Bio of Chris Abraham by Mark Harrison

Chris Abraham is a pioneer in online social networks and publishing with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing.

As a young man just out of college in the early 1990's, Chris discovered newly-emerging web publishing as a way to showcase his writing.

In those early days, the unformed structures of the internet required every would-be web author to be a quick-learning hacker just to be able to put his work online. Soon, English major Chris was as much techie geek as well-read, bookish, weltschmerzen-suffering young writer.

And since technologist positions were paying extraordinarily well, while creative writing was, and remains, a one-way ticket to the welfare roles, Chris sold out and became a corporate tech so he could afford his Mercedes, his Nikon, and his piles and piles of Velvia slide film.

At 24, Chris fled back to Hawaii, his childhood home, to escape his clingy marriage-focused girlfriend who was otherwise wonderful, and a mind-boggling lay as well. But a boy has to make certain sacrifices in the interest of his future.

Within a year or so, paradise lost its charm, so Chris packed up a few hundred thousand of his world-class photos and returned to Washington DC to settle in, but instead decided to travel around the world with 6-foot blond hottie, taking pictures.

Somewhere in Thailand, they decided they irritated one another so Chris went to the Netherlands to blow out his ACL while two-stepping in a lesbian night club with Europe's top Feminism scholars during an outing from an International Post-Modernism conference in Rotterdam.

Thus hobbled, Chris returned to Washington to try to get responsible, with only a few short and unmentionable misadventures with women in Nordic countries slowing his rapid return across the Atlantic.

Once back in DC, the reality of getting an actual job seemed to pale in comparison with the image of it, and enjoying a certain comfortable level of independent wealth based on his successful work as a stock photographer since the gentle age of 16, he chose instead to wallow in dramatic, self-indulgent artistic misery in his romantically squalid apartment overlooking the then un-gentrified and drug-ridden Lincoln Park.

After reading the entire western canon while skillfully avoiding his concerned friends multiple attempts at intervention, Chris took a job as an online creative writing teacher with an experimental joint program of the University of Michigan and the Kalamazoo public schools.

Given that Chris hadn't showered or gone out in public for something like a year, the only people who would hire him besides some Midwestern academics who had never seen him and had too much grant money were the federal government.

The Treasury Department that safeguards the stability of the US economy, and through that, the world - not to mention the life of the President of the United States - saw it fit to put Chris in charge of its IT systems.

Chris committed himself to the Treasury job with the focus and dedication required of a government worker, and thus was able to spend seven or eight hours every working day acting as a volunteer online community facilitator for a leading local forums company. Through this experience of selfless contribution to society at the expense of the American taxpayer, Chris discovered his vocation, his deep passion, and his God-given talent for manipulating people he can't see.

After a year or so of buying beer for the principals of this company, and sleeping with a number of its staff, they finally felt obliged to pay him for all the work he was doing. Chris abruptly left the Treasury Department and went to work for the forums people.

Shortly thereafter, the stock market tanked and the US economy went into a tailspin. A mouth-breathing, delusional, religious extremist took over the White House and the national debt skyrocketed. Coincidence? I think not.

Anyway, after Chris went over to the forums company, it tanked along with all the other interesting, fun-to-work-at tech companies with fantasy-based revenue models and foosball tables.

Forgetting that he could actually afford to live off his photography earnings, Chris went out and worked as a freelance geek on innumerable thankless and uninteresting gigs while his then-girlfriend spent all his income on Williams-Sonoma cookware and the lease payments of an unnecessarily over-engineered SUV that they used for grocery shopping and antiquing outings into the Virginia countryside.

After some time, Chris replaced the financially-draining, but really rather attractive girlfriend with an equally financially-draining, but rather less attractive partnership in the US subsidiary of a German software development firm. Weird family politics on the other side of the ocean eventually killed the parent company, leaving Chris with a needy unattractive orphan, so Chris tied a plastic bag over its head, put it in the nearest dumpster and flew to Acapulco to go sailing on a 42-foot catamaran with his best friend. After a few very manly months of yachting, Chris sailed into Newport Beach south of LA with a killer tan and a few thousand new photos.

So, after the sail, Chris returned to Washington, and having learned through his last two jobs how much more fun it is to manipulate people and boss them around than fix shrieking people's computer problems, he took a position as Director of Sales for a Washington, DC technology services company.

Then he realized that if you boss people around and they do something stupid, while it is indeed funny to watch, you end up having to take responsibility for their actions. So he went to his present company which pays him a lot more money to manipulate people whose actions he can't be held responsible for. Also, there are very pretty women working at this company and not just ugly, pimply geeks with receding hairlines.

The international consulting firm Haft, Harrison & Wolfson has also taken him on as a partner, but there are suspicions that they are just exploiting him for his underworld connections.

Early Career of Chris Abraham

Since technologist positions were paying extraordinarily well, while creative writing was, and remains, a one-way ticket to the welfare roles, Chris sold out and became a corporate tech so he could afford his Mercedes, his Nikon, and his piles and piles of Velvia slide film.

Hobbies of Chris Abraham

Chris ran memes.org for over five years and coined the Wikipedia terms mediasphere, memespace, and memesphere. Chris is an avid rower and houses a Hudson Heavyweight racing single shell at a local Washington boathouse.

