Farida Vis elected to Big Boulder Initiative Board of Directors!

Farida Vis, Faculty Research Fellow, has been elected to the Big Boulder Initiative Board of Directors. The Big Boulder Initiative is dedicated to the advancement of social data in businesses and organizations of all kinds. The BBI bring together representatives from companies within the ecosystem to collectively address key challenges in order to establish the foundation for the long-term success of the social data industry.

Alongside Farida, two other new board members were elected: Justin De Graaf, Global Media Insights Director at The Coca-Cola Company and Mark Josephson, CEO of Bitly.

The BBI board is chaired by Chris Moody, VP for Data Strategy at Twitter. In an official press release he welcomed the new board members by stating: “On behalf of myself and the entire board of directors, we are excited to have three new voices join the discussion as we kick-off 2015. With these additions, we have strong representation from the social data ecosystem that will help us drive our mission forward.”

The board is further strengthened through additional formidable support from representatives from Brandwatch, IBM, NetBase and Twitter.

Being part of this board as the only academic and only member from Europe is an important and exciting opportunity, not just for Farida and the Information School, but also for The University of Sheffield, in terms of profile and impact potential in this rapidly growing area of research. Having someone on board who has an understanding of the key issues concerning academia is a positive development.

The Big Boulder Initiative organizes an annual conference at which Farida spoke last summer and which also offered the opportunity to launch her exciting new research initiative: The Visual Social Media Lab, which is supported through funding from the ESRC.

Farida will attend her first board meeting in San Francisco next week and we look forward to following Farida’s progress on the BBI Board of Directors! Farida tweets as @flygirltwo. The full press release can be viewed here: bitly.com/BBI2015