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Connie Reece sports a long, blue ponytail and wears a hip, green pantsuit. The 30-something teleports around the grid to attend business and casual get-togethers, educational seminars; and, when it’s time to unwind, Reece might change her hair color to pink and head to her villa on the oceanfront. That is, if you watch Reece operating in her virtual world, Second Life®.
In-world auburn-haired Reece, 59, is founder and principal of Every Dot Connects, a consortium of marketing and media professionals, who, “are passionate about using new technology to build bridges between people, ideas and causes.” Reece was into social media long before it was ever called that. “When I got into direct marketing in the ‘70s, there were few resources to learn the business. With social media – it won’t be called that in a few years – you need to understand people don’t change, technology does,” explains Reece.
Reece masters the art of multitasking, as she twitters and checks her email, while discussing her life. Her workshops, such as Public Relations in the Age of Google, fill up quickly. She is regularly invited to speak at national industry conferences and serves as co-founder and board member of the national Social Media Club. Still, Reece finds time to use social media for social good. When Susan Reynolds was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, Reece created the Frozen Pea Fund, a nonprofit focused on funding breast cancer education and research. “I met Susan online, we got to talking and developed a friendship. The Frozen Pea Fund has bought an island in Second Life as a virtual escape from physical pain. We will teach others how to do this,” says Reece.
In the real and virtual worlds of social media, which most often are created and populated by 20- and 30-year-olds, peers regard Reece as one of the most respected players. She attributes much of her leadership and confidence to her father. “I am very proud of the fact that Dad changed the name of our family auction business to Von Reece & Daughters,” she says. “He always taught us that we could do anything we set our minds to, and would back us up when customers tried to go around ‘the girls’ and take questions directly to him.”
Born in Houston, Reece moved to Austin with her family when she was three. She spent her early years (“as soon as I could hold a pencil”), helping with her father’s weekly business newsletter. Her close-knit family, which includes a younger sister, Laurie, remained close as he later began to suffer from a disease, called Shy-Drager Syndrome, which eventually claimed his life.
With faith and family as her “cornerstones,” Reece followed in her father’s footsteps, becoming an elder with Calvary Worship Center several years ago. Once again, she paved the way as the first female to hold that position. She currently lives in north Austin with her sister and 84-year-old mother, who has a Facebook account. “My love of words came from Mom, who taught me to read. Now, every morning, we compete over the word puzzle,” Reece says.
Her experience with bridging generational gaps benefits her clients, who express frustration over technology gaps in the workplace. “With social media, you can take a little company and give them big presence, or take a big company and make them more personal. Companies who do not allow employees to access YouTube or Facebook at work are missing out, because these individuals can be your best advocates. They can rave about the things their company does,” says Reece. “Young people don’t know how to use social computing for business – for them, it’s only a way to connect with friends. So, we have to teach them how to use these tools and we also have to teach the mature market how easy it is to use those same tools.”
Businesses, cautions Reece, should also think of social media as the opportunity to build relationships, not just to sell products. One company turned to Reece to create a program to promote vacation rental properties. “They came to us to get the word out to bloggers. Our idea was a contest to post a blog or make a video about why you deserved the $5,000 getaway. It definitely got people talking,” says Reece.
“Bottom line, we are about community, conversations and connections.”
Four Things You Need to Know About Connie Reece:
1 Reece took four years of French at McCallum High School, during which she won a national French contest.
2 She cheated her sister for many years at their childhood game, Connect the Dots. Ironically, Reece wound up naming her company Every Dot Connects.
3 In 2000, while copy editor for Thomas-Nelson Publishers, Reece wrote a chapter of the highly secretive non-fiction, dubbed as “Project A,” which detailed John Ramsey’s version of the night of his daughter’s murder.
4 She once designed her own patterns for crocheting.
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Bonus quote from Connie Reece
Reece expressed her grief about her father’s death from the disease Shy-Drager Syndrome on her Dec. 2006 blog:
“Six years ago today, my father passed away. Our anguish changed to relief – his suffering was over at last – then back to the grief we’d known for several years as it had gradually become obvious that this much-admired, larger-than-life figure was slipping away from us, one chunk of his central nervous system at a time.”
More Info:
Twitter: @conniereece
www.everydotconnects.com