. Dana becomes lead writer for ReadWriteStart, our channel devoted to early stage startups. She will post once or twice a day there.
You will see both of these writers on the main ReadWriteWeb homepage, as at this stage we're streaming everything through there.
Our First Premium Report for Businesses
We're excited to announce the availability of ReadWriteWeb's Guide to Online Community Management, our first premium report. It's been in the works for more than four months and we believe it's unlike anything else you've seen. Businesses seeking to engage with online communities on their own websites or all around the social web will find the guide invaluable in getting up to speed on the state of the art and making sure their employees have the foundation they need to be effective.
The end product is in two parts. Part one is a 75 page collection of case studies, advice and discussion concerning the most important issues in online community. Part two is a companion online aggregator that delivers the most-discussed articles each day written by experts on community management from around the web. Read on to see what's included in the guide, how to purchase it and what early reviews have said.
We'd like to welcome a new daily writer to our team of Web enthusiasts: Jolie O'Dell. Jolie is a journalist, blogger, and video blogger. In the past, she has worked on newspapers, on magazines, for book publishers, for serial entrepreneurs, on startup teams, at advertising and marketing agencies, and for enterprise blogs and websites. Jolie has a B.A. in Media Studies from Shenandoah University. She will be blogging daily during the week for ReadWriteWeb.
