National Association of Government Webmasters

Going mobile - keep it simple

Technology Specialist
City of Round Rock

Brooks Sky Bennett is a technology specialist at the City of Round Rock and has worked for the City over four years. He is responsible for creating the programming on the City's government access channel and likes to get his hands dirty with a little web programming every chance he gets. He believes that government should not be afraid of new technology, and should use it to their best benefit. Brooks married Katie Bennett in November 2007 and also enjoys skateboarding at the local skate park.

Government on the Go! " Effective Municipal Mobile Sites"

Management Systems Information Officer
City of Ankeny, IA

Eason is the City of Ankeny's Management Information Systems Officer since 1997. He works with the new web site coordinator to discover new technologies and implement them the city's web site. He also maintains the back end function of the web system. Self taught and focused on the IT side of the web, Eason likes to "play" on the design and content as well.

Wordpress for Blogs & Microsites

Web Services Manager
City of Reno, NV

Kristy Fifelski is the Web Services Manager for the City of Reno, Nevada. She manages the award-winning Reno.gov website and is responsible for cultivating a forward thinking web communications strategy for the City of Reno. This involves adopting new media technologies and implementing online services to engage citizens. Kristy is the recipient of the peer-voted 2008 Employee of the Year Award.

Kristy graduated with honors from Northern Illinois University and holds a Master's Degree in Communication. She has served nearly 10 years in the public sector, formerly the Public Relations Coordinator for the City of Wheaton, Illinois, and Deputy Clerk for the Town of Cortland, Illinois.

Kristy also teaches speech communication in her spare time. She has had the privilege of instructing students at Northern Illinois University, Truckee Meadows Community College and the University of Phoenix.

Making your HTML Tables Accessible

Washoe County Health District

While Steve was briefly introduced to HTML and making web pages while pursuing a Computer Science degree at the University of Nevada, Reno, it wasn't until he started working at the Washoe County Health District in 2004 that he started working in depth with a web site and found out how deep the rabbit hole goes in the world of a webmaster. He's done work with HTML and some PHP web programming. His current interests in web design include graphical design, Information Architecture, usability, and content writing. When he's not at work maintaining the Health District's web site, troubleshooting computer problems, or herding cats, he's taking photographs, meditating, blogging, listening to Celtic rock music, and being a general geek.

Email Marketing Techniques and Best Practices

The Karcher Group

Collyn Floyd is an Online Marketing Specialist for The Karcher Group (TKG). She is responsible for TKG's own marketing, including content creation, press releases, email marketing, article writing, social media and managing TKG's search engine optimization seminars. Collyn also regularly writes press releases, articles, and website content for TKG's SEO clients. She has extensive experience working with many of TKG's 500+ clients in both the private and public sectors. You can also find Collyn tweeting for TKG on Twitter. Collyn frequently speaks on keywords and copywrting, link buiding, email marketing and online PR.

In addition to speaking at Search Made Simple seminars (http://www.seoseminars.org), she's been invited to speak at the Society for Professional Marketing Services, the Canton/Stark County Visitors Bureau, Walsh University and Search Engine Watch Live! She injects her presentations with humor and provides plenty of real-life examples, which are always well-received by audience members. Collyn has over 10 years of experience in the marketing communications, having worked for InfoCision Management Corporation, Mount Union College, and Priority Health. In 2003, Collyn won a Direct Marketing Association International Silver ECHO award. Learn more at http://www.tkg.com/collyn-floyd and http://www.twitter.com/karchergroup

Government on the Go! "Effective Municipal Mobile Sites"

Vision Internet

Ms. Fruechting has extensive experience in the website industry and working with government agencies. Coupling her communications background with knowledge of the latest website trends and tools, she has consulted with hundreds of government organizations to define their communication goals and put them into practice online. Ms. Fruechting has worked in the political arena, organizing events on a congressional campaign team and handling constituent relations for a U.S. Congressman. This experience gives her a unique perspective on the struggles government agencies face as they seek to reach their audiences with reliable and up-to-date information. Ms. Fruechting holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Kansas State University.

ADA/Accessibility Boot Camp (Preconference)

Firebug Accessibility Evaluator

Coordinatorof Information Technology Accessibility Disability Resources and Educational Services, Rehabilitation Education Center
Division of Disability Resources and Education Services, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

Dr. Gunderson has been working in the area of web accessibility for the past 14 years and disability access to computer systems for over 30 years. He currently is coordinates computer and information technology accessibility issues through the Division of Disability Resources and Education Services (DRES) at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. DRES has over a 60 year history of providing disability accommodations to students in higher education and was the first disability accommodation program at a major university. The University of Illinois has recently launched a major campaign to improve the accessibility of all administrative websites.

