{ "person": { "name": "Klas Holmlund", "role": "Community, Growth & Marketing Lead", "discipline": "AI · Digital Products · Creative Technology", "city": "Stockholm", "span": "1994 — 2026", "email": "klas.holmlund@gmail.com", "linkedin": "https://linkedin.com/in/uberlancer", "behance": "https://www.behance.net/uberlancer", "standfirst": "I create communities around games and products using a passionate will to inspire and engage.", "intro": [ "I build user ecosystems around products that are new, participatory or difficult to explain. For thirty years I have worked at the point where a new medium arrives and nobody yet knows what to do with it — the first commercial web, pan-European digital campaigns, participatory storytelling, user-generated worlds, and now agentic AI.", "The last decade has been community work: building the structures that bring people close enough to an unfamiliar product to understand it, use it, shape it and argue for it. This site is that career laid out along a single line, so you can see both the shape of it and the work itself." ] }, "cv": { "title": "Community, Growth & Marketing Lead", "profile": [ "Community, growth and marketing leader with a long background in digital products, creative technology and user-led growth. I build user ecosystems around products that are new, participatory or difficult to explain, combining audience insight, product communication, content, acquisition and hands-on creative execution.", "Recent work on Opera Neon spans agentic AI, Reddit growth, product launches, onboarding, Voice of Customer, QA and brand development; earlier roles include creator platforms, AAA game development, product ownership, digital marketing and art direction." ], "strengths": "Growth strategy · Product marketing · Community strategy · Audience & user insight · Content strategy & writing · Brand voice · Organic & paid social · Product launches · Activation & retention · Voice of Customer · UGC / creator ecosystems · Generative & agentic AI · Cross-functional leadership", "experience": [ { "title": "Community Lead, Opera Neon", "org": "Opera", "dates": "Sep 2025 — Aug 2026", "intro": [ "Led community, growth and product communication for Opera's agentic AI browser, working across users, product, marketing, QA and leadership." ], "bullets": [ "Built a structured Voice of Customer programme: curated 181 user insights and feature requests for bi-weekly leadership and developer triage, directly influencing Jira priorities and product roadmap decisions.", "Established Reddit as a major acquisition channel. Two months of boosted community-native content generated 3.4M impressions and 17,953 clicks from $1,654 spend ($0.49 eCPM; $0.09 CPC; 0.529% CTR), alongside 50K+ organic views.", "Wrote, designed and published communications for 49 feature launches across Reddit and Discord; the release work became a reference point for Opera Neon's wider tone of voice and ongoing brand building.", "Mapped onboarding, identified critical user-journey friction, initiated an onboarding email series with Product Marketing, and regularly contributed blog copy, social video and campaign creative.", "Maintained 30–40% new-user retention and above 30% activation in an inherited legacy Discord while managing moderators and building a highly participatory core culture.", "Worked closely with QA and personally contributed more than half of all product bug reports during the assignment, including critical product and security issues." ] }, { "title": "Community Lead", "org": "Embark Studios", "dates": "Jun 2023 — Oct 2024", "intro": [ "Led community and user-development work for WIM, an unreleased creative sandbox and UGC platform, as the role expanded into product evaluation, creator programmes and player safety." ], "bullets": [ "Built and led an embedded creator cohort of around 20 ambassadors plus some 200 casual builders, running twice-weekly creation sessions and connecting highly engaged users directly with developers and unreleased functionality.", "Designed and led structured company-wide product evaluations, coordinating an approximately 50-person design and programming group and consolidating findings for management and design leadership.", "Identified a missing player-safety function, secured leadership backing, researched requirements with Legal and designed the in-product moderation and safety UX, policies and functional requirements with Engineering through implementation.", "Managed three dedicated community operators and coordinated external partners while producing tutorials, showcases, creator content and product feedback for an 80-person internal project organisation plus 20 consultants." ] }, { "title": "Lead Community Manager", "org": "Adventure Box Technology AB", "dates": "Nov 2020 — Dec 2021", "intro": [], "bullets": [ "Managed the international community around a browser-based UGC game and platform with more than 3M users, segmenting creators, players and power users to improve communication and participation.", "Designed competitions, partnerships and reward programmes supporting retention and reactivation; integrated community support and CRM processes and built scalable moderation systems.", "Acted as a bridge between users and product teams, turning community behaviour and feedback into platform insight." ] }, { "title": "Head of Community / Product Owner / Head of Digital Marketing", "org": "Plotagon", "dates": "2013 — 2019", "intro": [], "bullets": [ "Created and scaled the global community around a new participatory storytelling product from 32 early users to almost 900,000, building onboarding, engagement, moderation, brand voice and international