William H. Gates Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation

William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft had revenues of US$36.84 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2004, and employs more than 55,000 people in 85 countries and regions.
In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home, they began developing software for personal computers. Gates' foresight and his vision for personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry.
Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft's mission has been to continually advance and improve software technology, and to make it easier, more cost-effective and more enjoyable for people to use computers. The company is committed to a long-term view, reflected in its investment of approximately $6.2 billion on research and development in the 2005 fiscal year.
In 1999, Gates wrote Business @ the Speed of Thought, a book that shows how computer technology can solve business problems in fundamentally new ways. The book was published in 25 languages and is available in more than 60 countries. Business @ the Speed of Thought has received wide critical acclaim, and was listed on the best-seller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com. Gates' previous book, The Road Ahead, published in 1995, held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times' bestseller list for seven weeks.

Tim O'Reilly CEO,O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world, and an activist for open standards. O'Reilly also publishes online through the O'Reilly Network (www.oreillynet.com) and hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and the Web 2.0 Conference. Tim's blog, The O'Reilly Radar (radar.oreilly.com) "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community.

Joe Belfiore Corporate Vice President, Windows eHome Division, Microsoft Corporation

As the corporate vice president of the Windows eHome Division at Microsoft Corp., Joe Belfiore is responsible for development, business management and marketing of Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition and related devices, including Media Center Extender and the Media Center DVR. He also leads development of Media Center for future versions of Windows. A huge consumer advocate, Belfiore believes the Media Center vision and mission is revolutionizing the way people think about and use personal computers, transforming PCs from mostly productivity devices to the primary entertainment hub for digital convergence in the home.
Before moving to the eHome Division, Belfiore was product unit manager for the Windows User Experience team throughout the planning and development of Windows XP. In that role, he was responsible for the overall user experience of Windows — both as a manager of the engineering and design team that created most of the Windows XP user interface and also as a key driver of positive user experiences across all versions of the Windows operating system.
Fresh out of Stanford University, in 1990 Belfiore began his career at Microsoft as a program manager on OS/2. Shortly afterward, he drove the design of the first Windows NT® user interface, then became the lead project manager for the user interface of Windows 95. He then acted as group program manager for Internet Explorer 4 and the Windows 2000 user interface before beginning his work on Windows XP. Just before taking on his current role, Belfiore served as general manager of the Windows eHome Division, during which time he drove the development and shipment of four versions of Windows XP Media Center Edition and expanded product availability from three countries to 33.

Jeff Barr Evangelist, Amazon Web Services, Amazon.com

Jeff Barr is focused on furthering awareness among software developers of the opportunity to innovate and build businesses using Amazon Web Services. Launched in July 2002, Amazon Web Services exposes Amazon.com technology and product data that enables developers to build innovative and entrepreneurial applications on their own. Barr meets regularly with developers in the U.S. and internationally to introduce Amazon Web Services and to help them build businesses and applications with the program's services. He joined Amazon in August 2002 as a Senior Software Developer on the Associates team.
Applications built using Amazon Web Services range from enhanced Associates sites that advertise products from the Amazon.com Web site to integrated solutions for retailers selling merchandise through Amazon.com. Developers make money by earning referral fees from their Associates sites or by charging users for the applications they build.
Barr has a longstanding interest in Web services and programmatic information interchange. He has held development and management positions at KnowNow, eByz, Akopia, and Microsoft, and was a co-founder of Visix Software. He earned his bachelor's degree in computer science from American University and completed graduate work in computer science at George Washington University.

Dean Hachamovitch General Manager, Internet Explorer Team, Microsoft Corporation

As General Manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft, Dean Hachamovitch is responsible for the design, development, and release of Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's RSS platform, and future versions of the Web browser.
Hachamovitch's passion is shipping software that enables personal computers to "just work" for people in useful, desirable, and trustworthy ways. Before working on Internet Explorer, he helped lead the development and release of several versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office in the 1990s on both Windows and Macintosh. His primary focus was user interface innovations like AutoCorrect, automatic spell checking and formatting, and integration across the product suite. He also led the Internet Explorer 7 effort, as well as running the Microsoft's online games business. He joined Microsoft in 1990 with an AB in Mathematics from Harvard.

