Speaker Bios
Meet the Experts
The Web development community is full of craftsmen who care about the products they produce and the process by which they are created. The Ajax Experience is the place to learn from these experts and go in-depth on the latest/best techniques, find out what's working (or not) around the community, and help drive these technologies forward.
Speakers at TAE include framework founders, business leaders, authors and independent experts. Browse all speaker biographies or choose a speaker from the list below.
Speaker Lineup:
Speaker Bios:
Dion Almaer, Co-founder, Ajaxian.com
Presenting a Keynote: The Ajax Universe with Ben Galbraith
Presenting: Tutorial: Intro to Ajax with Ben Galbraith
Dion Almaer is the co-founder of Ajaxian.com, the leading source of the Ajax community. Dion is part of the Google Developer Programs group, which enables him to work with developer facing technology. Dion has been writing rich Web applications from the beginning, and is a columnist on Enterprise Java topics at openxource.com, onjava.com, TheServerSide.com, and of course his blog at almaer.com/blog. He enjoys writing and speaking. He also participates on the Java Community Process expert groups, and the open source community as a whole.
Paul Bakaus, Creator and Lead Developer, jQuery UI
Presenting: Beyond the Standards - Advanced Animation and Physics in JavaScript
Paul Bakaus is a UI architect living in Germany. He's the creator and lead of jQuery UI and works for the open source company, Liferay, in a full-time sponsored position to jQuery UI. He's responsible for the overall direction and roadmap of jQuery UI and he enjoys speaking about his user interface work in many places of the world. He's also a member of the jQuery core team and takes part in the discussion of the overall direction of the jQuery project. In the past, he was largely responsible for creating the jQuery dimensions plugin (which is now part of the jQuery core) and worked together with Stefan Petre on the rich effects and components library Interface.
Allen Wirfs-Brock, ECMAScript Language Architect, Microsoft
Panelist: Ask the Experts Panel
Allen Wirfs-Brock represents Microsoft on ECMA TC-39, the “ECMAScript Standards Committee” and has been one of the major contributors to the draft ECMAScript 3.1 specification. Allen has spent much of the last thirty years working to make dynamic object-oriented programming languages practical for large-scale application development, and has an extensive background in both the technical and business aspects of programming languages and development tools. Prior to joining Microsoft, he founded two companies both named Instantiations, co-founded the ACM OOPSLA conference, and lived through the rise and fall of Smalltalk as an enterprise development language as VP of Technology and Chief Scientist respectively of the two most successful Smalltalk companies.
Aaron Conran, Senior Software Architect and Ext Services Team Leader
Presenting: Hands-on Ext
Aaron Conran has been involved with Ext JS since the beginning and has an in-depth understanding of Ext JS internals and architecture. He has demonstrated a mastery of the Ext JS library and client-side development practices. He currently leads the client development services team and provides on-site training for enterprise customers.
Douglas Crockford, Creator, JSON; Architect, Yahoo!
Presenting: JavaScript: The Good Parts
Panelist: Ask the Experts Panel
Douglas Crockford is a product of our public education system. A registered voter, he owns his own car. He is the world's foremost living authority on JavaScript. He is the author of JavaScript: The Good Parts. He has developed office automation systems. He did research in games and music at Atari. He was Director of Technology at Lucasfilm. He was Director of New Media at Paramount.
He was the founder and CEO of Electric Communities/Communities.com. He was founder and CTO of State Software, where he discovered JSON, the data interchange standard. He is developing a secure programming language. He is now an architect at Yahoo!.
Brian Dillard, Lead, Really Simple History library; RIA Evangelist, Pathfinder Associates, LLC
Presenting: Making Friends with the Browser: Ajax, Back Buttons and Bookmarks
Brian Dillard has built rich UIs for companies as diverse as Orbitz, Reflect.com, Archipelago and United Airlines. Now stationed at Pathfinder Development in Chicago, he builds complex Ajax applications, contributes to the blog Agile Ajax, and heads up Really Simple History, an open-source Ajax history management library.