campaigns.", "Held overlapping product and marketing leadership roles, including Product Owner for Plotagon Story and Head of Digital Marketing, connecting product development, user insight, paid and organic acquisition and creative communication.", "Earlier served as CMO, creating the marketing strategy, recruiting the marketing function and leading international launch activity across PR, social, digital and events." ] } ], "additional": [ { "title": "Co-Founder, Creative Director", "org": "Thespian AB", "dates": "May 2025 — Jul 2026", "intro": [], "bullets": [ "Developed an early-stage creative concept exploring how AI-assisted tools can support human storytelling, performance and visual expression; responsible for product concept, creative direction and experimentation." ] }, { "title": "Co-Founder & Community Builder", "org": "Klassförälder.nu", "dates": "Nov 2018 — Aug 2020", "intro": [], "bullets": [ "Co-created a community and fundraising concept for school classes built around custom-made cookbooks." ] }, { "title": "Art Director / Digital Specialist", "org": "Agency and freelance career", "dates": "1995 — 2013", "intro": [], "bullets": [ "Digital and creative roles spanning OgilvyOne, Grey Interactive, Almén Direkt, AGoodId and freelance work for brands including DHL, Cisco, Nokia, Electrolux, SAS, Ericsson, Scania and Sony Ericsson.", "UX/UI design consultant for DICE / Electronic Arts on Battlefield 2; extensive experience across digital campaigns, interface design, mobile, film, art direction and cross-platform creative strategy." ] } ], "capabilities": [ "Marketing & growth: product marketing, digital marketing, organic acquisition, paid social, campaign development, audience segmentation, activation, retention, onboarding, analytics, A/B testing", "Community & product: community strategy, creator and UGC ecosystems, user research, Voice of Customer, feedback systems, moderation, trust & safety, ambassador and founder programmes", "Content & creative: writing, brand voice, creative direction, art direction, social content, video, UX/UI, Adobe Creative Suite, Figma", "Platforms & technology: Reddit, Discord, social platforms, generative AI, agentic AI, emerging AI workflows" ], "education": "Berghs School of Communication — Art Director, Design, Typography & Layout (1997–1998)", "recognition": "Red Dot Award (2015) · SIIA CODiE Award, Most Innovative (2018) · Fast Company Innovation By Design Awards, Finalist", "languages": "Swedish — Native/Bilingual · English — Native/Bilingual · German — Limited working · Spanish — Elementary", "pdf": "https://holmlund.nu/assets/Klas-Holmlund-CV.pdf" }, "eras": [ { "id": "agency", "from": 1994, "to": 2012, "label": "The Agency Years", "note": "Consultant. Art direction, digital, film." }, { "id": "platform", "from": 2013, "to": 2022, "label": "Platforms & People", "note": "Client side. Users become creators." }, { "id": "agents", "from": 2023, "to": 2026, "label": "Spatial & Agentic", "note": "New media, again." } ], "chapters": [ { "id": "almen", "org": "Almén Direkt", "role": "Art Director", "span": "1995 — 2000", "year": 1995, "era": "agency", "kicker": "SAS · Telia · Ericsson · Scania · Nordea", "summary": [ "In 1995, I started working for Almén Direkt, the Swedish direct marketing and internet chapter of the international Grey advertising agency. I began as an art director's assistant and became an art director working with the world wide web during the dot com era." ], "description": [ "A lifelong computer nerd and a 3D illustrator, beginning work at a fledgling web agency during the heyday of the internet era, was a fantastic foot into the world of international advertising. From day one, I got to work with all of the major clients of Almén, which included some of the largest and most influential clients in the advertising scene. I began as a 3D illustrator and animator, but quickly moved on to become an Art Director's assistant. Not long after that, after attending Barry's School of Communication in 1998, I was a digital Art Director. I found that the role of Art Director suited me like a glove. I have the creativity to think outside the box, the curiosity to learn new things, and a natural knack for understanding the needs of the clients I worked for." ], "facts": [ [ "215", "colors available" ], [ "12/12", "top clients" ] ], "work": [ { "title": "Saltå Kvarn", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Copywriter — poster", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "berghs", "org": "Berghs", "role": "Art Director programme", "span": "1997 — 1998", "year": 1997.6, "era": "agency", "kicker": "Design · typography · layout", "summary": [ "In 1998, I attended the Berghs School of Communication to learn the craft of art direction and formally become an art director at one of the top agencies in Sweden." ], "description": [], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "Cut-paper model", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "The whole thing, in a matchbox", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "grey", "org": "Grey Interactive", "role": "Art Director · Digital specialist", "span": "1998 — 2000", "year": 1998.8, "era": "agency", "kicker": "The web arrives at the agency", "summary": [ "In 2001, after a short adventure in the dot-com startup world, I returned to Grey that had now established Grey Interactive as its interactive part of the agency." ], "description": [ "In the aftermath of the Dot-Com Bubble, the advertising world still forged ahead as the cutting edge of interactive media. I was there to be part of it. Again, I got to work with the top clients of the agency, including Ericsson, Nokia, and