Jim Zimmermann - Founder, Owner, Sr. Advisor

Jim Zimmermann has enjoyed a long and varied career in the IT industry. During his 30 years in the industry, Jim has worked for a variety of companies and has started and sold three successful startups. The startups were (in reverse chronological order):

During all of the startups, mergers, and acquisitions, Jim held various positions including Executive Editor of Analyst Information Products at Bitpipe,  Director of Content Licensing & Acquisition for TechRepublic, and Program Director for Electronic Commerce Strategies for IBM Global Services. Jim has also worked for Fujitsu, Mercator, Alias Research, Decision Resources, Ashton-Tate, and the technology companies of Dun & Bradstreet.

Prior to Jim’s involvement in the business-side of IT, Jim was an accomplished programmer and development director. His first job was to write Fortran programs for an environmental engineering firm. He then become an APL programmer doing statistical analyses for the firm. Through a series of interesting moves, Jim ended up writing the first commercially available email program for the brand-new IBM PC - developed on a prototype IBM PC with a wire-wrapped motherboard, 64K of memory, two 5 ¼ inch floppy drive (hard drives were not available for PCs then) and it used Western Union for communication (because there wasn’t any Internet available then). 

Jim graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Natural Science and Math from St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, NY.

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Linda is the author of seventeen published books, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio. She lectures at schools, libraries and for organizations across the country on topics as varied as the history of rockets to the in-depth role of specific regiments during the Civil War. She has given lectures at institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution and West Point, and was a featured speaker at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg.
 

Linda began her career as a Research Chemist for Fisher Scientific’s medical diagnostic division. From initial research through product development, to product launch and customer training, she was involved in all phases of the process, including document preparation and regulatory review. She was also the division’s senior writer for all news and product information for the company’s newsletter.
  

After receiving her Masters degree in English from Iona College, she began writing articles on science and history. By 1990, her career shifted away from the lab and she became a fulltime writer and lecturer. Linda also holds a Bachelor of Science from St. Thomas Aquinas College with dual majors in chemistry and English.

 

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Elizabeth Morley, Sr. Staff Writer

Elizabeth Morley has been writing for over thirty years beginning her career in radio, writing and producing commercial spots. In 1975, her career moved into high tech where she was employed in a start-up organization that delivered turnkey systems to academic and public libraries. There she was responsible for writing technical and user manuals and for developing and managing the company’s Technical Writing department.

As her career progressed, Elizabeth worked for several entrepreneurial companies, which were first in their markets to deliver products and services using new technology for their time. In these environments, Elizabeth planned and implemented a variety of marketing initiatives including developing key positioning messages, researching market trends, writing white papers, case studies, press releases, articles, newsletters, advertising, promotional collateral and web content.

Additionally, Elizabeth’s experience includes creating sales tools, user guides and customer implementation plans. She has conducted workshops at client meetings, planned and participated in industry-focused Webinars, and has managed advisory groups, user groups and focus groups.

Elizabeth’s background also includes product management. In this role, she was responsible for user, market and competitive research, creating marketing specifications and acting as liaison between marketing and engineering and conducting market, usability and integration testing.

During her career, Elizabeth’s experience is not only as an individual contributor, but also as a skilled manager in building, developing and running marketing departments.

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Robert Raus, Author and Industry Marketing Specialist

Bob brings over 20 years experience in industrial IT software and solutions product marketing, production data center output management, digital printing, variable data composition, complex project management and product lifecycle management at national and global 500 companies. Bob has hands-on knowledge of production IT applications and content creation for clients in the Enterprise Software, Securities, Banking, Insurance, Health Care, Direct Marketing, Commercial Print, and Manufacturing industries.

Bob has been Director of Software and Professional Services Marketing at Oce North America, Program Manager at Xerox and VP of Marketing for EFI. Bob has also managed his own consulting firm helping companies develop materials for all phases of the product lifecycle, established grass-roots branding, messaging and sales and demand generation programs.

Bob brings in-depth structured problem analysis and problem solving practices with deep operational knowledge, product lifecycle management best practices, business development and intensive sales force training experience to develop compelling street-wise white papers, case studies, articles and sales tools that result in notoriety and sustained sales success. Bob has presented and participated on expert panels at many industry events including Xplor, On Demand, Print!, Graph Expo and Graphics of the Americas.

Bob has a B.S., Electrical Engineering from Gannon University (Erie Pennsylvania) and an M.B.A. from St. John Fisher College (Rochester, New York)