Gavin Doughtie, Front-end Developer, Google; Contributor, Dojo toolkit
Presenting: Interviewing for JavaScript Gurus
Gavin Doughtie is a Front-end Developer on Google's Picasa Web Albums and a contributor to the Dojo toolkit. Gavin has worked extensively in user interface development on platforms ranging from the browser to raw win32 and xlib.
Andrew Dupont, Developer, Prototype; Front-end Developer, frog design
Presenting: Defensive, Cross-Browser Coding with Prototype
Andrew Dupont is a user interface developer for frog design and author of Practical Prototype & script.aculo.us, a book about Prototype and its sister effects library, script.aculo.us. Andrew is one of the developers of Prototype, the popular JavaScript toolkit bundled with Ruby on Rails and used on many large Web sites.
Brendan Eich, Creator, JavaScript; CTO, Mozilla Corporation
Presenting a Keynote: Faster Than Light JavaScript
Panelist: Ask the Experts Panel
Brendan Eich is the father of JavaScript. Brendan started out working at Netscape Communications Corporation in 1995, working on JavaScript (originally called Mocha, then called LiveScript) for the Netscape Navigator Web browser. He then helped found Mozilla.org in early 1998, serving as chief architect. When AOL shut down the Netscape browser unit in July 2003, Brendan helped spin out the Mozilla Foundation. Brendan now serves as the CTO of the Mozilla Corporation.
Jon Ferraiolo,
Web Architect, IBM; Head, OpenAjax Alliance
Presenting: Interoperable Ajax Tools and Mashups
Jon Ferraiolo is an employee of IBM within its Emerging Internet Technologies group. Jon is devoted exclusively to OpenAjax Alliance, where he manages operations and leads many activities. Before joining IBM in 2006, Jon worked at Adobe for 13 years where he was an architect, engineering manager and product manager.
Joshua Fraser, CTO and Co-founder, EventVue
Presenting: How to Design Great Forms
Josh Fraser is a software engineer and the co-founder of EventVue. EventVue provides online social networking tools to conferences which allow attendees to network with each other before and after the event. Josh has a broad range of expertise developing both front-end and back-end technologies, and is the editor of onlineaspect.com.
Ben Galbraith, Co-founder, Ajaxian.com
Presenting a Keynote: The Ajax Universe with Dion Almaer
Presenting: Tutorial: Intro to Ajax with Dion Almaer
Ben Galbraith is the CIO of MediaBank, a well-funded software start-up in the advertising industry, and General Manager of Feature50, a boutique software production company. Ben has long juggled interests in both business and tech, having written his first computer program at six years old, started his first business at ten, and entered the IT workforce at twelve. He has delivered hundreds of technical presentations world-wide, produced several technical conferences, and co-authored over a half-dozen books. Prior to his current roles, Ben acted as CEO of Ajaxian.com, a media property and related conference series he co-founded. He has enjoyed a variety of other business and technical roles throughout his career, including CIO, CTO, and Chief Software Architect roles. He lives in Draper, Utah, with his wife and four children.
Joshua Harrison, Co-founder, Point5u, LLC
Presenting: Using Milescript to Build JavaScript Applications
Joshua Harrison attended college at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he met the other co-founders of Point5u. After graduating from school, he worked for a few years before leaving to start Point5u, LLC with his colleagues.
Christian Heilmann, Web Architect, Yahoo!
Presenting: YUI for Control Freaks
Christian Heilmann has been building Web solutions for over 10 years, wrote Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax, contributed to 4 other books on accessibility, JavaScript and Web development with APIs, and hosted services and blogs actively on wait-till-i.com, Ajaxian.com and for the Yahoo! Developer Network. His official job title (that he still has to get used to) is "International Developer Evangelist" at Yahoo. His main passion is to help developers not having to do all the stupid things he had to do to deliver what should have been easy in the first place - usable, sturdy and accessible Web applications.
