Speakers

Addy Osmani is a Developer Programs Engineer at Google, working on tools for improving how developers create applications. He's also a member of the jQuery team where he assists with documentation and our learning site project. Some of his other OS work has included contributions to Modernizr and other similar projects. Personal projects include TodoMVC, which helps developers compare JavaScript MVC frameworks and jQuery UI Bootstrap. He also wrote 'Developing Backbone.js Applications' and 'Learning JavaScript Design Patterns' and occasionally tech review books like 'JavaScript Web Applications'.

Ben started creating for the web in the late 90’s. He used to design for these days.com and later on he worked as an Art Director at tcc.com. Recently he started teaching Web Design and Cross Media in college. Classes that he teaches are Photoshop, Web Graphics, Usability, Creativity, Graphic Design, Typography, User Experience, Online Reputation Management. Some say, he still works in Photoshop 2 because he believes it transmits less harmful rays on his screen. And that he holds the Belgian record of open tabs in a browser. And the rumor spreads that he uses exuberant amounts of Twitter to grease his bicycle chain!? All we know is, that he still owns a Yahoo! mail account. And that he uses it primarily for archiving his ‘post modern dogs and flowers’ stamp collection.

Ben MacGowan is the Lead UI Engineer for Creative Jar, a Reading-based digital agency. Not only does Ben strive to bring User Interfaces to life, but he also lives, breathes, eats and evangelises cutting edge front-end technologies. Ben began his career whilst still at secondary school and now, with many years experience, he has done everything from large multi-lingual email campaigns to highly interactive, responsive user interfaces and is responsible for the standards and front-end direction of his agency. Whilst some people's addiction is to smoke or drink, Ben's is to tweet; sometimes to the annoyance of his colleagues.

Clare is co-founder and managing director of Code Club - a nationwide network of volunteer led after school coding clubs that gives children the opportunity to learn to program computers. After studying print design, she briefly worked in advertising and moved to web design, working at several large London agencies as a designer. She’s got a bee in her bonnet about the lack of programming taught in schools and it's made her determined to change the way society views computer science. Clare works from London, covets every sausage dog she sees and yes, she'd love a glass of wine if you see her in the bar later.

After a years working at agencies and as a freelancer, Dan is now part of the BBC Sport web team. Enjoys prototyping, experimenting and loud rock.  He's contributed to .Net magazine and rants from time to time at events and over at breakthepage.com about different ways to think about the web and what we do as creators for it.

Darcy Clarke is an award winning Frontend Developer, Designer, User Experience Advocate & Entrepreneur. He speaks, mentors, builds & promotes all things HTML5, CSS3, JS & Open Source related. He works at Polar Mobile as a Senior UX Developer on the MediaEverywhere platform, is the Co-Founder of Themify.me, Partner of DealPage.com & is a proud member of the jQuery Team.

We're delighted to have Paul Boag, Joe Leech, Dave Ellender and Stephanie Troeth making up the panel for the UX discussion session at FOWD London.

Holly has several years experience helping to create intuitive interfaces for a variety of different products across multiple channels. She is currently a designer for London-based experience design agency, Flow Interactive. Holly has worked for both VC funded start-ups and large organisations on anything from concept design for small-scale apps to highly detailed interaction frameworks. She’s a compulsive problem solver striving to create beautiful and simple digital solutions whilst delivering world-class user experiences. Outside of work you’ll find her fulfilling the usual cliches of a 20-something geek living in London.

Jack is a JavaScript and Ruby developer based in Bath who runs the popular JavaScript Playground blog, has authored a book on jQuery and writes for a number of publications. Away from the computer he enjoys playing football, badminton and a quiet pint at the pub.

Based in Manchester, Jack Sheppard is a web designer, creating usable, accessible and all round engaging websites for screen and mobile. In a world where everyone’s son, daughter, niece or nephew can acquire the physical tools to build a website, he strives to be different, better - believing that there is only one way to become better and that is to learn. Learn from yourself, others, experts and idiots. Never stop learning.

