Speakers

Alt and Kirtsy have teamed up to find an all-star group of speakers. The best of the best in design and social media. We'll be posting speaker bios as we confirm them — so we hope you check back often. While you're patiently waiting for Alt Summit to arrive, you can hear what the speakers have to say by following the Alt Summit Speaker List on Twitter.

Bob Smithwick

Bob tried his best in college to avoid doing computer stuff. You can see how well that worked out. As the Technology and Operations Director at Charlotte’s LEAP Design, he enjoys helping national and regional clients create unique, engaging and get-down-to-business websites. Equally comfortable with Microsoft’s .Net framework and open source content management solutions, Bob has architected and built systems for the Air Force, the University of North Carolina, and popular blogs. Over many years of collaboration with LEAP partner, wife, and Kirtsy co-founder, Laurie Smithwick, Bob has developed a heightened sensitivity to faithfully implementing a designer’s vision without sacrificing speed and search visibility.

 

Jonathan Minori

Jonathan Minori began his career in junior high when he discovered Corel WordPerfect could save out HTML files allowing him to "design and build" his first web pages. At that moment he was hooked. Over the next 11 years he would spend most of his free time pushing pixels and writing code. He is currently employed as a Senior Interactive Designer at Struck/Axiom in Salt Lake City. Prior to that he was an Art Director at Blattner Brunner in Pittsburgh, PA. He's worked on campaigns for clients such as adidas, Nintendo, LEGO, Dreamworks, MINI, General Motors, The North Face, Cub Cadet, Aquafresh, and Sandisk among others. When he's not sitting in front of the computer you can find him shredding gnar (skiing), spending time outdoors, or running triathlons.

 

Jeff Yamada

Jeff Yamada is the Director of Development at StruckAxiom, where he leads a team of highly talented developers building interactive experiences and user interactions that people talk about. Prior to StruckAxiom he gained experience at companies like RED, Schematic, Designory, and Microsoft. As a developer Jeff enjoys bringing technical solutions to the table when solving creative problems. Jeff started out as a designer some time ago, but has been programming since high school and quickly became obsessed with creative programming. In 2008 Jeff Co-authored the Adobe AIR Bible, a reference guide to getting started with the Adobe Integrated Runtime using Flex, Flash, and HTML/JS and how to approach desktop development using web development tools to integrate rich interactive experiences with the power of desktop applications.

Before moving to the suburbs of Salt Lake City to enjoy free babysitting from his in-laws, Jeff grew up in Vancouver, BC, and lived for several years in both Seattle and Los Angeles. When not being a nerd, Jeff enjoys spending time with his wife Amy and boys Jack and Will. Someday he plans on enjoying the ski hills he keeps hearing about.

 

Nicole Balch

Nicole Balch of Making it Lovely has been working hard to transform her so-so house into a lovely home.  Armed with tools from Photoshop to a compound meiter saw, she invites readers to follow along, offer advice, or just get a glimpse into the creative process. There are plenty of before and after shots, along with decorating ideas, a monthly style post, and the popular Making it Yours feature which follows one piece of furniture through five different rooms. Making it Lovely was recently named one of the 50 World's Best Design Blogs by the London Times Online, and Nicole's work has been featured in the Chicago Tribune Magazine, Time Out Chicago, ReadyMade, Everyday with Rachael Ray, CS Interiors, and other publications. When she's not wallpapering, painting, or otherwise DIY-ing her home, Nicole is working on her stationery business, Pink Loves Brown, and she lives in Oak Park, IL with her husband Brandon and their baby Eleanor.

 

Mat Thorne

Mat Thorne is an artist and designer from West Virginia. He earned his BA in Photojournalism and New Media from Western Kentucky University, and was the Art Director for Maine Media Workshops (formerly the Maine Photographic Workshops) from 2004-2008. He continues his relationship with the Workshops as a faculty member, leading courses in digital photography, multimedia, and design. Thorne is also a lecturer, consultant, and freelance designer in New York City where he currently resides. Thorne's work can be viewed online at: http://www.mat-thorne.com

 

Heather Armstrong

Heather Armstrong, a former web designer, started publishing dooce(r) in early 2001. Heather has won numerous awards for her work on dooce.com including Best American Blog, Best Designed Blog, Best Writing for a Blog, Weblog of the Year and in 2008, received a Lifetime Achievement award. Heather was named #8 in Forbes' "The Web Celeb 25" in early 2009 and on the Web Celeb 25 in 2008.

