In the short time Jason Grigsby and Lyza Danger Gardner have, they won’t be able to make you an expert in each tool. But they will give you everything you need to start building your own preparedness kit and how to choose which tools are right for you.

In their must-attend workshop on the “Zombie Apocalypse of Device Preparedness”, Jason and Lyza will cover Responsive web design, mobile first web design, device detection, jQuery mobile, PhoneGap and the use of good, old fashioned baseball bats to give you a crucial head start in developing mobile apps – and keep your brain safe from flesh eating zombies.

The amount of information every one of us deals with daily is growing out of control as life accelerates, pressure increases, and everything needs to be dealt with right now. Breakthrough progress requires more than careful planning and in depth research – we need to cultivate the happy accidents that can take our games to a new level.

This begs the question: How can we attract good luck? We need more than that lightweight luck found in a fortune cookie – we need the real deal. Thor Muller explores the eight pathways for generating the conditions that favor luck in his session “Get Lucky: The Business of Planned Serendipity.”

Thor is a true believer in well planned luck and social entrepreneurship. He is CTO and co-founder of Get Satisfaction in San Francisco, where he finds and advises startups that make a difference. His experience as a Web pioneer bridges both design and technology.

Technology is everywhere, the digital and physical worlds are colliding, but often still not seamlessly or painlessly. Here’s your opportunity to change that by learning to create cross-channel design. After all, you live a cross-channel life.

Samantha Starmer’s interactive workshop, “The Future of Web Design Isn’t Just the Web” will offer tools and recommendations for creating holistic, interactive experiences that resonate in all channels, interactions, and surroundings.

Samantha leads experience, design and information architecture teams at REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.) and has done customer focused work at companies like Amazon.com and Microsoft. She is passionate about evangelizing and creating holistic customer experiences across channels, time and devices.

The new frontier of gaming is all about HTML5, with its fancy new features that allow designers and developers to create awesome gaming experiences that can be delivered to modern desktop and mobile browsers. If you haven’t played an HTML5 games, stop by HTML5games.com and take a few for a spin.

Convinced? Roll up your sleeves and get started developing your own games in Jesse Freeman’s fabulous half-day workshop on “Building HTML 5 Games,” where you’ll learn how to use Impact JS to create amazing retro-style games that deliver fast, fluid performance and can be deployed on a wide range of devices.

Jesse’s hands-on workshop will cover game design and theory, deployment and distribution, and the installation of HTML5 tools and ImpactJS. You’ll not only jump start your capabilities, you’ll get started in making a game, generating assets, and working with inheritance, animation & sound. Workshop attendees will also get a free non-commercial license of Impact JS along with documentation and lesson source code.

An expert in the gaming field, Jesse (@jessefreeman) is on the cutting edge of interactive development on the web and mobile platforms and is a Technical Architect and Technology Evangelist at Roundarch.

Sure, you want to roll up your sleeves and start using HTML5 and CSS3…it’s what the cool kids are doing. But, alas! Your client (or boss) wants the website to look good on older browsers. What to do?

In his half day workshop on “Adaptive Web Design,” author and web standards aficionado Aaron Gustafson (@aarongustafson) will show how novices and experienced professionals will gain insight and understanding about progressive enhancement and how to use it in their work.

Learn the secrets of building web pages from the content out with “mobile first” and ”responsive design”, use JavaScript wisely, work with layered CSS (including CSS3) and comply with accessibility standards. You will also learn about ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and see how you can employ them.

Aaron has a love of web standards and an in-depth knowledge of website strategy and architec­ture, interface design, and numerous languages, including XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. He is Group Manager of the Web Standards Project (WaSP), wrote the JavaScript library eCSStender and writes for .net Magazine. His latest book Adaptive Web Design: Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement is…well, all about adaptive web design.

An internationally recognized authority on innovation and best-selling author, Luke Williams, is a leading consultant, educator, and speaker specializing in design thinking and innovation strategy. He is a Fellow at frog design, one of the world’s most influential innovation companies, Adjunct Professor of Innovation at NYU Stern School of Business, and the author of Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business.

In “Broken Telephone“, Nishant Kothary will draw from diverse fields like behavioral economics, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, even religion to explore the causes, effects, and remedies for some of the most annoying dilemmas of our profession.

Nishant writes on MIX Online; advises Microsoft teams on their Web strategy; writes on design & human behavior for publications like Smashing Magazine and UXMag; signs up for custom projects; and takes on the occasional speaking gig.

Thor Muller explores some of the answers in “Get Lucky: The Business of Planned Serendipity.” Planned serendipity is the practice of making unexpected discoveries. By definition, we don’t know when serendipity will strike, but we can foster the conditions for it to occur early and often in and around our organizations.

Thor is CTO and co-founder of Get Satisfaction in San Francisco, where he founds and advises startups that make a difference to real people. His experience as a Web pioneer bridges design and technology. Thor is a true believer in social entrepreneurship.

In his presentation, “CSS3 OpenType: The New Web Typography Frontier,” Thomas Phinney covers the new possibilities and choices available to designers.

Thomas is a leading expert on typography, and the senior product manager for fonts and typography at Extensis. He has long been involved in the design, technical, forensic, business and historical aspects of type, as well as font standards development. His typeface Hypatia Sans is an Adobe Original.

In “From Muppets to Mastery: Core UX Principles from Mr. Jim Henson,” Russ Unger takes a quick dive into the life of Jim Henson, with a view into his work from the perspective of how it pertains to what it is we’re doing today.

Russ is a UX Director for Happy Cog, a web design firm in New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco. He is co-author of the book “A Project Guide to UX Design” for Peachpit Press (Voices That Matter) and is co-authoring a book on guerrilla research methods with Todd Zaki Warfel.

And yes, there will be muppets.