kthread / Kristen Taylor

In 2011, Kristen Taylor has been a consultant with foursquare, BBC America, Al Jazeera International, Global Voices, and Roadtrip Nation, developing content and community strategy for networked audiences. This draws on a decade of experience including high-profile social good incubator PopTech and the Knight Foundation, building deeply engaged communities online and on the ground.

Kristen has been teaching Community Design at NYU’s graduate ITP since 2010, and has written for Fast Company, GOOD, and The Atlantic.

She founded Galvanize, a geolocative mobile application launched in September 2010 for friends to hide and find real gifts for each other.

She is also the editor of Saucy magazine, a new food + story quarterly publication.

She’s @kthread and answers mail to her first name @ kthread [dot] com.

She quit her Ph.D. to change the world and thinks you should too. She convinced an Ignite NYC audience of the same June 8, 2011:

Her food photography is widely published online, and her doctoral research archive maps local currency, shelter, and food to network vibrancy.

Tumblr blogs: kthread | culturemodding | the serendipity of boise | winterize me

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In the fall 2010 and fall 2011 semesters, Kristen taught a graduate class called “Creating Community Environments” at ITP. Related: The Atlantic piece about the class syllabus.

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In September 2010, Galvanize.us launched in the iPhone store. Galvanize lets you hide and find gifts with your friends in the real world. Kristen is Founder/CEO and bootstrapping ongoing development. (TechCocktail article, November 2010.)

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Formerly called Culinaesthete, Kristen edits and produces a food and story magazine called Saucy.

Order the spring issue here (print and digital formats) and look for a new midsummer issue (follow progress on the magazine blog).

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Kristen’s dissertation (Ph.D. from the University of Virginia expected 2011) on accommodating diversity in food, shelter, and currency networks is called:

culturemodding: The Death and Life of Great American Communities.

She gave this Ars Electronica presentation on food and cooperative communities at the Cloud Intelligence Symposium (2009):

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As the first Director of Community for PopTech (2009-10), Kristen made #poptech a Twitter trending topic during the 2009 conference, managed a team of internal and external bloggers and contributors, and was part of the PopTech Social Innovation Fellows Faculty.

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As the Knight Foundation‘s first Online Community Manager, Kristen launched niche community site Knight Pulse for nerds obsessed with news delivery in November 2008 (site offline, screenshot below).

Kristen managed site production and programmed all content (directing, editing, ideation), including twenty-seven videos in an original video interview series on the future of news (in this example video, Hacker-Journalist Brian Boyer).

Kristen also launched a community site for Knight in support of their yearly $5 Million Knight News Challenge called the News Challenge Garage (also offline, screenshot below).

From idea to launch in the month of August 2008, the Garage saw 1,600 users and 445 projects find team members and receive feedback from Garage ‘mentors’ and each other in ten weeks of activity until the contest closed.

She spoke about the site (and sometimes about videoblogging) on the foundation’s behalf often in fall 2008:

She explored new partnerships for the foundation, including the Knight Pulse/GOOD Community Leader Fellowships in Los Angeles.

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As well as being on the launch team of PBS Engage in 2007, the earliest combined effort from PBS headquarters to let the network’s fans impact programming and join forces with NPR,

Kristen developed social content strategy for twenty PBS shows (including Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow, Nature, Austin City Limits, art21, e2, Roadtrip Nation, Independent Lens, and POV) and served as a resource for all 300+ PBS stations as the first PBS Associate Director of Content and Social Media.

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At the University of Virginia (2003-7), Kristen worked on humanities computing initiatives (XML, DTD): The Whitman Archive, nora Project, and NINES.

She designed advanced courses in Media Studies (HTML, CSS, PHP, advanced photo editing, digital theory), taught literature surveys, and gave cryptic digital art guest lectures. Costumes, scavenger hunts, and earth sandwiches were typical assignments throughout.

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Directing iDTech camp in summer 2006, Kristen managed a team of instructors (see photo at right), instituted salad contests in the dining hall, and helped hundreds of campers learn how to program in Santa Cruz. Her camp name was D.P. (so named for the Dread Pirate Roberts).

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In 2004, Kristen defended a Master of Arts thesis at the University of Virginia on 19th C print and photographic treatment of American children adopted through and escaping from orphan trains—their identity, rights, and marginalization through media.

Right-click this link to download “displacing_out.” (1414KB)

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Kristen infrequently designs databases, sites, and themes for friends and family.
(Featured work is from 2004-6):

In 2006, Kristen helped the UVA English Department plan its then-new site (she also designed the site that the Medieval Studies program still uses) and took all the images with people that appear on site pages. This set is of graduate and undergraduate students, this second set features professors.

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We play here. Things the family likes: annual holiday videos, dancing, wigs.

Kristen has two amazing sisters. Katrina is a photographer and documentary filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. Kassandra is a fierce dancer and choreographer based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Kristen is married on Facebook to the dashing singer-songwriter Stewart Pillow. She loves him.

Stewart’s album is available for mp3 downloads on CD Baby.

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