Thunder Levin is a feature film and television director and writer.

Best known for writing the insanity that is the “Sharknado” franchise for the Syfy Channel, he has also written and directed three films: “Mutant Vampire Zombies From The ‘Hood!”, an independent horror/comedy starring C. Thomas Howell; and more recently “American Warships” a military action film shot in Wilmington, NC, starring Mario Van Peebles & Carl Weathers which premiered on the Syfy Channel in May 2012; and “AE Apocalypse Earth”, a science fiction film starring Adrian Paul & Richard Grieco.

He also wrote the screenplay for the street racing action film “200 MPH” for the Asylum, and has several TV series and feature film projects in development.

Born and raised in New York City, Thunder received a Bachelor’s Degree in Film from NYU before moving to Los Angeles. He is a lifelong sailor and car enthusiast who’s recently taken up motorcycle riding and is at work on his first novel. Thunder is his real name. No one knows why.

Thunder has appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, Today and featured in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, NY Daily News, Mashable and the LA Times.

Paul Roof is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Charleston Southern University and specializes in urban studies and popular culture.

In 2007, while teaching at the College of Charleston, Paul founded the Holy City Beard & Moustache Society. This American Beardsman’s recent beard contest victories include 5th Place in the World Freestyle Beard 2011, 1st Place Freestyle Beard in the Miami Beard & Moustache Championships 2011, 3rd Place Full Beard Natural in the North Carolina Beard & Moustache Championships 2012, and 3rd Place Freestyle Beard in the East Coast Beard & Moustache Championships held in Philadelphia 2012, and 2nd Place Freestyle Beard in the National Beard & Moustache Championships held in New Orleans in 2013. His beard has been featured on Buzzfeed, GQ Magazine, UK Telegraph, Reader’s Digest and Ripley’s Believe It or Not!.

The HCBMS is one of just three American Beard/Moustache clubs to be part of the World Beard & Moustache Association. Charleston Mayor Joe Riley officially declared May 25th as Beard & Moustache Appreciation Day in the Holy City, and each year Charleston hosts the Southeastern Beard & Moustache Championships. The ultimate goal is to have Charleston host the World Beard & Moustache Championships.

The Beer Can Professor

Noah Stokes is a developer, designer, and partner at Bold, a web and mobile studio. He lives just outside of San Francisco with his beautiful wife, two sons, and their dog, Izzy. And eight chickens. And one goat. Actually, the goat died and most of the chickens lost their heads in a run-in with the dog.

Samantha is designer, art director, and the maker of StyleTil.es. She works with wide range of organizations from small startups to large tech companies to make their products and brands more awesome. Previously at Twitter, Samantha specializes in a blend of visual design and user experience strategy. She has been designing for the web for more than 12 years and frequently speaks at industry conferences about design process, practical UX tactics, and Style Tiles.

When she is not in the studio she is obsessing over mid-century modern furniture, exploring San Francisco parks, learning how to be a better ceramicist, and hanging with @JimJones and Grace the cross-eyed cat.

Mind The Gap: Becoming a better designer by owning your blind spots

As a designer you have great taste, and you know what looks good — and what works. But what happens when the things you make don’t live up to your own standards? Whether you are a designer, developer or just want to make something new, we all have discouraging moments where what we make doesn’t align with our original expectations. How do you get past that crippling feeling? Samantha shares how she overcomes these hangups and reframes them as a solution, not only as a designer but also as a aspiring ceramicist. Learn how to make the intimidating journey of creating an invaluable part of your design process for you and your clients.

Steph Hay is a pioneer of content-first design and Lean Content testing, two low-risk methods for proving traction before building a product. She leads Capital One's Content Strategy team, which designs experiences "to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time,” and she also runs their weekly design shares (across 11 locations and 150 design team members).

Steph's a two-time startup founder, former consultant (working with Ben & Jerry’s and Coldwell Banker), international speaker, and mentor (500 Startups, The Lean Startup Conference, and CV Labs).

Ask her anytime about Ohio, CrossFit, or ramen noodles — three things she loves.

Content-first Design

We spend a lot of time trying to solve communication problems through design. We design first, write later, and end up iterating endlessly, only to start the process over again -- design first, words last.

What would happen if we wrote the words first -- agnostic of technology or channel -- and then designed an experience to bring those words to life?

That’s what Steph Hay and her content strategy team are doing at Capital One. She’ll show us content-first techniques — like content prototypes, language boards, and conversation maps — that result in faster learning, fewer iterations, a more cohesive voice and tone, and higher engagement.

Come to this talk if you want to learn:

• The value of writing real content before there’s an interface
• Ways to introduce users to new content or interactions
• How to do Content-First Design in your work

One of our core values at Newfangled is to maintain an ongoing cycle of learning and teaching, so I’m thrilled to spend much of my time sharing what I’ve learned about the web with my colleagues and our clients. The rest of my time is spent managing the personnel and systems that keep Newfangled producing.

I’ve written articles on the the current and future state of the web for Newfangled, PRINT Magazine; HOW Magazine and their blog at HOW Interactive Design; Smashing Magazine, my personal blog, and am the author of The Strategic Web Designer: How to Confidently Navigate the Web Design Process.

I speak often on interactive design and digital marketing topics. Some of my recent talks have covered how web design is changing, the future of web development, studying user behavior, entrepreneurship, the future of content marketing, the web design process, responsive design, getting interactive design feedback, content strategy and production, emerging technologies in public health, writing for creative people, and something I call technosprawl.

Carl Smith is an irreverant ditcher of the nine-to-five and mortal enemy of the overworked lifestyle. Owner and founder of nGen Works, Carl’s role is that of an advisor, to nGen and other companies, on how to create self-sustaining teams that perform at the highest levels. Carl has made a name for himself by creating a new framework for how we get things done, and by enabling us to realign our creative communities. When he’s not conducting business experiments with companies around the world, he’s busy sculpting a new face for the world of work… and play.

Katie is a designer at Sparkbox. She is the 2014 Net Awards Young Designer of the Year, a teacher for Girl Develop It, and a writer for various publications. She strongly values collaboration with her teammates, performance in design, and beautifully smart design systems. She loves her dog and iced coffee more than anything formerly mentioned.