Telia, but as I grew in seniority, I also was part of almost every major pitch for new clients with the company. In this period, I worked as a full-time consultant for Grey at the onset, but then branched out and started working with other agencies as a contract freelancer. This enabled me to work with new technologies and new media, but Digital was the focus of all of them." ], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "MSD campaign", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "uberlancer-01", "org": "Freelancer", "role": "Art Director · Designer · Illustrator", "span": "2001 — 2006", "year": 2001.4, "era": "agency", "kicker": "Core network, Bodén & Co", "summary": [ "I went out on my own, and quickly found the hard part was not the work but describing it: a decade in, my skill set had grown wider than any single job title could hold." ], "description": [ "A decade into my career it had become apparent that my skill set was becoming extremely wide, and the challenge I kept running into was packaging it into a single person. I was no longer just a 3D animator, an art director, a copywriter, a filmmaker, a game designer, an illustrator. I had become a Swiss Army knife of creativity, and I kept learning new stuff. Freelancing can be a taxing process but an extremely rewarding one — you take ownership of what you work on, and you get to try things. The name for all of it came later." ], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "One person, rather a lot of job titles", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Sony Ericsson", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "dice", "org": "DICE / EA", "role": "UX/UI Design Consultant", "span": "2005", "year": 2005.2, "era": "agency", "kicker": "Battlefield 2", "summary": [ "In 2005, I was approached by Digital Illusions CE, Sweden's legendary game studio who had just been acquired by Electronic Arts." ], "description": [ "At the time, I did a lot of work in creating small, fully functional microsites and interactive elements for websites using Adobe Flash. When DICE contacted me and wondered if I could create a menu for them, I happily accepted and assumed they wanted me to create some form of menu for a website or the like. Working at Electronic Arts was a formative experience, and it taught me what to look for in a creative group and the realities and necessities of working in a large, complex project." ], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "Battlefield 2 — BFHQ interface", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "ogilvy", "org": "OgilvyOne", "role": "Art Director, digital", "span": "2006 — 2010", "year": 2006.9, "era": "agency", "kicker": "Pan-European and global campaigns", "summary": [ "In 2006, I had the wonderful news that I was about to become a father. As a parent, you typically want a bit of stability, so when Ogilvy approached me for the role of art director, I happily accepted." ], "description": [ "After a long period of working as a freelancer in different ways, shapes, and forms. It was a bit of a homecoming to again work for an international network agency. OgilvyOne was the direct marketing and interactive arm of the international ad agency Ogilvy & Mather in Sweden. I got to work with the top clients of the agency, adding an interactive component to the 360 advertising campaigns Ogilvy was known for, but the main client I worked with was DHL, where I was one of the two head art directors. The work for DHL was in many parts digital, but I also got to work with direct marketing, email marketing, and general advertising for the client." ], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "DHL microsites", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Cisco banner campaign", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Clicker — DM concept", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "DHL — film", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "DHL — the film", "type": "video", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "uberlancer-02", "org": "Überlancer", "role": "Digital Specialist, App Designer", "span": "2009 — 2012", "year": 2009.8, "era": "agency", "kicker": "Apps, campaigns, strategy", "summary": [ "After Ogilvy, I returned to the world of freelancing, specializing in the new field of app design for iPhone, iPad, and Android phones." ], "description": [ "In 2007, while still at Ogilvy, I sent for a special package by courier, opening it with trembling hands. I gazed in awe upon the original iPhone. To me, this fantastic platform represented the promise of creative media reaching the user directly and physically. In the years between 2000, 2009, and 2012, I created, designed, and published a number of applications for several different clients." ], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "Cannabishjälpen — site", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Cannabishjälpen — campaign", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Prediction Research", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "agoodid", "org": "AGoodId", "role": "Art Director", "span": "2012 — 2013", "year": 2012.5, "era": "agency", "kicker": "Responsive web · film · direction", "summary": [ "In 2012, I worked as an Art Director at a small advertising agency called AGoodId. I focused on filmmaking and designing responsive websites." ], "description": [], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "Responsive site build", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Nationalmuseum", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Svenskt