Speakers

Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. Vitaly is writer, speaker, author and editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.

Hot Studio founder Maria Giudice has pursued a vision of intelligent, elegant, people-centered design throughout her professional life. It’s an approach that’s helped Hot Studio grow into a full-service creative agency and one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 5,000 fastest-growing businesses. Recently, Maria joined Facebook as its Director of Product Design.

Lynne d Johnson works with brands and agencies to engage consumers through content-driven conversations that build passionate communities all with the goal of providing value for people while driving business ROI. 

Tomer Sharon is a Senior User Experience Researcher at Google Search in New York City and author of the upcoming book, "Lean UX Research for Entrepreneurs".

Marta is an interface designer at Swwweet, a small Barcelona based web design studio. When she's not messing around with CSS, she is teaching workshops on web technologies and helping organize local events like Webcat.

Chris Avore, Managing Director of Product Design at NASDAQ OMX, is changing how the stock market (recognized as the home for innovation and technology) thinks about design. 

Michael Boeke is a designer, product guy, and startup veteran, who currently designs and produces software at online payments company Braintree. He focuses on applying design thinking and modern technology to shake-up traditional (read: boring) industries.

John Carlin is the co-founder of Funny Garbage, one of the first digital design companies. He started his career as an art writer, curator and professor and created one of the first successful AIDS benefits in the entertainment business—Red Hot + Blue. 

As an Experience Design Director with Mad*Pow in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Adam combines his interaction design experience with his background in Computer Science, Film and Visual Design to create effective, efficient, and easy-to-use applications, websites, and interactive media.

Tami Evnin is a builder of kick-ass applications as a Product Designer at Nasdaq OMX and an international award winning artist, mobile designer and product designer.

As a designer and user interface engineer, Shay Howe has a passion for solving problems while building creative and intuitive products, and he specializes in user interface design and development. 

Aaron Irizarry is a Sr. Product Designer for Nasdaq OMX, lover of heavy metal, foodie, and a master of BBQ arts. You can find some of his thoughts and presentations on the conversation surrounding design at over at discussingdesign.com.

For 18 yrs, Gabe has been designing interactive exhibits and interfaces, and leading teams to create innovative experiences. In 2003 he founded Belle & Wissell in Seattle–a studio that crafts memorable, participatory experiences by blending inventive design and technology.

Brian is the founder of Sub-Genre Consulting, focusing on business development projects in the entertainment and cultural industries as well as helping filmmakers, artists and organizations to distribute content and connect with audiences through innovative uses of new technology. He was most recently CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI),  where he conceived and launched the Reframe project, a unique initiative that is digitizing and make available thousands of films for DVD, streaming and video on demand.

Casey Pugh is a developer dedicated to creating interactive experiences on the web. In 2009, Casey was inspired to use the Internet and an ever-ready pool of passionate Star Wars fans to crowdsource the classic film Star Wars IV: A New Hope. This pet project turned into a labor of love and creativity on a large scale. Nearly a thousand fans came together to participate and the resulting movie is equal parts fun, kooky, and dearly nostalgic.

Renaldi is the founder and publisher of Charles Lane Press, an independent publisher that showcases important new projects by contemporary photographers. Renaldi's forthcoming monograph,Touching Strangers, will be published by the Aperture Foundation in the spring of 2014.