RD Whitney’s Background
RD Whitney has an 18-year background in publishing, online media and conferences, including the successful execution of leveraging publishing assets and media to bring buyer and seller together in B2B marketplaces. For half of his career, he helped build Kennedy Information, a professional publishing and research firm focused on serving the information needs of recruiters, HR professionals, executive job seekers, management consultants, and investor relations officers. Whitney served as the general manager and executive vice president of the organization, but he wore many hats as the company grew.  Whitney joined as Kennedy Information was acquired by investors in 1996 for $1.7 million. The firm sold four years afterwards to the Bureau of National Affairs for $47 million dollars. Claiming that Kennedy Information was a “wonderful experience”, Whitney remarked that the job helped him strengthen and solidify his skills, especially given his mentor was a Harvard business school graduate who tremendously helped him to learn the ins-and-outs of the media industry.  Recently, Whitney finished his MBA. His 18 years of media familiarity consists of experiences at companies of various sizes, from small entrepreneurial operations to larger operations such as IDG, Wolters Kluwer, and Thompson Publishing Group. 

Introduction to Tarsus
RD Whitney was initially introduced to Tarsus while through a friendship that started as the internet was surfacing as a business change agent. In the late 90s, RD began to focus on the emerging trend of online recruitment. The web was starting to become a business-to-business application, where online sites such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com were replacing common newspaper classified ads. This particular trend also captured the interest of Onrec.com and Online Recruitment Magazine, a UK-based b2b publishing company. David Hurst, Founder and Managing Director of Onrec, established a close friendship with Whitney and frequently shared best practices in regards to both business and raising teenage daughters. Hurst, who had sold his company to Tarsus, subsequently introduced Whitney to the Managing Director of Tarsus, Douglas Emslie. Having witnessed the impressive company Douglas and his team had built, and recognizing the incredible opportunities that still needed to be uncovered in the United States, a long-term trust took root.

Introduction to Caroo Media
This trust that built shortly after these introductions led Emslie to ask Whitney to head up a collection of properties in the United States, under the umbrella of Caroo Media. A rapidly growing division of Tarsus, Caroo Media aims to bring buyers and sellers together through online properties. A few of the companies in this portfolio of properties include Onrec US, TSNN.com, and CVBHotRates.com. Additionally, Caroo Media is seeking to expand through organic launches and strategic acquisitions. Whitney has been appointed as the Divisional CEO for Caroo Media USA. According to him, the company is stand-alone and possesses very aggressive growth prospects for the US market. In response to his experience with Tarsus, Whitney states that “it has been truly amazing; enough to throw my entire career into and help build Caroo Media as a substantial organization in the US.”

Onrec
Onrec is one of the key properties of Caroo Media specializing in online recruitment. According to an extensive study in 1999, a mass shortage of skilled labor in the US and other industrialized nations was predicted due to demographic shifts, namely, the retirement of baby boomers. In response to this trend, Whitney believes that “retaining top talent to run business is the number one make or break element while everything else is a commodity.  Technologies can be acquired, but talent can’t be replicated.”  These issues underline the reasoning behind Caroo Media’s plans in expanding Onrec.  Currently, the company has a thriving a website that shares news, best practices, and trends in online recruiting that enjoys tremendous global traffic of corporate recruiters and HR professionals. In addition, Onrec will produce its third annual global trade show for the industry in September at the Stephens Convention Center. The theme of the show is: The Only Global Gathering of Recruiting Leaders and Game-Changing Technologies

TSNN.com
Since 1996, TSNN.com serves as the ultimate event resource aiming to provide the most comprehensive database of conferences, events, tradeshows, and expos in the US. The website currently boasts 4.4 million hits in a typical month with 880,000 page views, 141,500 show searches, and 68,000 visits. Containing data of more than 15,000 shows, expos, public events, and conferences, the website also boasts over 30,000 seminars as well as expansive supplier and venue directories. The ultimate goal of TSNN.com is to help facilitate the exchange between buyer and seller, lead generation, brand awareness, and website optimization. Since Whitney’s involvement in January, his primary focus with the property involves the publishing of better content in order to drive traffic and ultimately obtain more advertisers. Whitney explains, “I want every show, every venue and every event industry supplier in the US to be in this database, to be kept up to date, and for this to be a great free resource for the industry.”

