Web Directions

Cameron Moll & Tantek Çelik — Design and Coding at the Cutting Edge

• In: Resources
• By:jessie
• January 18, 2008
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A pre­sen­ta­tion given at at Web Directions North, Vancouver, February 7, 2007.

• MP3 of pre­sen­ta­tion — Cameron Moll
• MP3 of pre­sen­ta­tion — Tantek Çelik
• Session descrip­tion
• About Cameron Moll
• About Tantek Çelik

This ses­sion was orig­i­nally meant to fea­ture Cameron Moll and Douglas Bowman, but due to a last-​​minute change instead fea­tured Cameron Moll and Tantek Çelik.

Session descrip­tion

Hear micro­for­mats founder and cus­to­dian Tantek Çelik paint on the broad can­vas, talk­ing about moti­va­tions, use cases, exam­ples, and benefits.

Cameron Moll says the web is a volatile medium that changes end­lessly, but one thing remains con­stant: a demand for design­ers who are dis­ci­plined in graphic design the­ory, human com­put­ing prin­ci­ples, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­niques. Oh, and CSS, acces­si­bil­ity, and (soon) mobile devices, too. How does one stay abreast?

Hear one of the web’s most dis­ci­plined design­ers share his advice for mas­ter­ing fun­da­men­tal user inter­face prin­ci­ples, good vs. great design, communication-​​centric approaches, and mobile web devel­op­ment, all with the hope of pro­duc­ing mean­ing­ful inter­faces that deliver a reward­ing user experience.

About 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 was a con­tribut­ing author for the book, CSS Mastery. His per­sonal site deliv­ers design how-​​to in the form of engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion, on-​​topic ban­ter, and down­load­able art­work source files.

About Tantek Çelik

Tantek Çelik is Chief Technologist at Technorati where he leads the design and devel­op­ment of new stan­dards and tech­nolo­gies. Prior to Technorati, he was a vet­eran rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for Microsoft, where he also helped lead the devel­op­ment of the award-​​winning Internet Explorer for Macintosh.

As co-​​founder of the micro​for​mats​.org com­mu­nity and the Global Multimedia Protocols Group, as well as Steering Committee mem­ber of the Web Standards Project and invited expert to the W3C Cascading Style Sheets work­ing group, Tantek is ded­i­cated to advanc­ing open stan­dards and sim­pler data for­mats for the Web.

The micro­for­mats com­mu­nity believes that stan­dards should do less, not more. Data for­mats should adapt to cur­rent web pub­lish­ing behav­iors and reuse exist­ing broadly inter­op­er­a­bly imple­mented stan­dards. Easy to adopt for­mats are enabling a diverse set of web design­ers and devel­op­ers to vis­i­bly pub­lish, share, and con­sume all kinds of com­mon infor­ma­tion, and micro­for­mats are lead­ing the way.

Inspired by the can-​​do Webzine 2005 orga­niz­ers (of which Tantek was one), and Tim O’Reilly’s FooCamp, Tantek came up with the idea that a half dozen enthu­si­asts with no pre­vi­ous con­fer­ence orga­niz­ing expe­ri­ence could put on an inde­pen­dent, open, and highly par­tic­i­pa­tory week­end con­fer­ence, and BarCamp was born this past fall in San Francisco in only six days. Since the first BarCamp was orga­nized on a wiki, its DNA open for all to see, BarCamps have been sub­se­quently dupli­cated in Amsterdam and Toronto, and are planned in Los Angeles, New York City, Dallas, Phoenix, Portland, DC, Boston, and Ottawa. Want to orga­nize your own BarCamp in your city? Start at bar​camp​.org.

Tantek lives in San Francisco, and has Bachelor’s and Masters degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University, as well as a strong back­ground in human inter­face and user cen­tered design from his many years at Apple Computer. He shares his thoughts at tan​tek​.com.

Douglas Bowman

Recently appointed Lead Visual Designer at Google, Douglas Bowman is an influ­en­tial designer whose highly suc­cess­ful and widely acclaimed designs for sites like Blogger, Wired News, Capgemini, and Adaptive Path have pushed him to the fore­front of respon­si­ble, forward-​​thinking web design. Bowman refuses to keep tech­niques and secrets he dis­cov­ers to him­self, instead, opt­ing to share them with his clients and the web com­mu­nity at large. Bowman’s con­sult­ing firm, Stopdesign, proves by exam­ple that beau­ti­ful, func­tional, and acces­si­ble design can coex­ist with effi­cient, standards-​​compliant code.

Bowman believes design should sim­plify and facil­i­tate our every­day life.

Prior to found­ing Stopdesign, Bowman led the cre­ation and imple­men­ta­tion of design process and stan­dards for an inter­na­tional net­work of high-​​traffic sites within Terra Lycos. As Design Director for Wired Digital, he designed and over­saw numer­ous trend-​​setting, industry-​​leading sites under the Wired umbrella. A firm believer in standards-​​based design, Bowman con­tin­ues to help spread the word and prac­tice through exam­ples, arti­cles, and tuto­ri­als cov­er­ing design, web stan­dards, and the con­flu­ence of the two.

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