Build Right: Design Workshop

More info here

Wren is a designer with a passion for creating beautiful digital products. Since she started working on the web over 12 years ago, she’s done a little bit of everything—from advising startups on UX best practices to pushing pixels for Fortune 500 companies. When she's not building internet things, she enjoys eating bagels, making trouble, and taking naps.

How Designers Fail

Zoe is an experienced web designer and technical author who specializes in visual design, CSS, UX, and accessibility. She is the author of the New Riders books Stunning CSS3: A Project-based Guide to the Latest in CSS and Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS and the video training title Web Accessibility Principles for lynda.com, and she has written nearly 100 articles and tutorials for publications like .net Magazine, Smashing Magazine, and the web development training site Community MX on a variety of web design topics. She also has enjoyed helping others learn web standards through her many previous conference speaking engagements.

CSS Lessons Learned the Hard Way

You’ve probably heard the phrase “learn to fail or fail to learn.” The idea that making mistakes is essential to success has almost become clichéd by now. But in this talk, Zoe is prepared to embarrass herself with tales of her web design screw-ups to prove just how important and powerful it truly is to make mistakes in our work. Along the way, you’ll learn CSS tips and tricks that Zoe learned the hard way so that you don’t repeat her mistakes. Go out, try new things with CSS, and make new mistakes of your very own!

Rachel is a late 20-something Australian living in Sunny California, USA. Her love affair with the web began when her dad first brought home a dial-up modem in '97 but she only started building it 5 years ago. She got her start making Flash banners for an advertising agency and have been obsessed with animation/motion on the web ever since. These days she finds herself spending half of her dev time animating interfaces with CSS and JavaScript and the other half building APIs and backend applications with Node.js. she is currently building all the websites for the awesome dudes over at Active Theory.

Matters in Motion (Or How Rob Lowe Should Animate The Web)

The release of Google’s Material Design brought interfaces driven by transitions roaring in to the mainstream web and sent designers, developers and clients alike in to a frenzy over ‘moving interfaces’. Designing and building interfaces with animation brings infinite additional complexities to your project. I will run through some helpful suggestions, tips & techniques for designing (and building) with motion as well as the ‘gotchas’ I’ve come across in my work as motion designer and developer.

Paul has over 18 years of graphic design experience with brands like Subway, New Balance, Harrah’s Casino, and Facebook, and then some other brands you’ve never heard of, nor would remember. Currently, he is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of ChoreMonster (though he does not carry a badge), where he designs the overall brand experience on the web and all mobile platforms, helps craft words, illustrates monsters and draws farts. Paul has been married for 18 years and has 3 kids, 2 dogs, 1 cat and 0 hours to himself. In his spare time he likes to make pretty photographs with a real camera, dream about fried foods and find the playground in everything.

How Monsters And Fart Jokes Made Me A Better Designer

Jonathan LeBlanc is an Emmy award winning software engineer, author of the O’Reilly book "Programming Social Applications", and the Head of Global Developer Advocacy for Braintree and PayPal.

Specializing in identity, auth and security, hardware to web interconnectivity, and data mining techniques, as well as open source initiatives around social engagement, Jonathan works on the development of emerging initiatives towards building a more user-centric web.

Kill All Passwords

You have a solid security infrastructure, all user data is encrypted, your users are protected right? As long as passwords remain the standard methods for identifying your users on the web, people will still continue to use "letmein" or "password123" for their secure login, and will continue to be shocked when their accounts become compromised.

Passwords are not secure, they need to be replaced. In this talk we're going to explore the pitfalls of a system designed around a username and password, then dive into the ways that technology is giving us a slew of new ways to build a secure user identity system. From biometrics to wearables, hardware to tokens, we'll explore a multitude of ways that we can finally kill all passwords.

Aaron is the Founder and Technical Lead of Easy Designs, where he helps clients elegantly tackle the challenges presented by all the crazy devices and screens you see everywhere.

Aaron managed the Web Standards Project (WaSP) and currently serves as an Invited Expert to the W3C’s Responsive Images Community Group He is a Rosenfeld Media Expert the Publisher of Web Standards Sherpa, and founded the Chattanooga Open Device Lab. He also co-founded the event series Code & Creativity and Retreats 4 Geeks.

Aaron wrote the web design book Jeffrey Zeldman calls a “modern classic”—Adaptive Web Design. He’s also contributed to more than a dozen other titles. He has written dozens of articles and shape dozens more during his tenure as Tech Editor for A List Apart.

You can follow him on Twitter or on his website.

JD runs Simple Focus, a user experience brand firm and Pulse, a cash flow management app for small businesses. He speaks nationally about creative process, web design, and user experience, has written a book, CSS for Print Designers, and serves on the Editorial Review Board for Smashing Magazine.

Micro-Interactions Matter

Designers understand that details matter. We adjust curves and nudge pixels in the tiny spaces no one else notices because we know that’s what makes a design great. Sometimes, though, we focus so much on the visual side of design that we overlook the interactive details and deliver interfaces with minor usability and accessibility issues that erode user confidence. Whether it's a fancy form design that isn't keyboard accessible or the voice dialing in your car, these interactions can frustrate users and drive them to seek out other options.

When a new, original microinteraction is done right, though, it feels inevitable. Think of the iPhone's slide to unlock and how it pretty much eliminated butt-dialing without creating a new hurdle for "opening" the phone. Consider Sparrow's pull-down to refresh. These seem obvious in retrospect, but we know it took dozens or even hundreds of iterations to make it feel just right.

In this session, we'll take a deep dive into how microinteractions can make interfaces more usable, recognizable and delightful. Learn to build trust (and your brand) as JD walks through his checklist for considering micro-interactions from initial perception through mouse, keyboard, touch and voice interactions. Then he’ll show you how to test your own designs to make sure you got it right.

Hey, I’m Garth Braithwaite and I’m a developer and designer on PhoneGapat Adobe.

I’m committed to open source because I know how it can make things better; I care so much I started Design Open.