Darren David Senior Applications Engineer, Fluid

Darren is the engineering lead for all of Fluid's Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) technology efforts. He is responsible for technical design, team and client management of Microsoft related work. Darren created an application for The North Face demonstrating WPF capabilities that was included in Microsoft Vice President Jim Allchin's Keynote address at the PDC 2005 conference. As lead engineer on the Kaplan SAT Online Test Prep project, Darren lead the design and development of a sophisticated system of client and server applications that allowed Kaplan course designers to easily develop and implement online test preparation materials for the SAT exam. Darren also architected and implemented a DVD-ROM-based application for the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) to teach youth about the concepts behind video production. The application included a full-featured non-linear video sequencing/editing tool built entirely in Macromedia Flash MX and Director MX. Darren has been involved in the Internet industry since 1995, when he taught himself HTML and Perl and put his design background to use in a new medium. Before joining Fluid, Darren worked as a contractor on a number of Flash based projects for Charles Schwab, Acumen Sciences and Blue Shield.

Alan Lewis Technical Evangelist, eBay Developers Program, eBay

Alan Lewis is a technical evangelist with the eBay Developers Program and has been at eBay since 2004. He works with third parties who want to use the eBay Web Services platform to develop applications that help users sell, search, and buy on eBay. Before joining eBay he worked for a number of years as a technical writer and product manager at Blaze Software, where he helped build the market leading enterprise business rules management product.
Alan has a BA in philosophy from University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a self-taught Java and C# coder. Alan blogs at alanlewis.typepad.com.

Aber Whitcomb Chief Technical Officer, MySpace

Aber Whitcomb is CTO and a co-founder of MySpace where he is responsible for the engineering and technical operations groups of the world's most successful social networking sites. In the nearly three years since its founding, Aber has overseen the technologies that have enabled MySpace to grow from 0 to over 50 million users, and to be ranked the 2nd most trafficked site by comScore. Aber is a recognized expert in large scale computing, networking and storage and frequently speaks about these matters.

Rob Howard CEO,Telligent

Rob is a former employee of the Microsoft corporation (1998 – 2004) where he contributed to ASP.NET and served as a Technical Evangelist during the late 90s helping dot-coms adopt Microsoft’s web platform. He is a frequent presenter at software developer conferences such as Microsoft’s PDC and TechEd. He is also the author of several books on software development. Rob has a BBA from Baylor University and is a Dallas, TX Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft ASP.NET MVP, and an ASPInsider

• Email him at rhoward@telligent.com.

Cordell Ratzlaff Creative Director,frog design

Cordell is a Creative Director at frog design, where he leads design engagements for frog¹s Digital Media practice. He has over eighteen years experience designing and delivering successful products across a wide range of software, hardware, and Web applications.
Cordell has designed innovative products for Apple, Microsoft, Disney, Hewlett-Packard, NASA, Cingular, American Express, and DaimlerChrysler. Prior to joining frog, Cordell held a variety of design and management positions during a nine-year career at Apple Computer. As the manager of Apple¹s Human Interface Group, he directed the human interface strategy and design for Mac OS 8 through Mac OS X.

David Berlind Executive Editor, ZDNet

David Berlind is the executive editor of ZDNet. David holds a BBA in Computer Information Systems. Prior to becoming a tech journalist in 1991, David was an IT manager that was responsible for the design and deployment of custom developed software, local and wide area networks, PC-Mainframe connectivity, corporate technology standard-setting and end-user training programs. Since then, David has served as the Director of PC Week Labs (now eWeek), editor-in-chief at Windows Sources, editorial director at Computer Shopper and general manager at Ziff-Davis.
David has appeared on CNN, CNBC, PBS (the Charlie Rose Show), BBC Television, CBS Radio, NPR and has been quoted many newspapers including the New York Times, USA Today, Newsday, and the Chicago Tribune.

