About

Hi. My name is Bruno Boutot and modadmin is my blog in English about media and communities.

I believe that communities are the key to the success and development of media on the web.

I also believe that people, not things, are the most important part of the web*, so mods and admins of communities are the key to the success of media on the web, hence the name of this blog.

How I came to learn this is the topic of my work in progress called media machina.

*Note: to be consistent with this statement, I have edited and rewritten this page to include people I have had the privilege to work with; if you see your name here, don’t hesitate to contact me to correct any error, or if you have a better profile to link to; I apologize to people who don’t see their name here: please contact me for any omission. :-)

Short-short bio

  • I am a consultant on strategy for online media and communities;
  • I give conferences about online media and communities;
  • I have been a journalist for 30 years (in French, in Montreal);
  • I have been editor in chief of a business magazine about media, advertising and marketing for 10 years;
  • I have been on the Web since 1994 and I have explored hundreds of online communities since 1998 (I will link to stories here as I write them), participating, meeting fantastic people, asking questions, studying and analyzing community dynamics;
  • I have been a member of Worth1000 since 2002, where I was welcomed by Avi Muchnick; I became a moderator, then an admin while the community grew from 3000 members to more than 300 000;
  • I have been a longtime reader of MetaFilter, created by Matthew Haughey, one of the most original and successful online communities; I became a member in 2005; I read daily MetaTalk, one of the rare open forums about the governance of a living, energetic community; my favorites in Metafilter can be read as a blog about online media and community governance.

Short bio

I have recently worked as consultant on community projects with, among others:

I have worked as consultant on media projects with, among others:

I have worked as a journalist, among others:

  • as Advertising critic, with Claude Masson, then deputy publisher of La Presse (daily newspaper)
  • as co-founder and editor in chief, with Bruno Gautier, co-founder and publisher of Infopresse, (monthly business magazine on media, advertising and marketing)

I am regularly a member of juries for journalism and design awards.

Note: most of my work as a journalist has been published on paper before 1999 and is not available online (or behind pay walls); I plan to scan what is sleeping in my blue metal trunk. ;-)

As a freelance journalist, I have worked with a lot of interesting people for a number of publications; I will mention them in an extended CV. I have also worked with book publishers as translator (from English to French) and editor.

Credits

I thank all these wonderful guys who helped me set up this site:

Mathieu Dufour shot my portrait;
Robin Millette from Waglo Labs originally created this blog on Drupal, took care of it for years, and then did the hard work to move the content to WordPress;
Patrick Tanguay from taste of blue installed WordPress MU at iWeb, and created the original design with the theme Shantia by Nofie Iman;
Francis Laplante from iXmédia did the integration of the boutot.com domain, showed me the ropes, did the final set-up and is still helping me get through coding crisis.

I consider myself lucky for having the privilege to work with so talented and knowledgeable people; all errors and mistakes must be blamed on my own subsequent tinkering. :-)