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Members & Contact

Steering Committee   Co-Founders

Steering Committee

Jeffrey Zeldman
G R O U P   L E A D E R
[email protected]
212-725-0847

Zeldman co-founded the WaSP with George Olsen and Glenn Davis, and follows Olsen as group leader. Zeldman is the creative director and publisher of A List Apart, a weekly magazine "for people who make websites;" the author of Taking Your Talent to the Web (New Riders: May 2001), a book for professional designers; the creator of Jeffrey Zeldman Presents, a well-known personal site; and the founder of Happy Cog, a web design consultancy. He is a featured columnist for Adobe Online, PDN-Pix Magazine, and Crain's Creativity, and an irregular contributor to Macworld.

Tim Bray, Independent Writer and Programmer (Textuality), Vancouver, Canada
X M L

Tim Bray worked for DEC and GTE before joining the New Oxford English Dictionary Project in 1987. He co-founded Open Text in 1989, built one of the first Web search engines in 1995, and since 1996 has served (as invited expert) of several XML-related W3C Working Groups. He co-edited the XML 1.0, Namespaces in XML, and Canonical XML recommendations.

Steve Champeon, Senior Technical Consultant and Vice-President, hesketh.com/inc., Raleigh, NC
S Y S T E M S   I S S U E S,   D O M   S C R I P T I N G   X M L

Steven Champeon has over eight years of Internet-related computing and management experience, having worked with companies such as IBM, Odigo, Oxford University Press, Nerve, Bigelow Tea, and more to develop and implement their Web presences. He is now the Vice President of hesketh.com/inc., a Raleigh, NC-based Web design and development services company.
        Steven is an active participant in and speaker at trade conferences, and contributes to the online community through his management of and participation in several online forums including Webdesign-l, a mailing list community targeting Web design professionals, and the Inetworkers mailing list, targeting Web professionals in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina.
        The author of Building Dynamic HTML GUIs, published by IDG, Steven has also written on Web-related topics for Developer.com, Stating the Obvious, High Five, and A List Apart; has worked as a development editor for Macmillan/Hayden; and provided technical editing for O'Reilly and Associates, MIS:Press, and IDG.

B.K. DeLong, Research Lead, ZOT Group
S Y S T E M S   I S S U E S,   A C C E S S I B I L I T Y

B.K. Delong joined ZOT Group in August 1999 as Research Lead, with responsibility for corporate communications, media relations, event management, strategic partnerships and standards strategy.
        DeLong has over five years' experience with Web Architecture and Development. Prior to joining ZOT Group, he worked as a consultant on Web Accessibility for the Center for Applied Special Technology, focusing his efforts on the Bobby accessibility analysis engine. He has also worked as a Web consultant for various organizations, including the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), WebJammer Productions, UMass Amherst Office of Public Affairs and the Corporation for Public Technology.

Todd Fahrner, Design Technologist, Collabnet, San Francisco
C S S

Fahrner has labored nonstop in the production-editorial trenches of new media publishing since 1993, specializing in typographical design support. An invited expert to working groups of the W3C, he has contributed to the development of the Cascading Style Sheets Level 1 and 2 specifications, is the designer of the W3C Core Styles, a member of the Web Design Group, and author of various standards-related rantings at Agitprop.

Sally Khudairi, CEO, ZOT Group
S T A N D A R D S   P R O C E S S E S,   C O M M U N I C A T I O N S

Khudairi leads ZOT Group, a Web strategy consultancy focusing on standards, networking and communications. Active in the Web since 1993, she successfully directed and implemented communications strategies for some of the industry's best known technologies, including XML, HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0, PICS, HTTP/1.1, and Cascading Style Sheets.
        Before founding ZOT Inc., Khudairi was Solutions Architect at Cambridge Technology Partners's Interactive Solutions Group, and Head of Communications at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Tom Negrino
T O O L S

Tom Negrino is a book author and a contributing editor for Macworld magazine, focusing on Web tools. His latest books are Quicken 2000 for Windows: Visual Quickstart Guide and Quicken 2000 for Macintosh: Visual Quickstart Guide (Peachpit Press). He also wrote Microsoft Office 98 for Macs for Dummies, and co-authored the best-selling JavaScript: Visual Quickstart Guide, 3rd Edition (with Dori Smith).
        He is a frequent speaker at Macworld Expo, Thunder Lizard's conferences, and other computer trade shows, and is also a freelance computer consultant. Tom served on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Macintosh Group from 1985 through 1999, ending his term as the group's President. He now resides in Northern California's wine country.