I host Web Friends as an excuse to talk to people I admire.

I have kids and a wife; I’m not sure what that has to do with a professional bio, but I've seen other people include that stuff.

Designers Can Open Source

This session will cover a few topics in relation to open source design, including:

* Open source licenses
* Benefits of open sourcing design work
* How to open source work
* How to contribute design to open source projects
* How to make friends with other designers

This topic is aimed at designers and some development practices will be discussed.

Mason was born and raised in Jackson, MS (better known as The Dirty South). He grew up in the woods and, as a result, likes animals, trees and beer. A hacker from the start, he began hacking on software in his early teens. Upon moving back to the USA after four years in Japan, at age 24 he ended a multi-year fast from programming and hit the ground running. Like any good college graduate with a degree in philosophy, he has worked for small, boutique web shops, startups in San Francisco and everywhere in between. Mason serves as our CTO and head of all things pedagogical.

If you want an experienced designer who will create engaging and effective sites, then I’m your gal! I help paint an accurate and attractive reflection of my clients’ brands through color, type and code. And I design sites that not only have personality, but deliver a positive user experience that fulfills client and audience goals. All with sass and class!

Respecting clients and building great relationships with them are key to my process. This isn’t just fancy-speak: I was an active part of Capital Ideas, where small businesses help other each other. Additionally, I’ve been interviewed by the press about entrepreneurship, branding and competition. I understand where you’re coming from because I’ve been there.

Beyond Static: The New Design System

In today’s mobile world, providing design deliverables within the browser creates a more productive experience for your clients and your team. And while this means a shift from Photoshop to Sublime, it isn’t just a code shift. The design process remains integral and informs every web-based deliverable. Using a real client case study, Lea will explore Bright Umbrella’s design deliverables in and out of the browser and explain how their in-house “framework” has ultimately saved them time and money.

Ron is a cofounder of Myjive, a digital agency based out of Charlotte, N.C. He started his career working for motion design studios in Los Angeles, Calif., where he began blending his passion for film, pop culture, fine arts and emerging technology.

Badass Motion Design for Interactive
My early career started as a motion designer for ABC, Discovery Channel, FoxSports, AMC and the NFL Network. Fast forward 10 years and I am now carving out best practices for motion design as a driving force for UX. This talk will focus on achieving new interactive paradigms by dissecting large and small format touch and gestures experiences for Volvo Trucks, Honeywell, BMW, Wake Tech and others.

Patrick Fulton is a front end developer who has been working with the web since 1998. He understands that the Internet, like the universe, is expanding at a startling rate, and that clean, semantic mark-up and content-driven, responsive layouts are the way forward. He believes in building sites that are device-agnostic, adapting layouts and experiences to a user's viewing environment.

Patrick is the author of Bearded's front-end starter kit, Stubble, and manages the web design speaker series Refresh: Pittsburgh. He employs the ideals of progressive enhancement in his work. This ensures solid fundamental experiences in older web browsers, while using the latest web technologies to further enrich interactions in more modern browsers.

Before his professional career began in earnest Patrick, like many, went to school. After attaining a BA in Journalism from Point Park University, he also acquired a degree in Multimedia/Web Design from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Patrick lives in Ambridge, Pennsylvania with his wife Tracey and their dog Walter.

Element Queries

Technical Director for Sparkbox, Rob is responsible for operations and leading the development team. On any given day, Rob meets with prospective clients, writes code, or continues to lead the charge in improving development process. Sparkbox has become known as a leader in responsive web design and custom software solutions.

Why your business should have an apprentice program

Good talent is hard to find. What if your business grew new talent from within rather than hiring on the open market?

There are two types of companies—talent consumers and talent producers. Sparkbox believes that being a talent producer is a more sustainable path for the future. Running an apprenticeship program for the last four years, we've had some amazing results. Apprenticeships are a great way for a company to give back to the industry while still adding to the bottom line and plan for the future.

During our session, I will share how we run our apprenticeship, our mistakes, and our successes.

President of Sparkbox and founder of the Build Responsively workshop series, Ben shares his ideas about the web on the Sparkbox Foundry and other industry blogs like .net Magazine and Smashing Magazine. His leadership at Sparkbox has driven the team to be a pioneer in responsive web design techniques, and he continues to push for great user experiences outside the context of specific devices.

Letting Go of Workflow Baggage

Bryce Bigger is a designer, developer, author, tinkerer, and habitual line-stepper. By day he’s the Principal of The Bigger Design, where he creates games, apps, animations, and, of course, websites for clients like the US Navy, Oracle, Ping Golf, Lockheed Martin, and the National Institutes of Health. By night, he’s an indie game developer working on his first title and hoping to not go insane during the process.

Games & Shenanigans with WebGL & Unity

The browser has come a long way since the days of table-based layouts, blink tags, and dialup connections. With the last major holdout, Apple, finally enabling WebGL with the release of iOS 8, 3D in the browser can accelerate full steam ahead. We’ll look at several examples of WebGL’s capabilities and explore a few frameworks for getting started. We’ll also examine Unity’s new build module to export to WebGL.

Elyse is a Front End Architect at RetailMeNot, ATXSass co-organizer, SassBites podcast co-host, and conference speaker. She’s spent her career writing HTML, CSS, and Sass for large product apps, and is always willing to talk about refactoring, women in tech, GIFs, makeup, yoga, and good wine.

I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

We've all felt compelled to say, "oh but I'm so bad at this," lest someone think we might have something valuable to say. We've all felt that surge of inspiration, followed by frustration, sometimes to the point of being unwilling to try again.

I talk about the shit we don't know we don't know, and how we can be intentful about how we learn, challenge ourselves, and share our knowledge. I'll explore impostor syndrome and the fine line between deceit and "fake it til you make it.", how yoga and coding are similar, and how to be a constant beginner.

Jennifer Dellacroce has over 15 years of web experience and has a passion for creating usable, responsive websites and web applications. Jennifer is currently the Product Manager for VC3’s newest product, Cognito Forms – a free, easy-to-use online form builder that was created right here in Columbia, SC.

