Jerry Michalski's background


Jerry is also a pattern finder, lateral thinker, Gladwellian connector and explorer of the interactions between technology, society and business.

From 1987 to 1998, Jerry was a technology analyst, focusing not on quarterly earnings but rather on which technologies would be useful and which would be distractions, what trends and forces create new potential, and where all these forces might take us over a 20-year timeframe.

For the last five years of that period, Jerry was the Managing Editor of Esther Dyson's monthly tech newsletter Release 1.0, as well as co-host of her annual conference, PC Forum.

Since 1998, Jerry has been an independent consultant, doing business as Sociate, a name he coined because he is skilled at associating ideas and people, and also because he believes that the social changes that we are going through as a result of all the new connectivity (e.g., Internet, cell phones, inexpensive cameras, podcasting) will be more profound than the structural and economic changes we have already seen.

Clients and advisory roles

Jerry works with some larger companies such as Best Buy and Havas Media as well as non-profits such as EDF and the Institute for the Future.

Jerry also acts as a technology advisor to startups ranging from Twine, CoTweet, EverNote and TheBrain.com to Socialtext and Seedwiki. During the dot-boom days, Jerry was an advisor to eGroups (now YahooGroups) and Pyra (now Blogger, part of Google).

Often technologies such as social software are helpful in weaving links between people. Jerry recommends applications and adoption strategies; he doesn't generally manage software projects.

More background

Prior to his stint writing Release 1.0, Jerry spent five years at New Science Associates, a technology market-research firm similar to Gartner (later bought by Gartner). At New Science, Jerry launched and ran two retainer research services, Intelligent Document Management (which included hypertext and groupware) and Continuous Information Environments (which included wireless communications, voice/data integration and then-hot pen computing).

His first real job in the world was as a transportation rate clerk at Mobil Oil, looking up freight rates in a room full of paper tariffs at the same time as he was learning about computing with an Apple II+ and a 300-baud Hayes modem. Between Mobil and New Science, Jerry earned an MBA from the Wharton School and spent almost three years in strategy consulting with an internal strategy startup at Price Waterhouse.

Jerry rues that his age shows as the companies he was with continue to change names (e.g., ExxonMobil and PricewaterhouseCoopers).

Other work

Jerry's home page (and DBA) is Sociate, he blogs here, podcasts the Yi-Tan Weekly Tech Community Call, shares photos in his Flickr stream and publishes his Brain online.

Skills

Here are some things I think I do really well:

Bios and pictures

For more formal purposes, see Jerry Short Bio (one paragraph), Jerry Medium Bio (three paragraphs), Jerry Long Bio (six paragraphs) and Jerry Mug Shots (less formal pix also available in the jerrymichalski tag stream on Flickr).

Unless otherwise noted, all materials on this site are published under the Creative Commons Attribution license. We encourage you to use and improve these materials and ask that you not harm our ability to make a livelihood with them. This site is built atop Seedwiki; you can have one, too. Questions? Please e jerry(at)sociate.com