Dori Smith, Author, dori.com
E C M A S C R I P T,   J A V A S C R I P T   C R O S S - P L A T F O R M   ISSUES
(707) 473-0398

Dori Smith is co-author of the best-selling JavaScript for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide, 3rd Edition and the author of Java for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide, both from Peachpit Press. She has also contributed to numerous computer industry magazines.
        In addition to writing, she has been programming for over twenty years, with degrees from UC Irvine and UC San Diego, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. She is also Editor and ListMom for the Wise Women's Web organization.

Michael Sweeney
S Y S T E M S   I S S U E S

Michael Sweeney's checkered past includes writing, graphic design, marketing, and technology, all of which have led inexorably to his current passion for evangelizing the Internet as a communications medium. He has been involved with Web page development and design for over five years.
        He is currently occupied primarily with applying Web technologies as a bridge between the originators of information and their audiences. His tenure as former Web Administrator for Project Cool served to heighten and confirm his belief that compliance with open standards can only improve communications, and non-compliance can only be a barrier.  

Jeffrey Veen
T O O L S

Jeffrey Veen is an internationally sought-after speaker, author and consultant. He is a founding partner of Adaptive Path, a user experience consultancy focusing on the impact of design on business.
        Previously, Jeffrey served as the Executive Interface Director for Wired Digital and Lycos Inc., where he managed the look and feel of HotWired, the HotBot search engine, Lycos.com and others. In addition to lecturing and writing on Web design and development, Jeffrey has been active with the World Wide Web Consortium's CSS Editorial Review Board as an invited expert on electronic publishing. He is also a columnist for Webmonkey, the author of the acclaimed books The Art & Science of Web Design and HotWired Style: Principles for Building Smart Web Sites. In 1998, Jeffrey was named by CNet as one of the "First Annual Web Innovators."
        Jeffrey previously worked as the managing editor and creative director of South Coast Community Newspapers, and has been active in the Internet community since 1987. He is a graduate of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and lives in San Francisco with his wife, Leslie.
 

Illustrious Co-Founders

George Olsen, Web Architect, How2HQ.com, Los Angeles
P R O J E C T   L E A D E R 1998-1999

Olsen helps lead Web development efforts at How2HQ.com, a one-stop "headquarters for living" destination Web site. Previously Olsen was Design Director/Web Architect at 2-Lane Media, one of the premiere agencies in the burgeoning field of Interactive Communications.
        2-Lane Media has earned nearly 50 major industry awards, including a CLIO and several New Media Invision awards. Its clients include Nestle, Transamerica Corp., Knowledge Adventure (site under development), and several Hollywood studios. The "Toy Story" site, developed by 2-Lane Media in 1995, featured one of the Web's first online Shockwave games.
        Olsen also teaches Web design classes at UCLA Extension, writes about Web development issues for London-based "Web Update," and has spoken at various conferences, such as the 1998 Internet Animation Pow Wow.

Glenn Davis, former Chief Technology Officer of Project Cool, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
C O - F O U N D E R 1998-2000

Glenn Davis and George Olsen co-founded The Web Standards Project. Davis also co-founded Project Cool, Inc., one of the most successful educational resource centers for people learning to build the Web. As one of the Web's pioneers, Glenn has been monitoring and encouraging the growth of the Web since 1993. He is often credited with helping to shape the way the Web looks today and has been cited by Newsweek as one of the most influential people on the Web.
        Co-author of two books on building Websites, Glenn is also the creator of the first search engine aimed at Web developers, devSEARCH, as well as serving as a Website reviewer for Internet World magazine. Glenn believes that anyone can build a great Website if given knowledge, guidance, and inspiration.