He is the past chair of the W3C User Agent Accessibility Working Group which published a W3C Recommendation on how browsers and multimedia players (www.w3.org/TR/UAAG) can be designed to be more accessible to people with disabilities. He also has extensive experience in teaching administrators and web developers how to make resources more accessible.

He has given numerous workshops and presentations on web accessibility issues (http://presentations.cita.illinois.edu), developed several on-line courses on web accessibility and teaches a semester long a course at UIUC on accessible web design (http://courses.cita.illinois.edu). The workshops and courses have been highly rated from the participants. Dr. Gunderson encourages audience participation and interaction, and uses real world examples of accessible design in his workshops.

Social Media Boot Camp (Preconference)

Effective Web Communications using Social Media

Media Trainer
City of San Francisco

Adriel Hampton is a new media trainer and activist with deep experience in journalism and municipal government. He has worked for City of San Francisco and several Northern California newspapers, including the San Francisco Examiner. Hampton is an advocate of technology for more collaborative and efficient government; he co-founded and produces the Gov 2.0 Radio podcast and blogs at Wired to Share.

Redesign 101with Drupal (Preconference)

Microblogging and Lifestreaming in Government

Information Technology Coordinator
Missouri River Regional Library

Robin is the Information Technology Coordinator for the Missouri River Regional Library and a prolific presenter and author. She is the author of the book "Microblogging and Lifestreaming In Libraries". She has presented all over the world and is very active on many different social nShe's presented around the world on topics ranging from RSS to Collaboration 2.0 and has written an ALA Tech Report on Collaboration, a book on using Twitter and FriendFeed and a bunch of articles in library-related journals.

The Open Web (KEYNOTE: Closing)

The Emerging Open Web: Documents and Applications, Oh My! (Preconference)

Demystifying HTML5 (General)

Web Evangelist

Having achieved a modicum of balance after her midlife crisis, Molly decided to finally get a job. She is now a Web Evangelist focusing on developer relations for the upstart Norwegian browser company, Opera Software.

Earlier in life, Molly avoided a regular job including those silly start-up ventures and chose instead to write a lot of books and articles and stuff on Web standards, and talk a lot about them, too. She now avoids the former, while the latter is an ongoing inevitability.

To learn more about Molly and her work, you can check out her blog at http://molly.com/ or interact with her on Twitter @mollydotcom. Better yet, come have a chat F2F in St. Louis!

CSS-based Templating with the 960 Grid System

Matanuska-Susitna Borough

A veteran of the Browser Wars, Jack Horner has been working with the Web since '95. Having lost an eye in a fierce coding session, he retired to his hometown of Palmer, Alaska. Alas, the call of the web was strong, and he took service in local government and has been the Webmaster for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough for the past 6 years. As proud members of Self-Sustainability and Maker cultures, he and his family are constantly tinkering with everything. From techniques for gardening and livestock, to electronics, woodworking, and legos; very little escapes their spades, mitre saw, or soldering iron.

Writing Web Content - Hands On Seminar (Preconference)

Writing Web Content

Communications Manager
Delphia Consulting

Carole joined Delphia Consulting in 2007 as its Communications Manager. She helps clients create an exceptional web presence by developing outstanding content on their websites and working with them to leverage their social media exposure. While she does create and edit content, she prefers teaching content contributors how to write effective web content. Carole definitely subscribes to the teach-a-person-to-fish philosophy. Prior to joining Delphia Consulting Carole operated her own business specializing in association management and small business services. She also worked with Parma (OH) City Schools as a secondary education curriculum administrator.

Dancing With Vendors: How to Prepare Top-Notch RFPs, Negotiate Contracts and Handle the Media

Civic Plus

Before joining CivicPlus, Manning was the Chief of Editorial Operations at Infoition News Services, Inc., where he managed a team of more than 30 employees that worked directly with clients in the federal government, including White House offices, congressional committee staffs, Fortune 500 corporations and multiple government contractors. Prior to his role as Chief of Editorial Operations, Manning was a Senior Analyst who prepared and analyzed news summaries as well as assisted in the development of multiple new business opportunities. Jesse originally joined CivicPlus as the Director of Product Strategy. Manning performed in-depth research and analysis on current and upcoming trends in e-government technology. Through this research, he developed and implemented product roadmap plans to continue the strategic evolution of CivicPlus web applications. Manning has transitioned into his new role as Director of Sales Operations, where he will work closely with the sales team on proposals, contracts, pricing and overseeing the day-to-day operations of the department. A graduate of Kansas State University, Jesse earned dual-degrees in political science and history.

