Conference Speakers

Jim Heid: 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.

Danielle Beaumont

Danielle Beaumont is the Senior Product Manager for Adobe Fireworks, software that enables users to create, edit and optimize images for the web with precise control. In this role, Beaumont is responsible for developing and marketing Fireworks. Beaumont joined Adobe when the company acquired Macromedia in December 2005. At Macromedia, Beaumont was the Senior Product Manager for Macromedia Director, Macromedia Authorware, Macromedia Shockwave and Macromedia RoboHelp.

DL Byron

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.

Dion Hinchcliffe

Dion Hinchcliffe is Founder and Chief Technology Officer for the Enterprise Web 2.0 advisory and consulting firm Hinchcliffe & Company, based in Alexandria, Virginia. A veteran of software development, Dion has been working for two decades with leading-edge methods to accelerate project schedules and raise the bar for software quality. He has extensive practical experience with enterprise technologies and he consults, speaks and writes prolifically on IT and software architecture. Dion still works in the trenches with enterprise IT clients in the federal government and Fortune 1000. He also is the creator of and instructor for Web 2.0 University, which provides Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and Ajax premier training events for private corporations and the general public. He also speaks and publishes about Web 2.0 and SOA; he is working on a book about Web 2.0 for Addison-Wesley and is Editor-in-Chief of the upcoming Real World Ajax. He is also currently Editor-in-Chief of the Web 2.0 Journal and former Editor-in-Chief AjaxWorld Magazine.

Lori Hylan-Cho

Lori Hylan-Cho is a software engineer on the Dreamweaver team, specializing in JavaScript extensibility. Prior to joining the Dreamweaver team in 1997 for the first release of the product, she was a webmaster at Mecklermedia and a Web producer at Macromedia, and throughout her career she's written and spoken about Web development, JavaScript, the DOM, and Dreamweaver extensibility. Lately, Lori has been tracking down CSS browser bugs for Adobe's CSS Advisor Web site and for the Browser Compatibility Check feature in Dreamweaver CS3. When not writing code, fixing bugs, or investigating CSS issues, Lori can be found with either a camera or a hockey stick in her hand (and sometimes both at once). She's an avid photographer, ice hockey winger, blogger, and mom.

Nate Koechley

One of the first web developers at Yahoo!, Nate Koechley has been instrumental in creating and defining the practice of Web development and front-end engineering. Through evolving roles as developer, manager, and evangelist on both the development and user experience and design sides of the company, Nate has championed modern standards-based Web development, a commitment to accessibility, code and pattern library creation, and open-source and blogging initiatives. Through it all, Nate focuses on the intersection and coordination of design and development, helping teams understand "why" in addition to "how". Nate speaks worldwide about the intersections of Design and Technology, and blogs occasionally at http://nate.koechley.com/blog/.

Bill Lofft

Bill Lofft is one of Adobe Inc.’s Senior Solutions Engineers, and has over 10 years experience with database and application development. For the past eight years, Bill has been evangelizing Macromedia/Adobe products such as Flex, Flash Media Server, Connect, ColdFusion, LiveCycle, and Studio. Currently, he works with the Western region enterprise sales team to evaluate, architect, and implement large scale deployments of Adobe’s server-based products.

Lance Loveday

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

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

Peter Merholz is President and one of the founders of Adaptive Path. For more than six years, Peter has been instrumental in developing Adaptive Path's ability to provide world-class consulting, training and public events.

At Adaptive Path, Peter began with a focus on information architecture, and over time expanded his knowledge to include product strategy, user research and practice development. He's worked with a wide variety of clients, including Intel, Wells Fargo, PeopleSoft, and United Airlines, as well as smaller, avant-garde startups.

Peter is an internationally recognized thought leader on user experience.
His blogs and his essays for Adaptive Path demonstrate his foresight on issues of information architecture, organizational change and product strategy. Peter's thought leadership is perhaps best demonstrated in his coining of the term "blog" in 1998 when it was a nascent genre.

Peter is a passionate teacher, and has traveled throughout the United States and Europe giving one- and two-day workshops on user experience methods and fundamentals.

Cameron Moll

Recognized as one of the web’s most balanced designers, Cameron Moll is proficient in functional web design, clean markup, and CSS. 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.

Cameron’s work has been recognized by respected organizations such as National Public Radio (NPR), Communication Arts, and Veer. He is the author of Mobile Web Design and was a contributing writer to CSS Mastery. His personal site delivers design how-to in the form of engaging conversation, on-topic banter, and downloadable artwork source files.

Steve Mulder

Steve Mulder is author of The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web, and a regular speaker at web conferences. 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 companies, including Morgan Stanley, PC Connection, 3M, CVS, Estee Lauder, Talbots, Wired, Terra Lycos, and ZDNet.

John Nack

John Nack is a Sr. Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop. Prior to joining Adobe John was a Web designer and animator at AGENCY.COM New York, where we developed online content for clients such as Gucci, Nike, British Airways, and Coca-Cola. That experience convinced him that design tools could and had to be better, leading him to join Adobe's Internet Products Group in 2000. John has been on the Photoshop team since 2002 and has worked on features such as Adobe Camera Raw, Smart Objects, Vanishing Point, the File Browser, and Adobe Bridge.

Michael Ninness

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.

Greg Rewis

Greg Rewis is the Worldwide Senior Evangelist for Web Tools for Adobe Systems Incorporated with nearly 20 years of computer industry experience. In this role, Greg spends up to 200 days of the year on the road talking with customers, giving product demonstrations at trade shows and seminars, speaking at industry conferences, and leading specialized advanced training sessions featuring Adobe’s Web Tools product line. He is the co-author of the soon to be released book Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3.

Leslie Sommer

Leslie Sommer is a front-end developer at Yahoo!, working on various Community products. She's been working in the industry since 1999, after a short and unsuccessful stint selling classified advertising. At Yahoo! she's one of the go-to people for rounded corners and drop-shadows, but is starting to expand her expertise to other unnecessary design elements. Her favorite CSS rule is 'white-space', and she's hoping to write a book on the topic.

Jared Spool

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.