Dan Shafer, Editorial Director, Builder Division, CNET Builder.com,
(415) 395-7805 ext. 561 5

Dan Shafer is highly regarded among the Internet community as a Guru of Web development. Shafer has also authored more than 50 books including the best-selling HyperTalk Programming, Smalltalk Programming for Windows, Silicon Visions, JavaScript and Netscape Wizardry, and most recently, NetObjects Fusion 2 Design Guide. Shafer has also authored hundreds of magazine articles about computers and high technology, and is a renowned industry observer and participant.
        He defines the editorial vision of Builder.com's Web site, community discussion area, and semi-annual technical conferences, and writes the bi-weekly Master Builder column and the recently launched Dan Shafer: For What It's Worth email newsletter.
        A high-tech veteran, he's put in twenty years as a writer, documentation analyst, programmer, analyst, designer, and manager for companies such as Intel, Cisco Systems, Apple Computer, and IBM. Prior to joining CNET, Shafer was the founding Webmaster and Director of Technology at the highly acclaimed Salon magazine. He is a sought-after speaker, moderator, and instructor at high-technology conferences including MacWorld Expo, Web Design and Development, Software Development, and numerous AI conferences.

Fellow Founding Members

Lance Arthur, Web Designer

A freelance Web designer, writer and artist, Lance Arthur is the creator of glassdog. He has appeared on panels for the last two years running at both Austin's acclaimed South By Southwest and Miller-Freeman's various touring Web-based circuses. He has not written a book.
        An amalgam of witty tales, Web design tips, and bleeding-edge visual strategies, Glassdog is one of the Web's most-awarded (and most imitated) sites, having won infinet's Cool Design of the Year (1997) and David Siegel's HighFive.
        Lance currently resides in San Francisco, California where he spends in excess of $15,000 per year to live in a shoebox. Consequently, he must charge exhorbitant rates for his time which, for whatever reason, several companies have agreed to. It's the Internet Economy, Stupid!

Roger Black, President, Interactive Bureau

Black is the creative and strategic head of the Interactive Bureau. Long celebrated for his magazine and newspaper design, Black now is at the forefront of Internet design, and personally leads many of Interactive Bureau's design teams. His best-selling book, Websites That Work (Adobe, 1997) has just appeared in Japanese and Portuguese editions.
        As president of Roger Black Incorporated, he has rebuilt some of the world's most prestigious magazines and newspapers over the past twenty-five years. His designs have changed the face of Reader's Digest, Newsweek, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and scores of other publications on four continents.
        Interactive Bureau is the leading partner of Media Design Network, the international design team Black has put together. The group also includes the Font Bureau inBoston, and media design studios in France, Spain, Mexico and Colombia.

Tomas Caspers, Freelance new media developer, Cologne, Germany

Caspers (www.artware.de) is a freelance Graphic Designer who, after a career in photography and print design, now specializes in the design and production of multimedia projects and large-scale Websites for numerous international clients in the automotive, food, chemical and software industry.
        In his work Tomas puts emphasis on usability issues and insists on good and Web-specific typography, which unfortunately can hardly be put to work with the current crop of browsers and their implementation of CSS and other technologies like PNG and Font embedding.
        Tomas also co-authors articles on topics like Web animation, colour issues and typography for industry publications. He thinks that if clients were able to spend more money on content instead of debugging incompatibilities, the Web would be a better place.
        His most fun project so far is Web Design's Next Generation.

Rachel Cox, Web Designer/Site Coordinator, Raleigh, NC
S I T E   C O O R D I N A T O R

With her liberal arts degree clutched in one hand and her copy of HTML: The Definitive Guide  in the other, Rachel works to shepherd Web sites through the rocky terrain between innovation and frugality, keeping a sharp eye out for the pitfalls of lousy standards implementation. She has a background in writing, editing, visual design, and communication, and has been working on Web sites in one capacity or another for the last three years. Rachel tries to confine her more vitriolic rants to her personal site, 3:AM, but makes no guarantees about anything.

