Team ATX

ILENE HADDAD (aka: IleenieWeenie) began using social media in 2008 to network and meet potential clients for her graphic design business, but what really surprised her was how quickly she made real connections. A social person by nature, Ilene found she missed the camaraderie found in a traditional office environment.

To help alleviate the isolation often experienced by business owners working from home, she started a casual coworking event at a restaurant in central Austin. Each week anywhere from 8-20 people get together for a couple of hours to work, socialize and collaborate in a casual atmosphere.

In the summer of 2010 Ilene presented the first #BlogathonATX in a popular coworking space in east Austin. Entrepreneurs, educators, personal bloggers and professionals from some of the areas largest employers rubbed elbows with Austin’s brightest blogging experts and social media enthusiasts.

Featuring areas for brainstorming and panel discussions, a room for tech support and plenty of space for blogging, this popular event reached more than 10,000 people in the social media universe through tweets, blog posts, Livestream and Facebook updates.

Ilene was recently nominated for a Texas Social Media Award by the Statesman.com and has been a featured interview on the Austin Women in Communications’ website. She received her B.F.A. from the University of Texas before electricity was invented and resides in Austin with her husband, Bill, and Dexter the Poodle. You can find her alter ego, @IleenieWeenie, wreaking havoc on Twitter, where she is renowned for her lack of coordination and spilling prowess.

JEREMY ARNTZ wrote his first program in elementary school and hasn’t slept much since. He’s been building web sites and applications since 1996. Currently he is a full time web developer, a part time WordPress consultant, and an aspiring photographer.

JULIE GOMOLL has been an entrepreneur for most of the 25 years she’s lived in Austin. She ran Go Media, a graphic design and development firm, for nine years before selling it to Excite (remember Excite?) in 1996. Go Media started building websites in 1993, launching the first sites for Whole Foods and the City of Austin, among others.

In 1995 she co-founded Austin Free-Net, and served as President of the Board of Directors for 5 years.

Julie and her Austin team created the communities arm of Excite, developing chat, forums, instant messaging, clubs, and personals. She stuck with Excite for 3 years as it grew from 35 employees to 3500 employees. She left in 1999 and took some time off to travel the world. When Excite went bankrupt in 2001 she licensed the popular Virtual Places software and, along with the chief of engineering for Excite, launched VPchat as an ad-free, paid service, which continues running to this day.

In 2007 she put together a team to create LaunchPad Coworking, an ambitious project that sadly never opened. Yes, it’s ok to ask her about it.

Today she’s working independently as Jules Says, doing strategy, marketing, design, and development for select clients. Most notably, she’s doing this for Berkeley Bionics and having a blast promoting the amazing, world-changing, eLEGS exoskeleton.

Julie has traveled solo around the world, gone diving with Great White Sharks, gotten lost on an uninhabited island in Costa Rica, had dinner with Bill Clinton and lunch with Hillary Clinton, and eaten Mopane worms.

AMANDA QURAISHI is a writer, blogger, interfaith activist and technology professional living in Austin, Texas.  She currently works full time as the Web & Database Administrator for Mobile Loaves & Fishes, a non-profit organization that addresses the issue of homelessness in the U.S.

Amanda has been involved with Austin’s interfaith community for more than ten years. In 2003 she founded Central Texas Muslimaat, an organization that addresses the unique needs of central Texas Muslim women.  Amanda has also had the honor of having representing Austin’s Muslim community as the youngest board member in iACT/AAIM’s 70-year history. Presently, she serves on the Board of Directors for Muslims for Peace & Unity.

In May 2011, Amanda launched a smartphone app called 365muslim for which she received national media attention.  She also regularly contributes her writing to the online interfaith journals Tikkun Daily (an interfaith blog) and ILLUME (a Muslim news site).  Amanda blogs about both religion and politics on her personal blog, muslimahMERICAN.com.  She regularly tweets about her love for all things taco on her personal Twitter account, @ImTheQ.

Amanda also has a boutique new media firm BAM POW BIZ, which allows her to work with small, independent business owners as they extend their reach on the social web.  As a new media strategist, Amanda is able to advise small businesses to develop a competitive, conscious and cost-effective web presence.  She also coordinates and manages the work of independent and freelance contractors who provide her clients with world-class technical and marketing services as they put her clients’ plan into action.

Once again, Amanda is thrilled to be serving as the Official #BlogathonATX Social Media Czar and will be diligently live-Tweeting and live-blogging the event throughout the day for your enjoyment.

TECH SUPPORT

JACKIE DANA is an unabashed tech geek.

Having built her first website back in 1995 (when all websites were built by hand using cardboard boxes and a bit of string), she now is a WordPress evangelist, believing that WordPress levels the playing field and allows everyone to have a great website. She values the principles of universal design and usability, and finds both social media and search engine optimization way more interesting than she should ever publicly admit.

She owns Getting Dirty Designs, a web design and WordPress training/consulting business. Her ideal clients are small businesses, artists, writers and musicians. She’s also an active member of WordPress Austin and volunteers for Knowbility, a local organization promoting web accessibility initiatives.

She blogs at Getting Dirty Designs and on her personal site, Bending the Web to My Will. She also contributes to Sharp Skirts, a fabulous startup providing mentorship to women entrepreneurs.

At BlogathonATX Part Deux, expect her to be bouncing back and forth between the techathon and talkathon rooms and getting very little actual blogging done.

PAT RAMSEY‘s one of the founders of Cospace, a coworking space in North Austin and works as a WordPress developer/designer with slash25.com. Pat is active in Refresh Austin, leads the Austin WordPress meetup and leads custom training throughout the year on topics such as WordPress development, HTML and CSS. He’s been a trainer, advisor, and participant in Knowbility‘s Accessible Internet Rallies and AccessU. Pat is a former Navy Reserve sailor, a native Texan, and enjoys cooking large quantities of crawfish. He believes in the inevitability of change, with the only real question being on which side of it will a person be?

ERIC WEISS (aka txhoudini) is a freelance WordPress developer and journalist. He has been designing websites since 1996 as well as writing about technology for such sites as Android And Me and WPCandy as well as LAPTOP Magazine.

Eric recently started Skeptics on the .Net, a WordPress based directory of skeptical and science based blogs, podcasts and organizations.

He blogs at txhoudini dot com.