Kelly Goto Principal,gotomedia

As a design ethnographer, Kelly Goto is dedicated to understanding how real people integrate products and services into their daily lives. Goto is principal of gotomedia, inc., a global leader in research-driven, people-friendly interface design for web, mobile and product solutions for clients including Seiko Epson Japan, MobiTV, Adobe, NetIQ, WebEx and Macromedia. Her book, Web Redesign 2.0: Workflow That Works, is a standard for user-centered design principles. Goto is also the editor of gotomobile.com, a leading online publication on mobile user experience and serves on the national board of the AIGA Center for Brand Experience.

Roger Black

Roger Black is a media designer who has worked on newspapers, magazines and web sites around the world. Currently he is leading the redesign of Bloomberg.com in New York.
At the same time, Roger is part of the team starting up a high-end car magazine/web site in London; he is spear-heading the re-launch of Key West magazine; and he's rethinking the classified business of a major Western U.S. daily, both on-line and off-line.
In 2004 he completed a redesign of the Houston Chronicle, and collaborated on its revamped web site, chron.com. He designed and help launch the Spanish-language daily, Rumbo. In 2005 Roger lead redesigns of Nintendo Power, MIT's Technology Review and Poz magazines.
Black is a founding partner in Danilo Black S.A. in Monterrey, Mexico, and the Font Bureau. Previously he served as chief art director of Newsweek, The New York Times, New York magazine and Rolling Stone.

Nelan Schwartz Technology Manager, frog

As Technology Manager for frog's Austin studio, Nelan mentors and manages the technology team, providing technical leadership on key projects. Nelan's team delivers innovative, high-quality solutions, from analysis and prototyping to production-ready software implementation, using a wide array of tools including web standards technologies, ASP.NET, Java and JSP, PHP, Flash, WPF (Avalon), and Qt.
Since joining frog in 2000, Nelan has served as technical lead on projects for such high-profile clients as Blockbuster, Vodafone, T-Mobile, GE, HP, and Microsoft. The projects have ranged from web-based enterprise applications and online storefronts to portals and corporate intranets.
Nelan is a Sun Certified Java Developer and Microsoft Certified Professional and holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, with a major in Zoology.

Adam Trachtenberg Senior Manager of Platform Evangelism, eBay

Adam Trachtenberg is the Senior Manager of Platform Evangelism at eBay, where he preaches the gospel of the eBay platform to developers and businessmen around the globe. Before eBay, Trachtenberg co-founded and served as Vice President for Development at two companies, Student.Com and TVGrid.Com. At both firms, he led the front- and middle-end web site design and development. Trachtenberg began using PHP in 1997, and is the author of Upgrading to PHP 5 and coauthor of PHP Cookbook, both published by O'Reilly Media. He lives in San Francisco, California, and has a B.A. and M.B.A. from Columbia University.

Carl Sobeski Software Tech Lead, Yahoo!

Carl Sobeski is a Software Tech Lead on the Music Client team at Yahoo! Carl specializes in user interface development and is responsible for investigating new technologies that can be utilized to deliver Yahoo! music content. Carl contributed to the development of the Yahoo! Music Engine and also worked at Musicmatch as one of the original developers and designers of the Musicmatch Jukebox.

Paul Trevithick SocialPhysics.org

In the last few years my work has focused on creating open source infrastructure for the "social web." A user-centered networking layer that gives people more control over their digital identities across a wide variety of computer-mediated contexts (e.g. email, IM, e-commerce, shared spaces, and enterprise directories). As part of SocialPhysics.org, I'm the architect of Higgins, a user-centric trust framework hosted at Eclipse.org (http://eclipse.org/higgins) and co-creator with Phil Windley and others of the Identity Gang (http://identitygang.org).

