Account Exec John Shankman joins our New York sales team from infoUSA. John's fascination with new Internet business models brought him to FM, and his energy and enthusiasm for taking care of clients is infectious. Prior to joining the business world, John studied Economics and International Relations at Boston University. Besides technology, John's interests include video production and sports, two areas where - suprise! - FM is expanding.

Welcome, John!

We're growing, and adding two more positions to support our 100+ authors.

The Author Services Account Executive (ASAE) at Federated Media works with the whole Author Services team, and the rest of the company, to take care of authors. This person will institute and follow a plan to make regular contact with FM authors, checking in with them on how we are proceeding, together, toward meeting their goals. An ASAE must have excellent communications skills, as a primary responsiblity will be to communicate instructions and requests to authors, and also serve as the author's advocate within FM. Besides proactively contacting authors, the ASAE will also respond to requests from authors -- for information, technical help, advice, etc.

This person will also help search for new authors for this growing company, and respond to queries from prospective authors.

The ideal candidate needs to be organized and have an eye for talent. He or she should be able to cope with a rapidly changing amount of data from various sources. A passion for the world of blogs -- in particular for the world of search, media, and technology -- is required. The ability to work comfortably with a wide variety of personalities is a must. Editorial experience is critical. An understanding of the publishing and advertising worlds and a knowledge of general business operations are both important. Meticulous accuracy and attention to detail is essential, as is the ability to work on numerous projects simultaneously and under tight deadlines. If you are interested, please contact Pamela Parker, pamela at federatedmedia dot net.

Todd Serad joined us as an account executive in our New York office last week. Todd joins us from The Asbury Park Press where he was responsible for managing over $10 million in Major Account revenue. His success comes from his dedication, creativity and 10+ years of agency experience at Goodby, Silverstein; Creative Media; and Foote, Cone & Belding. Todd will help FM continue to build its strong relationships with agencies and clients across all federations, but he will also focus on Automotive and Graphic Arts. As a top player and organizer of volleyball tournaments in NY and NJ, Todd is a natural team player. Welcome to another great team, Todd!

The good news from our sales front continues with the addition of a manager to run our Southern California business. Will Irons

has over 15 years of sales and marketing experience - he most recently ran C5 Marketing LLC which focused on event sponsorship, media partnerships and brand development for clients. As the Director of Marketing for Op (Ocean Pacific), Will helped lead the award-winning marketing department and the successful re-launch of Op.com.

Will’s successful sales career has included working with leading companies including: Discovery Communications (Discovery Health Media), Lycos Corporation and Digitrends. Prior to his media career, Will worked for Blue Cross of California and Cigna Corporation in group healthcare benefits sales.

Will is a graduate of San Diego State University and lives in the north San Diego town of Cardiff-by-the-Sea, with his wife, Lea and his children, Kiara and Luke.

Welcome Will!

We've started a new sports federation, as some of you might have noticed, so we are thrilled to welcome Ed Curry to FM as our new Western Sales Director. Bernie Albers, who formerly held that position, has been kicked upstairs to VP Sales. Chas, who was formerly that role, has taken on the role of Publisher (and I'm now just a lowly Chairman/CEO).

Ed brings ten years of advertising experience to FM, with eight of those years in online sales. Prior to FM he worked at Time Inc, initially with SportsIllustrated.com and most recently managing the west coast sales of People.com. Before Time Inc., Ed worked at leading web sites such as CBS Sportsline and RedHerring.com. He has worked with many top brands across the auto, entertainment and tech industries.

Ed is originally from Connecticut and now, conveniently, lives in Sausalito.

If you've noticed we seem to be hiring great folks to scale up our sales efforts, you'd be right....we're up to 18 in sales, a few more introductions are coming...

The folks at Cnet might be a big peeved at us, but we're pleased to welcome Lester Lee alongside Josh. Lester comes to us as a

Regional Sales Manager from CNET Networks where he was a Network Sales Manager. Previous to Lester's experience at CNET, he was employed at Microsoft in Enterprise Sales and at Sybase in Product Marketing. He tells me he's "very excited to be fully using his creative right brain and helping to make all of his advertisers' wishes come true." Lester vaguely recalls receiving a degree in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley with a minor in Asian American Studies. Hey, that's my recollection of Berkeley as well - vague!
Welcome Lester!

Yes, we're adding a lot of folks to the FM team, and the latest is Josh Mattison. Josh joins us at Major Accounts Director. Previously, Josh was corporate sales manager for CNET Networks, responsible for collaboratively developing leading marketing programs on behalf of Intel and Best Buy across all CNET Networks brands including CNET, Webshots, ZDNet, and Gamespot. Leading up to his corporate responsibilities Josh focused his efforts on helping top business and technology marketers connect with customers across News.com, ZDNet, TechRepublic.

Prior to joining CNET Networks by way of acquisition, Josh was the Sales Manager for Newmediary, Inc., a technology focused business to business directory and RFP engine that ran across brands such as CIO, Computerworld, and Internet.com. Before heading west and entering the world of digital media, Josh spent several years as an Environmental Consultant in Boston.