Heather has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Forbes and Business Week amongst others. Heather has appeared on ABC News Nightline, NPR, PBS, ABC World News Tonight and The Today Show. dooce is one of the most widely read personal sites on the internet and has a passionately loyal following.

 

Emily Gray

Emily Gray is Manager of Digital Strategy and Development at Martha Stewart Omnimedia. In this position, she is responsible for strategic partnerships in the digital space as well as growing new business for the digital properties. Since joining MSLO in August 2007, she has been involved in the launch and continued development of Martha’s Circle, one of the first boutique advertising networks focused on lifestyle sites and blogs. In addition, she is responsible for overseeing MSLO’s partnerships with Pingg Corp, WeddingWire Inc. and Ziplist, Inc.
 
Prior to joining MSLO, Ms. Gray served as a Sr. Sales Producer at Yahoo! Music where she managed partnerships for such programs as the Grammy Awards, Live Sets (an online custom concert series featuring top performing artists) and music video strategy. Previously, she worked in the media sales group at Yahoo! New York. Ms. Gray graduated magna cum laude from Union College. She lives in New York City.

 

Mike Barash

Mike is the marketing communications director at Blurb, the creative publishing platform that makes it easy for anyone to design, publish, share and sell bookstore-quality books. Mike directs outbound communications and global PR for Blurb, a role which takes many forms. Simply put, he is responsible for driving awareness of Blurb around the world.

With Blurb Mike has led the marketing communications rollouts of Blurb’s European launch, the Photography.Book.Now international juried competition, the company’s presence at key events worldwide, and accepted a Webby Award on Blurb’s behalf in the services category. Previously Mike was a vice president with Atomic PR, where he worked with brands including Blurb, imeem, Photobucket (acquired by MySpace), LinkedIn, hi5, and Flock.

 

Bridgette Meinhold

Bridgette is a LEED accredited sustainability consultant based in Park City, UT and helps individuals and companies reduce their environmental impact. With degrees in Mechanical and Environmental Engineering, she has experience in renewable energy, energy efficiency, green building and sustainable development. She is a contributing writer for Inhabitat.com where she is the Architecture News Editor, and she's also a contributing writer for Ecouterre.com, and LowImpactLiving.com.

When she’s not calculating carbon footprints, recycling materials into new things, or writing blog posts, she spends her time with her dog hiking in the woods, skiing, cooking and painting. She recently got married to the man of her dreams, in a green, environmentally friendly wedding, and she is currently trying to talk herself into writing her first novel, which will most definitely have something to do with sustainability.

 

DJ Earworm

A Producer and DJ in San Francisco since 2003, DJ Earworm has recently rocketed to the top of the global new music scene. In 2006, Earworm wrote the “Audio Mashup Construction Kit”, for Wiley Publishing, the first ever book on creating music mashup. In December of 2008, he released the wildly successful United State of Pop 2008 – “Viva la Pop,” the end-of-year music celebration which became a #1 Radio hit, YouTube sensation and the first mashup ever to break into the Billboard Pop 100 Chart!

In addition to being voted “2009 Best Electronic Music Act” by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Earworm recently worked with artists such as Maroon 5, Annie Lennox, and Sean Kingston, plus performances with acts such as Wyclef Jean, The Eagles, Stevie Wonder, John Mayer, and many others. As well as rocking the crowds with his own electrifying solo DJ performances. The release of United State of Pop 2009 “Blame it on the Pop” has taken the musical world by storm in 2010, already breaking the Top 50 in the CHR Charts and gaining nearly 6 million views on YouTube in it’s first two weeks of release and becoming a true global sensation.

 

Rita Arens

Rita Arens is assignment and syndication editor for BlogHer, which encompasses an award-winning online news hub, the most robust blogging conference series in the world and a publishing network reaching more than 20 million unique visitors a month. Her job is to find and feature the best writing on the Internet.
 
Rita’s writing has appeared in Scholastic Parent & Child, The Kansas City Star, The Rockhurst Review and other outstanding print and online publishing venues. Her personal blog, Surrender, Dorothy, has won her attention in Businessweek online, The Wall Street Journal and as a frequent Open Salon editor’s pick. She is the editor of parenting anthology Sleep Is for the Weak (Chicago Review Press, 2008). Prior to BlogHer, she worked as an editor and product manager for H&R Block and as director of content for Primedia’s IndustryClick.