Nathan Moody Director of Creative Services, Fluid

Nathan Moody is the award-winning Director of Creative Services at Fluid, Inc. He has worked in nearly every digital creative discipline, media delivery medium, and major desktop technology for 15 years.
At Fluid, Nathan oversees all creative project output, from conceptual design to final on-screen pixels. He has contributed creative direction, information architecture, interaction design, and visual design for such clients as Adobe, Charles Schwab, Design Within Reach, General Electric, Microsoft, The North Face, Timberland, and Reebok.
Nathan is also published book and magazine author on the topics of digital imaging, broadcast design, and special effects. He also produces electronic music under a variety of pseudonyms and is an avid photographer.

Paul Sidlo Founder, CEO and Senior Creative Director, REZN8

Paul Sidlo is widely-recognized as one of the pioneers in the field of computer graphics and 3-D animation and has been a producer, director and designer for over twenty years. His work has earned him numerous awards, including nine Emmys. He brings to both REZN8 a significant technical & creative expertise that has been developed over a long period of time from the early emergence of computer graphics to the advanced technologies in that field today.
The company was founded in 1987 and is a recognized world-leader in conceptualizing, designing and producing high-end graphics, multi-media branding and graphic image systems that are employed to build and promote a brand by creating lasting relationships between the message and the viewer.
Mr. Sidlo has built a broad client base across a variety of media industries for REZN8 ranging from design of the graphic user interface for XBOX, major broadcast networks like ABC, CBS, CNN, ESPN, FOX and SciFi, to specialty WPF applications for Microsoft Vista. He has developed for the company a unique and recognized specialty in 3D real-time graphical user interface design and development.

Johannes Ernst CEO,NetMesh Inc.

Johannes Ernst is the CEO of NetMesh Inc., which develops a Web 2.0 software platform including a decentralized identity layer. He's one of the originators of LID(tm) -- Light-Weight Identity(tm) -- and also, together with Six Apart, of Yadis(tm), the open-source interoperability layer for URL-based digital identity.
For more information: LID: http://lid.netmesh.org/ , Yadis: http://yadis.org/ , NetMesh: http://netmesh.us/ and his blog, which is also his LID: http://netmesh.info/jernst

Andy Clarke Creative Director, Stuff and Nonsense

Andy Clarke is an internationally sought-after speaker, designer and consultant. He is creative director of Stuff and Nonsense ( http://www.malarkey.co.uk ), passionate about design and web standards. He regularly trains designers and developers in the creative applications of Web Standards and writes about aspects of design and popular culture on his personal web site, And All That Malarkey.

Lynda Weinman

Lynda Weinman is the author of numerous bestselling books, including the first book on web design, originally published in 1995: Designing Web Graphics. She is the founder of lynda.com, a leader in software training and instructional books for creative professionals. Lynda has taught digital arts at numerous seminars and colleges, including Art Center College of Design, UCLA, San Francisco State University Multimedia Studies Program and American Film Institute. Her web site,www.lynda.com, services tens of thousands of subscribers with the Online Training Library, a 24/7 web resource with over 11,000 training movies on web design and other digital design subjects.

Don Synstelien Creative Director,Fox Interactive Media

Don is the Creative Director for Fox Interactive Media’s R&D center in Atlanta, Ga, where he spends his days guiding a crack team of thinkers in challenging the status quo and inventing new ways to empower the user to interact with the world of information.
Past clients include The Weather Channel, DirecTV, 3M, WSI, TNT, Earthlink and Audi among others. His personal and professional work has won numerous awards across the advertising and design industries. He has been a contributing author of several books and published in numerous trade journals on the topics of usability and design. Find out more about don at www.synstelien.com

Jesse Edwards Sr. Developer,Fox Interactive Media

Jesse Edwards is currently Sr. Developer for the R&D arm of Fox Interactive Media (FIM). A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Jesse holds a BFA in web and multi-media design and has been a strong proponent of the use of "open source" platforms throughout his development career.
Jesse utilizes his creativity to push technologies beyond their traditional use as you can see in his desktop solutions work developed for clients such as FoxSports, DirectTV, WSI and The Weather Channel, to name a few.
Jesse’s understanding of design and information architecture assists him daily in creating a harmony between design and functionality.