As a writer, speaker and general font nerd, Jim Kidwell has written and spoken extensively on the use and management of fonts in creative workflows. Published in over seven languages, Jim has a unique perspective about how fonts and their usage can affect an organization – from the legal, creative and branding standpoints. He is a staunch advocate for the creative and excellent use of typography in all aspects of design. By day, he spends his time working to make web font delivery services and font management applications the best that they can be.

A recovering neuroscientist via a spell as a primary school teacher to a MSc in Human Computer Interaction, Joe embarked on a UX career 10 years ago. He's conducted over 800 user tests and designed interfaces for people like eBay, Marriott, Virgin and many more. As a User Experience Director for cxpartners Joe heads up a team of user experience consultants. He specialises in designing every aspect of the user experience from initial research to developing online strategies to producing wireframes & managing a design team.

A recovering neuroscientist via a spell as a primary school teacher to a MSc in Human Computer Interaction, Joe embarked on a UX career 10 years ago. He's conducted over 800 user tests and designed interfaces for people like eBay, Marriott, Virgin and many more. As a User Experience Director for cxpartners Joe heads up a team of user experience consultants. He specialises in designing every aspect of the user experience from initial research to developing online strategies to producing wireframes & managing a design team. Dave Ellender has worked as a user experience design researcher for over 13 years. Since completing a MSc in Human Computer Interaction, he has worked on a wide range of technologies, including web, mobile, touch-screen kiosks, interactive television, trains, robots, clothes, tables and even water fountains! A specialist in user research, co-design and evaluation, Dave has worked with children as young as four years old and old people in their nineties. He is Principal User Experience Design Consultant at Nomensa.

Jon Setzen is a Creative Director based in sunny Los Angeles, California. Over the past 12 years he has has the honor to work with the likes of Sony, Nikon, Target, SF Chronicle, MoMA and many more. He has created over 450 concert posters which have been exhibited all over the World including New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo. He is currently the Creative Director at (mt) Media Temple, the host of LosAngeles/CreativeMornings and founder of Arlo Jacob Candle Company.

Lea works as a Developer Advocate for W3C. She has a long-standing passion for open web standards, which she fulfills by researching new ways to use them, blogging, speaking, writing, and coding popular open source projects to help fellow developers. She is a member of the CSS Working Group, which architects the language itself. Lea studied Computer Science in Athens University of Economics and Business, where she co-organized and occasionally lectured a cutting edge Web development course for 4th year undergrads. She is one of the few misfits who love code and design equally.

Linda Sandvik is a wannabe MacGyver. Developer by day, hacker by night. Co-founder of Code Club. Part-time adventurer. She likes Tesla, bots, blimps & beams. She would love you to vote for her to go to Space! http://bit.ly/YxARJY

Matt Gifford is co-owner and primary primate at his own company, monkehWorks Ltd. His work focuses on mobile development and ColdFusion. He's a published author and presents at conferences and user groups on a variety of topics. As an Adobe Community Professional and Adobe User Group manager, Matt is a keen proponent for community resources and sharing knowledge. He is the author of “Object-Oriented Programming in ColdFusion" and "PhoneGap Mobile Application Development Cookbook" and also contributes articles and tutorials to international industry magazines. Matt can be reached at his blog (www.mattgifford.co.uk) or @coldfumonkeh on Twitter.

Mike Kus is a super creative web designer living and working in the UK. Hugely passionate about the web but with a history in Graphic Design and Illustration for print, Mike has transferred these skills online to take a fresh approach to his web design.

Oli Lisher is a graphic and web designer, illustrator and front-end developer working from Chichester in the UK. He has previously worked at design agencies before going freelance, and now works mainly with San Francisco based startups like Coderwall, creating and coding designs responsively for the web. He loves to use bold illustrative design.

