Socrata (www.socrata.com), the global leader in software solutions designed exclusively for data-driven digital government, today announced that Eric Eden, a veteran marketing visionary, has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer. Eden will be responsible for building Socrata’s brand as the company continues its rapid expansion that provides significant benefits to the public. These benefits largely fall into quality of life improvements for citizens, positive economic impact for people and businesses, and operational efficiency gains for government organizations.

Eden comes to Socrata with more than two decades of cutting-edge experience in technology marketing. He will be based in the company’s Washington, D.C. offices and report directly to CEO Kevin Merritt.

“We are at a critical point in our growth trajectory and attracting top talent positions us to seize the incredible opportunity ahead of us,” said Kevin Merritt, CEO and Founder of Socrata. “Eric’s expertise in digital strategy and marketing SaaS products will be instrumental in refining our brand as we grow. His action-oriented approach to marketing, paired with his expertise, will play an important role in enabling us to execute strategically as a company.”

Eden arrives at Socrata after more than 10 years at Cvent, which pioneered automating meetings and events programs within companies using the cloud and mobile apps and today is the de facto enterprise event management platform. As Senior Vice President of Marketing, Eden was responsible for Cvent’s global marketing strategy, marketing campaigns and marketing partnerships as the company grew from a small start-up, through venture-backed growth to becoming a successful publicly traded company. Prior to joining Cvent in 2005, Eden managed marketing teams for 10 years at several publicly traded companies including Network Solutions, Verio and NeuStar.

Eden added: “Socrata has earned an amazing reputation as one of the public sector’s most trusted and innovative technology partners. I’m excited to bring my experience to Socrata in order to enable government leaders to transform their institutions into open, innovative and digitally connected organizations that meet the rising expectations of 21st century constituents.”

Eden (@EricJEden) earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Media Communication and Computer Programming with honors from the University of Akron.

ABOUT SOCRATA

Socrata is the global leader in software solutions that are designed exclusively for digital government, delivering unprecedented data-driven innovation and cost savings for hundreds of public sector leaders and millions of their constituents around the world. Socrata is unleashing the power of data to improve government.

The company’s customers include the cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Melbourne and Eindhoven; the states of New York, Illinois and Texas; US Health and Human Services; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; the UN, the European Commission, and the World Bank.

Built on an affordable, cloud-based, Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, the integrated Socrata Digital Government Cloud is complemented by the Socrata Open Data Network and professionally supported by the Socrata Partner Ecosystem.

Socrata equips governments and NGOs of every size so they can rapidly transform outdated and expensive data access models, Web sites and legacy applications into intuitive, visually rich, intelligent consumer-grade apps and user experiences that can now be enriched and sustained by real-time government data, perhaps the most economically powerful public asset in history.

Socrata’s digital government solutions are being deployed for a wide array of strategic and mission-critical government services: enhancing quality of life through constituent empowerment; achieving operational excellence through fact-based, data-driven decision support; stimulating economic impact and opportunity by transforming open government data into the world’s most valuable, self-replenishing natural resource; and promoting unique intra and intergovernmental cooperation and collaboration by breaking down silos and dramatically reducing access barriers. To learn more about Socrata, visit www.socrata.com.

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