Kevin Hoyt, Platform Evangelist, Adobe
Presenting: Building Your First Adobe AIR Application and Not Your Grandfather's Dreamweaver
Kevin Hoyt is a Platform Evangelist with Adobe Systems, Inc. Passionate about engaging user experiences, you'll most often find him meeting with customers, speaking at conferences, presenting online seminars, or just enjoying the chance to share ideas and brainstorm with other developers. When not on the road, Kevin enjoys spending time with his family, photography and general aviation.
Ted Husted, Apache Struts group; Author, Struts in Action
Presenting: Ajax Testing Tool Review, Ajax on Struts: Coding an Ajax Application with Struts 2 and Struts on Ajax: Retrofitting Struts with Ajax Taglibs
Ted Husted is an longtime member of the Apache Struts group and co-founder of the Apache Commons. He is a regular speaker at ApacheCon US, as well as to various user groups, including NEJUG. Ted has consulted with teams throughout the United States, including CitiGroup, Nationwide Insurance, and Pepsi Bottling Group. His books include Struts in Action, JUnit in Action, and Professional JSP Site Design. In 2008, Ted joined VanDamme Associates, a .NET integrator specializing in non-profits and associations.
Dietrich Kappe, CTO and Co-founder, Pathfinder Associates, LLC
Presenting: Saving Your Investment: Transforming J2EE Applications into Web 2.0 using GWT
Dietrich Kappe is co-founder and CTO of Pathfinder Associates, LLC, a hybrid User Experience Design and RIA development shop. Dietrich published one of the first 100 public Web sites and launched one of the first Java Servlet-based Web applications. He has been a software engineer for over 17 years, a frequent open source contributor, and has developed applications for the Media, Financial Services, Insurance and Healthcare industries.
Dietrich is a technical speaker on Agile Software Development, Ajax and Business Rules technology. He publishes the Agile Ajax and Business Rules blogs and is a contributor to the RealRules Blogzine.
Max Katz, Senior Systems Engineer, Exadel
Presenting: Enterprise Rich Internet Application Tools: JSF, Flex, and JavaFX
Max Katz is a Senior Systems Engineer at Exadel. He has been helping customers jump-start their RIA development as well as providing mentoring, consulting, and training. Max is a recognized subject matter expert in the JSF developer community. He has provided JSF/RichFaces training for the past three years, presented at many conferences, and written several published articles on JSF-related topics. Max also leads Exadel's RIA strategy and writes about RIA technologies in his blog, http://mkblog.exadel.com. He is the author of the book, Using RichFaces.
Yehuda Katz, Plugins team leader, jQuery; Author, jQuery in Action
Presenting: Making your jQuery Code Modular
Yehuda Katz is the plugins team leader of the jQuery project. He is also a core team member of the Merb project, a Ruby alternative to Ruby on Rails. Yehuda currently works at Engine Yard, where he works on the Merb Ruby framework. Yehuda is the author of jQuery in Action, and is a contributing author for Ruby in Practice.
Anne van Kesteren, Opera Software; Member, WebApps and HTML W3C Working Groups
Presenting: Ajax 2.0
Anne van Kesteren works for Opera Software evolving the Web. As part of this activity he's member of a number of W3C Working Groups (WGs), including the WebApps and HTML WGs. He's also a member of the WHATWG since its inception, the group that founded HTML5 in 2004.
Omar Khan, Product Unit Manager, Visual Web Developer Product Team, Microsoft
Co-Presenting: JavaScript: From Tools to Runtime – Making Life Better with Jeff King
Omar Khan is Product Unit Manager at Microsoft corporation responsible for running the Visual Web Developer product team. Since joining Microsoft in 1995, Omar has worked on several product releases, including Visual InterDev 1.0 , Visual InterDev 6.0, Visual Studio 2003, Visual Studio 2005, and Visual Studio 2008. Prior to joining Microsoft, Omar attended the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor from 1992-1995, majoring in a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science.
Jeff King, Program Manager, Microsoft Developer Division
Co-Presenting: JavaScript: From Tools to Runtime – Making Life Better with Omar Khan
Jeff King is a Program Manager in Microsoft's Developer Division. He is responsible for the Visual Studio ASP.NET, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript editors. In previous releases, Jeff has also been responsible for the WYSIWYG design surface, delivering the Visual Web Developer Express Edition product, and authoring the Personal Web Site Starter Kit. On the side, he enjoys developing user experiences with WPF.