Responsive Design for Web Applications

Nowadays, everyone is building responsive websites. But what are the unique challenges faced when designing complex user interactions that need to work beautifully on all screen sizes? During this presentation, we’ll discuss real life examples and our thought processes in tackling responsive design for our online form builder.

Megan is a Front-End Developer at Viget by day and hobbyist illustrator by night based near Washington, DC.

A more beautiful & accessible web for all!

With an aging population and possible legislation changes around the corner, it's more important than ever that we build a more beautiful, accessible web for **all** our users. It's a responsibility that goes beyond government agencies and 508 compliance. With a little education and creative thinking, accessibility is achievable without changing our tools, our budgets, or our designs.

I'll be breaking down WCAG 2.0 Level A standards with a focus on easy, approachable ways you can build sites to be more accessible.

Smith Schwartz is a former museum experience designer, digital and reverse nomad. She currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky and is a front-end developer and designer at Say Media, building the future of web-based publishing.

Well-Designed Development: Sass for Engineers

It's not uncommon for back-end engineers to outnumber web designers and front-end devs 5 to 1. So, how do we as maintainers of front-end architecture help unruly coders fall in line when they write Sass files? We start by laying out straightforward and precise internal guidelines and styleguides, then make sure to communicate these clearly and effectively all while keeping in mind the ultimate goal: building stronger teams that understand the many aspects of the project, styles and design included.

Mina Markham (mina.codes) is a Sass-lovin' UI developer/designer in Dallas, Texas. She recently founded the Dallas chapter of Girl Develop It, and also teaches for Black Girls Code. As a developer at Parago, she specializes in building responsive websites and modular CSS architecture. Mina has presented at various conferences and events, including Front-End Design Conference, Front Porch and Passion Projects. When she's not crafting sites or teaching others, Mina is probably in her kitchen baking something chocolatey.

Modular CSS with Sass

I often ask myself these questions: Will this code be easy for the others to edit? Does it scale? Can I forget it and change it later without being lost?

While Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS (SMACSS) is just one methodology, the principals of modular CSS are applicable to sites large and small. Using a modular approach in tandem with Sass can greatly improve development efficiency and project maintenance. I'll discuss specific techniques, such as selector inheritance and interpolation, that can greatly reduce the amount of code written. Your code will be more portable, making it easier to use code on other projects.

Jeff Robbins is Co-founder and CEO of Lullabot, one of the world's leading Drupal strategy, design, and development agencies. Since 2006, Lullabot has lead development of many high-performance, high-profile websites such as MSNBC.com, GRAMMY.com, FastCompany.com, MarthaStewart.com, TeslaMotors.com, and many others. Lullabot is a fully distributed company with employees in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

Jeff is one of the world's first web developers. He worked at O'Reilly Media in 1993 at the dawn of the web and helped create GNN.com, the first commercial website.

In 1994, Jeff's band Orbit was signed to A&M Records. His songs appeared on MTV and made it into the Modern Rock Top 10 chart. The band played numerous festival shows and toured with the 1997 Lollapalooza festival.

Jeff speaks at many events about company culture, growing a digital agency business, and working with a distributed workforce. He also runs The Yonder Conference, which acts as a discussion group for leaders of distributed companies and teams.

Lessons Learned From Rock & Roll

Jeff Robbins currently runs Lullabot, a successful 60-person strategy, design, and development company responsible for sites such as MSNBC.com, GRAMMY.com, FastCompany.com, MarthaStewart.com, and TeslaMotors.com.

In his previous career, Jeff fronted the band Orbit. He signed with A&M Records in 1994 and spent the remainder of the decade recording, touring, and building a successful band. Orbit had a Modern Rock top-10 hit; they toured with Lollapalooza and appeared on MTV; and they toured extensively throughout the US and Canada.

In "Lessons Learned From Rock & Roll", Jeff talks about the lessons he learned playing in a band competing in the music industry and how these lessons helped him in putting together Lullabot, building a creative team, and building a unique presence in a competitive industry.

Analyzing Responsive Web App Patterns

Web Apps pose a new frontier for the responsive web and as similar as they can be to marketing sites, they require patterns of their own. We'll explore some of the patterns we've been using in Foundation for Apps: Look at what patterns didn't translate from Marketing Sites, Building collapsing panels, Reorienting and reordering menus, Full width and full height layouts

Brett Harned is a digital project management consultant, coach, and community advocate from Philadelphia, PA. His work focuses on solving issues that are important to organizations who want to produce quality digital projects in harmony. He loves building processes and communication tactics that work not only for projects, but for the people involved in them. His most recent role was as Vice President of Project Management at Happy Cog, where he mentored a team of PMs and managed projects for companies like Zappos, MTV, and Monotype.

Brett began blogging about his adventures in project management when he realized that the perceptions of the positions were just a little off. Since, he has spoken at events like SXSW, written for .net magazine and pmhut.com, taught web project workshops at places like The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and has led the biggest, most satisfying project of his career: the Digital PM Summit.

When he isn’t wrangling processes and people, he likes to discover new music, experiment with photography, and explore the City of Brotherly Love with his wife and two daughters.

Digital PM Workshop

Managing digital projects can be tough, but it doesn't have to be. Whether you're a Project Manager, Designer, or Developer, you use different processes, tools, and tactics to make things happen. You care about delivering quality—on time and under budget. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But there are some tactics you can employ to manage your digital projects with success. Join us for this workshop where and gain insights on how to best plan and manage digital projects.

Read More Here

Robert Pearce is an English major turned software writer from Charleston, SC who is currently living the digital nomad life throughout various European countries and the US. He works with Articulate, is the CTO of RidePost, teaches aspiring coders, mentors startups and likes long walks on the beach.

React.js

Facebook’s React.js project turns potentially complicated user interfaces in to easily grokable, modular components that make it simple to maintain your application’s state. React is a must-have tool for the working developer, so join us as we walk through creating a practical, production-ready interface and learn React along the way.

