Edward Vielmetti is a Pearl Comments user and a member of our company’s advisory board. Many people consider Ed to be the Kevin Bacon of the greater Ann Arbor, Michigan area: almost everyone either knows Ed or knows someone who does.
I have known Ed for many years dating back to when we were both students and employees at the University of Michigan. My colleague Kathleen Brade worked with him on the Student Conferencing Project when she was at UofM. Since that time, Ed has been involved in many pioneering ventures including MSEN (a very early ISP), First Virtual Holdings (first Internet-based electronic money transfer and payments system), and Socialtext (the first commercial Wiki company). He is currently focused on his own company, The Vacuum Group, where he takes on interesting projects and gets things done.
Ed recently posted a nice photo on Flickr that shows Pearl Comments being used in conjunction with the Ann Arbor District Library’s online catalog. After you take a look at that, check out his Vacuum blog which is filled with well-written and thought-provoking content.