webdirections » Who’s speaking?

International

• Andy Clarke
• Derek Featherstone
• Kelly Goto
• Molly Holzschlag
• Jeremy Keith
• Dan Saffer
• Thomas Vander Wal

Australian

• Cameron Adams
• John Allsopp
• Ben Barren
• Ben Buchanan
• Dave Greiner
• Cheryl Lead
• Donna Maurer
• Laurel Papworth
• Ben Richardson
• Gian Sampson-Wild
• Kevin Yank

Andy Clarke

Andy Clarke is a sought-after speaker, designer and consultant focusing on creative, accessible web development. Andy is passionate about design and passionate about web standards, often bridging the gap between design and code. He regularly trains designers and developers in the creative applications of web standards and writes about aspects of design and popular culture on his personal web site, And All That Malarkey.

Derek Featherstone

Engaging, surprising, and inspiring, Derek Featherstone has a gift for taking a fresh look at virtually every aspect of web development and teaching it in a way that renews our passion for making the web better for everyone. Featherstone is an internationally-known authority on accessibility and web development, and a respected technical trainer, and author.

Creator of in-depth courses on HTML, CSS, DOM Scripting, and Web 2.0 applications, his approach never fails to champion the cause of web standards and universal accessibility. As founder of Furtherahead, he has been an in-demand consultant to government agencies, educational institutions and private sector companies since 1999. His wealth of experience and insight enables him to provide audiences with immediately applicable, brilliantly simple approaches to everyday challenges in website design. He serves on the Accessibility and DOM Scripting Task Forces of the Web Standards Project, and comments on a variety of subjects at the popular boxofchocolates.ca.

Kelly Goto

Kelly Goto is currently a principal at Gotomedia, an online consultancy for user experience and interaction design, Kelly continues to focus on developing new techniques for collaborative development in digital media. With over 15 years of experience in the advertising, design and interactive industry, Kelly bridges the gap between utility and aesthetics.

Formerly an award-winning Creative Director at Idea Integration Kelly successfully managed the redesigns of many sites ranging from independent to corporate levels. In advertising and commercial design since the late 1980s, Kelly has acted as creative director, designer, and producer for many high-profile clients including KPMG Consulting, Compaq, IBM, Warner Bros., National Geographic, Adobe Corporation, Paramount Television, Macromedia Corp., and Sony Pictures. Kelly is the co-author of the highly acclaimed book "Web Redesign: Workflow that Works".

Molly Holzschlag

Molly E. Holzschlag is a well-known Web standards advocate, instructor, and author. She is Group Lead for the Web Standards Project (WaSP) and an invited expert to the HTML and GEO working groups at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Via each of these roles, Molly works to educate designers and developers on using Web technologies in practical ways to create highly sustainable, maintainable, accessible, interactive and beautiful Web sites for the global community.

Among her thirty-plus books is the The Zen of CSS Design, co-authored with Dave Shea. The book artfully showcases the most progressive csszengarden.com designs. A popular and colorful individual, Molly has a particular passion for people, blogs, and the use of technology for social progress.

Jeremy Keith

Jeremy Keith is a web developer with the web consultancy firm Clearleft in Brighton, England where he enjoys building accessible, elegant websites using the troika of web standards: XHTML, CSS and the DOM. His online home is adactio.com.

Jeremy is a member of the Web Standards Project where he serves as joint leader of the DOM Scripting Task Force. He wrote the book DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model.

When he’s not building websites, Jeremy plays bouzouki in the alt.country band Salter Cane. He is also the creator and curator of one of the Web’s largest online communities dedicated to Irish traditional music, The Session.

Dan Saffer

Dan Saffer has worked in interactive media since 1995 as a webmaster, information architect, copywriter, developer, producer, creative lead, and interaction designer. Currently, he is an interaction designer at the design firm Adaptive Path and is the author of the book Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices (New Riders, 2006).

Dan has designed a wide range of projects, from Web sites and interactive television services to mobile devices and robot navigation systems. His clients have included Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, non-profits, and start-ups. He holds a Master of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University, where he taught interaction design fundamentals.

Thomas Vander Wal

Thomas Vander Wal has a broad background in information management, which encompasses information architecture, interaction design, web development and information design. Thomas has 18 years of professional experience in the web and technology sector. He has spoken on information architecture, interaction design, accessibility, web standards, and user-centered design at IA Summit, STC, SXSW, Design Engaged, WebVisions, BayCHI, and various workshops. Thomas helped found Boxes and Arrows and the Information Architecture Institute (Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture), and is currently on the Steering Committee for the Web Standards Project. In 2004 he coined the term Folksonomy and is researching, advising, and developing tagging systems and services. He is the founder and principal of InfoCloud Solutions, Inc., a web consulting and product development firm.

John Allsopp

John Allsopp is a founder of Westciv, an Australian web software development and training company, which provides some of the best CSS resources and tutorials on the web. Westciv’s software and training are used in dozens of countries around the World.

The head developer of the leading cross platform CSS editor, Style Master, John has written on web development issues for numerous web and print publications and was one of the earliest members of the Web Standards Project.

Cameron Adams

Cameron Adams has a degree in law and one in science; naturally he chose a career in Web development. When pressed, he labels himself a “Web Technologist” because he likes to have a hand in graphic design, JavaScript, CSS, Perl (yes, Perl), and anything else that takes his fancy that morning. While running his own business he’s consulted and worked for numerous government departments, nonprofit organisations, large corporations and tiny startups.

