WEBBuilder Speakers
Wayne Ariola
Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development, Parasoft
Wayne leads the development and execution of Parasoft’s long-term strategy. Ariola drives the growth of Parasoft’s security, Web, and SOA quality offerings by leveraging customer input from Parasoft clients, who span 58% of Fortune 500 companies, and ensuring that Parasoft solutions continuously evolve to support the ever-changing complexities of real-world business processes-identifying trends as they emerge and supporting them with first-to-market solutions.
To achieve this, Ariola fosters partnerships with industry leaders in the SOA, Web, and security domains as well as participates in organizations such as RSA, OWASP, OASIS, and the SOA Leaders Council. Recognized as an industry leader, he is a frequent contributor to publications such as Software Test & Performance, SOA World, and ebizQ.
Ariola brings more than 15 years strategic consulting experience within the technology and software development industries. Prior to joining Parasoft, Ariola was Senior Director of Business Development for Fasturn, Inc., a company he helped to start. Ariola was a Principal Consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he was recognized as a leader in the Strategic Change practice. Ariola joined Parasoft in March of 2003. He has a BA from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a MBA from Indiana University.
Shawn Bissell
Software Research Architect, Strangeloop Networks
As a software research architect at Strangeloop Networks, Shawn Bissell designs advanced web application acceleration solutions that implement ASP.NET and web services optiization techniques in an intelligent hardware appliance. As a member of Strangeloop’s Office of the CTO, Shawn designs the product architecture, generates patents, and translates these designs into product specifications. He brings extensive experience architecting web applications and enterprise software for performance to his role at Strangeloop. In his more than 10 years of software and application development and testing experience, Shawn has contributed deep technology expertise to companies in a wide range of industries from computer hardware, software, gaming, leisure, travel and tourism, to paper and forest products. He has architected, designed and developed object oriented enterprise frameworks used in multiple applications, and effectively led and mentored large teams of developers. His prior software development and architect experience comprised of key roles at leading companies including Intrawest, Knowledge Junction Systems, GTE Enterprise Solutions, Electronic Arts, Canada, Resort Reservations Network, and Macmillan Bloedel. Shawn holds a bachelor of science degree in computer science from Simon Fraser University.
Robert Boedigheimer
Software Research Architect, Schwan Food Company
Robert Boedigheimer works for Schwans Shared Services, LLC providing business solutions with web technologies and leads Robert Boedigheimer Consulting, LLC. Robert has been designing and developing web sites for the past 13 years including the early days of ASP and ASP.NET. He is a columnist for aspalliance.com, an ASP.NET MVP, an "Early Achiever" MCSD for .NET with C#, an MCPD: Web with C#, and a 2nd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Robert has spoken at industry conferences including the Heartland Developers Conference, Twin Cities Code Camp, Tulsa Tech Fest, TechEd, AJAXWorld, and numerous national and international VSLive! events.
DL Byron
Principal, Textura Design
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.
James Farley
James Farley is a computer scientist, IT manager and author. He's worked at the GE Research and Development labs and has headed the IT engineering group at The Harvard Business School. Farley is also the author of Java Distributed Computing and co-author of Java Enterprise in a Nutshell, both published by O'Reilly and Associates, and is a lecturer for the Harvard Extension School.
Aaron Gustafson
Founder and Principal, Easy! Designs LLC
After getting hooked on the web in 1996 and spending several years pushing pixels and bits for the likes of IBM and Konica Minolta, Aaron Gustafson founded his own web consultancy: Easy! Designs LLC. Aaron is a Group Manager of the Web Standards Project (WaSP) and is a member of the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS). He serves as Technical Editor for A List Apart and has built a small library of writing and editing credits in both the print and Web worlds. Aaron has graced the stage at numerous conferences and is frequently called on to provide web standards training in both the public and private sector.
Steven Heintz
Adobe Systems
Steven Heintz is the principal product manager for a new product at Adobe codenamed “Thermo.”
