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.

Brad Abrams
Group Program Manager for the UI Framework and Services Team, Microsoft

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.

Andy Clarke
Creative Director, Stuff and Nonsense
Andy Clarke has a background in advertising and started Stuff and Nonsense in 1998. He is a passionate advocate of creative, accessible design. Outside of the studio, Andy also writes a designers’ journal, And All That Malarkey and is on the Web Standards Awards judging panel.

Kelly Goto
Principal, gotomedia, inc.
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 (www.idea.com), 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.

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.

Molly Holzschlag
President, Molly.com, inc.
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.

Lance Loveday
CEO, Closed Loop Marketing
Lance Loveday is the CEO and Founder of Closed Loop Marketing. Lance has been helping companies make the most of their online marketing efforts for the past 9 years. His areas of specialty include online marketing strategy, increasing online conversion, search engine marketing, usability consulting, online lead/sales generation campaigns, information architecture, and ROI analysis (closed loop marketing). His clients value his ability to integrate various disciplines — user psychology, economics, usability, design, etc. — to craft end-to-end marketing campaigns and systems that result in measurable ROI. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences and has delivered numerous custom seminars to his clients on a wide range of topics. His current clients include Hewlett-Packard, InsWeb and Quicken Loan.

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.

Peter Merholz
Director of Practice Development, Adaptive Path
Peter Merholz is the Director of Practice Development and a founding partner of Adaptive Path. He is an experienced information architect, writer, speaker and leader in the field of user-experience design. Clients include Cathay Pacific, Yamaha, Socialtext and the California Health Care Foundation. On his (in)famous blog, peterme.com, Peter writes on issues of design and user experience, challenging orthodoxy and assumptions. Peter speaks at design and information architecture conferences, such as ASIS&T's Information Architecture Summit and the Webvisions conference. He keynoted both the Institute of Design's 2003 About With and For conference, and 2004 SIGCHI.NL, the premiere Dutch HCI conference. Peter is currently the president of the IA Institute, where he seeks to broaden the scope of information architecture, and its impact on people's lives.

Steve Mulder
Senior Consultant, Molecular
Steve Mulder is a Senior Consultant in the User Experience group at Molecular, an Internet consulting firm in Boston. He has delivered successful user experiences for clients such as Morgan Stanley, PC Connection, Estee Lauder, 3M, and Lycos. Through his expertise in information architecture, he translates knowledge about customers into effective features, site structure, navigation, and search systems. Through his expertise in usability, he applies testing techniques and best practices to ensure that the end product actually works.

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.

Brandon Schauer
Design Strategist, Adaptive Path
Brandon Schauer is a design strategist for Adaptive Path, a leading user experience company. He has nearly a decade of experience developing new products, services and user experiences on the Web, handhelds and beyond. His passion for finding and understanding the unmet needs of customers has led him to diverse environments, from the homes of cancer patients to tunnels beneath Walt Disney World. Through this insight into customers' needs, a solid grounding in business analysis and mastery of methods for design and innovation, Brandon has helped organizations such as Morgan Stanley and Motorola craft better experiences for their users. Prior to joining Adaptive Path, he was a Manager of User Experience at Sapient, a business consulting and technology services company. Brandon holds two master-level degrees from schools with the Illinois Institute of Technology. He received a Master of Design from the Institute of Design in Chicago, where he studied the planning, development and management of innovation. Concurrently, he graduated with an MBA from the Stuart School of Business. Brandon is the editor for the Institute of Design's Perspectives on Design and Strategy, allowing him to interact with leaders in the fields of innovation, design and strategy.

Jeffrey Veen
Design Manager, Google
Jeffrey Veen is an internationally sought-after speaker, author and user experience consultant. A founding partner of San Francisco's legendary Adaptive Path, he is now a Design Manager at Google. As a consultant, Jeffrey has been involved in designing the leading blog and social media applications on the Web, including Blogger, TypePad, Flickr and more. Previously, Jeffrey served as the Executive Director of Interface Design for Wired Digital and Lycos Inc., where he managed the look and feel of HotWired, the HotBot search engine, Lycos.com and others.