Kött", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "plotagon", "org": "Plotagon", "role": "CMO → Head of Community → Product Owner", "span": "2013 — 2019", "year": 2013.6, "era": "platform", "kicker": "Participatory storytelling", "summary": [ "Grew the global community around a new creative medium from 32 users to almost 900,000 — and held the marketing and product roles that had to keep up with it." ], "description": [ "Plotagon let anyone write a script and watch it become an animated film. That is easy to say and hard to understand, so the community work started as teaching: helping people grasp that they were being handed a medium, not a toy.", "For a metaphor I reached for a typewriter — a magical one. It gave a global, largely young audience a way to think about what they were doing: you write, and the writing performs.", "Growth from 32 to nearly 900,000 required onboarding, moderation, brand voice and international campaigns built roughly as fast as they were needed. Running Product Ownership and Digital Marketing alongside it meant the feedback loop between creators and the development team was never longer than a conversation." ], "facts": [ [ "32 → 900K", "community growth over six years" ], [ "3", "overlapping roles: community, product, marketing" ], [ "Red Dot", "Award 2015 · CODiE Most Innovative 2018" ] ], "work": [ { "title": "Inventing a magical typewriter", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Plotagon Story — desktop", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Plotagon Story — mobile", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Recognition", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "klassforalder", "org": "Klassförälder.nu", "role": "Co-Founder & Community Builder", "span": "2018 — 2020", "year": 2018.9, "era": "platform", "kicker": "Cookbooks that fund school trips", "summary": [ "In 2019, I founded my first startup, a company with the vision of helping kids make money for their class trips by creating and selling their own cookbooks." ], "description": [], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "The cookbooks", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Class community", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Delivery day", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Klassförälder — the promo", "type": "video", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "mekonomen", "org": "Mekonomen Group", "role": "Creative Direction", "span": "2019 — 2020", "year": 2019.7, "era": "platform", "kicker": "Promeister VR experience", "summary": [ "In 2019, I started a nine-month contract to work in the creative studio of Mekonomen Group, working with brands such as Mekonomen, Promeister, and others. I did a lot of motion design and film creation, but this also constitutes the first major project where I started to explore VR for communication." ], "description": [], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "Promeister VR event", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "adventurebox", "org": "Adventure Box", "role": "Lead Community Manager", "span": "2020 — 2021", "year": 2020.9, "era": "platform", "kicker": "Browser-based UGC platform · 3M+ users", "summary": [ "Managed the international community around a browser-based UGC game and platform with more than three million users." ], "description": [ "Segmentation did most of the work: creators, players, power users and lapsed members are four different audiences wearing one name, and each needed its own communication and its own reason to come back.", "Competitions, partnerships and reward programmes carried retention and reactivation. Community support and CRM were integrated so onboarding and issue resolution stopped being separate conversations, and moderation combined automation, volunteer moderators and clear behavioural standards so the whole thing could scale." ], "facts": [ [ "3M+", "users on the platform" ], [ "4", "audience segments communicated to separately" ] ], "work": [ { "title": "Instagram campaign", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Running a team remotely", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Community through the pandemic", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "bestlaidplans", "org": "Best Laid Plans", "role": "Worldbuilding · XR", "span": "2022 — 2025", "year": 2022.4, "era": "platform", "kicker": "Mnemo · spatial galleries", "summary": [ "Since 2019, I have been actively looking for ways to use extended reality, virtual reality, and augmented reality for games, communication, and marketing. Here are some projects I have created." ], "description": [], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "Worldbuilding", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Balloon Full of Love — start screen", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Mnemo — an infinite AR memory palace", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "embark", "org": "Embark Studios", "role": "Community Lead", "span": "2023 — 2024", "year": 2023.5, "era": "agents", "kicker": "Unannounced creative sandbox", "summary": [ "Led community for WIM, an unreleased UGC platform — a remit that expanded into product evaluation, creator programmes and building player safety from zero." ], "description": [ "WIM was invite-only, unannounced and under development. The inherited Discord held ~5,000 people, most of them left over from a discontinued open-source project and silent for a year. It had to be rebuilt around a game nobody was allowed to describe.", "The answer was to make the product itself the shared language. Twice-weekly building sessions in the sandbox, dogfooding hard enough to develop kit-bashing