Welcome to LaurelPapworth.com. See the tabs at the top?

About has Laurel’s background and interests as an Online Communities Specialist.

The Strategy section outlines Laurel’s role as a leading Social Network Strategist and how her knowledge and experience can help you and your company. If you are interested in attending any of Laurel’s Web 2.0/3.0 conference presentations or one day public workshops at the University, please go through to Seminars.

Laurel Papworth resides in Sydney Australia, and is a leading

• facilitator who develops, teaches and evaluates practical courses on strategy, marketing, media, monetisation, building and managing forums, creating online buzz, integrating online community discussions and future directions of web 2.0.
• International strategist who works at an executive level to facilitate understanding of the impact of social networking on industry sectors.
• Top 100 Australian blogger focussing on online communities and social media marketing.
• commenter, regularly interviewed about social networks in international press and on Australian TV shows and Radio National, Vogue Australia, The Australian and the Fin Review, Sydney Morning Herald, Telegraph, and various magazines.
• Mentor on cross media projects for Australian Film, Television and Radio School.
• Mentor on social media marketing for the Australian Businesswomen’s Network.
• Educator teaching marketing, blogging, facebook, P.R. and advertising courses (University of Sydney) and Social Media subjects (Masters of Convergent Media, University of Western Sydney)
• Keynote speaker and workshop facilitator - teaching Arabic women how to blog in Saudi Arabia (I went to Jeddah for a week in March 2008)
• consultant with electronics, telecommunications, film and media, television, publishing, National, State and regional government, not for profits,
• Public speaker and presenter (usually with a practical workshop attached) - AIIA, WebDirections, TravelTech, No Vacancies, TourismFutures, P.R and Marketing (Sydney and Melbourne), RMIT Australian of the Year awards, EDNA, Walkley Journalism, Sydney Freelance Journalism, Mobile Monday Sydney, ad:tech Sydney, and overseas conventions.

For more information, please click the About tab. If you are looking for Laurel’s blog as SilkCharm please click through to silkcharm.blogspot.com.

Laurel has worked in telecommunications since 1984, virtual communities since 1989, and mobile services since 1993 and mobile content since 1999.

Headshots photos for bios.

On April 17th I was on the Channel Ten morning chat show, 9am with David and Kim

Thanks to Gary Hayes of AFTRS LAMP who copied and uploaded it in two parts (YouTube takes videos in 10 minutes or less chunks).

At the end of March I was invited to keynote speak and then run workshops on social media and blogging for women in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The courses took place from Sunday to Thursday (the working week) at a women’s university in the city.  Some posts:

1. Event: Saudi Arabia: Arab Women Creating Content

2. Journey to Jeddah - Day One

3. Journey to Jeddah - Day Two - Women and Identity

4. Journey to Jeddah - Day Three and Four

5. Women in Business: Behind the Veil

6. Jouney to Jeddah: Homeward Bound

All in all, an amazing trip.

Five minutes into a session with Laurel and you can see just how connected our digital generations have become. Multi-tasking & connected in a miriad of ways, it’s no wonder marketers are struggling with the web 2.0 revolution and its deconstruction of traditional marketing theory. Luckily we have Laurel to put meaning to it all and guide us through the darkness.

Sean Smith Head of Digital Marketing Ticketek Pty Ltd (PBL media)

As one of Australia’s preeminent thinkers in social media and virtual worlds, Laurel deconstructs the buzz words and brings social concepts to a mass audience through engagement and demonstration.

Duncan Riley, CEO of Inquisitr and ex-TechCrunch

Laurel Papworth is higly considered in the Social Networking world, due to her leading edge work in the Social Community field. Examples of this include her work in implementing and helping iMatter - a social network for women based in Saudi Arabia - gain traction. Laurel regularly teaches and is involved in panels about Social Media and it’s impact on business (including monetisation), communities and government. I believe Laurel’s biggest asset is that She has an innate sense of the revolutionary thinking behind “web 2.0″, but is still able to describe these ideas to any one, be it the non digital, non networked person who watches morning TV, or the hard headed busines person who needs to know where the customers and revenue have gone.

Martin English SAP Enterprise Portal Consultant CSC Australia

Laurel has delivered workshops, seminars and has mentored across a range of LAMP events. She is obviously one of the world’s leading practitioners and commentators in Social Media, Games Culture and Community. She is able to communicate complex issues interactively with absolute beginners through to peer experts while maintaining a unique humour combined with empathy for their business and/or personal needs.