Peter-Paul Koch,
Founder, QuirksMode.org
Presenting a Keynote Panel: 'Top 10' Cross-Browser Issues
Presenting: State of the Browsers
Peter-Paul Koch, whom everybody calls ppk, is a freelance Web developer in Amsterdam and author of the book ppk on Javascript.
He's best known for QuirksMode.org, a 100-page compendium of CSS and JavaScript browser incompatibilities. The site is used not only by Web developers around the world, but also by browser vendors like Microsoft, who seek factual, hype-free reports on the capabilities and problems of their browsers.
He has founded 'fronteers,' a professional organization for front-end developers that's currently active in the Netherlands only, but may eventually branch out to other countries.
Glen Lipka, Director, UX & Product Management, Marketo
Presenting: UX Design for Ajax Applications
Glen Lipka is a UX Architect in Silicon Valley, currently leading UX and Product Management at Marketo, a RIA marketing automation company. Pioneering UX Design since 1995, Glen has been at the forefront of rich internet experiences for over a decade. His early internet design company, Koko New Media, developed the first Web animation, the first all-Flash e-commerce site, the ground-breaking e-commerce work with Grainger and the award-winning business extranet Hotkoko, which was one of the first RIA applications.
Glen has always had a passion User Experience and blogs frequently about it at http://www.commadot.com.
Neil Mix, Senior Software Engineer, Pandora.com
Presenting: Fun UI: Lessons Learned From Building a Consumer-Oriented Media Product
Neil Mix is a startup company addict currently working with Pandora.com, where he builds the Pandora music player and other client-side software. Prior to Pandora.com, Neil worked with startups such as Merchant Planet, LinkExchange, Idealab, and Kenamea. He is the author of Narrative JavaScript and other hacks which he publishes on his blog, neilmix.com. In his spare time, Neil is a concert pianist, father, and lightweight student of programming language theory.
Brad Neuberg, Developer, Gears; Creator, Dojo Offline and Dojo Storage
Presenting: Creating a Client-Side Search Engine with Gears
Brad Neuberg is an open source geek and developer advocate for Google. He currently works with the Gears team, a browser plugin that teaches current Web browsers new tricks; created Dojo Offline and Dojo Storage, libraries that enable applications to go offline easily and store large amounts of data on the client-side; created the Really Simple History library, a well-known framework that makes it easy to bookmark and work with the browser history for Ajax applications; worked with Douglas Engelbart on the HyperScope project, grafting new hypertext abilities onto the contemporary Web; and invented coworking, an international grassroots movement to found a new kind of workspace for independents. Brad also created the Paper Airplane project, an initiative to imagine new kinds of Web browsers that deeply support community and next-generation browsing. Brad lives in San Francisco with his cat, George.
Aaron Newton, Contributor, MooTools; Founder, Iminta.com
Presenting: MooTools: An Overview
Aaron Newton is a product manager, developer, interface designer, and writer. He is a contributor to the MooTools Javascript framework - where he writes code, the documentation, free online tutorials and the first Mootools book published by Apress. His experience includes founding music startup, Epitonic.com, launching CNET's Download.com Music, and several years product managing application development for various projects at CNET Networks. His current startup, Iminta.com, launched this spring and is based in San Francisco.
David Nolen, Lead Developer, ShiftSpace
Co-presenting: ShiftSpace and the Open Metaweb with Dan Phiffer
David Nolen is an artist, musician, and obsessive-compulsive self-taught hacker. He is the lead developer of ShiftSpace, an open source project striving to provide an open platform for user generated interface. His software work focuses around a suite of tools for drawing across many different technological mediums. David currently works with Portland-based Web start-up Platial and teaches as an adjunct at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Dan Phiffer, Co-founder, ShiftSpace
Co-presenting: ShiftSpace and the Open Metaweb with David Nolen
Dan Phiffer is a new media hacker from California, and co-founder of ShiftSpace, an open source project striving to provide an open platform for user generated interface. Dan is interested in exploring the cultural dimension of inexpensive communications technology such as voice telephony and the internet. He is employed as a front-end Web developer for outside.in, a Brooklyn-based Web start-up, and teaches as an adjunct at the Electronic Design & Multimedia department at City College of New York.
