J. D. Lasica

J. D. Lasica (2008)

J. D. Lasica is the public name used by Joseph Daniel Lasica, an entrepreneur, public speaker and journalist. He is co-founder and chief executive of Cruiseable, a travel company, cruise discovery engine and online travel publication. ^[1][2]

Lasica is also the author of Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation (ISBN 0-471-68334-5) (2005), a book about the copyright wars and the future of media.

Lasica was born in Passaic, New Jersey and graduated from Rutgers University, where he holds a BA in communication.

He began working in journalism as a reporter for the Passaic Herald News, then held several editing positions at the Sacramento Union and Sacramento Bee in California. He left newspapers in 1997 when he joined Microsoft's Sidewalk.com city guide as copy chief and managing editor. In 1999 he joined BabyCenter.com, a site for new and expectant parents in San Francisco, as managing editor and then editorial director. He worked briefly as Director of Content and Production for iVendor in Sunnyvale, California, before the Silicon Valley startup folded in late 2000.

From 1997 to 2005, Lasica wrote dozens of free-lance articles for publications such as the American Journalism Review, where he was its first new media columnist; the Online Journalism Review, where he was its chief columnist; and the now-defunct Industry Standard magazine. In 2003 Lasica was editor of the white paper We Media: How Audiences Are Shaping the Future of News and Information,^[3] published by the Media Center at the American Press Institute. From 2004 to 2005 he was a columnist for Engadget, a technology blog. His book "Darknet" came out in May 2005.

In March 2005 he co-founded Ourmedia, a grassroots media community and one of the first video hosting and sharing sites on the Internet, with co-founder Marc Canter. He served as its chief executive until his departure in December 2008.

Lasica was also founder and president of Socialmedia.biz, a consulting firm and collaborative blog that provides social media services to companies. In May 2009 he launched Socialbrite.org, a learning center and collaborative blog for nonprofits and social change organizations.

He has written three reports for the Aspen Institute:

(1) The Mobile Generation: Global Transformations at the Cellular Level.^[4]

(2) Civic Engagement on the Move: How mobile media can serve the public good.^[5]

(3) Identity in the Age of Cloud Computing: The next-generation Internet's impact on business, governance and social interaction.^[6]

Lasica speaks regularly on the lecture circuit about social media and the future of media, having lectured at such venues as Harvard University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the 2006 International Citizen Reporters' Forum in Seoul. He serves on the board of directors of the Media Bloggers Association and on the advisory boards of the Center for Citizen Media, NowPublic, and the Society for New Communications Research, among others. Additionally, Lasica serves as one of Board of Advisors for ClassWish.org, a nonprofit organization.

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