Judges

2011 Judges

Gary and Helen  have been hard at work sourcing judges to evaluate the hundreds of entries that will come in, here are the final list:

Australians

Internationals

Paul Arlott

Paul Arlott founded TOLRA Micro Systems Ltd (UK) in 1997 and provides web hosting and development services to clients all over the world.

Paul began his career in the aviation industry building functional prototype displays for human factor analysis and was involved in running the trials. This type of work has allowed him a deep understanding of the importance of continual client collaboration for the duration of a project. He has extensive experience in C/C++ which provided a sound foundation for expanding to PHP and MySQL development which is now almost exclusively his development platform.

Paul has a holistic approach to developing websites and building network infrastructures, understanding the need for industry standards and requirements laid out by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).  Paul joined forces with Attitude e-media in 2010.

Paul was one of the first developers to build an accessible directory to industry standards, which is still being used by some of the major online directories.

Through the exploration and use of mobile technology Paul has been able to free himself from the traditional office desk while maintaining an exemplary level of customer service.  He has recently set up all his mobile devices to interact with his server environments so he can operate his business from anywhere there is a wired, WiFi or any type of internet connection.

Paul believes in building light weight flexible websites which are engineered to survive compatibility challenges and intermittent or slow service connections.

Sally Bagshaw

Sally is a copywriter and content strategist based in Brisbane. She has made a living from crafting content for almost 15 years and is the founder of the successful copywriting business Snappy Sentences. Her clients range from Suncorp to The Coffee Club, and over the years she has written about all manner of weird and wonderful things including insurance, playgrounds, air-conditioning and apprentices.

She thinks great content is readable, to the point, and with purpose. It’s a persuasive conversation with the reader, an engaging story, a problem solver. It’s useful.

She’s written about content on Johnny Holland and Pro Copy Tips, and shares her copywriting tips on the Snappy Sentences blog. She also writes about how businesses can better manage their content on her own content strategy blog.

When not writing, Sally can be found on Twitter, playing Words With Friends, or completely offline in her garden.

Matt Balara

Matt is a user experience and web designer, who “designed” his first web page in 1993. Matt’s strengths lie in user research & testing, rapid idea generation, presentation and visual design.

During 10 years living in Hamburg Germany, Matt was a Senior Art Director at one of Germany’s largest web agencies. He helped brands such as Volkswagen, TUI (Europe’s largest touristic firm), Microsoft, OTTO (the second largest online retailer worldwide) and the Danish shoemaker ECCO develop elegant, profitable, user-centric e-commerce sites that are today used by millions every month.

Matt also speaks and teaches workshops about agile design, rapid idea generation methods and e-commerce design at conferences around the world, and was a judge of the 2009 Australian Web Awards.

Matt returned to Australia in October 2008, and since then has worked as a user experience design consultant for clients in Germany, America and Australia. He believes that most the web is far less attractive and more difficult than it needs to be, and is passionate about improving it.

He blogs about user experience design and social tools at mattbalara.com and is @MattBalara on Twitter

Scott Barnes

Scott Barnes formerly a Microsoft Rich Platform Product Manager (WPF & Silverlight) and now UX Specialist. He has been working with Adobe/Microsoft technology for the past 15 years with a focus specifically on Internet Applications (aka. RIA, Rich Client Technology etc).

Sonja Bernhardt

As technology entrepreneur and owner of software development firm ThoughtWare http://www.thoughtware.com.au Sonja  demonstrates a passion (almost addiction) for awards, having judged multiple technology awards over the past 15 years eg.

  • Secrets of Australian IT Awards,
  • Asia Pacific ICT Awards
  • Australian Institute of Project Management Awards
  • Women in Technology Awards
  • Past Australian Web Awards

Tristan Bottrell

Tristan a multi-disciplined, Perth based developer working for Precedent. He takes a design and makes it work, from building the front end with HTML, CSS and JavaScript through to customising Content Management Systems and databases. He primarily works with .NET CMS products such as Sitecore and Sitefinity.  Tristan ensures that the final design is not compromised and that the code meets web and accessibility standards.