Christophe Porteneuve, CTO, Ciblo.net
Presenting: Shiny Things in Spinoffsland: What's Up with Prototype and
script.aculo.us?
Christophe Porteneuve has been designing and implementing Web apps since 1995. After having created the first JSP-based portal in Europe, he ran the software engineering department of a prominent IT college. He is now the CTO of Ciblo.net, a Web agency to which he brought a leading edge on Web development best practices, and the love of Rails.
Christophe authored the French best-seller, Bien développer pour le Web 2.0, and the already famous, Bungee book, on Prototype and script.aculo.us, published at the Pragmatic Bookshelf. He is a member of Prototype Core, a script.aculo.us contributor.
John Resig, Creator/Lead Developer, jQuery
Presenting: Intro to jQuery, Advanced jQuery, Tutorial: JavaScript Library Overview, Visual Programming with JavaScript and What's Happening with Firebug?
Panelist: Ask the Experts Panel
John Resig is a JavaScript Evangelist for the Mozilla Corporation and the author of the book Pro Javascript Techniques. He is also the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library. He's currently located in Boston, MA.
Alex Russell, Project Lead, Dojo Toolkit and Director of R&D, SitePen, Inc.
Presenting: Dojo Fundamentals and Dojo Grid and Charting
Alex Russell is Director of R&D for SitePen, project lead for the Dojo Toolkit, and a contributor to the CometD project and is a co-author of the Bayeux specification. Alex also serves as President of the Dojo Foundation and is a member of the OpenAjax Alliance Steering Committee.
Before joining SitePen, Alex was a Senior Engineer at JotSpot and Informatica where he helped build highly interactive Web interfaces. His earlier Open Source involvement included stints as editor of the OWASP Guide to Building Secure Web Applications and primary author of the netWindows DHTML toolkit.
Bill Scott, Director of User Interface Engineering, Netflix
Presenting: Hacking Netflix
Bill Scott is the Director of User Interface Engineering at Netflix, the world's largest online movie rental service. At Netflix, Bill is guiding the UI Engineering team's efforts to continue Netflix's excellence in user experience, improve client performance and refactor the presentation tier to use the latest best practices for both the DHTML layer as well as the Java tier layer.
Bill is currently finishing up a book called Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interaction. The book covers 75+ interaction design patterns, several anti-Patterns organized into six design principles for designing rich interfaces. His musings can be found at http://looksgoodworkswell.com.
Gaurav Seth, Program Manager, JScript Product Unit, Microsoft
Presenting: Analyzing the Ajax Application Performance
Gaurav Seth is currently working as a Program Manager with the JScript Product Unit at Microsoft’s India Development Center. He has an experience of over five years in different language runtimes and tools at Microsoft and has contributed to various product releases. Prior to that, Gaurav worked as a developer with Lucent Technologies-Bell Lab’s Development Center in India for three years.
Jonathan Sharp, Owner, Out West Media
Presenting: jQuery on Rails (The Real Ones)
Jonathan Sharp is a freelance Web designer and developer and owner of Out West Media in Omaha, Nebraska. Previously, Jonathan worked for Union Pacific Railroad where he served as Sr. Project Engineer and lead architect for UP's user interface library. Prior to joining Union Pacific in 2006, Jonathan worked for CSC and Motorola, Inc. in Chicago after helping start Imprev, Inc. in Bellevue, Washington in early 2000.
Jonathan has served in a number of different roles, ranging from networking (former CCNA) and hardware management, up through user experience/usability. He now focuses exclusively on development best practices and creating a positive experience both for the end user and the developer.