Shawn Henry
Web Accessibility Initiative, World Wide Web Consortium
Shawn Henry leads worldwide education and outreach promoting web accessibility for people with disabilities at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Before joining the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), she developed and implemented strategies to optimize user interface design for usability and accessibility with Fortune 500 companies, nonprofit organizations, education providers, and research centers. Shawn focuses her personal passion for accessibility on bringing together the needs of individuals and the goals of organizations in designing human-computer interfaces. Her most recent book, Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design, offers an approach for developing products that are more usable for everyone.
Billy Hollis
Founder and Principal, DotNetMasters
Billy Hollis is an author and software developer from Nashville, Tennessee. Billy is co-author of the first book ever published on Visual Basic .NET, VB .NET Programming on the Public Beta. He has written many articles, and is a frequent speaker at conferences. He is the Regional Director of Developer Relations in Nashville for Microsoft, and runs a consulting company focusing on Microsoft .NET.
Nathan Jakubiak
Web Applications Solutions Manager, Parasoft
Nathan Jakubiak is a Web Applications Solutions Manager at Parasoft. He currently manages the development of Parasoft Web Applications Solution (an automated error prevention and detection suite for web applications) and is the lead developer of Parasoft's Ajax testing solution. He has extensive experience developing testing tools for web-based technologies, and has led the development of customized web testing solutions for enterprises such as IBM. His web-related R & D experience has resulted in a number of pending patents in the area of automated regression testing. Jakubiak holds a B.S. in Mathematics from Harvey Mudd College.
Randolph Kahle
Randolph Kahle is a senior architect at 1060 Research, Ltd where he advises clients on the design and development of high-performance RESTful systems. Prior to working at 1060 Research he worked at GTE Sylvania designing real-time systems, HP, Microsoft, MageLang Institute and had his own consulting practice. He holds a degree in Math Science and Electrical Engineering from Rice University and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Alan K'necht
Founder and President, K'nechtology Inc
Alan K'necht is the founder and president of K'nechtology Inc., one of Toronto's Leading SEO, SEM and Web analytics consulting firms, servicing organizations from Canada's Fortune 500 to small entrepreneurial businesses. K'necht is an internationally published columnist and has spoken at conferences throughout North America and Australia including previous Web Builder conferences. He has been working in the Web development field for over 12 years.
K'necht's primary goal is helping organizations maximize their Return on Investment (ROI) for their web based initiatives and always brings his ROI approach to all things web. Since 2000, his primary focus is on search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and measuring the effectiveness of all efforts through web analytics. K'nechtology is currently helping clients like Toyota Canada and SecureIT International measure and optimize their web sites through a practical and systematic approach to web analytics.
Amy Konefal
Director of Search Engine Marketing, Closed Loop Marketing
As Director of Search Engine Marketing at Closed Loop Marketing, Amy brings extensive expertise in both paid search and organic search engine optimization to every client account. She has worked in the online marketing industry for more than four years, managing campaigns for both B2B and B2C clients across a wide variety of industries. Amy's approach is to blend both paid and organic search into a complementary, holistic campaign focused on achieving client business goals and maximum ROI. She is certified as a Google Advertising Professional and a Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador.
Having been a teacher for five years prior to entering the world of Search Engine Marketing, Amy has a natural gift for explaining new information to clients in a manner that is both understandable and relevant to their specific industry. Her goal in working with clients is to develop and execute sound marketing strategies for maximizing their return on investment, while also explaining the complexities of Search Engine Marketing in a way that makes them feel comfortable and confident with their search campaigns.
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
Director, Development Tools Ecosystem team, 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.
Mark Meeker
Architect, UI Engineering Team, Orbitz Worldwide
Mark leads the the UI Engineering team responsible for building the presentation tier of online travel sites Orbitz and CheapTickets in the Americas and ebookers in Europe. His focus is on building rich, interactive and internationalized sites that are standards-based and accessible. Previous to Orbitz, he helped develop Britannica.com and earned a M.S. in Software Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He rarely blogs, but when he does it is at http://markmeeker.com.
