CV — Larry Swanson: Knowledge Architect & Community Builder

Contact

email: larry at ellessmedia dot com
+1 206-428-7623 (voice mail)
LinkedIn
residence: Heidelberg, Germany

Objective

Seeking an ecosystem leadership role helping a semantic technology vendor grow the partner, practitioner, and industry communities that sustain their markets.

Overview

Larry Swanson is a knowledge architect and community leader specializing in knowledge graphs, structured content systems, and hybrid AI architectures. With two-plus decades of experience spanning web entrepreneurship, enterprise products, semantic technology ecosystems, and practitioner community development, he brings director-level judgement, deep technical fluency, and a consistent track record of cross-functional alignment to complex initiatives.

Expertise

Strategic

ecosystem development
professional community building
developer/practitioner relations
practitioner enablement and practice democratization
stakeholder alignment
cross-functional program management
product ownership and roadmap

Technical

domain modeling
ontology design
hybrid AI architectures
content architecture and modeling
headless CMS design
semantic web standards

Experience

metaphacts

Community Growth Manager, May 2025-January 2026
Built and ran a devrel-style community program that grew customer and industry engagement across the knowledge graph and enterprise AI space. Managed community growth program, launched Customer Advisory Board Slack workspace, owned Semantic Modeling Guidelines, wrote industry thought leadership content, hosted events, moderated panel discussions, and convened industry-wide community conversations.

Elless Media

Principal, 1998-2025
Operated results-focused information architecture and content strategy consultancy, organized communities for content, data, and semantics professionals, and produced independent media (podcasts, online publications, and workshops).

Show details

Content Architecture Consultant
January 2017-April 2025
content architecture, content modeling, customer journey mapping, persona development, metadata strategy, UX architecture, and information architecture for enterprises, nonprofits, and startups
Host and Producer, Knowledge Graph Insights podcast
July 2024-present
interview experts on knowledge graphs, semantic tech, ontology design and engineering, linked data, and the semantic web
Host and Producer, Content Strategy Insights podcast
November 2017-present
interview web, product, technical, and marketing content strategists, designers, developers, operations managers, and executives
Host and Producer, Content+AI podcast
November 2023-October 2024
interview AI experts of all kinds: content practitioners, UX designers, founders and executives, software developers, data scientists and engineers
Consultant, Utterly Content conference
August-October 2020
recruited sponsors and panelists for international content strategy conference
Various ventures in digital publishing, content marketing, and web services
including product management roles on web publishing startups and product management consultations
July 2006-August 2020
Web Marketing Consultant
January 1998-June 2006
created strategy, marketing, publishing, and SEO programs for SMBs and startups
Director of Marketing (interim), Digital Candle
June 2001-January 2002
designed and built marketing-services system for shareware developers

National Geographic Society (via Urbina Consulting)

Omnichannel Service Designer (freelance), May 2023-June 2024
Provided content modeling, customer journey mapping, metadata strategy, information architecture, and content-service design for enterprise client.

Expedia Group

Senior Content Architect (contract), March 2022-February 2023
Conducted enterprise content ecosystem mapping and enterprise-scale content modeling entailing extensive and intensive stakeholder alignment across multiple UX, content, product, and engineering teams. Ran product-content CMS discovery and design project. Collaborated with multiple teams contributing content design, UX writing, and information architecture for enterprise workflow-optimization platform.

Content Designer (contract), August 2021-February 2022
Managed multiple projects on information architecture, system design, and communication and governance strategy for design-system and content-design teams.

workz.com

Jack-of-All-Trades, April 1998-December 2000
Early product management and digital publishing roles at an ecommerce education startup, including product ownership of a contextual advertising system and a productized-service design agency.