Adobe Creative Suite 5 (What's new and exciting) (Preconference)

Dreamweaver CS5 (What's New) (General)

Adobe Expert

Jim Maivald is a designer, consultant and Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor with over 25 years of experience in the graphic design industry. He has design and production experience in all areas of print and Web design. Jim has been editor of several graphic design and electronic publishing magazines. He is also an author of hundreds of magazine articles on graphic design and electronic publishing, as well as several books, including Dreamweaver CS5 Classroom in a Book (Adobe Press, 2010), The Designer's Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML (Adobe Press, 2008) and Photoshop Complete (Complete Books 2009). Check out his latest offering an online video training course from Lynda.com: InDesign CS5: Dynamic Publishing Workflows in XML.

Webmaster Tools

Support Engineer, Google
Google, Inc.

Jason joined Google's Search Quality team in 2008 to fight spam, scams and other abuse. While most of his time is spent building tools to support the team, Jason also enjoys educating webmasters, developers and users about keeping spam off their sites and avoiding scams. Prior to joining Google, he worked at AT&T as a senior analyst.

Jason holds a master's degree in information architecture and knowledge management from Kent State University and a bachelor's degree in journalism from Ohio Wesleyan University. He has published research on information retrieval and enjoys his role making the web a better place. He likes the web so much, in fact, that he let the world vote on the name for his firstborn daughter.

Google Analytics (KEYNOTE)

Senior Product Manager, Google Analytics
Google, Inc.

Phil Mui has been the Senior Product Manager for Google Analytics since 2005. Prior to coming to Google, Phil was an Advanced Products Developer at Lycos and a Senior Research Developer at Stanford University School of Medicine. Mr. Mui holds a Masters degree from University of Oxford and a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Managing a Web Project in a Small Shop (Preconference)

Webmaster
City of Thornton, Colorado

Paulette has 10 years experience programming for the web for the City of Thornton and is a former adjunct professor of Computer Science for Colorado Technical University and holds an MCSD for .NET 1.1.

How to Archive Govt Websites

President & CEO
DotGov Inc.

Michael is President and CEO of DotGov, Inc. Prior to DotGov, Michael was co-founder and Executive Director EMEA of a leading e-Government company. He has worked for more than 10 years in e-Government: helping local, state and federal governments to implement internet strategies and technologies.

Why Is It So Hard?--Building the Business Case for Your Website

Is This Really Good?

CTO
Delphia Consulting

Joe Rotella, SPHR, is "something of a one-man think tank, has been doing more innovative things with the internet than anyone I've met yet." — Bob Scott, Editor, Accounting Technology, April 16, 2009.

With over 20 years of web/application design and development experience, Joe is CTO of Delphia Consulting and leads their Usability / Web Design and Development Practice. His team is responsible for the design of several government sites including Chicago's tourism site (www.explorechicago.org) and the Las Vegas city site (www.LasVegasNevada.gov) and private sector sites, including Weiser LLP (www.weiserllp.com) and GBQ (www.gbq.com).

Accessibility: PDF Documents & Forms

MSF&W Consulting

As Manager of Accessibility Solutions for MSF&W Consulting, Mike Scott works with government, education, and private-sector organizations to help make information systems accessible to people with disabilities. Mike leads a team that provides a full range of accessibility services, including testing, training, development, and design. Working as a consultant to the State of Illinois, Mike has spearheaded key accessibility initiatives, including the development of the Illinois Web Accessibility Standards and the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act. Prior to working with MSF&W, Mike served as chief Rehabilitation Engineer for the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services, where he specialized in using assistive technologies to enable individuals with disabilities to do their jobs.

Plugin to the Power of JQuery (Preconference)

Plugin to the Power of JQuery (General)

Webmaster
City of Lee's Summit, Missouri

Nathan Smith has worked on websites and business intelligence for the City of Lee's Summit, Missouri since 2008. He enjoys solving problems with open source software like jQuery, DotNetNuke, and Pentaho. A native of Mount Ayr, Iowa, Nathan holds undergraduate degrees from Drake University and graduate degrees from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Before coming to work for the city, Nathan worked as a music and geometry teacher at a private school. In his spare time he enjoys playing the piano and organ and directing his church's choir.

Cooking Up Gourmet User Experiences on a Fast-Food Budget (KEYNOTE: Opening)

TBA (General)

CEO & Founding Principal
User Interface Engineering

Jared M. Spool is the founder of User Interface Engineering, the largest usability research organization of its kind in the world. If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he’s probably the most effective and knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. He’s been working in the field of usability and design since 1978, before the term "usability" was ever associated with computers.

Jared spends his time working with the research teams at the company, helps clients understand how to solve their design problems, explains to reporters and industry analysts what the current state of design is all about, and is a top-rated speaker at more than 20 conferences every year. He is also the conference chair and keynote speaker at the annual UI Conference and Web App Summit, is on the faculty of the Tufts University Gordon Institute, and manages to squeeze in a fair amount of writing time. He is author of the book, Web Usability: A Designer’s Guide.