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Charlene primarily contributes to Forrester’s offerings for the Interactive Marketing professional. She is one of the driving forces behind Forrester’s Social Computing and Web 2.0 research, and examines how companies can use technologies like blogs, social networking, RSS, tagging, and widgets for marketing purposes. During her eight years at Forrester, Charlene has also led the marketing and media research team, and ran the San Francisco office.

In her research, Charlene covers such marketing-related topics as consumer portals, search, and media site design. She also leverages her background in newspaper publishing and looks at online local media and online classifieds. In the past, she has also written about online advertising, online gaming, and media content strategies. She also contributes to her Groundswell blog and plans to publish a book by the same name in spring 2008.
Charlene was publisher of interactive media for Community Newspaper Company, a group of newspapers in Massachusetts, where she started its award-winning Town Online Web site. In addition, Charlene served on the board of directors for the Newspaper Association of America’s New Media Federation. Before working for Community Newspaper, Charlene was at the San Jose Mercury News, where she managed new product development. This included creating new advertising products and a consumer electronics show.

Charlene is one of Forrester’s most quoted analysts and has appeared in outlets like The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, CNN, NPR, and BBC, as well as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and BusinessWeek. She is also an accomplished and frequently requested public speaker, and has appeared at Web 2.0 Expo, Ad:Tech, Search Engine Strategies, and AlwaysOn. She has delivered keynote speeches at many events, including Forrester’s Consumer Forum and Television Forum.
A former strategy consultant for Monitor Company, Charlene is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University and holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Charlene enjoys being with her family, dreaming about exotic travel, doing logic puzzles, playing video games with her kids, cooking, and needle crafts. She has been known to dabble in triathlons.

Mark Levitt is responsible for driving IDC’s collaborative applications research which includes integrated collaborative environments (ICE), team collaboration, conferencing, enterprise instant messaging, unified messaging and communications, and email applications software and software as a service, as well as email usage and spam volumes. He also directs IDC’s research in the area of portals and composite applications.

Mr. Levitt regularly publishes market forecasts, vendor analysis, and analysis of emerging trends such as contextual collaboration and the enterprise workplace. He also provides customers with assessments of vendor strategies and market opportunities.

Since joining IDC in 1989 as a research analyst in IDC’s PC software and PC hardware programs, Mr. Levitt has conducted research in the areas of PC pricing, worldwide and regional PC markets, PC distribution channels, storage, and printers. Since 1995, he has focused on messaging and collaboration.

Mr. Levitt is often quoted in business and computer trade publications. He delivers speeches, moderates panels, and presents webinars on collaboration market trends and issues. As an attorney and legal consultant, Mr. Levitt has written about the privacy of email in the workplace and government access to information contained on computers.

25 years of software career focused on application architectures, XML and database topics, and collaborative applications. Enterprise application developer and data modeler. Software product management, business development, and strategy roles with companies including IBM/Lotus, Groove, and Macromedia. Analyst/author of dozens of reports and articles on Microsoft platform and product strategy, XML standards, DBMS market dynamics, and other topics. Consultant to enterprise and software vendors on topics including application architecture, data/conceptual modeling, and product/company strategy.

PRIMARY DISTINCTIONS

Led IBM Lotus Notes product management during the pivotal Notes R4 release. Established product management and competitive strategy for collaborative application pioneer Groove Networks. Macromedia VP Strategy during the launch of its MX product line. Frequent speaker at many major industry events such as Lotusphere and Enterprise 2.0. He is continually quoted and looked to for insight regarding major movements in collaboration and communication fields. Avid blogger since early 2000.

Erica Driver (formerly Rugullies) primarily contributes to Forrester’s offerings for the Information and Knowledge Management professional. She is a leading expert on enterprise collaboration strategies and platforms and Information Workplace strategies and platforms. In the past, Erica has covered information rights management, message archiving, product information management, idea management, product life-cycle management, commerce servers, eProcurement, business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces, and electronic bill presentment and payment.

PREVIOUS WORK EXPERIENCE

Erica came to Forrester through its acquisition of Giga Information Group. She covered a wide range of trends and technologies in her more than six years with Giga. Prior to joining Giga, Erica was a research analyst at Hurwitz Group, where she covered electronic commerce and information security. She has experience with Lotus Notes/Domino application development and administration, network administration, and project management. She has also served on the board of trustees of the Massachusetts Electronic Commerce Association.

Irwin Lazar is the principal analyst and program director for convergence and collaboration at Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, develops cost models, conducts strategic seminars and advises clients. His background is in network operations, network engineering, voice-data convergence, and IP telephony. Mr. Lazar is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VOIP, unified communications, Web 2.0 initiatives, social networking, and collaboration.

A Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and sought-after speaker and author, Mr. Lazar is a columnist for Business Communications Review magazine and Collaboration Loop. He is a frequent resource for the business and trade press. He is regular speaker at events such as Interop, VoiceCon, and Enterprise 2.0. Mr. Lazar serves as the conference director for FutureNet (formerly MPLScon), the chair for Network World IT Roadmap Web 2.0 track, and is on the advisory board for the Enterprise 2.0 conference.