Expert Network - First 3 Announced: Herman, Vaynerchuk, Turoczy

Last week we announced plans to expand CN with a network of experts around the world who will provide content in their areas of expertise. Today I'd like to share the first three experts: Darren Herman, Gary Vaynerchuk and Rick Turoczy. Darren will focus on marketing and advertising, Gary on building a brand, and Rick on PR and Portland startups. Here is a brief bio on each and their columns will begin later this week. If you have any suggestions for experts, please let me know.

Darren Herman

Darren Herman is a globally recognized digital media pioneer who is inspired by the white space that exists between advertising, media, and technology. Over the past 10 years, Herman has started five companies, sold two, and raised more than $40M in venture capital. His companies achieved numerous awards including Avenue-A | Razorfish's critically acclaimed "Breakout Company of the Year" and AlwaysOn's "Top 100 Private Company." He also personally won BusinessWeek's Top Entrepreneur award in 2006. He has been featured in an MTV documentary and is frequently quoted in global marketing, technology and financial periodicals.

Over the past decade, Darren has stewarded clients such as Viacom, Panasonic, Sony Pictures, MTV, AT&T, eBay, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, American Eagle Outfitters, and PBS (amongst many others) into digital media campaigns utilizing search, rich media, traditional display, digital video, video games, mobile, and digital out-of-home.

In 2008, he released his first book, Coloring Outside the Lines: Confessions of a Digital Native.

Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk, the star of Wine Library TV, is Director of Operations at Wine Library in Springfield, NJ. With his unconventional, often irreverent commentary on wine, Gary has attracted a cult-like following of more than 60,000 viewers a day. In the name of "expanding one's palate", Gary convinced Conan O’Brien to lick salted rocks and shared samples of dirt and grass with Ellen Degeneres. He routinely pans popular wines (even ones sold by Wine Library). He interrupts his webcasts with rants about his beloved New York Jets. This is not your typical wine expert. Customers depend on Gary for his advice and within a five year time period, Wine Library grew from a $4 million dollar business to a $45 million business. He is most easily reached via Twitter.

Rick Turoczy

Rick Turoczy has helped Portland, Oregon, startups with traditional and Web-based communications activities for more than a dozen years--from spectacular dotcom IPOs to working with some of the best and brightest Web companies in Portland, today. A blogger for nearly a decade, Rick currently covers the startup tech scene throughout the Silicon Forest on his blog, Silicon Florist. He is most easily reached via Twitter.