 

Stacey Ferguson

Stacey Ferguson is a Senior Attorney in the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices, where her workload focuses primarily on advertising issues related to the Internet and high-tech goods and services, such as spyware and adware, peer-to-peer file sharing, digital rights management, and word-of-mouth marketing online. In 2006, she received the Janet D. Steiger award for her work as part of the FTC Spyware Team. She assisted in coordinating the Commission’s town halls on mobile marketing and digital rights management. She currently serves on the Interactive Technologies Task Force, the Federal-State Law Enforcement Spyware Task Force and the Diversity Council in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. She is also part of the FTC’s Endorsement Guides education outreach team. Prior to joining the FTC, Ms. Ferguson practiced law at Proskauer Rose LLP, where she worked in the areas of privacy and intellectual property law. She received her J.D. from the Howard University School of Law and her B.S. in Telecommunications from the University of Florida.

 

Emily Goligoski

Emily Goligoski develops strategic marketing products for Federated Media, an online publishing company that represents Apartment Therapy, NOTCOT, and dooce among other sites. She's worked as a digital strategist for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide and as an interactive producer for the advertising agency Venables Bell & Partners after studying journalism at Northwestern University. She co-founded the live event series Ignite Bay Area and conducts video interviews with female company founders for the technology entrepreneurship organization Women 2.0.  She now writes about arts and culture as TheSanFranista after getting an early start in trends reporting publishing the "Gollie’s Follies" in grade school in the cultural hotbed of Toledo, Ohio. Her work has appeared on Notes on Design, Huffington Post, Mashable, DivineCaroline, and Josh Spear.

 

Jeroen Reuven Bours

Jeroen Reuven Bours (Dutch born) - Advertising Art Director, Graphic Designer and Creative Director. Board Member of the Art Directors Club (ADC) of New York, Member of D&AD.

Known for many campaigns in Advertising. Created the -"Priceless"- campaign for MasterCard, together with Joyce King Thomas at the advertising agency of McCann Erickson. Fortune Magazine named the campaign one of the major breakthroughs of the last century (May 31, 2006: Six Teams That Changed The World - The Power Of An Idea). Worked for over 2 years directly for Steve Jobs on his NeXT Computer with Ken Segall. Other campaigns include the - Beyond Petroleum - campaign for British Petroleum together with writer Ken Shuldman. This campaign set off the beginning of the green messages coming from Oil Companies.

Besides various introductions of new products for American Express, Jeroen's credited with the invention of the OPEN business network. This business and creative idea propelled the small business card and division at American Express into a thriving business source enough to make local banks nervous and small business owners enthusiastic about this new idea.

Speciality: Inventing Ideas that Last.

 

Laura Mayes

Laura Mayes is an Emmy-winning writer and co-founder of kirtsy.com, a user-generated content aggregator for online news from 30 editors and hundreds of thousands of women. Kirtsy also hosts the Mom 2.0 Summit in February and has launched a nationwide “Hands-On Social Media” program to educate women about social media. In addition, Laura created and edited the book, Kirtsy Takes a Bow: A Celebration of Women's Online Favorites and continues to write for a variety of new-fangled blogs, review sites, and publications, including her personal blog, The Queso.

Note: Laura will be teaching social media tools to local businesses, politicians and organizations during Thursday's preconference programming.

 

Monica Danna

Monica Danna is a Marketing & Public Relations Consultant who specializes in New Media strategies for small businesses. Monica has spent much of her career in the Energy industry as a software marketing specialist. Before beginning her consultantcy, co.lab, in 2009 she held the position of Social Media Manager for Halliburton and its various subsidiaries. Focusing on Social Media consulting and Public Relations strategies for small businesses and non-profit organizations, Monica uses tools such as blogging, Facebook, and Twitter to add new media tactics to traditional marketing methods to achieve the optimal marketing mix for a client. She enjoys playing an active role in the Houston arts community and is a freelance writer for various print and online publications. You can find her blogging at www.cosmopolitician.net or Design Junkie or twittering away as @cosmopolitician.

Note: Monica will be teaching social media tools to local businesses, politicians and organizations during Thursday's preconference programming.

 

Victoria Smith

Victoria Smith is a San Francisco based design blogger, photographer, and bonafide flea market junkie. Victoria is the writer/editor of sfgirlbybay.com, one of the West Coast’s leading daily design blogs. Victoria has an interesting and varied background in the design industry, a journalism major with an Advanced Arts degree in Interior Design, she has also worked as a freelance art buyer producing photo shoots for advertising agencies and designers on accounts such as Condé Nast Publications like Domino, Architectural Digest, Gourmet and Bon Appetít. In addition, Victoria has been recently been voted #10 of the London Times Top 50 Design Blogs, and is a frequent writer for 7×7, and Uppercase magazines. She loves collecting old cameras, vintage-inspired fashion, exploring the city on her bicycle, and discovering a really fabulous fish taco. You can usually locate her scouring the local flea markets, or chained to her desk writing about her latest decor finds.