Adam Smith started building websites in 1996. From Geocities tables to fully responsive JS frameworks he continues to learn and push the boundaries of the web. Currently employed as lead developer at Wide Open Technologies in Wilmington North Carolina he focuses on e-Commerce frameworks and highly interactive web interfaces. His passions are javascript, impressive UIs and brewing beer.

Rapid prototyping with Meteor JS

Meteor JS offers a toolkit for developing and publishing applications with minimal effort. The expanding plugin library is quickly growing in number. With the tools provided by Meteor JS a developer can build an application in days, not weeks. Meteor JS offers all the bells and whistles of very popular application frameworks but with a few extra special goodies. The data-base everywhere approach allows for front end javascript to interact with the tables. The data-on-the-wire approach comes out of the box, no need to call sync events or page refresh, it just works. Finally, publishing your application to the web is literally a single line in terminal.

With the combination of MongoDB and NodeJS, Meteor JS is the best all javascript solution for building and deploying applications fast!

Nick Whitmoyer is the founder and principal of Whistle Studios, a product design and development studio based in the Washington DC area. For more than 10 years, Nick and his team have helped clients such as NPR, Capital One, PBS, Global Entrepreneurship Week, and The Nature Conservancy build award-winning microsites, interactive tools, apps, and more. He is the force behind his company’s mission to collaborate with the best and brightest companies in the U.S. and abroad on innovative, user-centered interactive design projects.

Rethinking The News: An Insider's Look at NPR's Recent Responsive Redesign

From small to jumbo breakpoint, consultant Nick Whitmoyer shares his recent design work and insights with NPR’s responsive website. He’ll provide a look into combining news and audio, radio programs and content collections, along with experiences for desktops and touch devices.

James Brown has 15+ years of experience in software development. He previously was a Senior Developer and Director of Development for WRECKINGBALL Media Group. He has built multiple internal and external projects for Adobe Systems, including international product launch websites, and was primarily responsible for leading his programming team to code and rebuild the Adobe’s popular site, Adobe TV. He has extensive knowledge in building internationalized websites, internally-used CMS systems, and is an expert in architecting and building large-scale, enterprise sites and applications.

Gluing the Web Together with AWS SQS & JavaScript/Node.js

Many developers think that being in the cloud is just turning on some cloud servers and deploying their website. Utilizing cloud services is so much more! In this presentation, we're going to look at Amazon's SQS (Simple Queue Service) and how you can use it to glue the web together. SQS is a fast, reliable, scalable, fully managed message queuing service and we'll look at how to decouple your services, scale your applications and real code

Brad Colbow is an independent UX/UI designer from Cleveland Ohio (colbowdesign.com). Brad has built a reputation designing user interfaces and experiences for brands like Smucker's, Rubbermaid, Starbucks, The Cleveland Clinic and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Design is fun, but Brad is probably best known for his comic strip “The Brads” which was published in .Net magazine and can bee seen on his personal website (bradcolbow.com) along with his newer comic work. He's also the co-organizer of the Cleveland Web Standards Association and the midwest's premiere web design conference, Rustbelt Refresh.

Sequential Design - What comics have taught me about design

When most people think of comics they think of larger than life heroes or over the top cartoon characters. But what makes these big ideas work? It’s the spaces in between--the details that tie all the elements togethet that make the big moments gigantic, and the special moments memorable.

It’s the same with design. Whether you’re wireframing an app or crafting the UI for a corporate website, the design is the story you tell. The visuals and the message work together to craft the experience.

You’ve already learned everything you need to know to about user centered design from comics. Brad will guide you through the basics and explain how design can tell the big stories, the little stories, and everything in between.

Nic is a web developer in Atlanta, GA. He’s the founder of Epic Labs and has recently joined the team at 352 Inc as a developer. As an active member of the Atlanta web community, he regularly speaks at events and meet-up groups, organizes workshops and volunteers his time to a number of tech community initiatives.

Before becoming a web developer, Nic worked as a Network and Systems Administrator, Security Analyst and even Operations Manager; all of which give him a unique perspective on creating for the web.

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Nic has been living in Atlanta for almost 15 years.

Battle of the Stacks

When you first start as a developer all you care about is the code. As you progress and become more concerned with performance you begin to realize that there’s a whole world of possibilities and no clear indication of what works best.

In this presentation we’ll look at different combinations of web server technologies, including Apache, NGINX, HHVM, PHP-FPM and a lot more; then pit them against each other and in a head to head competition of load testing to find out which one is the last stack standing.

Justin Woo is a Developer Evangelist at PayPal and has been programming ever since he got his first IBM XT running DOS. He loves writing mobile applications (especially hybrid-HTML5 applications) and wishes everything could be done in LISP. In his spare time he enjoys tinkering around with cool hardware. He’s built a game for Autistic Children, a Robot that can be controlled remotely and even a Kinect game involving tapeworms. He graduated from Purdue University with a degree in Computer Engineering and was previously a Program Manager at Microsoft. He lives with his wife and two wonderful dogs - one of which refuses to admit that he is blind and the other that likes to pretend she's a rabbit. In his spare time he loves playing squash and board games (his favorite being Settlers of Catan). He also grew up in Singapore and so please don't mind his Singlish.

Making Credit Card Forms Beautiful!

Can a Credit Card From be beautiful? Well it can certainly be ugly!

Shopping cart abandonment across ecommerce sites is > 50%. There are simple tricks that designers/developers could do to make it easier for customers to fill out their Credit Card details. Things like automatically detecting the Credit Card Type or not requiring a user to create an account when purchasing an object. These design patterns and more can drastically improve the checkout rate.

I'll go through many ways merchants make it difficult for us to purchase things online, how they can improve them and tools they can use to make the checkout process so MUCH easier.

I'll also tell a few jokes along the way like " A credit Card form walks into a bar.. AND..." (you'll have to come to the talk to find out the rest of the joke)

The Future of Payment Identity

Who ever said payments were complicated/boring? This will be an introduction into the world of online payments and how to make it fun and enjoyable for your customer. Whether it be on your smartphone or website, we'll show you how you can get setup and accept payments quickly. We'll also show you some cool tricks, tips and best practices and ways to get started. At the end of this expect to be able to make the most fun, enjoyable and seamless shopping cart checkout experience ever.

