ConvergeSE 2010: June 25-26, 2010. Columbia, SC.

Neil Patel is the co-founder of 3 Internet companies: Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and KISSinsights. Through these 3 companies he has helped large corporations such as AOL, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard and Viacom make more money from the web. By the age of 21, not only was Neil named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, but he was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal.

Kevin Hale is the Co-founder of Infinity Box Inc, a Y Combinator seeded company. His responsibilities include safe guarding and designing the user experience of their online HTML form builder, Wufoo, which was ranked by Jakob Nielson as one of the best application UIs of 2008. He also writes about interface design issues for the web development blog, Particletree and served as Editor-in-Chief of the web development magazine, Treehouse.

Robert is a professional software developer whose interest in product development has blurred the lines of his job description. Currently working in the field of iPhone+iPad development at Condé Nast Digital, where he's developing his second digital magazine, Vanity Fair. Robert has developed iPhone apps such as for Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List, GQ Magazine, Wired Product Reviews, & Postcard by Concierge.com

By day, Aarron Walter is the mild-mannered lead user experience designer for MailChimp, and by night he leads a team of education crusaders in The Web Standards Project who are the magic behind The WaSP InterACT curriculum.

Aarron is the author of Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond, and is a co-author and project manager of the book InterACT With Web Standards: A holistic approach to Web design.

Brandon Eley is an Interactive Director, entrepreneur, author, and professional speaker. Brandon has 10 years of experience in online marketing and e-commerce from both the perspective of an e-commerce retailer and that of a consultant.

As the Interactive Director for Kelsey Advertising & Design, a small-smart advertising agency with a strong focus on digital media, Brandon oversees interactive projects, online marketing campaigns and information architecture.

Brandon is the co-author of "Online Marketing Inside Out," and frequently speaks about online marketing at conferences and organizations all over the country. He also co-authors the SitePoint Tribune email newsletter that reaches over 200,000 web professionals weekly.

Brandon is the owner of 2BigFeet.com, online retailer of large men's shoes, as well as several other websites and blogs.

Jonathan LeBlanc works with the Yahoo! Developer Network as a technology evangelist / senior software engineer. Focusing on partner relationships and training, as well as external developer integrations, Jonathan works with and promotes emerging technologies to aid in the adoption and utilization of new social development techniques. As a software engineer, Jonathan works extensively with social interaction development on the web, developing new methods for linking social networks to drive the ideal of an open web.

An experienced Creative Director and designer for top companies, with a BA in Fine Arts, a two-year stint in visual art in the UK, and apprenticeship at the RMAC, Matthew also speaks and writes for the web design community (AIGA SC, Digital Web, et al.). When he's not designing, you'll find him building treehouses for his two young boys or sipping on a fine Belgian Tripel with his wife Amy.

Matthew is at the helm of squaredeye.com, and the web design inspiration hub Patterntap.com.

Founder and partner of truematter, an interactive usability consultancy, Dean has championed online simplicity and clarity since the early days of the Web. He oversees truematter's user experience practice leading strategic engagements for innovative regional firms as well as the Fortune 100. Dean's expertise, which can never be satisfactorily explained to his mother, includes:

- Ethnographic Research - Understanding how people experience technology in context
- Design Testing and Prototyping - Testing how people actually use interactive interfaces
- Information Architecture - Designing useful systems that work and perform correctly
- Application Interface Design - Designing intuitive Web and mobile applications

Dean is past founder of Renaissance Interactive (a dotcom boom/bust story). He also writes about the running sub-culture at zerotoboston.com.

Samantha Warren’s goal is a site that’s bold, exciting, usable, and well-built. Sometimes that means she’s obsessing over the perfect typeface to tell the story, while other times she’ll be crunching on the markup and styles behind the scenes. A Senior Web Designer at Phase2 Technology in the Washington, DC area, recent years have found her working for a variety of clients including National Geographic, Choice Hotels International, and The National Basketball Players Association.

Her passion for design and the web doesn’t end at quitting time. She has been published in .NET Magazine, regularly speaks at industry events including SXSW Interactive, and is on the Board of the Art Directors Club of Washington DC. When she is not doing any of the above you can find her enthusiastically teaching typography and web design at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University. Once she gets home, she writes about design and the web on her blog at badassideas.com.

Zoe Mickley Gillenwater is a freelance graphic and web designer, developer and consultant. She is the author of the book Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS and the video training title Web Accessibility Principles for lynda.com, and is working on the upcoming book Stunning CSS3: A Project-based Guide to the Latest in CSS. Zoe is currently a member of the Web Standards Project (WaSP) Adobe Task Force and was previously a moderator of the popular css-discuss mailing list. Find out more about Zoe on her blog and portfolio site or follow her on Twitter.

Carmen Maye is a South Carolina-based lawyer and an instructor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina, where she teaches courses in media law and advertising. Maye has extensive experience in corporate public relations and advertising and has won awards for writing, design and editing. Her undergraduate degree is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her master's and juris doctorate degrees are from the University of South Carolina.

Sean Gaffney is a freelancing developer that works with designers and agencies to make sure their details get communicated clearly through technology on the web. He lives with his gorgeous wife in their new home in Greenville and works next to a talented crew of folks at CoWork Greenville. When he's not developing for clients, he's usually pushing the boundaries of new technologies and web APIs... or on Twitter.

John Coates is a (very) small business consultant at FreshBooks, the leader in online billing for freelancers, teams, and web applications. At FreshBooks, John focuses on the customers' side of the business, spending more time with freelancers than with the actual team. He is always helping freelancers save time, look more professional, and get paid faster, so they get back to what they love.

Mark has been a software developer for over 12 years, working in diverse industries and technologies. He holds an undergraduate degree from Emory University but can't remember in what because he spent all his time in the computer lab and gym. He almost holds an Masters of Business Administration and almost a Masters of Decision Sciences but suffers from extreme attention deficit when it comes to any curriculum that contains Marketing.

Mark is a founding member of Catamorphic Labs, LLC, which specializes in mining massively large datasets, semantic web technologies, and software development using emerging technologies.

Jason has been developing Ruby on Rails sites full-time for over 4 years for the SC Budget and Control Board. He has a passion for learning and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science -- his latest degree was a M.S. in Statistics. His favorite tools of the trade are Vim and anything on the command line. He is also the co-founder of the Columbia Ruby Brigade.

Jed Schneider is employed by the South Carolina Office of Research and Statistics as a Ruby and Rails software developer. HeÊholds an undergraduate degree from Montana State University, and a Masters from the University of Kansas, where he used GIS and Remote Sensing technologies to model geologic processes. Prior to his position at ORS he worked for Ameritest, a national leader in advertising and marketing research, building Rich Internet Applications with the Adobe Flex Framework. He also spent three years running his own internet retail business, specializing in one of his life's passions: coffee! Jed spent 17 years as a top level amateur and professional cyclist; highlights included racing for the US National Team, representing the United States at the World Championships, and winning two National Titles. After a day of software development and raising a young family, he still rides, when time allows.