Chris Heuer

Chris Heuer
Occupation	Co-Founder of the Social Media Club

Chris Heuer ^[1] is an Internet entrepreneur from San Francisco, California, specialized in social media and business strategy. He is the co-founder of the Social Media Club ^[2].

Biography

Chris Heuer is a pioneer in Internet entrepreneurship and social media, with more than 15 years of entrepreneurial Internet and marketing experience, and former teacher in Web design, multimedia and convergence marketing at Miami Ad School. He is a specialist in consulting on business strategy and social media for big brands, non-profits and emerging technology companies, helping them leverage the power of Internet and Web 2.0 technologies. Chris formed BrainJams in 2006 to bring social media tools and Open Space gatherings to a wider audience, and launched the Social Media Club to gather together diverse groups of people willing to share their understanding of best practices in social media and Real Marketing.

Chris likes snowboarding.

After graduating with an inter-disciplinary degree in Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics and Government from American University in 1991, Chris Heuer became proficient in marketing communications, product management, strategy consulting, organizational development, Internet technologies, Web site development, user experience design, and building companies.

In 1995 he launched Guru Communications, where he managed the relationships with large accounts including Bombardier ^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Chicago Tribune/AOL, the City of Miami Beach, and several advertising agencies, and led the company to become the pre-eminent interactive agency in South Florida.

In 1999, Chris became Director of New Media Business Development for the United States Mint. He helped to launch H.I.P. Pocket Change to encourage children to take up coin collecting, and was a major contributor to the launch of the online catalog, directing the site from zero to $1.6MM per week in online sales.

At that time, he started his holistic approach to help companies develop a better understanding of how and what it should be communicating to potential and existing customers, which would become "The Communications Strategy". This led to the launch of Conversal, a software development and consultancy company, with accounts like Palm, Inc., until 2005 when he began to pursue a new social media business that leveraged The Customer Strategy while focusing on the mergence of the Knowledge Economy.

In October 2005, Chris organized the Web2.1 unconference as an alternative to Tim O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference. Which resulted in 2006 in the launch of BrainJams, a non-profit organization aiming to bring together leaders from non-profits, business, government and technology for the purpose of collaborative best practices and knowledge sharing.

In 2006, the BrainJams experience has led to the launch of Social Media Club, which purpose is to bring together diverse groups of people willing to share their understanding of best practices in social media and "Real Marketing". The SMC, whose baseline is "If you get it, share it", has now over 70 chapters all over the world and counts more than 100.000 members ^[3].

Youth

Both of Chris's parents had Cerebral Palsy. To his mother Mandy, who raised him with his grandparents after divorcing his father when he was 2 months old, Chris was no less than a miracle. If it were not for her constant encouragement and contagious positive attitude, he would not have ever been bitten by the entrepreneurial spirit that has led to seven different startups in the last 15 years.

References

1. ^ http://www.chrisheuer.com/about/
2. ^ http://socialmediaclub.org
3. ^ http://socialmediaclub.org/blogs/from-the-clubhouse/how-big-social-media-club-100000-and-growing

External links

• [1] Chris Heuer - the 7 social media principles