Tim is design director of Envy, a web consultancy that makes things (like Code School), and builds things (like digital products for Google, Cisco, Github, and Booz Allen Hamilton). He taught himself how to make websites in middle school and “became a designer” while making custom MySpace templates for friends and websites for his Starcraft clan. He decided to become a designer for real and moved from Seattle to Orlando, FL to take an internship he wasn’t qualified for. That turned into a full-time design job, which turned into a full-time career, which turned into a creative passion that extends beyond a job. He still resides in Orlando with his wife and a first child on the way, though he’ll never stop thirsting for the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.

Discovery Meetings: Taking Complex Ideas and Distilling them into a Plan

Before any code gets written or any wireframes drawn, software on the web can often seem like be a complex mesh of business goals, new features and big dreams. The first challenge is "where to start". In our time together, Tim will be sharing insights from the discovery process at Envy that he helped develop. This process provides the framework for Envy to time and again deliver successful web applications in a variety of industries.

Alex Wier and Daniel Stewart are partners at Wier / Stewart, a creative firm in Augusta, Georgia. Both graduates of the University of Georgia, they grew their business from 2 to 12 people in a poor economy, with neither having any formal business training. The work of W/S has been published in Communication Arts, How and Print, and the renovation of their office at 982 Broad Street was given Historic Augusta's Preservation Award. They have lectured at the University of Georgia and presented at Creative South and The Southern Coterie Summit. Wier was also a speaker at TedX Augusta.

How to do what you love and survive while you’re at it

Daniel Stewart and Alex Wier break down starting-up and running a creative firm, sharing lessons and advice learned in their 8 years from 2 man operation (without funding) to 12 person creative firm. Without the benefit of any formal business education, they’ve made decisions (good and bad) based on guts, intuition and what is most likely a very different ethos than they’re teaching in school. Join in the fun as a couple of guys who just love what they do give their best advice, based on some brutal and humorous experience, on how to do what you love and survive while you’re at it. They’ll tell you what they’ve learned about leadership, management and strategy so you don’t have to suffer like they did to figure it out. Perfect for small and developing shops as well as freelancers working in the wild.

Alex Wier and Daniel Stewart are partners at Wier / Stewart, a creative firm in Augusta, Georgia. Both graduates of the University of Georgia, they grew their business from 2 to 12 people in a poor economy, with neither having any formal business training. The work of W/S has been published in Communication Arts, How and Print, and the renovation of their office at 982 Broad Street was given Historic Augusta's Preservation Award. They have lectured at the University of Georgia and presented at Creative South and The Southern Coterie Summit. Wier was also a speaker at TedX Augusta.

How to do what you love and survive while you’re at it

Daniel Stewart and Alex Wier break down starting-up and running a creative firm, sharing lessons and advice learned in their 8 years from 2 man operation (without funding) to 12 person creative firm. Without the benefit of any formal business education, they’ve made decisions (good and bad) based on guts, intuition and what is most likely a very different ethos than they’re teaching in school. Join in the fun as a couple of guys who just love what they do give their best advice, based on some brutal and humorous experience, on how to do what you love and survive while you’re at it. They’ll tell you what they’ve learned about leadership, management and strategy so you don’t have to suffer like they did to figure it out. Perfect for small and developing shops as well as freelancers working in the wild.

Jamie is co-founder of Cognito Forms, an online form builder for organizations seeking to quickly and easily connect with their customers. In his free time, Jamie loves spending time with his wonderful wife and kids, leading a great group of cub scouts, singing in the choir, and trying out the latest gadgets.

Managing Feature Requests & Backlog

Applying LEAN principles to stay focused while engaging your stakeholders.

If you have ever worked on a project with external stakeholders (aka, not you) then you know how important it is to manage feature requests. When you are working on something small with just a few stakeholders, it is easy to track everything and keep your stakeholders engaged until everything is "done". But what do you do when the list of features is seemingly endless and the stakeholders numbers in the thousands?

I will discuss how we have applied LEAN principles and used Trello as our Kanban solution to manage our feature list, including our work in progress and feature backlog. We chose to do this "out in the open" where our customers (our stakeholders) could freely participate, comment, and generally help us prioritize features to ensure we remain focused on what is important.

After starting his career in finance, Dan McKinley freaked out and moved to Brooklyn. He stumbled into a fledgling Etsy.com in 2007, and spent his first years there trying to stop overwhelming traffic from reducing the site to its constituent elements. In the long summer that followed he worked on activity feeds, search, recommendations, experimentation, and analytics.

Dan currently works for Stripe from Los Angeles, California.

Data Driven Products

Most startups begin their lives as someone's cool idea. Some of the lucky ones gain traction, funding, and employees. It's human nature to conclude that having cool ideas and implementing them is therefore a recipe for success. But it's not. That's survivorship bias rearing its ugly head.

This talk will demonstrate that the application of absurdly simple arithmetic can give product teams an edge over those that refuse to do any arithmetic. Math! It works! I know. It's crazy.

This talk draws from Dan's direct experience creating a data-driven product culture at Etsy.

Nick is the Studio Manager of Facebook’s Analog Research Lab and co-owner of The Half and Half.

The Analog Research Lab is a creative space for design and art-making. Its primary goal is to create and direct projects that influence culture and challenge thought. Our mediums of choice favor the analog without neglecting the digital. We ask questions and we build things. Then we ask questions about the things we built. Hopefully somewhere along the way you start asking questions and building things too. It’s this cycle of creation, reflection, education, and provocation that drives our work.

The Analog Research Lab has become accepted as an important component of our culture and company. It was founded through passion and hard work, not corporate initiative. The existence of the lab is a reflection of the freedom afforded to employees of Facebook as well as an example of its hacker spirit.

That's fascinating!

An inside look at the Facebook Analog Research Lab and all the crazy willy wonka stuff they do.

