Speakers in the News »

9/30/05
JASON FRIED

2006 SXSW Interactive Festival Opening Speaker Jason Fried is among the web luminaries featured in the September 26 BusinessWeek story titled "It's A Whole New Web: And This Time It Will Be Built By You." The president of 37signals.com in Chicago, he provides the closing quote for this story, which notes that an ever-maturing Internet favors function and usability as opposed to hype and empty promises. Comments Fried, "It's all about doing things. Cool wears off. Usefulness never does."

4:50pm CST | +

9/29/05
JAMES CRAIG

Read or listen to a full transcript of the "Accessibility: Can't We All Just Get Along?" panel from the 2005 SXSW Interactive Festival. The transcript is posted by James Craig (pictured above), who was one of the speakers on this session. As Craig explains on his website cookiecrook.com, the transcript serves to further expand the agenda of the panel: "The documentation includes an audio recording of the panel, a text transcript with timecodes, representations of the slides presented, and additional notes added by the panelists . . .The intention of this web presentation is to demonstrate that accessible websites benefit everyone, not just those with disabilities. For example, a hearing-impaired person may need to read the transcript, but even non-disabled person will benefit from the additional information provided with the transcript."

4:52pm CST | +

9/28/05
DICK HARDT

Dick Hardt's "Identity 2.0" presentation from OSCON 2005 is now available online. He explains the premise of his talk in a short intro on this page: "As the online world moves towards Web 2.0, the concept of digital identity is evolving, and existing identity systems are falling behind. New systems are emerging that place identity in the hands of users instead of directories. Simple, secure and open, these systems will provide the scalable, user-centric mechanism for authenticating and managing real-world identities online, enabling truly distinct and portable Internet identities." Hardt spoke on the "Open Source Infrastructure" panel at the 2005 SXSW Interactive Festival.

4:53pm CST | +

9/27/05
MARISSA MAYER

The October 3 issue BusinessWeek features a lengthy profile of Google's Marissa Mayer: "She ended up joining Google in early 1999, as a programmer and roughly its 20th employee. Since then, Mayer has emerged as a powerful force inside the high-flying company. Her title, director of consumer Web products, belies her power and influence as a champion of innovation. Mayer has her hands on virtually everything the average Google user sees -- from the look of its Web pages to new software for searching your hard drive. And she helps decide which new initiatives get the attention of the company's founders and which don't. . . .A large part of Mayer's success at Google is due to her ability to travel easily between different worlds. When she first joined, the company had something of a high-school cliquishness, albeit in reverse. At lunch, the coolest kids -- in this forum, the smartest geeks -- sat together. On the periphery, sales and marketing folks gathered. Mayer could hold her own in either realm. 'She's a geek, but her clothes match,' says one former employee." Mayer talked about "Google, Innovation and the Web" at the 2004 SXSW Interactive Festival.

4:54pm CST | +

9/26/05
SEAN BONNER

The celebration of independent online publishing known as WebZine 2005 occurred this past weekend in San Francisco. One of the best accounts of the event comes from Sean Bonner, who gives a thorough assessment of the good and the bad on his website: "Good: Jabob Appelbaum's talk about visiting Iraq / New Orleans was the must see speech of the entire conference. More people should advocate doing something dangerous from time to time, especially publically. Bad: The blogware dance off turned out to be just three short presentations on the new features of Worpress, Blogger, and MovableTypepadJournal. And everyone was friendly. I can safely say that 100% of the people watching were hoping there would be at least a little debate, and maybe a little feature compairison." Bonner spoke on the "Blogging Without Borders" and the "How to Create a Compelling Community Blog" panels at the 2005 SXSW Interactive Festival.