SHARON RICHMAN
Sharon is a founding partner of Electric Valley Media, publishers of the Shawangunk Journal, a weekly print newspaper covering New York’s Rondout Valley, and the Kingston Wire, a new digital newspaper writing about the city of Kingston, New York. She also owns Zelacom Electronic Publishing, a software development company based in Ellenville, New York. She has a background in both fine arts and computer science. She is webmaster and designer for a wide variety of websites, and provides technical support and website maintenance for many others. Sharon’s background includes stints as a computer programmer for IBM, book illustrator, and newspaper editor.
ALEX SHIFFER
Alex is a founding partner of Electric Valley Media, publishers of the Shawangunk Journal, a weekly print newspaper covering New York’s Rondout Valley, and the Kingston Wire, a new digital newspaper writing about the city of Kingston, New York. He also owns Zelacom Electronic Publishing, a software development company based in Ellenville, New York. He is a programmer and database developer by training, but a local news hound at heart. His two passions came together in NewsAtomic – a digital news publishing platform that has a variety of innovative monetization features for publishers: subscriptions/memberships, micropayments, and timed usage metering. In his insufficient spare time he raises chickens, ducks, goats and donkeys.
MARK FUERST
Mark Fuerst is founder of Innovation4Media (I4M), the first national consulting company focused exclusively on the relationship between new media and public broadcasting. With support from the Wyncote Foundation, he now serves as Director of the Public Media Futures Forums, a unique “think tank” analyzing the broad financial, competitive and technology trends affecting public media companies, with emphasis on the public broadcasting stations and networks. Prior to focusing on new media, Mark was General Manager of WXPN-FM in Philadelphia, the public radio station of the University of Pennsylvania, where he helped develop the AAA music format and launch The World Café, a daily national AAA-music program now syndicated by NPR to over 200 stations. He then expanded syndication of World Café-style programming to the (commercial) United Stations Radio Network.