 

Kelly Beall

Kelly’s loved art and design for as long as she can remember. (Seriously.) Since making the move from the world of advertising to design (and the 6 states in between), her day-to-day life plays out as a graphic designer at Hester Designs, and author of Design Crush. What began in June 2007 as a place to catalogue design inspirations and musings quickly turned into a design crush of massive proportions. Every D.C. post is kept short and sweet (“crush-sized”), showing off anything and everything Kelly’s inspired by. Never anything she isn’t. When undistracted by obscure and clever design finds, she can be found making a mess in the kitchen, hanging out in dive bars and stalking professional mascots. She shares her Oklahoma home with two laid-back cats (one a hypochondriac, the other a pillow) and one high-energy pup.

Justin Hackworth

Justin Hackworth is a Utah based photographer, working throughout the United States for a variety of wedding, portrait, and editorial clients. His photographs have shown in galleries across the state, as well as the photography publications Photo District News, Photographer’s Forum and American Photo. Justin approaches photography with a classic documentary style, and his images reflect wit and authenticity. He is currently working on a long-term documentary project photographing the recovery of Stephanie Nielson. In April he will begin his third year of the 30 Strangers portrait project and fundraiser. In addition to photography, Justin also enjoys movies and music, but his beautiful wife Amy and their two little boys make him smile the most.

His favorite font is Papyrus. Just kidding.

 

Sheila Bernus Dowd

An entrepreneur, blogger and mother who works from home, Sheila’s 1940s California bungalow serves as the inspiration for her site, Lookiloos — a site designed to inspire creativity and satisfy curiosity by showcasing great architecture, landscapes, design and decor. Lookiloos is a nationally syndicated home and garden site about Silicon Valley homes and style. Sheila's style articles are featured in the San Jose Mercury News’ Home section. Sheila is also Founder/Principal of Clever Girls Collective. She serves on the Yahoo! Mother Board and is an ambassador for Graco Baby Products. She blogs and writes reviews at XiaolinMama, Silicon Valley Moms Blog, and MOMocrats. A lifelong music lover, Sheila is the co-founder of Left Coast Live, a music festival and conference that features the best emerging artists of the West Coast music scene.

 

Karen Walrond

A former attorney, Karen Walrond is a writer, photographer and the creative mind behind the award-winning blog Chookooloonks, a site that helps readers see that their ordinary lives are, in fact, extraordinary. Her fine art images and photography projects have been included in exhibits around the country. She was one of the founding contributors to the collaborative website, Shutter Sisters, a photoblog aimed at inspiring and creating community among avid women photographers. A seasoned speaker, she has appeared on both local and national radio and television shows, including an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She is the author of the upcoming book, The Beauty of Different, to be published by Bright Sky Press, Fall 2010.

 

Neil Chase

Neil Chase is Vice President for Author Services at Federated Media, where he and his team manage relationships with more than 100 of the most creative independent publishers on the Web. He has worked as an editor, with a strong focus on design and graphics, at The San Francisco Examiner, The Arizona Republic, CBS MarketWatch and The New York Times and was an assistant professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Neil has also been a consultant for dozens of companies and organizations and run publishing projects at events ranging from journalism conferences to Woodstock (no, not that one, the 1994 one).

 

Amy Love

Amy Love leads the US operations for PicScout and serves as the Vice President for Marketing and Business Development on a global basis. Amy’s experience includes multiple Silicon Valley based technology companies with B2B and B2C market opportunities. Amy served as the CEO for the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives and also founded her own company, REAL SPORTS magazine, which earned a reputation as The Authority in Women’s Sports in 1997. Her roots in marketing extend to her first role with Procter & Gamble after graduating from Texas Tech University and at Booz*Allen in their Marketing Intensive Practice after graduating from Harvard Business School.

Amy is an excellent instructor, too, having taught Marketing at the MBA level for San Jose State University for 9 years –She is consistently applauded for her engaging and practical hands-on learning style. She also created a class for Stanford MBAs, Entrepreneurship from the Perspective of Women, which has been offered for the last 5 years.