Steve Mulder
Director of Emerging Interactions, Molecular
Steve Mulder helps organizations innovate on customer relationships using social media, social networking, rich interfaces, and emerging digital interactions. He is also the 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 13 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 Adidas, TD Waterhouse, TripAdvisor,HumanaOne, Talbots, PC Connection, 3M, CVS, and Estee Lauder.
Garrett Murray
Garrett has been designing and developing for the web for over nine years. Throughout his career, he has placed an emphasis on building efficient and elegant web applications with a focus on user experience. A technology addict, Garrett started learning Perl at the tender age of 16. Shortly after, it was Javascript, PHP, then ASP, ColdFusion and everything in between. Recently, Garrett has been focusing on developing with Ruby on Rails. In 2003, Garrett wrote and released xPad, a Mac OS X application praised for its ease of use. Recently, he released SimpleLog, a Ruby on Rails weblogging application, which helps users focus on writing through an efficiently designed interface that eliminates clutter.
Sandra Niehaus
Creative Director and Vice President of User Experience, Closed Loop Marketing
As VP User Experience and Creative Director of Closed Loop Marketing, Sandra heads up the company's usability and conversion optimization projects. She is co-author of the book "Web Design for ROI" from New Riders Press, and regularly speaks on the topics of usability, design, and conversion at industry and business conferences. Sandra has contributed her expertise to projects for a wide range of companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Brocade, ReelzChannel, and Allstate.
Sandra joined Closed Loop Marketing in 2004 after nearly a decade as an independent web consultant. She resides in Northern California, where she surfs, writes, practices mixed martial arts, and thinks about stuff.
Michael Ninness
Senior Product Manager, InDesign Adobe Systems Incorporated
Michael Ninness grew up in the Redwoods of Arcata in Northern California. He 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 designers and photographers how to use digital tools and techniques. Michael has over ten years experience as a product manager and user interface designer of software products for creative professionals. Past positions include LiveMotion Group Product Manager and Senior User Interaction Designer for the Creative Suite 3 at Adobe, and Program Manager for Expression Blend at Microsoft. Michael is a frequent and top-rated presenter at numerous industry events including Photoshop World, PhotoPlus Expo, PMA, Macworld, FlashForward, Flash on the Beach, Web Design World, the HOW Design Conference and Pacific New Media at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of several Photoshop video training titles published by Lynda.com.
Trent Nix
Development Process Consultant, Notion Solutions
Trent Nix is a Development Process Consultant with Notion Solutions in
Dallas, Texas. His primary gig is working with software companies to improve
their software using Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. Trent is convinced
the future of the web is made of Silverlight (and managed with Team System)
and has been compulsively consuming everything he can about Silverlight since
it first found its way on the radar. Trent has spoken about Silverlight and a
host of other topics at user groups, seminars, Code Camp, and VSLive. Trent
cut his teeth on web development with CGI and ISAPI and has been building
solutions for the web ever since.
George Plesko
Design Principal, Allurent
George is responsible for heading the design vision for products and services at Allurent. He has worked in print, motion graphics, application design, interactive environments, large scale digital displays and online media. Before joining Allurent, he spent seven years at ATG in services and product design and headed the visual design group. Additionally, he taught in the design department at Yale University for six years and was an adjunct professor at Columbia University. He has worked with diverse clients such as BDDPO, Herman Miller, Knoll, McKinsey and Co, Panasonic (Tokyo), Sundance Film Festival, Yale University, Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Banana Republic. His work has been featured in several publications and he has lectured widely on design. He holds a BFA from Philadelphia College of Art, Design and an MFA from Yale University, Design.
Greg Rewis
Group Manager, Web Evangelists, Adobe Systems
With nearly 20 years of computer industry experience, 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.
