The Winners 6-10: Twin Cities Top Ten Titans In Social Media

6.  JASON DERUSHA:  BUZZ-FEEDER

Jason DeRusha is a reporter, blogger, Twitterer and Facebooker at WCCO-TV.  He’s been answering “Good Questions” since 2007, using social media not just to promote his work, rather to involved the community in helping to craft his work.

Jason was named to the Top Ten Outstanding Young Minnesotans by the Minnesota Jaycees in 2009.  He’s been profiled in Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine (as the “Twitter guy”), featured nationally (twice) in Mashable.com, won the City Pages 2009 Best of Award for Online Personality.

The social media community directly led to Jason DeRusha Day in Minneapolis on September 21.  Jason organized a day, threw together a party, and raised nearly $1000 for People Serving People (half of which was me Jason personally matching the donations of people who came to the party.)  Let me mention, this was an actual day that was proclaimed “Jason DeRusha Day” by the Mayor R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis.  I was at the party.  It was totally awesome.

If you aren’t already doing it, click here to follow Jason on Twitter.

7.  NANCY LYONS & MEGHAN WILKER:  THE GEEK GIRLS

Nancy Lyons and Meghan Wilker launched the Geek Girls Guide in January 2008 as a place to publish their perspective on the Interactive industry and demystify technology for non-technical audiences. Their mission is to make web technology accessible and exciting and cultivate a movement of empowered women and men online. Since the beginning the Geek Girls have been making connections, but more importantly, creating meaningful conversations.

Nancy is the President and CEO of Clockwork Active Media Systems where she enjoys the daily challenges of making web technology simple and accessible for a wide variety of audiences. In May of 2001, Nancy was chosen as one of the Twin Cities’ 40 under 40 by City Business and in July of 2004 Nancy was chosen as one of the Twin Cities’ Women To Watch by the Business Journal. Meghan is the Managing Director or Clockwork Active Media Systems and in 2009 was named one of the 25 Women to Watch by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.

Click here to follow Nancy on Twitter and here for Meghan.

8. KATE IVERSON: EDITOR OF THE ARTS

Kate is the editor in chief for l’etoile magazine, an online arts, fashion, and entertainment site/blog that is known for its uber-hip weekend event listings, branded parties. She is also also the arts editor for Secrets Of The City (formerly The Rake) and arts and culture writer for the651.com.

The past year has been good to Kate, she recently won “Best Social Director” in MN Monthly’s “Best of 2009″ issue. She also won a Metro 100 award for the being editor of the l’etoile blog.  Metro called l’etoile “the online magazine with the biggest Rolodex in town!

To become part of that Rolodex, or at least find out where the parties are at, follow Kate here on Twitter.

9. RACHEL DYKOSKI: SOCIAL MEDIAL ACTIVIST

Rachel’s interests are driven by her life. She lives with a disability and she finds getting out and about is impacted by her limitations. But on the cyber-side she is everywhere, engaged and connected. Rachel has found this offers her a way to give back to the community.

Rachel helped to start The Video Brigade that was awarded COMPAS grant to educate at-risk teens in citizen journalism.  She is also a board member of MSSoftserve, an online community for people with MS.

In the area of advocacy Rachel works online for the Hip Hop Caucus, Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota, and the National MS Society.  She does everything from Twittering for these organizations to helping launch online games to provided mulit-media interviews in their advocacy/outreach efforts.

Not just happy to work in the activist role, Rachel is also a blogger and post on multiple blogs.  Rachel worked on the Twin Cities Daily Planet connecting folks to the Green Jobs conference in Washington DC via their blog in February.  She also blogged about Al Franked for The UpTake.  To get up to speed with what Rachel is doing, follow her here on Twitter.

10.  TOM PICK:  B2B VIRTUOSO

Tom Pick is an online marketing executive with KC Associates, a marketing and PR firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, focused on b2b technology clients. He also writes the award-winning WebMarketCentral blog, a blog about B2B lead generation, social media, interactive PR, SEO and search engine marketing.

His blog has been around since 2005, has won several awards (including MarketingSherpa recognition). He has also written guest posts for several blogs, including recently BtoBbloggers and Business.com.  He is an advisor to FYIndOut.com, a b2b-focused social media site, and one of the two original founders of B2BMarketingZone.com, a b2b blog aggregation site.

He has spoken about social media at conferences such as the Blogging for Business conference in Salt Lake City last year, and sat on a b2b social media panel here in Minneapolis this spring hosted by Minnesota BMA (Business Marketing Association).

Tom was recently named to a list of the 50 most influential b2b marketing thought leaders. You can follow Tom on Twitter here.

More from Just JudyJudyJudy

• The Winners 1-5: Twin Cities Top Ten Titans In Social Media
• The Judges: Twin Cities Top Ten Titans In Social Media
• The Twin Cities Not-So-Sexy List
• Twin Cities Top Ten Titans In Social Media 2009: The Results Are In
• Call For Nominations: Twin Cities Top 10 Titans In Social Media 2009

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Tags: Jason DeRusha, Minneapolis, minnesota, Social Media, Twin Cities, Twin Cities Top Ten Titans IN Social Media

This entry was posted on December 9, 2009 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Twin Cities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.