 

Chelsea Fuss

As a teenager, Chelsea Fuss spent much of her time sitting in an herb garden, gathering bouquets. Still a flower geek (and a one-time flower shop owner), Chelsea now authors Frolic!, a daily lifestyle blog popular worldwide with artists, editors, and lovers of pretty things. Frolic! has received press mentions in The London Times, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, Lucky, Madison, and more. In the summer of 2009, Chelsea founded Urban Weeds, Portland’s first street style blog. Chelsea is also a floral and prop stylist, focusing on how-to articles for wedding blogs and online publications. For fun, Chelsea loves to watch ballet with her nieces, practice photography with her vintage cameras, and eat lots of macaroni and cheese.

Rachel Jones

Rachel Jones is a graphic designer and blogger, who enjoys photography, and sharing her favorite creative design and style finds at Black Eiffel. Her laid-back Seattle area roots coupled with her optimistic passion of incorporating beauty into everyday living can be seen within her posts ranging from design to fashion to interiors. In her spare time Rachel likes to plan trips to foreign countries, make top ten lists, listen to great music, and unleash her inner foodie. Rachel currently resides in Utah, and enjoys hanging out with her husband and 3 year-old daughter. Black Eiffel has been highlighted in the Huffington Post, Design Quarterly, and Martha Stewart Living.

 

Kathryn Storke

Kathryn Storke has lived in four states since graduating from high school: New York, where she got her degree in English and creative writing; Mississippi, where she taught kindergarten for two years and fell in love with a mid-western boy; Wisconsin where she started Snippet & Ink and learned how much she hates driving in the snow; and now Texas, where she lives with her soon-to-be hubby, Ryan, and their cat, Lady Bird, and where she eats tacos at least four times a week and calls blogging her full-time job. She hopes the next move will bring her back to San Francisco, the place where she grew up and where her creative mother and godmothers taught her an appreciation for beauty and thoughtful details.

 

Michael Kern

Michael Kern serves as the Executive Creative Director and co-founder of Welikesmall. He brings extensive experience in both creative direction and digital solutions. Welikesmall is the brainchild of a few award-winning interactive industry veterans who were, quite frankly, fed up with the inefficiency and bureaucracy of large interactive companies. We knew that our clients were growing tired of it too. So we created a new model. We feel that by remaining small and hand-picking the best people allows us to stay nimble, offer the absolute best client service, and ultimately, work faster and more effectively than our larger sized competition.

Prior to founding Welikesmall, Mike was the Interactive Creative Director at Struck, and oversaw one of the most awarded and ground breaking sites in recent history, the Phillips shaveeverywhere.com microsite. Mike has been the driving creative force behind multiple award winning and ground-breaking works for clients like Nike, Coca-Cola, Camelbak, Microsoft, Dodge, Bugaboo, Sprint, Hyundai, Quiksilver, HP, among others. He is currently also teaching at The University of Utah.

 

Erik Natzke

Erik Natzke, artist, designer, and programmer, creates and gives material substance to his ideas through immaterial computer code. His sensibility, combined with his stubborn resolve, has enabled him to push back the limits of his medium, beyond known methods and approaches. Erik loves to take risks, in the awareness that the value of failure lies in discovering new, never-before conceived solutions.

Natzke's work focuses on aesthetics and methodology, in which code and numbers generate beauty. When Natzke wants to draw something, he doesn't pick up a pencil. He opens his Flash software editor and starts writing code. It is at this initial stage that he controls the environment in which his creation will grow and take shape down to every last, minute detail, before stepping back and watching the work emerge as the code is executed. For Natzke, the creative process is not confined to the programming room, or to moments when he contemplates nature. Rather, it is a continuous lending and borrowing of shapes, patterns, colors, processes and dynamics between the material and immaterial worlds. Form follows nature.

Enrico Schaefer

Enrico Schaefer is a technology addict, who has been entrenched in the internet space since he took over as President and General Counsel of a Boulder CO internet start-up in 1994. Since then, he has run several internet companies and is the founding partner of Traverse Legal, PLC, one of the most successful law firms specializing in internet law and technology company representation in the world. His firm represents some of the largest web companies on the internet, as well as scores of internet start-ups looking to make their on-line dreams come true. His value billing and flat fee pricing models, transparency and use of technology to collaborate with clients have been the subject of articles and commentary throughout the world.

While many people theorize that Enrico only exists virtually in cyberspace, his attendance at this conference will be proof positive that there is a real person manipulating the mouse on the other side of that GoToMeeting. And if you have any legal issues in the hopper, catch him at the break or on the slopes between telemark turns for some legal advice. Unlike any other lawyer you have ever met, he never charges a dime for time.

