Thomas Knoll has been building online communities for 19 years.
He has been a community architect, community cultivator, product designer, social marketer, customer developer, and startup advisor for companies including Primeloop, Taptalk, 500Startups, LaunchRock, Zappos, UserVoice, and Seesmic.
While he has a technical background, he prefers to speak in gardening and architecture metaphors. He is inspired by storytelling, psychology, evangelism, architectural theory, social economics, game mechanics, cultural anthropology, compassion, and ants.
He was studying to become a missionary, but left that path because he grew tired of the business of religion. Now, he helps businesses convert customers into communities of evangelists.
Oh, and he falls in love with almost everyone he meets.