Michael De Monte
Founder/CEO ScribbleLive
I started in the technology business in 1983 just before Apple revolutionized the world of publishing with the introduction of the Apple Macintosh. I remember buying my first 128K Mac and thinking - this will change everything. Since that day my various work has put me in front of every major publishing revolution as it happened. The end of manual typesetting with WYSIWYG digital page layouts, CD-ROM’s as the new medium for big data, desktop video and the studio in your lap, the internet and the dawn of community and today the age of social. The social media phenomenon shifted the eyes of the world away from static content to real-time status updates and shifted the stories from paragraphs to sentences. This was the birth of Generation now…and this new consumer wants their content immediately or they will go somewhere else to get it. As stories break, we no longer have the luxury of static long form content. We need to tell stories at the speed of social media with the authority of a professional storyteller. In 2009, ScribbleLive was founded by news guys. Having been responsible for dozens of CMS’s for the largest Media Company in Canada, we witnessed the barriers that impeded the newsroom and envisioned a product that would allow real-time collaborative storytelling. A vision that launched in May of that year and now we serve millions of readers with billions on minutes of content every month and have the largest media and corporate clients using our platform every day to amplify their message through our vast network. And we are just getting started…. Storytelling has always been at the heart of what I do. I believe that the advent of the “Now” generation is not a hindrance to great content but an opportunity to engage your readers as the excitement of your coverage builds. An opportunity to tell your own story now, not one gleaned from the social web but one that is creative, collaborative and original.