Hi, I'm Caner (pronounced Junnair). I'm a front end developer at the Center for Open Science and a doctoral candidate at University of Virginia. I have been working in the field of education since 2005 and programming since my high school years. As a self taught web developer I have created several education related online applications and worked as the lead developer for the online discussion tool Dscourse. I won the Curry Cup entrepreneurship award in 2012 and worked as the Chief Technology Officer in our new educational technology company AdapDif; for which I'm building the prototype app right now. My main job right now though is developer at Center for Open Science which is a small non-profit software company building open source tools for researchers.

One of my main hobbies/talents is bridging the gap between design and development. I have a lot of interest in design and building proper design practices and in all my work I tried to help design play well with development and developer practices.

Chrome Dev tools for Designers

Using Chrome Dev tools as a designer so that you can quickly edit live websites. This is very handy when talking to customers about their design needs in websites and show them quick changes on the fly. It also gives a visual experience to CSS; which your text editors often lack.

Brad Weaver is a Partner & Director of Design at Nine Labs. He designs, he codes, he writes, he UXs, he slices and dices.

Brad went to school to be a lawyer, then he came to his senses and has spent the last 15 years as a UX generalist with a geek's heart of gold. His experience includes product development, interactive, branding, and market segmentation. He's been the big cheese, the plebeian, the middle manager, and the class clown. He's also folded clothes, pumped gas, bagged groceries, sold cell phones, and climbed the Great Wall of China. He likes beer, scotch, Oxford commas, and Jesus, but not in that order. He's worked with clients including MTV, Verizon, Bank of America, AT&T, ESPN, Disney, Columbia Records, NATO, SunTrust, The PGA, Olive Garden, Coca-Cola, Big Brothers Big Sisters, United Health Group, The Home Depot, Chick-fil-A, Macy’s, Hard Rock Café, and more. His upcoming book from Focal Press, "Creative Truth", releases this fall.

He lives in Atlanta, ya’ll.

How to Price Your Work:Real Ways to Create Great Work Without Losing Your Shirt (and Soul)

Most of us who are any good at design, development, or UX got into this because we love it, not because we saw dollar signs. We grew up with concert posters, comic books, and t-shirts letting us know that creative is cool, and we'd like to keep it that way. But what happens when you've been at this for a while and you're still making fry cook wages (or so it seems)? Billing hourly, outsourcing, using templates, and all of the other less than exciting parts of the job creep in.

So how do you create great work, stay fresh, and avoid starvation all at once? Let's have a chat about value-based pricing with real dollars, real projects, and real solutions to figure out how we can do what we love without losing our shirts and souls.

What You’ll Learn:
How much to charge
How to figure out your real hourly rate, then stop using it
How to get discovery contracts
Managing client expectations
Which pricing system is best for you by project, business type, or client type

Sales Director at Skookum, a custom software, innovation, and IoT company in Charlotte, NC and Denver, CO. Past lives: enterprise coldcaller (first gig out of college); Obama '08 campaign field op; Capitol Hill press aide; hire #3 and biz dev director at a Raleigh-based tech marketing startup; R&R manager (research, revenue) at Skookum. Also the founder of an online bespoke glove haberdashery (say that 3 times fast).

"Profitable Innovation" or "Why big companies burn big dollars on 'technological ideating', and other such valueless terms/behaviors"

A 30min blitz on how big-money-making-and-big-product-shipping F1000s can avoid screwing up the innovation end-game. Starts by defining what the heck "innovation" is (or what it should be...)

Highlights:
- 3 measures for "innovation”
- 5 reasons (bad habits) why your favorite logos burn cash on "disruption" (involves Pied Piper, Don Draper, & Nest thermostats)
- 4 tips for how innovation leaders can make measurable and valuable progress, and still get home in time to see their kids every day.

Developer Evangelist responsible for present PayPal/Braintree product stack to developers in North America.

Past Software Architect/Developer in a wide variety of business applications, particularly in the areas of Web, Mobile, and Client/Server applications using Java and PHP. I also have experience with Oracle PL/SQL. I used to develop these applications using Oracle, MySQL and MS-SQL Server databases.

How to build your own ‘pet’ machine

In this session you will see how to build your own ‘pet’ machine. Based on wearable sensors the machines powered by RaspberryPi could interact with you. Adding environmental sensors data, the machine could gives you advice or play with you.

A rootbeer drinking, cupcake eating, Spanish speaking, piano playing, handlebar mustache wearing designer/developer hybrid living in the glorious city of Charlotte, NC

Bermon is the organizer of various community groups for user experience designers and front-end developers, and the organizer of Blend Conference, a 3-day multi-track event for user experience strategists, designers and developers. He also leads the user experience team for Cardinal Solutions’ Charlotte office where he consults with large enterprise clients on interesting problems across user experience, design and front-end development.

In his free time he contributes to http://sass-lang.com/ and is the father of the Sass logo

Modular Front-End Development with Sass

Rob, a software engineer, has been learning lessons for the last 19 years. As a developer at the Department of Defense, a retail software consultant, a partner in a failed startup, and now building mobile apps, he’s leaked memory, referenced null, assumed the garbage would be collected, avoided testing, argued about syntax, avoided difficult conversation, written too much email, repeatedly underestimated, etc. Despite his many mistakes, he’s worked with awesome teams and helped build software that works. At present, he’s fortunate to lead mobile apps at Speek.com and game development for HungerCrunch.com at Rice Bowls. War Eagle!

A Developer's Guide to Building a Video Game

Husband and dad, design lead @RiceBowlsOrg @HungerCrunch - making iOS games, films & kid-friendly things for taking down world hunger http://apple.co/1udmqdP

Designing your first video game - what you should know

Daniel is a developer at Sparkbox with an wide range of experience in both frontend and backend technologies. He spends most of his time sipping coffee, writing code, and debating design structures. In his free time he is hanging out with his wife, watching Netflix with his dog, and making sweet, sweet music with his guitars. You can find Daniel attempting to twitter and pretending to be artsy.

Build Right: Frontend Tooling Workshop

More info here

Adam Simpson is a frontend developer at Sparkbox with experience in Javascript, PHP, Ruby, and web design, and he’s passionate about semantic markup, crafting quality code, and creating accessible experiences regardless of device. Adam is a constant evangelist for efficiency and creativity in workflow and development.

