Firecat Studio

Speaking Engagements

Susan Price and Firecat Studio help businesses and entrepreneurs select, adopt and leverage web, email and social media. With 25 years of experience riding the technology waves of computers, desktop publishing, web, and social media, Susan knows how to turn an emerging technology trend into an actionable strategy that gets immediate results.

Firecat Studio provides cutting-edge internet and marketing strategy to businesses and organizations of all sizes, from Fortune 200 financial services giants to technology startups and nonprofits. And we love helping others learn about and master the techniques.

Speaking Topics

With engaging, popular speakers on emerging technology topics, Firecat Studio is ready to deliver a customized, compelling presentation on these and other new media topics.

Intro Length

These rousing 30-45 minute presentations help audiences understand and get excited about the "why" behind various elements of digital strategy.

• Twitter: Waste of Time or Great New Business Tool?
• Does This Website Convert? An Expert Evaluation
• Web Usability: 20 Common Errors to Avoid or Fix Now
• Coworking Revolution: Today's Mobile Workforce
• Web Accessibility: Why It Matters to Your Business
• Don't Put That on Facebook! Social Media Guidelines for Today's Enterprise
• Your Company & Social Media: The Firewall or Freedom?
• Clean Up Your Act: Social Media Makeovers for Students
• Search Engine Optimization: What It Takes to Get to Page 1 on Google, Bing and Yahoo
• Hounds to the Hunter: Using eMail and Social Media to Drive Web Traffic
• Is Your Company Visible Online? Elements to an Online Brand Presence

Industry-Specific Presentations

We love to customize our talks with examples specific to the audience and industry. Here are some ready to go presentations - but we are always happy to customize a new one.

• Social Media and Your Sphere of Influence: For Real Estate Professionals
• Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn: For HR and Recruiting
• Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn: For the Small Business
• Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn: Inside the Enterprise

Half-Day Workshops

Give attendees at your conference or meeting the hands-on experience they need to master digital strategy and tools, with expert guidance every step of the way. For groups of 10 or more, we will bring additional instructors.

• Join the Conversation: A Social Media Strategy for Your Business
• The Right Content at the Right Time: Create a Cross-Channel Editorial Calendar
• Connecting Your Remote Team: Tools and Workflows that Work
• Your Online Brand: Strategy, Monitoring and Control
• Find Your Next Job Online
• Natural Search Optimization: Raise Your Rank on Google, Bing and Yahoo
• Content Strategy: What to Say Where, To Whom, Online (and how to measure it)
• Measuring Online Success: Set Goals and Show ROI for your Online Campaigns
• Social Media Governance in the Workplace: Structures and Guidelines that Work at Work

Channel- and Tool-Specific Presentations

Arrange 90 minutes, 3 hours or a full day with your crowd to give us time to motivate attendees with the "why," cover pertinent examples and case studies. With more time, we can get into the "How" of executing a digital strategy. These sessions are customizable for any organization, so you can emerge with workflows and templates ready to put to work.

• Blogging for Business
• WordPress: Your Business Website and Blog Platform
• Content Management Systems: Why, How and Which One Should My Business Choose?
• Podcasting: Your New Business Channel
• Web Video: Strategies that Work for Business
• Google Analytics: Set Goals and Measure Success
• Run Your Business with Free Google Tools
• Collaboration Portal: Your Intranet SharePoint Strategy
• Collaboration Portal: Using 37Signals BaseCamp to Manage Projects
• Remote Teams: Tools and Techniques to Keep Them Connected and Productive

Engaging a Speaker

Contact us for a recommendation or proposal for your specific group or time slot. Susan and other Firecat Studio experts occasionally offer free introductory presentations to nonprofit groups. A stipend may be required to cover travel or other expenses.

We are certified to award Continuing Education credits on some topics through the Texas Real Estate Commission; contact us for details.

Speaker Bio: Susan Price

Susan Price Intro

Susan Price has made quite a career riding waves of emerging communications technologies. She has helped her clients make authentic connections using the personal computer, desktop publishing, the Internet, email, and social media. Susan is passionate about authenticity in communication, web accessibility, collaboration and innovation. Since being struck on the head by lightning in the Grand Canyon, she's called herself Queen of the Universe.

Susan Price Full Bio

Susan Price has made quite a career riding the waves of emerging communications technologies. With an education focused on Radio-TV-Film, she has helped businesses and organizations make the most of the personal computer, desktop publishing, the Internet, email, and social media.