TSNN.com Research Trends
Showcasing the rapidly growing traffic and research on the database, TSNN.com’s recent press release seeks to accomplish the following: 1) to highlight the massive amount of visibility that TSNN.com gives to shows, suppliers, and venues, and 2) to establish a helpful metric that could predict the slope of the industry itself. “We have got the most comprehensive database of events in the US,” Whitney elaborates, “let us use that to create an indicator that people can use as another metric to gauge what the event industry is up to.” To see this objective into fruition, Whitney was involved in creating a tradeshow activity indicator called TSAI™ to gauge the future health of the industry, allowing accurate reporting of collected information for searches on tradeshows, venues, and suppliers.

Another research trend that TSNN.com has seen over recent months is the tradeshow industry growing somewhat counter-cyclical. Despite of, or even maybe due to the gloomy headlines in the economic news services, people feel like they could no longer sit in the office and wait for their business to come to them.  As Whitney observes, “business is not going to come in just through an email or phone alone; businesses need to have an integrated approach and get out there and pound the pavement to make some rain.” TSNN.com found this hypothesis backed up by a substantial amount of qualitative research conducted through tradeshow producers, organization marketing professionals and executives, and industry suppliers and venues.

CVB Hot Rates
The third hot property of Caroo Media, CVBhotrates.com, markets as an online tool that assists show producers in connecting directly with convention visitor bureaus. The tool facilitates a free RFP process to them so show producers may take advantage of particular opportunities within a city or venue. Through CVB Hot Rates, show organizers can also gain knowledge of the distressed time frames within properties, or times when hotels or venues may not typically be at capacity and can be more flexible.  Each convention visitor bureau is charged with bringing and attracting more shows to their area. Whitney says, “we can accomplish a lot more together than we can apart. This isn’t a zero sum game. Many producers move their shows around the country and if we work together on this, we can help raise the profiles of convention visitor bureaus and help bring more business.” 

Caroo Media’s Business Strategy
Caroo Media’s business strategy is the typical 2x2 matrix. The company is currently focused on existing products and customers to ensure that the foundation stays strong.  Caroo Media is also presently taking existing products over to new customers as well as beginning to develop new products for existing customers. The future phase for Caroo Media, which will begin once the present infrastructure is solidified, certain acquisitions occur, and a few organic launches are underway, will focus on the development of new products into new markets. The company would then possess an infrastructure of both technology and industry talent, as well as the investment infrastructure of Caroo Media, to move into new markets. When that occurs, the bias would certainly lean towards the markets adjacent to those Tarsus dominates. 

Growth of Tarsus in US Market
Tarsus presently produces several shows in the US and the company continues to expand its reach.  Both Caroo Media USA and Whitney himself are examples of Tarsus’s growing investments in the United States. Since Tarsus has invaluable veteran experience of producing great shows and bringing buyers and sellers together, Whitney believes that the future holds opportunity for remarkable growth in the United States over the next couple of years.

Personal Side of Whitney
Whitney is as a devoted and protective father to his two beautiful teenage daughters. Always a businessman, he constantly muses over the fact that there is too much opportunity and not enough time in the day. Whitney believes that the rate of change taking place in the marketplace is fundamentally shifting the business landscape. “Right now, barriers have never been lower and opportunities have never been greater,” he says, “I can't sleep knowing that's going on!”

Inspirational Reading
Whitney’s recent favorite read is Wikinomics by Don Tapscott. This book highlights how the speed of change has been accelerated specifically because of mass collaboration. The ideas in this book are having a massive effect on business, innovation, productivity and once again, his sleeping habits.