 

 

Allison Czarnecki

Allison Czarnecki is the founder and chief editor of the popular family lifestyle blog, Petit Elefant, where she writes about traveling with kids, fashion and style for women, recipes and crafts, home and garden, all on a realistic budget. This past summer she spearheaded the crazy fantastic SocialLuxe Lounge party at BlogHer which primped and pampered close to 700 women on the eve of the conference. She had only a few nervous breakdowns in the months leading up to BlogHer, which ended up being completely worth it, as the party was a smashing success. She lives in Utah where she is the happily married mother of two school aged children.

 

Jean Aw

Jean Aw is the design addicted, shopaholic, tech-loving founder of the NOTCOT design lifestyle sites — jokingly referred to as the NotEmpire by loved ones — the sites include the blog NOTCOT.com, and curated user submission sites NOTCOT.org, NotCouture.com, and Liqurious.com, as well as random experiments (some of which are housed in NotLabs.com — others you may hear sneak peeks of at @NOTCOT) In a one liner, NOTCOT is about Visual INSPIRATION! Think of it as your digital muse of sorts. It's filled with  Ideas + Aesthetics + Amusements hoping inspire passion and creativity, or at least make you smile.

While currently based in her hometown of Los Angeles, CA, she is very mobile, hopping around the country and across the globe, entrenching herself in international culture and their respective design hotspots. She often finds the most incredible things in the most unlikely of places and loves bringing them to her readers, often leaving them wondering whether the treasure was in their existence or in their discovery.

 

Josh Rogers

Josh was born and raised in the woods. Then he earned his English literature degree from the University of Virginia. After graduating (and going undrafted by the Boston Celtics), he moved to New York to become an Advertising Executive. Stints as a Strategic Planner and Writer at McCann Erickson and Berlin Cameron taught Josh that a traditional agency structure, machine-tooled to produce pre-determined solutions to every unique problem wasn’t ideal for him or for the brands he hoped to build. In 2001 he joined Powell, a design-focused communication company, where he was a strategic and creative partner. Before joining Imagination, he was most recently co-founder and creative director of Operator, a new fangled new media shop where he continued to make campaigns and other things that typically defy definition. For his work with brands like Rheingold Beer, Disney, Reebok, vitaminwater, Perry Ellis, the NBA, Coca-Cola and Sundance, Josh has short-listed at Cannes, won One Show pencils, CLIOs, EFFIEs and the Jay Chiat Planning Award. He values his experience as a guest teacher, speaker and new creative voice on the EFFIE Steering Committee. He also lives in the woods again, at least part time.

 

Bryan Mason

Bryan Mason is the President of Typekit, a service for using some of the worlds best typography on the web. Prior to Typekit, he was the Chief Operating Officer at Adaptive Path, an international design consultancy whose mission is to create experiences that change people's lives. Currently a board member at Adaptive Path, he's worked with clients including Skype, MySpace, Flickr, Zappos, Google, and The Unite Nations. He has served as an advisor to Twitter, the business manager for Blogger, and as an events producer for The White House, the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics (back to Utah!) and the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

 

Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan

Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan is an interior designer, author and the founder of Apartment Therapy Media, a network of blogs devoted to helping people make their homes beautiful, organized, and healthy.

In 2004, Maxwell launched apartmenttherapy.com. The network now includes five sites — apartmenttherapy.com, thekitchn.com, ohdeedoh.com, unplggd.com, re-nest.com — reaching over 3 million unique readers per month. He is the author of Apartment Therapy: The Eight Step Home Cure (Bantam, 2006), Apartment Therapy Presents: Real Homes, Real People, Hundreds of Design Solutions (Chronicle, 2008), and Apartment Therapy’s Big, Book of Small, Cool Spaces, a forthcoming book from Clarkson-Potter (Spring, 2010).

 

 

Jan Fleming

For the past eight years, Jan Fleming has worked to reinvent the Sundance Film Festival branding and communications. She oversees development of the defining concept, scouts fresh creative talent, and follows the work from concept to execution to ensure holistic branding, message and experience. Uniquely, Jan has worked with Mr. Redford and Sundance since 1999 across most of the Sundance organizations both as staff and consultant. She fell into television in New York at Children’s Television Workshop; wound her way through making music videos to commercials; became a development exec for an independent production company; developed tv; developed film; created/produced a live action-puppet-animated music series for Nickelodeon; was recruited by Disney as a Creative Director; developed several family-focused brands there until meeting this Redford fellow who offered wider open spaces to play.

Up to now, she’s enjoyed all these creative endeavors large and small, and has positively influenced a diverse range of organizations and brands. Her work, when successful is often stealth, but it always requires some thinking and making in every dimension and across all mediums.

