UI 2.0: Bringing SEXY Back

Date/Time: 9/24/2008 Wed 7:00-9:30pm

Event: UI 2.0 Bringing Sexy Back

Moderator: Holly Liu, Director of User Experience and Co-Founder at Watercooler Inc.

Speakers:
Mitch Grasso, CEO & Co-Founder at SlideRocket
Bill Wetherell, Director of UI Design at AOL
Elaine Wherry, VP of Products at Meebo
Stephen P. Anderson, VP of Design at Viewzi
Location: AOL Campus, Mountain View
Address: 401 Ellis Street, Mountain View, CA
Registration URL: http://ui20.eventbrite.com
FREE if register online 

Agenda:
7.00 - 7.30 Registration, Refreshment, Networking
7.30-8:30 Panel
8:30 - 9:00 Q&A
9:00 Raffle
9.10 Networking & Demo
9:30 End 

Moderator

Holly Liu
Director of User Experience and Co-Founder at Watercooler Inc.

Holly is in charge of product design and founding member of Watercooler, a creator of sports and television entertainment applications within Facebook and other social networks for millions of fans. Prior to Watercooler, she was a Lead Designer at AOL in the Community Product Line. Holly holds a Masters from UC Berkeley in Information Management and a B.A. from UCLA in Communications.

Elaine Wherry
VP of Products at Meebo

Elaine is a co-founder of meebo.com in Mountain View, California. She majored in Symbolic Systems at Stanford and upon graduating, joined Synaptics and led their Usability team for several years. In 2005, she started meebo with two friends from Stanford, Seth Sternberg and Elaine Wherry. Shortly thereafter, Nielsen/NetRatings named meebo the fastest-growing IM destination in the US – ahead of Google Talk and Skype Messenger. Investors include Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Elaine plays the violin and migrated west to California after growing up on a goat farm.

Bill Wetherell
Director of UI Design at AOL

Bill Wetherell leads the UED Team for AOL Mail. He's been working in user experience design for over 12 years and in past lives has led design teams at TechTV, the Walt Disney Internet Group, and Infoseek. And way before all that he studied film production and screenwriting at San Francisco State University.

Mitch Grasso
CEO & Co-Founder at SlideRocket Mr. Grasso was co-founder of AdSpace Networks, which raised nearly $60MM in venture funding and operates a nationwide network of digital signs for advertising in shopping malls. Mr. Grasso became the VP of Product Development and was responsible for the planning and creation of the underlying CoolSign digital signage software, which was sold to Clarity Visual Systems in 2005, and subsequently to Planar (NasdaqGM: PLNR) in 2006, and is widely regarded as one of the foremost digital signage platforms available today. Prior to AdSpace, Mr. Grasso was part of the startup team at Silicon Gaming. There he spearheaded the design of the platform and games of the Odyssey, a revolutionary slot machine that brought multimedia to the casino gaming experience.

Stephen P. Anderson
VP of Design at Viewzi

A consultant, entrepreneur, and speaker, Stephen is passionate about elegant design and the technological innovations that make desirable experiences possible. He is currently the VP of Design at Viewzi, where he hopes to change how people view search results.

Prior to Viewzi, Stephen grew and led the user experience teams at both Sabre Travel Network and Bright Corner, a small creative and technology services company he co-founded in 2001. There he worked with a variety of businesses to create valuable online and offline customer experiences, with a special focus on custom business applications. Stephen has worked on Web 2.0-style applications with small startups as well as larger usability and information architecture projects for enterprise clients such as Nokia, Frito-Lay and Chesapeake Energy. A former high school English teacher, Stephen brings a love for language and cognitive learning theories to the design profession.

As time permits, Stephen enjoys sharing his thoughts at poetpainter.com.