Dan Rubin
Founder & Principal, Webgraph
Dan Rubin is a highly accomplished user interface designer and usability consultant, with over ten years of experience as a leader in the fields of web standards and usability, specifically focusing on the use of (X)HTML and CSS to streamline development and increase flexibility and accessibility.
His passion for all things creative and artistic isn't a solely selfish endeavor either—you'll frequently find him waxing educational about a cappella jazz and barbershop harmony, interface design, usability, web standards, typography, and graphic design in general.
In addition to his contributions to sites including Blogger, the CSS Zen Garden, Yahoo! Small Business and Microsoft's ASP.net portal, Dan is a contributing author of Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation (2nd Edition, friends of ED, 2003), a technical reviewer for Beginning CSS Web Development (Apress, 2006) and The Art & Science of CSS (SitePoint, 2007), coauthor of Pro CSS Techniques (Apress, 2006), and Web Standards Creativity (friends of ED, 2007), writes about web standards, design and life in general on his blog, SuperfluousBanter.org, and spends his professional time on a variety of online and offline projects for Sidebar Creative and Black Seagull.
Steve Smith
Steve is a recognized authority on front-end development and interface design. He is an entrepreneur, founding Ordered List, and co-founding Sidebar Creative, both of which are outlets for his professional work. And as an author, public speaker, and University of Notre Dame professor, he is passionate about sharing his knowledge with others.
He lives in South Bend, Indiana with his wife and two children. In the rare times he's not working, he's either on the golf course, making home-brewed beer, or spending time with the family.
Stephanie Sullivan
Founder/Principal, W3Conversions
Founder and principal of web standards redesign company W3Conversions, Stephanie Sullivan is a Dreamweaver, accessibility, CSS and XHTML expert, whose services are in demand by top firms across the United States. She's a top gun that companies go to for troubleshooting problems, training their web team, or to work behind-the-scenes transforming their in-house designs into functioning standard-based websites.
She wrote the CSS Layouts included in Dreamweaver CS3, serves as co-lead of the influential Web Standards Project (WaSP) Adobe Task Force and is a partner at Community MX, a site offering over 2,300 tutorials to web developers seeking to increase their skills. Though an admitted workaholic, she escapes from the little people inside her computer to play beach volleyball. Her guilty pleasure? 80's music.
David Verba
Director of Technology, Adaptive Path
Since 2006 John Yesko has been a User Experience Lead at Roundarch, where he strategizes and designs large-scale websites. His projects have included consumer product/e-commerce, government, and financial services websites. Previously, John was the User Experience Group Manager at Fry, Inc. In that capacity, he led the user experience and information architecture efforts for several prominent e-commerce websites. His clients included Eddie Bauer, Spiegel, and Dow Corning. John’s more than 15 years of experience include information architecture, usability testing, interface design, illustration, and creative direction. He has designed Web and CD-ROM solutions for companies such as Kodak, Eli Lilly, Sierra Club, Caterpillar, and Accenture. John earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Illinois.
John Yesko
User Experience Lead, Roundarch
John Yesko is a User Experience Lead at Roundarch, a leading Web consulting company. In this capacity, he directs the information architecture and user experience design efforts for consumer product, eCommerce, government, and financial services websites.
Previously, he was the User Experience Group Manager at Fry, Inc., leading the information architecture design for several prominent eCommerce websites.
John has worked with client companies of many sizes and industries, from dotcom start-ups to Fortune 500. Some of his better-known past clients are Caterpillar, Dow Corning, Eddie Bauer, Eli Lilly, Kodak, Motorola, Sears, Spiegel, and the Sierra Club.
As a veteran of new media, his projects have ranged from the CD-ROM-based programs of the early nineties to the rich Internet applications of today. In addition to user experience design, his past work includes usability testing, interface design, illustration, and creative direction.
John earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Illinois.
