This December, we’re very excited to have the amazing Kimberly Blessing joining us to talk about the history of the Web and what we can learn from the past. Our own David Morton will open the night with a discussion of technology as a tool to drive civic engagement.
In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a “vague, but exciting” proposal for a hypertext-based information management system. That proposal eventually became the World Wide Web, a system that rapidly outgrew the competition, moved beyond the altruistic goals of its creator, and today dominates the Internet. Kimberly Blessing, a twenty-year veteran of the Web, will put lessons learned during those early days into a modern context for the next generation of web designers and developers.
In her nearly 20-year career on the Web, Kimberly Blessing has evangelized design, code, and accessibility best practices while holding senior engineering and management roles at Comcast Interactive Media, PayPal, and AOL. She has served on the W3C HTML and CSS Working Groups and was a co-lead and member of the Web Standards Project, the grass roots organization that helped the web standards movement get beyond the “browser wars”. Currently, Kimberly is the director of web development and technology consulting at Think Brownstone, an experience design consultancy based in Philadelphia.
A graduate of Bryn Mawr College (B.A., Computer Science) and The George Washington University (M.Sc., Computer Science), Kimberly is also a passionate advocate for increasing the number of women in computing and technology fields.
From education to law enforcement, local government is responsible for basic quality of life services that all of us care about. Yet city and county leaders are elected by a small fraction of voters. Reporter David Morton will explore citizens’ influence over public institutions and the changing role of local journalism.
David Morton is a writer and musician. He studied communications and audio production at MTSU and played drums in several bands. He currently lives in North Chattanooga with his family.
He reports on government for Nooga.com and co-hosts The Task Force podcast. He’s also a recurring panelist on WTCI’s Tennessee Insider.
From 2009 to 2011, David was the editor of Chattarati. He recently launched Chattizen, a citizens guide to local government, and put together a voter guide for the November election.
In his spare time, he writes code, cooks, and watches too much TV.
Code & Creativity is a social talk series created to connect us with each other and our larger community. Every other month, we’ll gather at the Camp House for a few hours to listen to one local and one visiting designer/developer as they share their passions, wisdom, and war stories. We'll ask questions, talk shop, and maybe even make some new friends. Of course no gathering would be complete without something yummy in your tummy, so snacks and a tasty beverage (coffee, soft drink, or beer) are on us!