Susan has created several small businesses over the years, but she gained insider perspective into large organizations working for the University of Texas and financial services giant USAA. Her clients include USAA, Dell, AMD, IBM, Novell, Mutual of Omaha, SWBC, QuickBooksTexas, Talbotworld, Reaching Neighbors, Christopher Avery, Texas State University, the US Air Force, the Texas National Guard, and the Texas Department of Commerce.

Keeping up with rapidly evolving communication technology and tools is an art form. To ensure that Firecat Studio stays on the leading edge, Susan blogs both personally and professionally. On behalf of clients, she creates, manages and runs web, eMail and social media campaigns.

Susan is committed to web accessibility - ensuring that blind, deaf, and mobility-impaired persons can use web technology. Not only is Section 508 accessibility the right thing to do for those users, there\'s a huge, growing market share, and compliance is the most prudent legal strategy for employers and vendors. Compliant websites and other tools are also optimized for search engines such as Google and Bing, two "blind and deaf" users most businesses care about.

Susan Price holds a Radio-TV-Film degree from the University of Texas at Austin, with a concentration in Animation. She lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband and son, two nonflaming cats, a leopard gecko and one very vocal beagle.

About Firecat Studio

Firecat Studio creates websites of all types, as well as email and social media campaigns that drive traffic to those websites. The firm specializes in user-centered design and usability techniques that result in effective, enjoyable, intuitive, and sustainable communications and workflows.

Firecat Studio sponsors regular coworking days and free brownbag learning lunches, as well as local art events and nonprofit endeavors.

Firecat Studio's name and mascot reflect the firm's high energy, agile approach to transforming business communications and marketing. The transformative, elemental power of fire burns away the nonessential, inefficient old ways, and allows us to create and refine streamlined, efficient workflows in a sustainable system. The cat symbolizes our insatiable curiosity and flexible, focused approach to creating solutions.

Speaker Bio: Julie Gomoll

Julie Gomoll Intro

Julie Gomoll is a seasoned entrepreneur and visionary executive and a leading expert in online communities. Her Austin-based agency Go Media, Inc. was a pioneer in both the desktop publishing revolution and the internet for business wave. Excite acquired Go Media in 1996, and Julie led the conpany's development of online community products, including instant messaging, chat and forums. Julie currently offers training, workshops, webinars and business consulting services worldwide.

Julie Gomoll Full Bio

Julie Gomoll (guh-MOLL) is a seasoned entrepreneur with proven ability to jumpstart businesses and bring innovative ideas to profitable reality. She has been a leader and a visionary in the fields of new media and community building for over two decades. From her early days as an internet pioneer to her current status as a sought-after independent strategist and consultant, Gomoll has fearlessly adopted and mastered each new wave of media technology. From the desktop publishing revolution of the 80s to today’s expansion into open source community, her leadership and experience have been invaluable assets.

In 1987 she started Go Media, Inc. offering the first Mac-based production services in Austin. She transformed Go Media from a one-person operation in her garage into an award-winning web design and development agency. She sold Go Media to Excite, Inc. in 1996.

As Co-founder, President and Board Member of Austin Free-Net from the late nineties to the early aughts, Gomoll defined new visions and goals for supporting Internet use and education in traditionally underserved markets in Austin, creating a model that is recognized internationally as a blueprint for success in community computing.

As Director of Product Development for Excite and Excite@Home, she was responsible for their entire online community strategy, growing what had been a vague notion of needing users to “participate on the site” into the highest traffic-generating suite in Excite’s product line, pioneering protocols and positioning for the then unheard-of applications instant messaging, chat, message boards, groups and web-based email.

Most recently, as Co-founder and General Manager of Halsoft.com, Inc., she was able to capitalize on her Excite experience to create an innovative, profitable and sustainable subscription-based chat community, as well as the successful Halsoft Online Subscription Service and Halsoft Leagues.

Indeed, Gomoll’s heart, her passion, is in creating and serving community through innovative strategies, the latest of which is building LaunchPad Coworking, where technology, ideas, and people can meet. “I love what I’ve learned about community and collaboration in my career as an entrepreneur,” she says. “Most importantly, that we’re smarter and stronger when we work together and share knowledge than when we work alone. That applies online and offline.”