Speakers

Jim Heid
Web Design World Conference Chair
Your host at Web Design World, Jim Heid is one of the most experienced technology writers and instructors in the world. His 24-year career began at the dawn of the personal computer revolution, when he quit his job as a typographer to become technical editor of Kilobaud, one of the first computer magazines. He's been online since 1980, when he fired up a 300-baud modem and logged onto The Source, an early online service.

Since 1998, Jim has served as Conference Chair for over a dozen Thunder Lizard conferences, and has spoken to thousands of Web professionals on subjects ranging from typography to streaming media. As Conference Chair, he is responsible for planning the editorial scope of each event, recruiting speakers, and planning session content.

Jim has been a Contributing Editor and columnist for Macworld magazine since 1984, specializing in digital media topics ranging from Web design to DVD authoring. He has also written for the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, PC World, and Internet World, and has taught at the University of Hawaii, the Center for Creative Imaging in Camden, Maine, and at dozens of conferences and industry events in between.

DL Byron
Principal, Textura Design, Inc.
Byron is the Principal of Textura Design, Inc. He first stole Zeldman’s code in 1997, then lived dotcoms, dotcom crashes, Clip-n-Seal, and now he is evangelizing Standards-based design, writing a New Riders book about blogging, and speaking at conferences. With more than eleven years of experience, Byron is an expert blogger, web designer and developer. An entrepreneur and an inventor, he also consults with clients, co-founded the Blog Business Summit, and publishes a network of successful blogs, including one of the first business blogs.

Shawn Lawton Henry
World Wide Web Consortium
Shawn Lawton Henry leads the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) worldwide education and outreach activities, promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities. She develops online resources to help Web developers understand and implement Web accessibility guidelines, and provides presentations and training on accessible Web design and development with the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Before joining the W3C, Shawn consulted with international standards bodies, research centers, government agencies, non-profit organizations, education providers and Fortune 500 companies to develop and implement strategies to optimize design for usability and accessibility. She developed UIAccess.com to share information on universal user interface design and "usable accessibility." Shawn holds a research appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Lance Loveday
CEO, Closed Loop Marketing
Lance Loveday is the Founder and CEO of Closed Loop Marketing, an online marketing company dedicated to helping clients understand and maximize the return on their Web investments. Drawing on 10 years of experience in user psychology, economics, usability testing and design, Lance works directly with companies like Hewlett-Packard, InsWeb, SalesForce.com and Quicken Loans to create end-to-end marketing campaigns with measurable ROI. Lance is a regular speaker at industry conferences and produces custom training seminars on the topics of online marketing strategy, increasing online conversion, search engine marketing, usability consulting, online lead generation, information architecture and ROI analysis (closed loop marketing). With a knack (and a passion) for making online marketing exciting and engaging for novice and expert alike, Lance is currently working on a New Riders book on conversion marketing and Web design, due out in 2007.

Joe Marini
Group Product Manager for VSIP, Microsoft
Joe Marini has been active in the Web and graphics industry for more than 15 years. He was an original member of the Dreamweaver engineering team at Macromedia, and has also held prominent roles in creating products such as QuarkXPress, mFactory's mTropolis, and Extensis QX-Tools. He is a regularly featured speaker at industry conferences and has authored or co-authored several books on Web development. His book The Document Object Model is widely regarded as the definitive resource for working with the DOM.

Eric Meyer
Principal, Complex Spiral Consulting
Eric Meyer has been working with the web since late 1993 and is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML, CSS, and Web standards. A widely read author, he is the founder of Complex Spiral Consulting, which counts among its clients America On-Line; Apple Computer, Inc.; Wells Fargo Bank; and Macromedia, who described Eric as "a critical partner in our efforts to transform Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 into a revolutionary tool for CSS-based design."

Author of Eric Meyer on CSS and More Eric Meyer on CSS (New Riders), Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly & Associates), and CSS2.0 Programmer's Reference (Osborne/McGraw-Hill) as well as numerous articles for the O'Reilly Network, Web Techniques, and Web Review, Eric also created the CSS Browser Compatibility Charts and coordinated the authoring and creation of the W3C's official CSS Test Suite.

Cameron Moll
Designer, Author, Speaker
Recognized as one of the industry's most balanced new media designers, Cameron Moll is proficient in functional web design, clean markup, and savvy print design. Cameron has been involved in the design and redesign of scores of websites, and his influential techniques have found favor in circles across the
Web. He was a contributing author for the book, CSS Mastery. Cameron's work has been recognized by respected organizations such as National Public Radio (NPR), Communication Arts, and Veer. His personal site, CameronMoll.com, delivers design how-to in the form of engaging conversation, on-topic banter, and downloadable artwork source files. Cameron holds a degree in marketing management from Brigham Young
University.

Steve Mulder
Senior Consultant, Molecular
Steve Mulder is Principal Consultant in the User Experience group at Molecular, an Internet consulting firm in Boston, as well as author of The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web (www.PracticalPersonas.com). With over ten years of experience in user research, information architecture, interaction design, and usability, Steve practices what he preaches by delivering successful user experiences that drive business results. He has brought his expertise to a wide range of clients, including Morgan Stanley, PC Connection, 3M, CVS, Estee Lauder, Talbots, Wired, Terra Lycos, and ZDNet.

Michael Ninness
Executive Director, Lynda.com
Michael moved to Seattle in 1989 to study for a Graphic Design BFA at the University of Washington and fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. He paid his way through design school by teaching professional designers and photographers digital imaging tools and techniques. Michael now has over seven years experience in the graphics software industry as a product manager and user interface designer of products for creative professionals at Extensis, Microsoft and Adobe. In early 2005, Michael returned to his training roots and joined the team at Lynda.com, an award-winning education provider of self-paced online video training, CD-ROMs, books and events for designers, photographers, developers, instructors, students and hobbyists.

Jared M. Spool
Founder, User Interface Engineering
If you've ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he's one of the most effective, knowledgeable communicators on the subject today. What you probably don't know is that he has guided the research agenda and built User Interface Engineering into the largest research organization of its kind in the world. He's been working in the field of usability and design since 1978, before the term "usability" was ever associated with computers.

Jared spends his time working with the research teams at the company, helps clients understand how to solve their design problems, explains to reporters and industry analysts what the current state of design is all about, and is a top-rated speaker at more than 20 conferences every year. He is also the conference chair and keynote speaker at the annual User Interface Conference, is on the faculty of the Tufts University Gordon Institute, and manages to squeeze in a fair amount of writing time.