Rob Neppell was once known online only by the pseudonym “N.Z. Bear”. In 2002, Rob created the first and still-definitive blog tracking system, The TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem, and over the following years earned a reputation as one of the key innovators in the new world of weblogs and citizens’ media.
This is his blog. But the URL probably gave that game away already.
For his efforts online, Rob was awarded the first-ever “Blogger of the Year” award in March 2007 at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and was a member of The Heritage Foundation’s New Media Advisory Board.
In September 2007, in recognition of his work as founder of The Victory Caucus, Rob was honored to be invited to the White House to spend an hour with President Bush discussing the war in Iraq and the role of online media in the information war.
Rob is co-founder with Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds of Porkbusters, and spearheaded the “Secret Hold” effort which resulted in the passage of the historic Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. Resurrecting a key government transparency bill from oblivion, the Secret Hold campaign was one of the most successful and effective online activism efforts ever, and provides an example of the kind of campaigns and creative solutions that Kithbridge can deliver for clients.
In 2008, Rob co-founded Top Conservatives on Twitter, a non-profit activist group which has provided conservatives a rallying point in the new world of microblogging. And in January 2998, Rob and Kithbridge created ReadTheStimulus.org, an innovative site which has received over 1.3 million pageviews as citizens flocked to the site to view a searchable, commentable version of the 2009 economic stimulus legislation.
Rob was one of the initial founders of Tea Party Patriots, the leading national group providing support to the millions of “tea party” activists nationwide fighting for limited government, and is now proud to have handed off leadership of the organization to a ten member Board guiding TPP’s efforts to serve the grassroots.
Rob’s dual passions for technology and media were on display even in his early years, when he earned a degree in Computer Science from Cornell University while at the same time working as a reporter and Assistant Managing Editor for the Cornell Daily Sun. Prior to founding Kithbridge, Rob had a successful career in traditional consulting, with thirteen years experience delivering technology solutions for clients with Andersen Consulting (later renamed Accenture) and Unisys Corporation.
At some point soon, Rob will hopefully update this page so that at the very least he stops referring to himself in the third person, which makes him sound slightly unbalanced on a personal blog, but for now, he’s just cutting-and-pasting his professional bio page.