Content Matters

Liz Danzico is equal parts information architect, usability analyst, and editor. With nearly ten years of experience as a user experience professional, she makes information useful, usable, and delightful for websites of all shapes and sizes. Liz has organized information for sites across a variety of industries, including retail, publishing, media and entertainment, nonprofit, and financial services. Today, Liz spends her days in Brooklyn where she organizes information of all shapes and sizes. She is forthcoming Chair of the new MFA in Interaction Design Program, starting in Fall 2009 at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She does independent consulting in New York and is user experience consultant for Happy Cog, editor for Rosenfeld Media, a publisher of user experience books, editor-in-chief for A Brief Message, 200 words or less about design, board member of AIGA/New York, and advisory board member of the Information Architecture Institute and SXSW Interactive Festival.

Liz has been editor-in-chief for Boxes and Arrows and has held the position of director of experience strategy for AIGA, where she was responsible for the national web presence and all online and New Riders publications. Before that, she led the information architecture teams at Barnes & Noble.com and Razorfish New York.

She occasionally keeps track of things at Bobulate.com.

• Web site

Jeffrey Zeldman was one of the first designers, bloggers, and independent publishers on the web, and one of the first web design teachers. In 1998, he co-founded—and from 1999 to 2002 he directed —The Web Standards Project, a grassroots coalition that helped bring standards to our browsers. He writes Jeffrey Zeldman’s Daily Report [zeldman.com] and publishes A List Apart Magazine “for people who make websites” [alistapart.com]; has written two books (notably the foundational web standards text, Designing With Web Standards, now in its 2nd Edition); co-founded the web design conference An Event Apart and founded and is executive creative director of Happy Cog™ [happycog.com], an agency of web design and user experience specialists.

• Web site

Alex Wright is an information architect for The New York Times and the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. He has previously led user experience initiatives for Yahoo!, Macromedia, The Long Now Foundation, IBM, Microsoft, Harvard University, and the Internet Archive, among others. He writes regularl

Alex Wright is a writer and information architect for The New York Times and the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. He has led user experience initiatives for Yahoo!, Macromedia, The Long Now Foundation, IBM, Microsoft, Harvard University and others. He maintains a personal Web site at http://www.alexwright.org/

• Web site

Kristina Halvorson is the founder and president of Brain Traffic, a content strategy, information architecture, and web writing agency.

Since 1997, Kristina has led content strategy and web writing projects for over 100 web sites and several Fortune 500 companies. She is a passionate advocate for content strategy, the “hidden discipline” that lives between information architecture, web writing, and the build process.

In 2006-2007, Kristina served as president of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA), one of the country’s leading IMAs with nearly 1,000 active members. In 2002, she co-founded the annual MIMA Summit, which is today widely regarded as the premier regional interactive conference in the nation.

• Web site

Novelist, radio commentator, editor. Working on feature about technology and publishing for Harper’s Magazine.

• Web site

Bre Pettis produces the show “Weekend Projects,” which is released weekly as a video podcast for Make: Magazine. For his show, Bre makes something every week, and then makes a video teaching viewers how to make it too. In his recent past, he’s been a schoolteacher, a multi-artist, and a puppeteer. Bre is passionate about invention, innovation, and all things DIY.

• Web site