Pach is a digital strategist at Huge and draws upon her background to shape brand experiences and consumer engagement. After 5 years with Ogilvy & Mather in Thailand, she studied for her MA in Cross Cultural Innovation Platforms at New York University. She spent a year in Japan conducting ethnographic research for her thesis, Japanese Women and Mobile Phone Culture. She joined the Huge, planning team in 2009, working across clients including L’Oreal, Maybelline, Diet Pepsi and Svedka.

Paul Boag has been working on the web since 1993. He is a User Experience Consultant for Headscape Ltd, a web design agency that he founded back in 2002. Paul also produces and hosts the longest running and popular web design podcast at boagworld. He is a regular speaker at conferences and author of the Website Owners Manual.

Bio: Peter is a web developer, writer, public speaker, and author of The Book of CSS3. He blogs at Broken Links and tweets as @stopsatgreen. He lives in London, England.

Relly Annett-Baker lives in Brighton with her husband, Paul Annett, and their two sons. As a result she thrives on the sea air and can be guaranteed to stand on Lego at least once a day. As well as being a copywriter, she is employed as live-in domestic staff by two cats who often supervise her typing and make editorial suggestions such as 'I think it's dinner time'. When not being purred into submission she writes copy and content for clients, magazine articles for titles as diverse as .net magazine and Scrapbook Inspirations and is currently writing a children's novel.

Rob has been working with the web since 2002. Starting life as a techy he moved through project management and business development and today he is the co-founder of Dootrix (www.dootrix.com), the U.K. based enterprise mobile software consultancy. You may have seen Rob speaking at conferences, writing for blogs and featuring on leading web design podcast boagworld.com Rob has been involved in the wider web community as a host of leading web design podcast; Boagworld.

Seb Lee-Delisle is an award winning digital artist and speaker who likes to make interesting things that engage and inspire people. His work has pushed the boundaries of what is possible in digital, and he won a BAFTA for a BBC project with Plug-in Media, the agency he founded in 2003. In 2012 he was awarded an Arts Council grant for the large scale installation PixelPyros (the official launch of the Brighton Digital Festival), closely followed by a commission for the Dublin Science Gallery GAME exhibition, Lunar Trails, that features a full size arcade cabinet and a 3m wide drawing machine. A sought-after speaker, his recent Creative JavaScript / HTML5 workshop series sold out within hours. He co-hosts the Creative Coding Podcast, his blog can be found at seb.ly and he tweets @seb_ly.

Steph is a user experience strategist who loves maturing ideas and making things real. She has worn many hats, including a product lead for a startup in digital publishing and a studio director at a digital agency. She is also known for her grassroots contributions to best web practices through the Web Standards Project and the W3C. Well-travelled and living on her fourth island, she speaks several flavours of English, a few languages, and possesses an indecipherable accent.

Steve Workman is a UI developer at PA Consulting Group, where he runs the mobile development team - designing and creating applications and web sites using the latest standards-compliant and accessible technology. Simply put, trying to make the web a better place for everyone. For the past two and a half years he has also been one of the organisers of London Web Standards; a group who evangelise web standards. Originally from the north-west of England, Steve graduated from the University of Sheffield with a masters in Computer Science before moving to London to take up his current post. He plays hockey for Barnes Hockey Club whenever his body lets him.

Tammie Lister is a designer who specialises in creating communities. She loves creating designs that work for humans and making interfaces that engage. Her favourite community building tools are BuddyPress and WordPress which follow her passion for open source. Tammie is lucky enough to create these communities with some great and diverse clients through her company Logical Binary.

Zaidin is currently a Senior Interactive Developer at Fi, responsible for translating beautiful design on to the web through creative technology. He is fluent in both front and backend development with an atypical self-taught background and has honed a specialization in web and mobile platforms. At Fi, he helps build digital brand experiences for clients like Toyota and Wacom. Previously, he was the CTO at Casus Belli managing the development team for clients including Disney, Turner and Sony.