Sharon Bautista is a Chicago-based user experience designer passionate about helping complex businesses create transformative digital experiences. She has led UX teams both agency- and client-side. Passionate about mentoring emerging designers, Sharon also teaches part-time in the Interactive Arts Department at Columbia College Chicago and is one of the organizers of the UX Book Club of Chicago.

Born and raised in Kenya, Duncan Jimbo is a front-end developer based in St. Louis, Mo. Curious and creatively motivated, he finds great satisfaction in using technology to make the web a more delightful place to work and play. In addition to being a programmer and problem-solver, he also loves the teaching and learning opportunities that come from collaboration. Outside of work, Duncan enjoys taking road trips and sharing his latest brew — the finest Kenyan tea this side of the Mississippi.

Michelle is an independent graphic designer in Minneapolis (formerly Chicago). Her formal education is in design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress websites and high-end presentations for her clients. She loves the open source community and speaks/volunteers/organizes at WordCamps and other events around the country.

Scott Kubie is a Senior Content Strategist at Brain Traffic. He recently moved to Minneapolis and joined the Brain Traffic team after a decade of work in Des Moines, Iowa, focused on the intersection of art, design, and technology. He organized three World Information Architecture Day events in Des Moines, hosted the city’s first content strategy meetups, organized independent pop-up art markets on Black Friday, and even helped launch the city’s first independent major summer music festival. Scott has worked previously as an independent digital strategist focused on early-stage digital startups, and was the first UX content strategist at Wolfram, makers of Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha.

He has spoken and led workshops at many great web events since 2012 including Confab, the Information Architecture Summit, The Web Conference at Penn State, the University of Illinois Web Conference, MinneWebCon, and Midwest UX. He’d love to meet your pug and will have a sparkling water please, thank you.

Natalya is a classically trained fine artist who spent 6 years lecturing and teaching people how to paint, draw, and grow their creativity. Upon realizing that the Renaissance had in fact already ended, she decided to join the modern world and is now a front end developer at Rooster Teeth. She loves writing code as much as she loves painting, and she wants to convince the world that writing code is an art form. She gets excited about updating and sharing old school design theory and knowledge and applying it to the infinite canvas that is the internet.

Natalya loves sharing all kinds of knowledge. In addition to her BA in Studio Art, she also earned a bachelor’s in Developmental Psychology and a master’s degree in Creativity and Talent Development, and does her best to weave interesting facts about how our brains work, learn, and develop into every talk. When she’s not writing code, she paints, travels, and drinks absurd amounts of coffee.

As a front-end developer for Lullabot, Marc focuses on creating great experiences no matter the device, browser or abilities of the person accessing a site. Marc is currently writing Drupal 8 Responsive Web Design for Packt Publishing and serves as co-maintainer of Drupal 8’s core Responsive Image and Breakpoint modules. He previously served as the web technologies coordinator for the city of Minnetonka from 2004-2014; he also served on the board of the National Association of Government Web Professionals from 2009-2014, serving as President of the organization from 2013-2014.

Marc earned a BA in English and a concentration in Public Service from Albion College in Michigan, as well as degrees in web design and graphic design at Minneapolis Community & Technical College. Marc enjoys living in the Twin Cities suburbs with his wife and three-year-old daughter, as well as their cat and dog, and getting together regularly with family who live nearby.

Philip M. Kragnes has served as the Adaptive Technology Specialist for the University of Minnesota since October 1998. He manages the Computer Accommodations Program (CAP) – a partnership of the Disability Resource Center (DRC) and the Office of Information Technology (OIT). The program exists to ensure access to online information and services; hardware and software; classroom, laboratories, event spaces and work environments for students, faculty, staff, guests and visitors with disabilities.

In addition to providing training and consulting to University of Minnesota students and employees, Phil has trained over 300 State of Minnesota Web developers and numerous clients from entities such as Unisys, Walden University, US Bank, U.S. Department of Wildlife, U.S. Federal Reserve and many others. Mr. Kragnes received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Cognitive Psychology from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1987. He created Carnegie-Mellon University’s first adaptive technology computing space and developed the university’s first disability services program, serving as its director for a year and a half, while pursuing his studies at the institution. In 1995, he received his Master of Science degree in Experimental Psychology: Human Cognition, Memory and Learning from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Kelsey Lynn Lundberg is an independent web strategist working in the Twin Cities. She loves bringing editorial strategy, people process, and technology together to help organizations and individuals create and support a meaningful web presence. She’s worked with everyone from small businesses to large organizations, all the while pursuing her mission to make the web usable, navigable, and delightful.