Jake spent 4 years working at the BBC writing low level JavaScript that catered for their strict accessibility and browser support requirements. He authored and maintained the corporation’s Standards and Guidelines on JavaScript, and sat on their working groups for accessibility, markup and download performance.

After the BBC, Jake reacquired a love of CSS and HTML, and gained a love of Django at creative agency theTeam, building sites and apps for clients such as eBay, Sony, Canonical, and released SpriteCow, which uses modern clientside technologies to process spritesheets. Jake has recently moved to Lanyrd to do more frontendery things.

Outside of the web, Jake is a keen photographer and motorsport fan.

Naomi is a designer and illustrator passionate about creating beautiful, intuitive user experiences for the web and mobile. Active in the design industry for almost a decade, she has held senior positions at three leading brand, web, and advertising agencies in London with world renowned clients such as Audi, British Telecom, Macmillan Cancer Support and Aviva.

She's a regular contributor to .net magazine and been nominated as Designer of the Year in this year’s awards. An avid photographer and gallery-goer, Naomi is co-founder of web animation startup Animatable, runs her own design studio in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

Heiko Behrens is a programmer, author, and public speaker with more than a decade of commercial software development, technical writing, and on-stage presentation experience. As an active committer at Eclipse and as an involved participant in numerous other open source projects, he has in-depth experience in a broad range of technologies. His startup BeamApp, still in stealth mode, is focussed on mobile application development, both native cross-platform and web-based.

Tomas Caspers' main asset is that he always thinks web projects through to the end. Since 1995 he has been working as a consultant for major corporations, NGOs, and government authorities. He conceptualizes, designs, and creates web­sites, writes articles and tutorials, gives talks, and loves to share his knowledge from numerous successful projects through lectures, conference sessions and workshops. Even though he is widely regarded as a leading accessibility expert, he refuses to carry the job title because, in his thinking, accessibility should be a natural component of every web project right from the start.

Dan Rubin is a published author, teacher and practitioner of user interface design and web standards.

When he isn't busy Twittering, his work, writings, and various side projects can be explored in and around the vicinity of Sidebar Creative and his personal site, Superfluous Banter.

Hello, I’m Jon. Welcome to my bio. Sorry, but there is no third person, just you and me. My real name is Jon Tan, but the Web calls me @jontangerine. I’m a designer. I co-founded Fontdeck. I’m part of Analog, a co-operative of friends working on a new app called Mapalong, an event called Brooklyn Beta, and a co-working studio called Mild Bunch HQ. I like co-doing things, because it’s more fun to work on good things with good people. My addiction to web typography has led me into co-writing a book about it. I hope the International Society of Typographic Designers doesn’t strip me of my membership afterwards. Occasionally, I write for publications like 8 Faces, and The Manual, and try to help organisations like the BBC. Most of all, I try to avoid ignominious defeat when wrestling with my two young sons.

Simon is a UK-based web designer with over a decade of experience at the sharp end. Simon co-founded the successful Erskine Design which he ran for 4 years before returning to freelancing. He's written a few books and speaks about design at events around the world. Simon also organises the New Adventures events, is working on a new book, and a few ambitious top-secret projects.

Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. Originally from Minsk, Belarus, he studied computer science and mathematics in Germany where he has discovered his passion for typography, writing and design. After working as a freelancing designer and developer for 6 years, he co-founded Smashing Magazine, one of the largest online magazines dedicated to Web design and development. Vitaly is writer, co-author and editor of both Smashing Books. He is now working as the editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine in the lovely city of Germany, Freiburg.

Aaron Gustafson is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Easy! Designs, a web development consultancy. He is Group Manager of the Web Standards Project (WaSP) where he has spearheaded both Web Standards Sherpa and a small business outreach effort.

He wrote the JavaScript library eCSStender, serves as Technical Editor for A List Apart, is a contributing writer for .net Magazine, and has filled a small library with his technical writing and editing credits. His latest book is Adaptive Web Design: Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement.

Seb Lee-Delisle is an internationally recognised creative coder specialising in large scale installations. Whether building digital interactive fireworks displays or glow-stick voting systems, his work uses technology to bring people together in fun and exciting ways. He also produces creative visual effects for websites, games and apps in many programming languages and platforms.

He loves sharing the creativity of code with artists and programmers alike using physics, motion detection, 3D and particle systems. His work has pushed the boundaries of what is possible both on and off the web, and won two BAFTAs with Plug-in Media, the agency he co-founded in 2004.

A highly 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.

A little over six years ago graphic designer Yves Peters started reviewing type in his Bald Condensed column on Typographer.org. In August 2008 he put his graphic design career on the back burner, freeing him to concentrate on his writing and related activities in the digital type business. Yves currently edits The FontFeed, a daily dispatch of recommended fonts, typography techniques, and inspirational examples of digital type at work in the real world; and Unzipped, his blog on the FontShop BeNeLux home page. Yves also is an accomplished drummer with British/American/Belgian pop/rock bands Troubleman and Rosa Luxe*. His talent for being able to identify most typefaces on sight is utterly useless in daily life.

Des Traynor is the UX Lead, and COO at Intercom, a CRM and messaging tool for web application owners. Prior to Intercom, he worked as a UX consultant, designing dashboards & data visualisations for hundreds of clients during his time with Contrast.

He writes regularly on the Intercom blog about design, the business of software, and start-ups. Prior to that he wrote on the popular Contrast blog. He speaks regularly at international conferences on topics including product strategies for start-ups, data driven design, and user experience design.

Steph is a user experience strategist who has worn many hats, including a product lead for a startup and a studio director at a digital agency where she led a multi-disciplinary team. Currently the Editor-in-Chief for Web Standards Sherpa, she is known for her grassroots contributions to best web practices.

Her expertise lies in the strong ability to mature ideas and make them real. Well-travelled and living on her fourth island, she speaks several flavours of English, a few languages, and possesses an indecipherable accent.

Chris Heilmann has dedicated a lot of his time making the web better. Originally coming from a radio journalism background, he built his first web site from scratch around 1997 and spent the following years working on lots of large, international web sites, spent a few years in Yahoo building products and explaining and training people and is now at Mozilla. Chris wrote and contributed to four books on web development and wrote many articles and hundreds of blog posts for Ajaxian, Smashingmagazine, Yahoo, Mozilla, ScriptJunkie and many more.

Steph Hay is a usability-focused copywriter and information architect who, in 2010, took the plunge into full-time freelance so she could work independently with awesome clients and not have to wear dress shoes anymore. Now, as co-founder of FastCustomer, she's trying to save the entire world from never having to wait on hold again for customer service. Steph is based near Washington, DC, and is super excited to be visiting Germany for the first time … and sampling its finest beers.