As well as running this site, Cameron is one of the founders and judges of the Web Standards Awards – a site that aims to promote web site design using W3C standards by seeking out and highlighting the finest standards-compliant sites on the Internet. He has also written a book – The JavaScript Anthology – which is one of the most complete question and answer resources on modern JavaScript techniques.

You can see more of Cameron’s design work on his portfolio, and if you’re interested his services are available for hire.

Cameron lives in Melbourne, Australia, where – between coding marathons – he likes to play soccer and mix some tunes for his irate neighbours.

Ben Barren

Ben Barren has spent the last 11+ years in hands-on business roles helping establish leaders such as ninemsn’s Carpoint business, Virtual Communities online division, and Sensis Search’ Media Smart advertising unit.

In 2005 he co-founded his own venture, Feedcorp Pty Ltd, which in May 06 launches its first business – gnoos.com.au. Gnoos will be the first Australian search engine (using RSS) which allows consumers to find out what bloggers and media are talking about locally and globally.

Ben is strongly focused on the next wave of Web 2.0 businesses - RSS, as well as podcasting and blogging and its implication for media, search and startup companies.

Ben Buchanan

Ben Buchanan started creating web pages ten years ago while completing a degree in everything but I.T. He started working as a web developer in 1999 and is currently the Web Standards Developer at Griffith University. He works with a wide range of clients within the University and has been involved with the development of three generations of the Griffith website.

Ben Buchanan is known as a passionate web standards and accessibility advocate through his work, public speaking and writing at the 200ok weblog.

Dave Greiner and Ben Richardson

Dave Greiner and Ben Richardson started Campaign Monitor in 2004 out of sheer frustration. When they couldn’t find the right email newsletter software for their clients, they decided to hold off on their consulting work and build their own. Today, more than 10,000 designers in 60 countries use their web application for their email marketing. Ben and Dave still manage the day to day running of Campaign Monitor including new feature development, marketing and support.

Cheryl Lead

Cheryl Lead is the Online Manager at Virgin Money and was responsible for driving the design and development of the redesigned Virgin Credit Card site and the recently launched Virgin Home Loan website. She is a strong champion of accessibility, usability and web standards. Her key drivers were to ensure that they are optimally accessible to the largest client base, and clearly and simply designed to encourage people to navigate through complex product documentation to gather information and apply online, as well as reflecting the Virgin brand values and sense of fun.

Donna Maurer

Donna Maurer is a freelance interaction designer and information architect who specialises in making complex systems simple for people to use. She has loads of experience, with more than 6 years in senior consulting and in-house roles. She has designed intranets, websites, e-commerce sites, search systems, business applications and a content management system. She has conducted so much user research she can’t count it but knows she has facilitated more than 200 usability tests. She continually surprises her colleagues by talking to people rather than computers, and using as many coloured markers as possible.

Donna is an experienced speaker and has presented sessions and workshops at many events, including the Information Architecture Summit. She is currently writing a book on card sorting.

Laurel Papworth

Laurel Papworth runs a consultancy specialising in maximising value from establishing online communities.

Back in the nineties she had key roles in major projects such as NewsPro (digitising Fairfax Newspapers in 1994) and Optus Networker (the first WAP product in Australia in 1999). As part of establishing Optus Convergent media, she managed optus.com and optus.net editorial and technical teams. The last 10 years have been spent outside Australia, working for such major players as Telkomsel Indonesia, UUNET Europe and Cisco Asia.

Laurel is a leading expert on user generated content. She set up an online community for Cisco using user generated content from project managers to manage knowledge transfer across Asia. She’s also been an administrator for Stratics.com, a massive MMORPG site that handles the official online newspaper, forums etc for Ultima Online and others.

Excited to be back in Australia, her current projects include consulting to a major international studio and entertainment group in preparation of the launch of a children’s TV program across AsiaPacific that addresses childhood obesity and health combining animation with online communities.

Gian Sampson-Wild

Gian Sampson-Wild has worked in the accessibility industry for over seven years. She ran the accessibility consultancy PurpleTop for five years and built the automated accessibility testing tool PurpleCop. Gian worked as the accessibility consultant for the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games for over two years and trained Microsoft developers on how to maintain the accessibility of the site. Gian has been a Member of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group for over six years and has spent a significant amount of time working on WCAG, Version 2.0.

Kevin Yank

Kevin Yank is a professional know-it-all. As Technical Director of sitepoint.com, he keeps abreast of all that is new and exciting in the world of web technology. He oversees all of SitePoint’s technical publications–books, articles, newsletters and blogs–but is best known for his book, Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL, now in its third edition.

Kevin also writes The SitePoint Tech Times, a free e-mail newsletter first published in November 2000 that goes out to over 120,000 subscribers worldwide every two weeks, and regularly contributes to SitePoint’s blogs.

Kevin is thinly spread in his spare time, performing improvised comedy with Impro Melbourne, co-producing the Lost Out Back podcast, contributing to open source projects like the BlogBridge feed reader and flying light aircraft whenever he can afford to.

Images:

The images are downsized due to limited space here. The original dimensions may differ.
Click on the image to open it on a new tab.