techniques, and selecting ambassadors by watching what they actually made — then handing them senior developers, internal playtests and unreleased tools.", "The most consequential piece was unplanned. The product had no player-safety function at all. I made the case to leadership, ran the research with Legal across GDPR, COPPA and younger-user scenarios, and designed the moderation UX, policies and escalation model with engineering through implementation." ], "facts": [ [ "~20", "embedded creator ambassadors, plus ~200 builders" ], [ "~50", "person structured product evaluation sessions" ], [ "0→1", "in-product player-safety function, built from nothing" ], [ "~80", "internal staff + 20 consultants coordinated across" ] ], "work": [ { "title": "WIM — creative sandbox", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "WIM — the promo", "type": "video", "notes": [] }, { "title": "WIM — player-built world", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "A Wes Anderson film, built in WIM", "type": "video", "notes": [] }, { "title": "WIM — gameplay", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Halloween in WIM", "type": "video", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Social campaign", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Discord worlds showcase", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "thespian", "org": "Thespian AB", "role": "Co-Founder, Creative Director", "span": "2025 — 2026", "year": 2025.2, "era": "agents", "kicker": "AI-assisted performance", "summary": [ "An attempt to create a brand new platform for visual storytelling using immersive media" ], "description": [ "In 2025, together with long-time colleague Chris Kingdon, I embarked on a quest to redefine how stage acting can be achieved by creating Thespian, a virtual reality fully realized theater stage. The project was built around a grant by the European Union and was developing a collaboration with RISE and the Sorbonne University." ], "facts": [], "work": [ { "title": "Thespian", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Thespian — the trailer", "type": "video", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "opera", "org": "Opera", "role": "Community Lead, Opera Neon", "span": "2025 — 2026", "year": 2025.85, "era": "agents", "kicker": "Agentic AI browser", "summary": [ "Built the community ecosystem around Opera Neon — connecting early adopters, founders and power users directly to the people building the product." ], "description": [ "Opera Neon is an agentic browser — a product that is genuinely difficult to explain. Most of the work was translation: turning MCP workflows, model releases, browser-aware memory and task systems into things a person could actually try on a Tuesday afternoon.", "The Voice of Customer programme became the spine of it. 181 curated insights, triaged for demand and feasibility, carried into Jira on a fixed cadence — then closed back with \"You asked, we built\" release notes when they shipped. One conversation with a single user led to an unplanned LLM being reprioritised and integrated inside a month.", "Reddit was established from zero as an acquisition channel. Community-native content, boosted with a small budget, produced the largest new-user spikes since launch — on a fraction of the main social spend." ], "facts": [ [ "181", "user insights curated for bi-weekly leadership triage" ], [ "49", "feature launches written, designed and published" ], [ "3.4M", "Reddit impressions from $1,654 spend · $0.09 CPC" ], [ ">50%", "of all product bug reports filed personally" ] ], "work": [ { "title": "Model added — Claude Fable 5", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Split screen update", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Good morning, wherever you are", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Good morning — the film", "type": "video", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Vault Drop — Thursday, 18:00 CET", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Valentine's campaign", "type": "image", "notes": [] }, { "title": "Tell someone you love them", "type": "video", "notes": [] }, { "title": "The right tool for the job", "type": "image", "notes": [] } ] }, { "id": "future", "org": "The Future", "role": "What comes next", "span": "2026 →", "year": 2028.4, "era": "future", "kicker": "A personal note", "summary": [ "In my many years as a concept creator and realizer, I have worked in complex situations where knowing what to do next is not always easy. It's been my responsibility to invent and communicate a vision about something that, in many cases, people have never seen before. In so doing, I have had to step out of the comfort zone of established work processes. I've learned a lot during this work, but one of the things I consider most important in understanding how I navigate the challenges of being a creative in this ever-changing world is a poem by French poet and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:" ], "description": [ "\"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.\"", "We are right now living in a space of time where the playing field is changing rapidly. AI has fundamentally changed how we would work in the future and what creativity means to me. This is exhilarating, and even though I understand that this will mean new ways of thinking and reevaluating your business model, it's still going to be a process of pathfinding, which is a deep passion of mine.", "In the future, I hope to join like-minded people and be a part of their team, where we can inspire each other together and build a ship to sail these new seas." ], "facts": [], "work": [] } ] }