 

Erin Loechner

Writer Erin Loechner launched award-winning DesignForMankind.com in mid-2007 in an attempt to bring light to the inspiration found in today’s creative culture. Her work has been featured in Ready-Made, Glamour, Dwell, Lucky and Nylon Magazine. She also co-owns BAKERY, a business consultancy, with fellow blogger Jaime Derringer of Design Milk. The two have never met in person, but have managed to successfully e-advise over 75 independent artisans and creatives in less than a year. In her spare time (what spare time?!), Erin loves to surf, play with her two dogs and eat inappropriate amounts of hummus.

Also, she totally lied about the surfing thing.

 

Gayla Trail

Gayla Trail is a writer, photographer, and graphic designer with a background in the Fine Arts, cultural criticism, and ecology.  Gayla launched YouGrowGirl.com in February 2000 as a personal response to a kind of gardening media she found missing. What began as a fun side-project for her design partnership has taken on a life of its own over the last ten years, transforming Gayla into an in-demand garden personality and spokesperson with a focus on urban gardening, growing food, and sustainable living. Her work as a writer and photographer has appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, The Globe and Mail, Organic Gardening, ReadyMade, Budget Living, and several more.  She is also the author, photographer, and designer of two books on urban gardening: You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening (Simon and Schuster, 2005) and Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces (Clarkson Potter, 2010).  Her own line of pithy gardening products can be found at SUPERfantastico.com.

 

Jaime Derringer

Jaime Derringer is editor of Design Milk, a website dedicated to art, architecture, and design. Design Milk has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Time Out New York, and is one of the Google Engineers' Staff Picks. Over 70% of its readers work in a design-related field. It's also read by many entertainers, hundreds of retailers, magazine editors, and HGTV hosts and designers. In addition to Design Milk, Jaime is an artist, a freelance writer, and co-owns BAKERY, which assists bloggers, artists, and small business owners build and improve their online presence. She has over 10 years of marketing, advertising, and project management experience, including 8 years working with new media and online publishing.

 

Joy Deangdeelert Cho

Joy Deangdeelert Cho is a graphic designer and blogger who worked with numerous fashion clients in New York before launching her own business, Oh Joy! She now designs textiles, packaging, and branding for clients in the fashion and food industries and sells her stationery line nationwide. She has authored the popular Oh Joy blog since 2005 and recently launched a new food blog, Happy Lady Eats, chronicling her foodie adventures. She is currently co-writing Creative, Inc. – a book about becoming a freelance creative talent to be published by Chronicle Books and released in Fall 2010.

 

Sarah Jane Wright

Sarah Jane Wright is a designer and illustrator, focusing on her children's book illustrations and her Etsy shop, where she sells fine art prints and stationery. She has grown her business from a one woman operation to a 4 person operation and has been able to share her designs all over the world. In addition to her online shop, she keeps up a her illustration blog, Sarah Jane Studios, with design ideas, free downloads, and posts on life as a mother and illustrator/designer. Sarah Jane has recently begun a career in book illustration. Her latest title, with author Nancy O'Dell (co-host of Access Hollywood), is Full of Life, and is currently a top seller on Amazon. She is working with Harper Collins Publishers on her latest venture: a picture book called A Christmas Goodnight, due out Fall 2011. When not illustrating, she can be found playing with and cuddling her 3 young children: her absolute favorite pass-time.

 

Maggie Mason

Maggie Mason pioneered the shopping blog space with the launch of Mighty Goods in 2004. The site was named one of Time Magazine's Top 50 Cool Sites, and selected as best shopping site by both Forbes and BusinessWeek. She has since launched a network of popular shopping sites that includes Mighty Haus and Mighty Junior. Maggie is the author of No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, and her personal blog, Mighty Girl was nominated for a SxSW Lifetime Achievement Weblog Award. She was named one of Silicon Valley's Top 50 Influencers by Now Public, and is a Broad Summit founder.

 

Grace Bonney

Brooklyn-based writer, Grace Bonney, launched Design*Sponge in August of 2004. It has since grown to be one of the most popular blogs in it's field, with 47,000 daily readers and over 42,000 daily RSS readers. Grace has a unique angle on the industry, working as a contributing editor at Domino Magazine and CRAFT magazine, and as a freelancer with top publications like House and Garden, New York Home, Food and Wine, In Style, Better Homes and Gardens, New York Magazine, CITY Magazine, Time Out New York Kids, Archinect, The New York Post, Everyday with Rachael Ray and others. In addition, she wrote a weekly design column for the Philadelphia Inquirer for two years and has worked as Style Editor of HGTV’s Ideas Magazine. Grace has been a featured guest on Good Morning America and the Martha Stewart Radio Show and has been invited to speak with wide variety of organizations ranging from design schools to professional trade organizations.

