Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

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 microformats.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 barcamp.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 tantek.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.