Jack Slocum, Chief Software Architect and Co-Founder, Ext JS
Presenting: Advanced CSS and Theming for Ext JS
Jack Slocum began development on Ext JS in 2006 to provide feature rich open source extensions to a popular JavaScript library. With a strong foundation in software architecture, design patterns and development experience, Jack has guided the development of Ext JS to where it is today - an innovative, low-cost, high performance solution for client-side development.
Steve Souders, Web Performance & Open Source Initiatives, Google; Creator, YSlow
Presenting: Even Faster Web Sites and Episodes - For Timing Web Pages
Steve Souders works at Google on Web performance and open source initiatives. His book, High Performance Web Sites, explains his best practices for performance along with the research and real-world results behind them. Steve is the creator of YSlow, the performance analysis extension to Firebug.
Steve previously worked at Yahoo! as the Chief Performance Architect, where he blogged about Web performance on Yahoo! Developer Network. He was named a Yahoo! Superstar. Steve worked on many of the platforms and products within the company, including running the development team for My Yahoo!.
Prior to Yahoo!, Steve worked at several small to mid-sized startups including two companies he co-founded, Helix Systems and CoolSync. He also worked at General Magic, WhoWhere?, and Lycos. In the early 80's, Steve caught the Artificial Intelligence bug and worked at a few companies doing research on Machine Learning, including several publications and conference appearances. He received a B.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and a M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
Oliver Steele, Principal, Oliver Steele Consulting; Author, Functional JavaScript and more
Presenting: *Practical* Functional JavaScript
Oliver Steele is a software consultant and entrepreneur in Amherst, MA. He is the author of the Functional JavaScript, PyWordNet, PyFSA, and other JavaScript, Ruby, and Python libraries. Oliver was the architect of the OpenLaszlo Rich Internet Application Framework at Laszlo Systems, and has worked on programming language design, and 2D graphics, at Apple Computer and a host of startups.
Stoyan Stefanov, Performance Engineer, Yahoo!
Presenting: Image Optimization - How Many of These 7 Mistakes Are You Making, Advanced JavaScript: Closures, Prototypes and Inheritance Demystified and The 7 Habits for Exceptional Performance with Nicole Sullivan
Stoyan Stefanov is a Yahoo! engineer doing research, writing articles, and building tools such as YSlow for improving the performance of Web pages. He also contributes to several open source projects, and is the author of numerous online articles and books, most recently the author of Object-Oriented JavaScript published by Packt Publishing. Stoyan blogs at www.phpied.com.
Nicole Sullivan, Performance Engineer, Yahoo!
Co-Presenting: The 7 Habits for Exceptional Performance with Stoyan Stefanov
Nicole Sullivan is a CSS performance guru and has built CSS framework solutions for many well-known European and worldwide brands, such as SFR, Club Med, SNCF, La Poste, FNAC, Accor Hotels, and Renault.
Nicole now works for Yahoo! in the Exceptional Performance group. Her role involves researching and evangelizing performance best practices and building tools like YSlow that help other F2E's create better sites. She writes about standards, her dog, and her obsession with object oriented CSS at www.stubbornella.org.
Francisco Tolmasky, Co-Founder, 280 North; Creator, Objective-J programming language
Presenting: Cappuccino/Objective-J and The Road to Cappuccino
Francisco is a co-founder of 280 North and the creator of the Objective-J programming language. He was an early member of the iPhone team at Apple, working on Mobile Safari and Maps, as well as creating most of the Web SDK. In 2008, Francisco started 280 North with two friends, Ross Boucher and Tom Robinson, where they are helping to bring desktop-class applications to the browser with their new open source framework, Cappuccino. They recently launched 280 Slides, the first application built on Cappuccino, which allows users to create beautiful presentations online.
Ojan Vafai, Software Engineer, Google
Presenting a Keynote: Google Chrome and Web Applications
Ojan Vafai is an engineer on Google Chrome with a focus on Web development
and compatibility. He co-founded Google Page Creator and has worked on
a number of Google Web applications, such as Gmail and Google Docs.
David Verba, Technology Advisor, Adaptive Path
Presenting: Tutorial: Practical Design for Ajax Development
David Verba is the Technology Advisor for Adaptive Path and the Chief Technical Officer of Emmett Labs. His many years of technical leadership and architecture experience cover a broad range of projects and strategies, including Sun, Java, Oracle, and a variety of open source technologies.
