Hello! I’m Renato and serve as Vice President of Digital Strategy and Education at BloomNet, a premier florist services company. My primary role is to serve BloomNet’s member florists by developing customized services and solutions focusing on search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), social media, content marketing and mobile strategy to help them build web sales and engage customers. I also serve as lead educator for new technology, digital marketing strategy and business, consumer and demographic trends at the Floriology Institute in Jacksonville, FL.
Prior, I served as Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Society of American Florists (SAF), the floral industry’s trade organization providing marketing, technology and government relations for flower growers, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers.
I regularly evangelize technology and marketing benefits and best practices through a weekly blog at floriologyinstitute.com, a monthly column in Floriology magazine, articles in state and regional floral association publications, presentations at floral industry events, monthly webinars, on social media and chat (yes, on the phone) with BloomNet members to help solve their challenges.
I served as an active volunteer for the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) where I chaired the ASAE Technology Council, was a founding member of the Young Professionals Committee and continue to be active as a Diversity Executive Leadership Scholar (DELP).
Open Source attracts lots of attention from associations primarily due to its “mostly free” status but is it too good to be true? Should you really stop using licensed, proprietary software? And what about other myths like it’s hard to get support or license software is better because you pay for it. We tackled these questions and more as a moderated a debate at the 2011 ASAE Technology Conference between Becky Granger, CAE, of Educause and Heidi M. Korthase, CAE American College of Healthcare Executives.