Build Right: Frontend Tooling Workshop

More info here

As Creative Director at Sparkbox, Jeremy designs compelling layouts for the responsive web. While constantly refining the process of responsive web design, he and the Sparkbox team believe in creating content-driven websites that are both useable and beautiful on any device. Jeremy’s design work has won several awards and appeared in numerous design blogs and publications including HOW, Wired and Print. In addition to writing for the Sparkbox Foundry, Jeremy also writes for .net magazine and Web Design Tuts Plus.

Build Right: Design Workshop

More info here

Ryan Cromwell is the Technical Director at Sparkbox with nearly 15 years of experience delivering solutions ranging from real-time customer loyalty systems and elegant user experiences to streamlined statistical process control software. Having worked with passionate, high-performing teams, Ryan ventured into the world of Scrum.org training and Agile coaching to replicate those amazing experiences. Ryan’s passion remains delivering software others enjoy using. He is co-founder of Dayton Clean Coders, the Dayton Elixir virtual Meetup, co-organizer of Southwest Ohio GiveCamp, and all around software community ally. You can find Ryan at [http://cromwellhaus.com] and on Twitter as @cromwellryan.

Build Right: Frontend Testing Workshop

More info here

Rob is a developer at Sparkbox in Dayton, Ohio. He spends his days writing JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Ruby, and building tools that help make the Internet a better place for everyone. Rob also co-leads GemCityJS, a local JavaScript meetup. When not at work, Rob can usually be found building LEGOs with his kids, hanging out with his wife, building Node powered Arduino robots, or experimenting with what can be done with JavaScript.

Build Right: Frontend Testing Workshop

More info here

Gabe, aka @MyLawyerGabe, is a New Media attorney, who specializes in representing web and software designers and developers. He's well known for his role in Mike Monteiro's Fuck You Pay Me Creative Mornings talk, as well as for his blog and podcast.

Gabe is a partner at the San Francisco law firm of Levine & Baker LLP, and has been recognized as Super Lawyers Rising Star six years in a row.

Before becoming a soldier of justice and right, Gabe spent some time goofing off in Santa Barbara (where he "earned" a bachelor's degree from UCSB and drove a cab for a year)... and then he basically kicked law school's ass. Gabe also runs a lot, and is a Coach for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training.

Your Business and the Law 101

Node.js Platform Owner at @Heroku. PlayfulJS Author. Avid motorcyclist and indie traveler.

Building JavaScript Games

Games in the 80s and 90s redefined the relationship between a user and a computer. Realtime, offline-first networking, fluid graphics, and physics-based animations posed incredible development challenges. Overcoming these challenges introduced a whole class of elegant techniques for immersive user experiences - that most JavaScript developers have never heard of!

We Will All Be Game Developers

My talk will show that normal JS interfaces will soon rely on game programming techniques - in fact, you're probably already using libraries based on game architecture. We'll also cover the current potential for building JavaScript games. Finally, you'll leave ready to push your own apps forward with a little bit of gamedev magic.

Ab is the epitome of the ultimately passionate tech entrepreneur.

Having spent some short, but quality time in Silicon Valley with the big tech giants, Ab quickly understood his heart was in the agency world. He left the West Coast and dedicated his career to cultivating small, passionate teams that dreamt about designing for a better web. His first agency, GovTrends, a Washington, DC-based niche agency focused on providing digital solutions to the United States Congress. Growing rapidly to the point of serving over 200 congressional offices and committees by 2010, Ab knew he wanted more and bigger.

Out of this realization came WDG, short for The Web Development Group. With a mission to build a passionate team that clients would scramble to work with, WDG has become the place for designers, strategists and developers to come to and grow their talents and creativity. In the five short years since leaving Capitol Hill, WDG has grown to become an international agency, working with names like The American Red Cross, Royal Netherlands Embassy, Atlantic Media The National Association of Realtors, and The Folger Shakespeare Library, just to name a few.

In addition to building spectacular user experiences for big brand names, Ab and the WDG team are equally focused on giving back to the community that helped steer and grow their business. In its fourth year, WDG’s GiveBack DC has come a long way from the weekend-long hackathon and promises to continue giving back to Washington, DC’s amazing small non-profits in big ways

Small Shop, Big Brands

Bigger is not better; its not the size of your agency but how you work it! In this session you will learn how you and/or your team can differentiate yourselves from the larger agencies to attract and retain big clients, while recruiting top talent. The importance of culture, good work, and giving back is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s your time to stand out from your peers, other freelancers, and the big agencies.

TBD

Michel has been working with design since 1997 and has had the chance of working with a variety of clients, from ground-floor start-ups to multi-national corporations all over the globe - such as Booking.com, Coca-Cola, MTV, Telefonica, NBA, amongst many, many others. With a passion for testing and a drive to always learn, he now works at Booking.com as a Designer where he tries to help the users through the use of design, copy, technical improvements and even workflow experimentation.

Data, Decisions & Designers

Dr. Scott Padgett is a music writer, producer & archivist dating back to his college days as a program director at WUSC radio in Columbia, SC. He followed that with radio programming & production work in the new frontier of the 'FM underground'.

A stint as music editor at the southeast's pioneering alternative newsweekly Osceola Magazine led to becoming the first music writer/columnist at Free Times Magazine. His work appeared in Billboard, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone and practcally every other regional art/political outlet extant through the early nineties.

After a stint in radio in Los Angeles & later at Warner Brothers Studios, he returned to the south where he and co-conspirator Steve Gibson vowed to bring live spectrum-spanning music to the masses. Thus was born the legendary Rockafellas music venue and artist management company.

Working through Ian Copeland's legendary musical talent booking firm FBI, the likes of Soundgarden, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, et. al. were initially exposed to club venues all over the U.S.

He is a contributor and social media monitor for semi-important e-music rags as well as several fly-by-night blogs and has a music industry specific twitter account @AntiBonIver which draws on a digest of 104 music news outlets for content.

Dr. Padgett is our Musical Stylist, spinning his DJ'ness from 9-noon each day!