Our Lovely Speakers

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  Naomi Atkinson

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  @naomisusi visit website

  Naomi Atkinson is a designer and illustrator who runs her own studio based in Newcastle upon Tyne. An avid photographer, gallery-goer, tea and sketch-book addict, Naomi is passionate… about creating beautiful experiences for the web and mobile.

  Questions that make you squirm

  We all get them. Those awkward questions asked by clients that make us wriggle uncomfortably, fidget uncontrollably, or make us want to hang up the phone and blame it on the unexpected tropical storm in the middle… of winter.

  Simply the mention of the word “fold”, “Can you give us three routes?” or that old chestnut “How long will it take?” is enough to send us all into fits.

  We’d like to share our thoughts and suggestions for answering these questions and others. Being prepared and having solid, confident replies (based on research, testing or known facts) can often be the solution to a project’s success and how much fun you — and your clients — have during it.

  Naomi & Dan will be talking together!

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  Seb Lee-Delisle

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  @seb_ly visit website

  Seb 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 also co-hosts the Creative Coding Podcast.

  CreativeJS - beauty in the browser

  Now that Canvas and SVG are available natively in all major browsers, JavaScript developers have much to learn about creative visual programming.

  From particle systems to blending effects, optimised animations, gaming and good old maths creativity, Seb Lee-Delisle has more than a trick or two to share with us. If you’re interested in bringing a little visceral beauty to your websites, apps and games, then this is the session for you.

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  Relly Annett-Baker

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  @rellyab visit website

  Relly Annett-Baker lives in the South of the UK with her husband and Supernice Studio business partner, Paul Annett, and their two small sons. As a result, she thrives on the country air and… can be guaranteed to stand on Lego at least once a day. Her principle employment is as live-in domestic staff for two cats but when not being purred into submission she is a content strategist and writer, runs dedicated workshops in-house with companies big and small and continues to procrastinate over the draft of her Five Simple Steps book Content Creation for the Web due out in 2012. She’ll get right back to it just after she’s had another cup of tea and checked her RSS feed.

  Deadly lasers and you

  In which Relly tells a cautionary tale or two about the perils of ignoring web content when creating for the web. Will include references to anime murderous robots, Power Rangers, Nyan cat, Maru and slash fiction…
  . Oh, and content strategy too.

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  Bruce Lawson

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  @brucel visit website

  Bruce leverages synergies for Opera. He co-authored Introducing HTML5, is co-authoring a book on mobile-friendly sites and plays mean punk rhythm guitar.

  He’s @brucel on Twitter, or “Mr Snugglebotty” face to face.

  How to destroy the Web

  The future of the Web is a dangerous Babylon: people talking to each other to do business, organise revolutions, express their feelings, meet their friends, transcend their disabilities and economically empower… themselves. Obviously, this must be stopped. Bruce will show you his top tips and tricks that you can employ to destroy the web

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  Dan Rubin

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  @danrubin visit website

  Dan Rubin is a designer, singer, photographer, barbershop harmony aficionado, philosopher, and aspiring polymath. He was born in Miami Beach, FL and still makes his home in the… Sunshine State when not traveling the globe.

  Questions that make you squirm

  We all get them. Those awkward questions asked by clients that make us wriggle uncomfortably, fidget uncontrollably, or make us want to hang up the phone and blame it on the unexpected tropical storm in the middle… of winter.

  Simply the mention of the word “fold”, “Can you give us three routes?” or that old chestnut “How long will it take?” is enough to send us all into fits.

  We’d like to share our thoughts and suggestions for answering these questions and others. Being prepared and having solid, confident replies (based on research, testing or known facts) can often be the solution to a project’s success and how much fun you — and your clients — have during it.

  Dan & Naomi will be talking together!

• 

  Chris Mills

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  @chrisdavidmills visit website

  Chris is a web technologist, open standards evangelist and education agitator, currently working at Opera Software in the developer relations team.

  He spends most of his time writing articles about web standards for dev.opera.com and other publications (such as .net mag and A List Apart), giving talks at universities and industry conferences, and lobbying universities to improve their web education courses.

  He believes that education is the answer to everything, but in particular he is passionate about using education to improve the overall content quality, accessibility, usability and future-viability of the Web.

  He is the creator of the Opera Web standards curriculum, contributor to the WaSP InterACT project, and coauthor of InterACT with web standards: A Holistic Approach to Web Design.

  In August 2011, he also accepted the position of co-chair of the newly-formed Web Education Community Group.

  Outside work he is a heavy metal drummer, proud father of three and lover of good beer.

  Accessibility doesn’t exist

  Accessibility is just a matter of passing the WCAG conformance criteria, or bolting on an accessibility widget to your existing site. But it is costly. Right? Spare me! Accessibility is a very misunderstood discipline.

  In this talk, Chris Mills will share his opinions on the subject including sensible approaches to testing, using conformance criteria and online tools, building accessibility around cost and environment limitations, and good old common sense.

  He will also argue that real accessibility isn’t just about people with disabilities, and that accessibility – as a separate discipline – shouldn’t in fact exist at all.

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  Martin Beeby

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  @thebeebs visit website

  Martin is a developer who speaks and writes about the web on behalf of Microsoft. He is a contributor to ubelly.com the Official Unofficial Microsoft blog and dreams in c#, JavaScript and… HTML.

  He loves trying to push the boundaries of code, making technology do things that its inventors never intended.

  The Web As It Should Be

  With the advent of CSS3 and the ever-greater maturity of HTML5, it’s an exciting time for the Web. The possibilities for creating truly engaging – even addictive – Web and business applications appear limitless…
  . And, with the release of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft finally came in from the cold after many years in the world wide wilderness.

  As Internet Explorer moves towards full support of standards-based HTML5 and CSS3, Martin Beeby will demonstrate how these key technologies will be used to build and deliver the applications of tomorrow, engage end-users like never before, and generate even greater loyalty to Web-sites.

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  Darren Waddell

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  @fakedarren visit website

  A senior C# developer at Abacus and a Core developer for the MooTools JavaScript framework. He converts caffeine into computer code and is obsessed with accessibility & standards.

  Contributing to Open Source

  Why you should, and how you can! Open Source software is an important part of the web. Be it a JavaScript framework, WordPress, Firefox, PHP, MySQL… there is a good chance you use Open Source on almost…
  every single project.

  Giving something back to the web and open-source is easier than you think. In his talk, Darren will tell you why you should, and how you can.

  Darren is talking on behalf of one of our main sponsors, Abacus e-Media.

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  Syd Lawrence

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  @sydlawrence visit website

  Syd Lawrence is a social web guru, using HTML6, CSS4, AJAZ, using twitbook and facedIn. Expert with paint, frontpage and VBScript.

  In the real world he is a freelance developer, university lecturer and hacker. Often found playing with new APIs, tools and languages.

  Hacking the web bit by bit

  Hacking, not cracking. The internet is a wonderful place. A network of computers. Information at your fingertips. Learn how to use some of this information in projects for yourself or for your clients.

  Some of this data is easily available and within your reach. Learn the kind of things you can do with it and how it is useful in the real world.

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  Mike Kus

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  @mikekus visit website

  Mike is a Graphic/Web Designer & Illustrator based in Bath, UK and designs for clients worldwide.

  10 thing I’ve learned

  I’ve been designing for print for fifteen years, designing for the web for a relatively short four years and running a web design business for only 6 months. I’ve learnt a lot along the way and some of it is worth sharing.

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