Social Alchemy - How to grow a community from 5 to 5,000 by Vincent Lauria

Vincent Lauria is the co-founder of lefora.com, a free forum hosting service for communities on the web. As VP of Product, Mr. Lauria steers the product line through the ever-dynamic consumer marketplace. Additionally, Mr. Lauria runs a monthly New Technology Meetup group in Silicon Valley, featuring over 3,000 members and 100+ companies that have demoed their product since 2006.

Prior to starting lefora, he was VP of Product Strategy at meetro.com, a location aware IM client. Prior to Meetro, Mr. Lauria held a number of roles in IBM's Business Consulting Services during his four years with the company, including serving as Community Leader of the Social Networking Community of Practice. Mr. Lauria helped shape how IBM was approaching social software as an emerging and in some cases, disruptive technology.

Mr. Lauria graduated Boston University with a B.S. in Computer Engineering and a minor in Business Administration. His career started as early as high school where he co-developed a web-technology to facilitate online settlements of arbitration cases.

He spends much of his time following the trend of social software and its cultural impact on society. Outside of work, he has taken on a number of adventures, including live webcamming a tour of the southern United States, backpacking a summer across Europe, and taking the helm of an open cockpit biplane.

With a strong interest in social software and building communities, Mr. Lauria views social software technologies transforming much of our culture and driving a new age of communicative methods, affecting the way we interact with others.