I’m very pleased to announce that Bernard Lunn has joined ReadWriteWeb full-time as our Chief Operating Officer. Starting today, Bernard will assume responsibility for most of the non-editorial functions of our business – sales, business development and other operational matters. This allows me to re-focus on leading our editorial, including doing more writing! I will still be running the business, but Bernard will take a lot of pressure off me by running our sales and business development operations. He will also be leading our ‘channel’ strategy.
Bernard Lunn is based in New York and he has an extensive background in media, having started in online publishing
before the Internet (with Prestel in 1980!). He has lived in and
started companies in Asia and Europe as well as America; he is Chairman of IQ Resource and Co-founder of iYogi.
Bernard worked for Aregon from 1979 – 1994, a pioneer in what is now called Publish & Subscribe technology. Bernard led sales and marketing for Aregon in London in the run up to the Big Bang deregulation in 1985, took the company into Europe after the crash of 1987 and then built the US operations from 1990 to 1992 in a recession, with minimal capital, against entrenched competitors. After Aregon merged with Kapiti (back office banking systems), Bernard took over and rejuvenated Kapiti’s US operations before moving to Asia in 1994 and then the U.S. after that. You can read more about Bernard’s background on LinkedIn.
Many of you probably know Bernard already as a writer at ReadWriteWeb (since July ’07) and editor of our new Enterprise channel. He often focuses on business issues in his writing, so we’re all excited to see that innovative theory being put into practise here at ReadWriteWeb!
Bernard is the third full-time member of ReadWriteWeb, after myself (the founder) and Marshall Kirkpatrick, VP Content Development who joined us full-time in August. The rest of our staff are contractors. I am proud of the whole team we have managed to put together without external funding – or indeed a presence in Silicon Valley until our recent writing hire of Lidija Davis.
Please join me in welcoming Bernard into his new role. We all have big plans for ReadWriteWeb and we’re grateful for the continued support of our readers and sponsors.