Joe Crawford, Web Integrator, Jamison/Gold Interactive, Marina del Rey, CA

Joe Crawford has been working and hacking on the Web since early 1997. For a long while, he worked as a freelancer and contractor doing animation, graphics, html, scripting, and perl. Most recently, he served as Web Integrator for Jamison/Gold Interactive, where he worked on high profile Websites including Namco America, Midway Games, and Energizer Batteries.
        Joe thinks it's about time the Web paid better attention to standards. To this end, and on a complete lark, he joined the WaSP and penned the alpha version of the "Developer Standards Baseline Proposal." It has evolved into a sturdy product and is the WaSP's Mission Statement. He is proud to be involved, even cursorily, with something as worthwhile as the WaSP.

Martin Diekhoff, Web Media Developer & Information Architect, Los Angeles.

Martin Diekhoff, through 20 years of applications programming, writing, and traditional media work, has published works on story structure, programming, and the Web. As an applications designer and engineer, he's developed and deployed software for use around the globe.
        With the WaSP, his contributions have ranged from founding, to technical, to practical strategy issues facing the WaSP and developers in their push for browser standards.
        Martin's unique combination of analytic and artistic sensibilities provides the backdrop for his work and for his dreams of technology as a spiritually rich medium where a vibrant competitive environment allows all who engage it the opportunity to discover value and adventure in materials that they, and others, bring to life.

Chris Kaminski, Creative Director, New York City
Action Committees Volunteer Coordinator

Kaminski studied Visual Communications at Northern Illinois University, Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Northwestern University in 1993. For over two years, he has been building sites for small- to mid-sized businesses across the midwest. While doing software needs analysis for Genoa Business Forms, Inc., he planned and built a highly successful community site that has become the model for several other similar sites currently in development. Chris now works as a Creative Director at apbonline.com.

Brian M. Platz, Director of E-Commerce, Zentropy.

Brian is responsible for the E-Commerce initiatives of some of the largest and most reputable brands in the world. In addition, he is currently writing a book on PHP, the Web scripting language, due out this year by publisher Addison Wesley. Taking a break from his writings, he recently delivered a lecture at Web Design World on XML and Apache. With Jeffrey Zeldman, Brian co-founded the Web design forum A List Apart.

John Shiple, The Springfield Project

Prior to the Springfield Project, John Shiple was the leader of Squishy Designs, an Internet consulting company in Venice, California, specializing in information architecture, collaborative system strategies and advanced user interfaces for Internet-based content.
        John has been at the cutting edge of internet design for a number of years, having spent time at the MIT Media Lab, HotWired, Organic Online, and Construct Internet Design.
        John takes a holistic approach in designing large-scale network-based virtual environments, encouraging simplicity and ease-of-use for all users. A five-part article by Shiple about information design recently appeared in Hot Wired. Among his achievements:
        Information Architect/Interface Design/Usability Consultant - Realtor.com, Westlake Village, CA. Spring 1998.
        Designer/Producer - GeoCities, Santa Monica, CA. Fall 1997. Completely redesigned GeoCities, the fourth largest site on the internet at the time – from backend (information design) to user interface.

Simon St. Laurent
X M L

Simon St. Laurent is a web developer, network administrator, computer book author, and XML troublemaker living in Ithaca, NY. His books include XML:A Primer, XML Elements of Style, Building XML Applications, Cookies, and Sharing Bandwidth. He is a contributing editor to xmlhack and an occasional contributor to XML.com.

Nate Zelnick, Freelance Writer, Boston

Zelnick has been a reporter covering technology (among other things) since 1990. He also writes the bi-weekly columns "Under Development" for Internet World and "The XML Files" for the Web magazine Webdeveloper.com. He has worked at PC Magazine, edited a number of newsletters related to the Internet and the electronic information industry, and was Technical Editor of Webweek/Internet World. He has also worked for public radio in Philadelphia, The New York Times, States News Service, and he ran the conference program for the Internet World trade show. Zelnick was recently Project Manager for Industry Relations for Allaire Corp. in Cambridge, MA, and represented the Internet tools company at the World Wide Web Consortium.  

 

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