 

Megan Reardon

Megan Reardon studied costume design and construction in college before being distracted by making websites. After moving to San Francisco she found herself building a website about all the projects and inspirations she was obsessing over while building websites for other people. After moving to Seattle she started a small business selling handmade knitting needle cases called The Organized Knitter. These days she is a founding member of the Grassroots Business Organization and continues to keep track of all the things she hopes to find again over at Not Martha. She has several knitting patterns published in books and at Knitty, and once wove small baskets out of bacon in the hopes that the dazzle would disguise the fact that she isn't such a great cook.

 

Volker Durre

Volker Durre is Principal of Durre Design, a Los Angeles based graphic design consultancy that serves clients across the spectrum. Founded together with his wife Gina Durre in 2007, the company works with clients such as Sundance, Warner Bros., The Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson & Johnson and ExerciseTV. In the past 15 years he also worked with some excellent design teams, among them Najbrt & Lev in Prague, the MTA in Los Angeles and AdamsMorioka in Beverly Hills, where he designed and directed projects for Adobe, Gehry Partners and GAP.

Born in Germany, Volker's interest in graphic design and typography sparked in high school. He studied for two years at Art Center College of Design in Switzerland and two years at Art Center in Pasadena before graduating there. Volker is past board member of the AIGA Los Angeles where he headed the website committee. He occasionally teaches Corporate Identity Design at Otis College of Art and Design.

 

Laurie Smithwick

Laurie Smithwick is a co-founder of Kirtsy who blogs at UpsideUp, and runs LEAP, an award-winning, can-do graphic and web design studio in North Carolina. She was nominated for a Grammy award in 1998. She didn’t win, but she got to wear an awesome purple velvet dress that made her feel real girly. When she's not being held captive by her computer, she can be found laughing with her redhead husband and 7-yr-old twins, building stars out of old palette wood, or wishing she was eating french fries.

 

Stephanie Brubaker

After stints on both the East and West Coasts, Stephanie Brubaker finally landed in the desert city of Salt Lake.  She lives with her family in Salt Lake City full-time, except when they take on crazy projects in foreign countries. This year Stephanie and her husband (with 3 kids in tow), renovated a 500-year-old cottage in a picturesque Medieval village in Southwestern France (think "Chocolat" and "Ever After").  During this time she fell further in love with the ideas of simple French living and the importance of quality-of-life.  Stephanie also keeps busy writing a lifestyle blog — which can be best-described as a forum for design, fashion, parenting, entertaining, travel and all things food-related — and contributes weekly to a local food blog. Prior to child-rearing, Stephanie spent time working in art museums and Williams-Sonoma's corporate offices. On Stephanie's current to-do list is planning her son's birthday party, designing an office/loft space in a historic building downtown, and attempting to keep her Meyer Lemon tree alive.

Karey Mackin

Something brilliant happened on Karey Mackin’s last birthday: she stopped being afraid of chances. Specifically, the taking of them. She now says yes to pretty much everything that scares the britches off of her. As long as it’s legal and doesn’t require britches. After a six-year adventure in the Middle East, Karey lives near the Obama family with her husband and their girlies three, Lillie, Grae-Rose and Esmé. She still writes for a PR firm in Jordan that rarely pays but never. ever. edits her, and at Mackin Ink about such things as her loathing of capital letters and proper punctuation - but only because they give her vertigo - and her quest to win the contest for most bangles on one wrist. Karey is also a proud editor for Kirtsy, and part-owner of a creative confectionery called T.ruffles, where she and her best imaginary friend make candy for your soul. Sweet.

 

Joslyn Taylor

With California roots and a liberal arts degree, Joslyn Taylor never imagined she’d end up (happily) living in Dallas, TX and running a corporate website for a software company, but while on maternity leave with her second daughter (and seriously wishing for a creative outlet) she discovered the world of design blogs and was instantly enamored.  Now, in addition to her day job, she finds herself writing two blogs: Simple Lovely, her lifestyle/design blog, and Raising Foodies, which chronicles her attempts to get her two young daughters to consume something other than chicken nuggets. She’s also a Kirtsy editor, a contributor at the Dallas Arts Blog Renegade Bus and has written articles for Dallas Child magazine.
 
Joslyn lives with her daughters Audrey and Amelia (Millie) and her stellar hubby Bryan, where they love having living room dance parties and eat far too much gelato.