Dr. Stefan Brands President,Credentica.com

Dr. Stefan Brands has been active in user-centric identity management since 1992. He is the president of www.credentica.com, a former adviser to www.privcom.gc.ca, and an Adjunct Professor at crypto.cs.mcgill.ca. In the latter role he co-supervises graduate students conducting research on digital identity and privacy. Stefan is a principal member of two R&D consortia that examine identity and privacy issues, www.anonequity.org and www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.be/adapid. He is the author of www.credentica.com/the_mit_pressbook.php and maintains a blog on digital identity at www.idcorner.org.

Marc Canter Founder and CEO,Broadband Mechanics

Marc Canter is one of the most recognized people in the sphere of open standards, social networks and blogging, and he has been interviewed and quoted on the subject matter in numerous publications. Marc is a frequent speaker and panelist at conferences such as Web 2.0, SuperNova, Gnomedex, AlwaysOn Innovation, SXSW and many others. Marc is also a contributer to many open standards efforts and is champion for end-user controlled digital identities and content - being a co-founder of the Identity Gang.
Over the years Marc has also traveled all over the world, consulting to global corporations (AOL, EMI, PCCW, Reuters, T-W, Sony, JVC, Fujitsu, Telecom Italia, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Kalieda Labs and many others) and has written on the multimedia industry and burgeoning world of micro-content publishing and social networking.
He is the founder and CEO of Broadband Mechanics, a digital lifestyle aggregator (DLA) company. Broadband Mechanics builds new kinds of tool and environments which enable everyday people to create and maintain new kinds of online communities. Additionally, DLAs allow people to integrate, aggregate and provide appropriate levels of customization to media, communication and personal publishing.

Molly E. Holzschlag

Molly E. Holzschlag is a well-known Web standards advocate, instructor, and author. Among her thirty-plus books is the recent The Zen of CSS Design, co-authored with Dave Shea. The book artfully showcases the most progressive csszengarden.com designs. Molly is an invited expert to the GEO and HTML working groups at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is the Group Lead member of the Web Standards Project (WaSP). A popular and colorful individual, you can catch up with Molly¹s blog at, where else? http://molly.com/.

Ron Belanger Senior Director, Channel Strategy and Development, Yahoo! Search Marketing

Ron Belanger is the Senior Director of Channel Strategy and Development at Yahoo! Search Marketing and joined the company in September 2005. His role is to serve as an expert resource for clients and agencies looking to maximize the efficiency of their performance marketing infrastructure, and effectively incorporate search marketing into their overall marketing mix.
Prior to joining Yahoo! Search Marketing, Ron served as Vice President of Search and Affiliate Marketing for Carat Interactive, an interactive advertising agency. While at Carat, he developed marketing strategies for more than twenty top-tier clients, including Hyatt Hotels, America Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, Radio Shack, Hyundai and Kodak. Ron also co-authored the industry’s premier course on Search Marketing in conjunction with iMedia Learning. Prior to Carat, he served in various positions for Inceptor, FairMarket, and HSRI.
Ron received his BA from Clark University and is currently a candidate for an MBA from McCallum Graduate School of Business, Bentley College.

