Welcome Carl Ford

I'm pleased to announce long-time technology community developer Carl Ford will be working with us at Fierce as a strategic advisor and community developer. Carl will be writing a couple of columns and working with us on webinars and other types of events as he and we see fit.

There's a reason why I underlined "with us" above; Carl is also free to do his own things and I'm not going to pretend we're keeping him busy 100 percent of his time--his creative mind is active way more than a stock 40 hour week to begin with. He's got some projects he's working on and I hope we may be of service to him in the future in those areas.

So what does a community developer "do"? That's an interesting question when it comes to the world of technology. I'm reviewing the wiki definition of "community development" and can't bring myself to put Carl in the same category as Gandhi and Muhammad Yunus; I think I'll crib a part about "community building and organizing" where people work together with a common interest.

I'd also like to break the mold that Carl is just a VoIP/telecom guy. He and I have been going back and forth on video and femtocells and peering and 4G for quite a while. I'm going to publish Carl's first column either today or tomorrow on FierceOnlineVideo because he talks about social networking and Comcast and video--there's no VoIP there.

So, welcome Carl!

- Doug