Welcome to FM, Josh!

New Account Executive Jared Katzman comes to FM from Salesforce.com where he managed relationships with strategic accounts. This is great news for us, Jared is going to help us leverage our Salesforce implementation to give our authors better pipeline (ie what is coming down the pipe) information in our platform. Jared, a UCLA grad (hey, thanks for beating SC...) tells me he's excited about being at the forefront of conversational marketing and is thrilled to be working with some of the most innovative media folks in the world.

Our Engineering team welcomed a new addition recently in Ivan Kanevski, who joined to work with Jonathan in our Technical Author Services division. Ivan is taking care of the engineering needs of our authors and working with our entire engineering team on the ongoing builds of our platform.

Ivan gives us a flavor of his background:

"I've been hacking away and publishing on the web for over 8 years. Born in Ukraine, grew up in New Jersey, went to school in Atlanta (Emory). Graduated with degrees in Philosophy and Computer science. Prior to Federated, worked at VerticalResponse as Web Producer - otherwise, I have been freelancing for over 5 years (with emory.edu/FINANCIAL_AID being one of my bigger projects prior to VerticalResponse). Personal / professional blog can be found at http://www.ephramzerb.com, which is off to an embarrassingly anemic start."

This is the first VP position we have recruited for since I hired my first three senior staff (Chas in sales, Andre in Engineering, and Jason in Operations). It's crucial to FM's business. It's a role I've played so far, and need a partner to work with on, now we are at more than 100 authors. If you know of anyone....

Federated Media Publishing

Job Specification

Vice President, Author Services

Reports to: Chair/CEO, FMP
Start Date: Immediate
Location: SF Bay area (Sausalito Headquarters)
Salary: Base, bonus, and options commensurate with experience

Job Description:
Federated Media Publishing is a fast-growing startup in the Internet media space backed by JP Morgan, the New York Times, and Omidyar Network, among others. At the core of our business are the independent author/site owners, people whose passion, authority, and talents set them apart and allow them to grow significant and influential audiences. The Vice President of Author Services will oversee all aspects of FM’s relationship with its more than 100 authors, from business contracts to recruitment, talent management to setting strategic editorial direction. He/she will oversee a staff of three that will more than double over the next year. He/she will also work directly with his/her counterparts in business development, engineering and ad sales, as well as senior management (COO, Publisher, Chief Architect, and CEO/Chair).

FM’s business is part agency, part advertising representation, part publisher, and part technical services. We represent the highest quality independent sites on the web, sites like Digg, Boing Boing, Dooce, ProTrade, Real Travel, and scores of others. The VP Author Services lives at the heart of this business - this new position formalizes a key role of FM’s founder and Chair, John Battelle.

The ideal candidate will be savvy in the world of media business, must be extremely comfortable in the Internet media space, and must possess a strong editorial sensibility. Excellent “people skills” and a strong background in management is a must, as talent management requires the ability to hold one's own with highly opinionated and passionate colleagues. Interested candidates should peruse the information available at federatedmedia.net and contact Jennifer Charette, Director of Operations, at jcharette@federatedmedia.net or John Battelle at jbat@federatedmedia.net.

Also, we have a senior BD position if that's more your speed. ....

FM is growing, and we are looking for a seasoned pro to help us and our authors keep growing. Here is the job description - if you know of anyone or are interested, please contact Jennifer at jcharette@federatedmedia.net.

Director of Business Development

Federated Media Publishing is a fast-growing startup in the Internet media space backed by JP Morgan, the New York Times, and Omidyar Network, among others. FM’s business is part agency, part advertising representation, part publisher, and part technical services. We represent the highest quality independent sites on the web, sites like Digg, Boing Boing, Dooce, ProTrade, Real Travel, and scores of others.

Federated Media seeks an experienced media professional with experience developing partner, channel sales and syndication relationships for on-line media properties.

The Director of Business Development will be directly responsible for establishing partner relationships with complimentary services to enable Federated Media to quickly enter markets or offer services with a minimum investment in development resources and time. Some relationships will be revenue focused and others will be purely to provide services or capabilities to our client publishers. Example relationships would be with 3rd party ad networks, video, rss and other content distribution and monitoring services, services and products that enable social networking on our client sites, etc. The Director will be responsible for taking these relationships through contract, with minimal support; candidates should be comfortable developing relationships, developing business models and pro forma financials, contracts and implementation plans. This role will also be responsible for coordinating the launch of any such partnerships and ensuring they perform to the forecasted targets.

This role will also be responsible for developing syndication agreements with other online media groups to increase the visibility and audience of our Publisher and Author partners.

The Director of Business Development will be based our of FM’s Sausalito Office and report directly to the COO.

Candidates will have a minimum of 3-5 years experience as a Director of Business Development or Director of Sales in the on-line media market.

Compensation will be, in part, based on performance.