Robert Reinhardt VP of the Multimedia Platforms Group, Schematic

Robert Reinhardt, VP of the Multimedia Platforms Group for Schematic is internationally regarded as an expert on multimedia application development, particularly in Macromedia Flash. Robert is the lead author of the Flash Bible and Flash ActionScript Bible series (Wiley), as well as Macromedia MX: Building Rich Internet Applications (Macromedia Press). He has developed multimedia courses for educational facilities in Canada and the United States, and is a Macromedia certified instructor for Flash courses at Portland State University. Robert has been a regular featured speaker at the FlashForward, FITC, and SIGGRAPH conferences. Robert is also a partner and writer at Community MX.

Build Your Own Search Engine Presenter: Jeff Barr, Web Services Evangelist, Amazon Web Services

Amazon subsidiary Alexa.com is leveling the search playing field. For the first time developers looking to build the next "big thing" in search or an ultra custom search engine have access to the 300 terabytes of Alexa crawl data, along with the utilities to search, process, and publish their own custom subset of the data — all at a reasonable price. Developers no longer need a million dollar budget, or must reinvent the wheel designing search algorithms to be able to build their own search engines, or create customized Web services based on data from the Alexa crawl. As a full-service Web analysis and Web service publication platform, the Alexa Web Search Platform should allow any user with an Internet connection to access Web content on large scales and provide new services or applications to the online community. Jeff Barr will provide an overview of the Alexa API and show developers and designers how they can get on the new, leveled search playing field.
Audience: Business Decision Maker, Developer

Powering eCommerce with PayPal

The Commerce Starter Kit for ASP.NET 2.0 is a free, open source application built from the ground up on ASP.NET 2.0. It includes a storefront, shopping cart, order management system and many other features required to sell products online. It comes pre-integrated with PayPal Pro and can be extended to support other payment systems as well. In this presentation, Rob Conery, the creator of the Commerce Starter Kit, will give an overview of the project and show you how you can extend it to meet your specific needs using the Data Provider Model available in ASP.NET 2.0.
Audience: Developer

Artificial Artificial Intelligence: Using Amazon Mechanical Turk and .NET To Create New Breed of Web App Presenter: Jeff Barr, Web Services Evangelist, Amazon Web Services

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a new Web service that allows .NET software developers to incorporate the power of human-decision-making into their automated software systems. Units of work (known as HITs or Human Intelligence Tasks), qualifications necessary for workers to accept the work, and payment information for completing the work are encapsulated and uploaded to www.mturk.com where they become available to workers. After the work for a particular HIT has been done, the requesting developer or organization approves the results, thereby releasing payment to the worker. Organizations with work to be done use a complete set of Web services (available in REST and SOAP form) to create, monitor, and approve HITs, along with a Requester Tool Kit and a GUI Question Builder. Jeff Barr, from the Amazon Web Services developer relations team, reviews the concepts, structure, and workflow of Amazon Mechanical Turk, presents an overview of the Requester Toolkit and works through a complete sample application to illustrate how to implement each part of the Mechanical Turk workflow.
Audience: Business Decision Maker, Developer

Using Web Services in your Gadget/Widget Presenter: Alan Lewis, Technical Evangelist, eBay Developers Program

Gadget/Widget platforms, such as Live.com, have a natural integration with sites, such as eBay, using Web services. Gadgets are great for monitoring the status of ever-changing data; the eBay marketplace is always in flux. However, there are unique challenges you will need to overcome in order to use Web services in your gadget, such as security constraints, authentication, data overload, and more. This session discusses how to use Web services within Live.com and similar platforms, and will dive in to some real-world examples of gadgets/widgets that use third-party Web services.
Audience: Developer

Building a Real World WPF Application: The North Face In-Store Explorer

Fluid, a pioneer in online retail customer experience worked with The North Face, a premiere outdoor products manufacturer, to develop a retail kiosk using the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) platform (formerly code-named "Avalon"). This session will walk through how the application was built, discussing design decisions and performance optimizing behaviors that were used. The session will cover how the architecture of the application model as a whole was designed. It will also delve into the creation of the video carousel. The session will be delivered by Darren David, Fluid's lead engineer on the project.
Audience: Developer