Australia is lucky to have such an experienced individual who has decades of experience of the ‘human network’ on its shores.

Gary Hayes Director Laboratory for Advanced Media Production AFTRS, Sydney

Laurel has a deep understanding of how real people use social networks and social media. She also shares that knowledge in jargon-free and accessible ways. Her understanding of business drivers enables her to connect the dots between the online and physical worlds.

Kate Carruthers Web 2.0 Senior Strategist and ex-Director of Westfield

I had no idea what a social network was until I read Laurel’s blog and in a life changing moment, realised I was very socially networked. Laurel has an irreverent and humorous way of sharing her knowledge about this important field. She can decipher the undecipherable and make it understandable. That and I saw her on television, so she must be real.

Colin Campbell Senior Project Manager Coffey Environments

Laurel Papworth is Australia’s thought leader on communities, social media and collaborative computing.

Mark Pesce, Futurist and Panellist on THE NEW INVENTORS, ABC-TV.

Laurel Papworth’s Public Calendar of Events for 2008:

• EdNA (education network Australia) Keynote July 29th
• MentorNet (Australian Businesswomen’s workshop) 3rd June
• University of Western Sydney, Keynote, June 2nd
• How to Blog (University of Sydney) May 31st
• Singapore workshops week May 24th
• Broken Hill public workshop, DSRD, May
• Kempsey public workshop, DSRD, May 20th
• Australian Film Television Radio School workshop, Hobart, May 10th
• Walkley Journalism Social Media Panel - May 6th
• Mobile Social Networks - Mobile Monday Sydney - May 5th
• Social Network Revenue, University of Western Sydney Masters Program, May 2
• RMIT Communicator of the Year, Melbourne, April 24th
• Facebook Blogs and Marketing April 4th
• Saudi Arabia: New Media Literacy March 14th (back March 23r)
• ad:tech (virtual worlds) Sydney March 12/13th
• How to build a social network (University of Sydney) March 7th
• P.R. and New Media Summit (keynote) March 4/5th
• Australian Film Television and Radio School Melbourne residential (AFTR’s LAMP) Feb 24th to 29th
• Web 2.0 - YouTube, blogs and Marketing (University of Sydney) Feb 8th

If you wish to know more about individual subjects that make up the Masters of Convergent Media or the social media subjects in Masters of Professional Journalism, please contact direct

From Crikey.com.au about the 2020 Australia Summit

Have your say on the top 1,000. …over at Bloggerati you can vote for who you think should be involved in the Summit. As Laurel Papworth has already observed “it probably won’t do anything but at least you feel like you had a say”. Anyway, you can vote here. — Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ

February 5th 2008

On Friday March 7th, Laurel Papworth is teaching a public course at the University of Sydney, Centre for Continuing Education called Managing a Social Network for Business (it is sometimes called “How to Build a Social Network “):

Course description:

Your consumer is spending a lot of time on Facebook and other online communities - find out how to build a social network around your products and services that will engage your customers and meet their needs. Successful corporate sites are now enabling visitors to talk to each other and contribute content using Web 2.0 tools. Benefits include people creating personal connections and maintaining relationships through your site, increasing the number of visitors and length of stay, brand recall and loyalty, and a decrease in technical and customer support. In this workshop we’ll explain how to build and maintain an online community around your business. We’ll examine the various types of social networks and discuss creating spaces for different types of connecting, then look at developing in-depth rules of engagement such as codes of conduct, FAQ, moderating member forums and chat rooms, and encouraging members to implement word of mouth to grow the network. This is not a technical course but a reasonable familiarity with blogs and forums will be assumed.

PDF of course here. See you there!

Course at the University of Sydney

Course description:

You probably already know a little of YouTube, Flickr and del.icio.us. With this one-day course you’ll get a real taste of the marketing power of the new Web 2.0 services: blogs and wikis, user-generated content, citizen journalism and social software. We’ll look at case studies of customers creating ads and campaigns, how they distribute their content and how to monitor consumer discussions and reviews of your products. An interesting day spent exploring a dynamic and challenging area. No technical or prior knowledge required. (Download PDF with more information)

Currently FULL (waitlist) Find out more here at the University of Sydney Professional Development (Centre for Continuing Education)

Snippet of interview with Nick Hodges of Microsoft ON10.