Official Biography of Chris Abraham

Bio of Chris Abraham Updated 17 November 2008

Chris Abraham, President and COO of Abraham Harrison, is a leading expert in online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet reputation management. A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and advisor to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in web2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

Prior to starting Abraham Harrison, Chris was a member of the Interactive Team at Edelman Public Affairs in Washington, DC, consulting clients such as Wal-Mart, Shell, and GE on blogger and social media strategy. Before Edelman, Chris was Technology Strategist for New Media Strategies, a pioneer in online brand promotion and protection with clients including Sci-Fi Channel, Buena Vista, TomTom, Paramount Pictures, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Disney, Reebok, EA, RCA, and NBC.

In the early nineties, Chris joined The Meta Network, a seminal online virtual community based in Washington, and so began his career as an expert in online community development, social media, social networking, and online collaboration. Chris has had a web presence since 1993 and started blogging in 1999, focusing on community, connection, innovation, and brand extension. As a technologist, Chris has consulted T. Rowe Price, the US Department of Treasury CIO, Friendster, Deutsche Telekom, and others.

Chris has taught blogging courses for the Writer's Center of Bethesda, has been a guest lecturer on public affairs blogging at Columbia University's SIPA school and the American University in Washington, DC, and is the Emergent Technologies Advisor to the Urban Institute's Communications Advisory Board. Additionally, he is the go-to expert on social media, citizen journalism, technology, and the Internet for BBC World Service, CNN Radio, and CNet's BNet.

Chris received his BA in American Literature from The George Washington University, studied American Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and studied French at the University of Hawaii. He splits his time between Berlin, Germany, and Washington, DC.

Passions of Chris Abraham

Chris attends Renaissance Weekend, rows a single rowing scull, and studies memetics for fun. Chris is a voracious reader and a media whore.

Personal Life of Chris Abraham

Chris is still an eligible bachelor and looking for the right women to support his blogging habit. Chris is especially interested in memetics and emergence and how they direct culture. Chris was found in the company of a brood of Unicorns and is believed to have been bred for his skills in magic.

Professional Life of Chris Abraham

Chris is founding partner of Abraham and Harrison. Just previous to launching is own firm, Chris got canned as a PR Exec at Edelman within 90-days is working on the Online Advocacy team in Public Affairs in Washington, DC. Go figure.

Well, considering all the allegations against Edelman of flogging, astroturfing, and blogger bribery, Chris is probably better off. Chris is a self-professed media whore and "blog expert."

Chris lives and works in Washington, DC, and maintains the blog Chris Abraham - Because the Medium is the Message. Chris also teaching blogging workshops for the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and maintains a blog for the class, The Applied Blogging Workshop.

The Early Life of Chris Abraham

Chris was born in Saint Mary's Medical Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, to Barbara and Bob, on March 8, 1970. Soon after being born, Barbara and Bob Abraham moved Chris over to Murray Hill, NY, on the Island of Manhattan. By the time Chris was six, his parents decided they wanted to upgrade their island from being on the Hudson River to being on the Pacific Ocean so they moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1976.

Chris attended Aliamanu Elementary School from kindergarten through sixth grade and then Saint Louis School from seventh grade through graduation. After graduating Saint Louis, Chris bolted to Washington, DC, where he attended GWU.

As a young man just out of college in the early 1990's, Chris discovered newly-emerging web publishing as a way to showcase his writing. In those early days, the unformed structures of the Internet required every would-be web author to be a quick-learning hacker just to be able to put his work online. Soon, English major Chris was as much techie geek as well-read, bookish, weltschmerzen-suffering young writer.

Underworld Connections of Chris Abraham

The international consulting firm Haft, Harrison & Wolfson has also taken him on as a partner, but there are suspicions that they are just exploiting him for his underworld connections.

Unofficial Bio of Chris Abraham

Chris Abraham is a strategist and technologist and has been a technologist for over a decade, focusing on online education, virtual community building, web publishing, and blogging. Chris is especially interested in memetics and emergence and how they direct culture. Chris was found in the company of a brood of Unicorns and is believed to have been bred for his skills in magic.

Abraham Harrison LLC Company Culture and Working Environment

Abraham Harrison LLC is an Internet-focused and Internet-based company that works to take fullest advantage of the medium we work in to maximize the freedom, independence, and quality of life of our company's clients, associates and partners.

At present, our people span ten time zones and three continents. We are completely ambivalent about where our staff lives and works.

All work is done online, so of course we have no dress code, no office hours, and no boring meetings. We do as much of our work as possible via email and document sharing so that it can be done asynchronously at whatever time of day is best for you.

We are a team of highly independent, self-motivated, self-managing experts in our fields. We work with a team who love freedom and mobility, and see work as a satisfying augmentation to life and a way to fund one's existence - not as the primary meaning in one's life.

Our associates have the right to choose whether or not to work on a particular offered project. We believe in transparency in our work, both within the company and in our communications towards our clients' audiences.

We work to stay free of the ego and drama that taint so many a workplace, and focus on the strict discipline of extraordinary professionalism.