David served as Director of Technology for WholePeople.com, a large e-commerce initiative by Whole Foods, Inc., and was a core developer for CodeZoo.net. He also provided essential technical leadership to Measure Map, a free web service (now part of Google) that tracks blogs’ traffic stats.
Joe Walker, Creator, Direct Web Remoting (DWR); Director, Support & Development, SitePen
Presenting: New Features in DWR Version 3, Advanced Web Application Security and Highly Interactive Websites: Implementing Comet
Panelist: Ask the Experts Panel
Joe Walker is a renowned developer working on advanced Web development techniques in JavaScript & Ajax technologies. He is the creator of Direct Web Remoting (DWR), which has become the most popular Ajax toolkit for Java by making browser/server interaction intuitive for Web developers. As Director of Support & Development for SitePen, Joe provides leadership, technical expertise, guidance and training to clients and interested developers across the United States and Europe.
Greg Wilkins, CTO, Webtide; Creator, Jetty Web container; Co-founder, Apache Geronimo; Contributor, Dojo cometd
Presenting: Comet Overview and Deploying and Scaling Ajax Comet Applications
Greg Wilkins is closely involved with the open source movement, being the creator of the Jetty Web container, a co-founder of Apache Geronimo, and a committer or contributor to a number of other open source projects including Dojo cometd. Greg sits on the JCP Servlet Expert Group and is active in the Open Ajax Alliance. Greg was also a founder and CEO of Mort Bay Consulting.
Richard Worth, Lead Developer, JQuery UI
Presenting: Rich Interactivity, Simplified, with jQuery UI
Richard Worth is a Web developer in the Washington, DC area. He works for Fulcrum IT on Web services contracts, primarily for the government.
Richard is one of the lead developers of jQuery UI, a component framework built on top of jQuery, designed to make Rich Internet Applications as simple as jQuery has made Ajax. Richard is also a contributing author on dmxzone.com, writing regular beginner and advanced jQuery UI articles, and has been selected as a Technical Reviewer for a book on jQuery UI to be published in the fall.
Max Zabramny, Manager, Interface Engineering, Organic, Inc.
Presenting: Experience Design & Rapid Prototyping – From Concept to Pitch
Max Zabramny leads the Interface Engineering Group in Organic's NY office. He specializes in blending his expertise in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with his passion for experience and interaction design. Max has a deep interest in tactile and intuitive interfaces that behave, react, and "feel" to the user. He is also involved with Organic's Emerging Platforms group in working and developing new trends in UI. Clients include Bank of America, Home Shopping Network, Bose, iVillage, Estee Lauder, Six Flags, Martha Stewart, Ethan Allen and Equinox Fitness.
Nicholas Zakas, Senior Front-end Engineer, Yahoo!
Presenting: Test Driven Development with YUI Test and Enterprise JavaScript Error Handling
Nicholas Zakas is a principal front end engineer at Yahoo!, where he works on the Yahoo! front page, is a contributor to the YUI library, and teaches classes on JavaScript to employees and Yahoo! Juku participants. Nicholas is the author of Professional JavaScript and co-author of Professional Ajax in addition to over a dozen online articles. Prior to the front page, Nicholas worked on My Yahoo!, helping to bring the world's most popular personalized homepage into the Web 2.0 era.
Kris Zyp, Research and Development, SitePen
Presenting: Applied JSON: HTTP REST, Ajax Databases and Beyond and JSON SOA-based Client/Server Application Development
Kris Zyp is involved with research and development at SitePen, a forward-thinking company committed to building and enhancing the open Web. Kris represents the Dojo foundation on the EcmaScript 4 committee. Kris is the lead developer of the Persevere project and the JSON Schema format. He is actively researching and developing technologies in Ajax REST client/server architecture, JSON-RPC, JSONPath, JSPON, and JavaScript persistence. He is also a contributor to Comet Daily and is working on RESTful HTTP Comet approaches.