Justin Brown

Justin Brown is a senior lecturer within the School of Computer and Security Science at Edith Cowan University.  For the past 10 years Justin has been teaching web programming with a focus on web applications design.  Justin completed his PhD in 2005 looking at e-learning systems and has research interests in web accessibility, methods for teaching web programming and general web based systems.  Justin is the course coordinator for the Master of IT and Master of Computer Science as well as the new Bachelor of Science (Web Technology) degree.

Vivienne Conway

Vivienne Conway is working on a PhD at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia.  Her field of research is website accessibility, particularly as it relates to the National Transition Strategy for Website Accessibility (NTS) introduced by the Australian Federal Government.
Vivienne is currently an invited expert at W3C, working on the WCAG 2.0 Working Group, the Research and Development Working Group, and the WCAG 2.0 Evaluation Methodology Task Force.

Previously Vivienne completed a First Class Honours Degree where she examined the accessibility of the public library websites in Western Australia.  It is perhaps not too surprising that the research indicated that no public library in WA adhered to Level A of WCAG 1.0 when the research was completed in 2010. 

The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) award the Twila Ann Janssen Award for Disability Services to Vivienne in 2010 for her work with website accessibility in the WA public libraries. She has been following up this research by visiting local governments with a presentation on website accessibility and providing them with the results of their website audits.

In 2011 Vivienne won a Google award to travel to Hyderabad, India to present her proposed PhD research into website accessibility at the W4A 2011 Conference.  This was a co-located conference with the World Wide Web Conference in March 2011.  Presenting at this conference has provided an increased awareness of the efforts of people around the globe who are making the web an inclusive place for everyone.

Recently, as a result of the needs identified by her research, Vivienne launched Web Key IT Pty Ltd.  This is a new business initiative which specializes in website accessibility auditing, training, and consulting.  Services include technical auditing services along with extensive user testing by a group of experienced usability testers, all of whom have a disability and are assistive technology users.

Vivienne’s aim is to assist organisations achieve truly accessible websites, making the web a more inclusive place for all.

Ruth Ellison

Ruth Ellison is a user experience practitioner and information architect living in Canberra. She is extremely passionate about designing for inclusive and useful user experiences. She is fascinated by the psychology of design and the way humans interact with technology. Ruth currently works at Stamford Interactive on many interesting Government and private sector projects.

When not busy with design and accessibility work, Ruth can be found exploring graffiti and street art through the lens of her camera, helping to organise TEDxCanberra, BarCampCanberra and a number of other events, as well as sharing her love of robots. Ruth can occasionally be found blogging at ruthellison.com

Ruth is @RuthEllison on twitter.

April Garvey

April Garvey combines over 13 years of online consumer marketing successes from a diverse range of organizations such as Wall Street giants Citibank and GMAC, digital pioneers Kanoodle.com and Etrade.com, and most recently international software giant Rosetta Stone, where April directed online marketing and web strategy in the US, UK, DE, and JP.

April has first-hand experience working on both the online retail side as well as experience developing advertising networks on the publisher side.  She served as Vice President of New Product Development for Kanoodle.com, a pioneer in search-targeted sponsored links. Today, April leverages this insider experience to help advertisers intelligently grow their online business while mitigating the high risk of fraud inherent with advertising networks and affiliate partnerships.

April holds degrees in Marketing (BA), Instructional Technology (MA) and her MBA. She is currently acting as President & Founder of an online consulting company called Web By Numbers (www.webbynumbers.com), located just outside of Dulles, VA, alongside AOL, Network Solutions and Omniture/Adobe.

Amanda Gonzalez

From an athlete to a corporate lemming to a misfit Gen Y entrepreneur, Amanda Gonzalez co-founded and leads web design and copywriting agencyUntangle the Web.

Amanda has gained popularity from frankly and generously chatting about failing forward with her business through her newsletter, blog and speaking around the country.

Her articles on usability, copywriting and online business have been published nationally and internationally in a varied range of print magazines and blogs.

Catch Amanda 'round the traps on Twitter or Google+.

Bill Harper

For ten years Bill edited technical documents for a government department (or, as he puts it, “turned them into something the rest of the organisation could understand”). And in that time he got to experience some of the worst writing he has ever seen. Don’t believe him? How about an 83-word sentence with no punctuation other than a full stop at the end?

He’s now a freelance writer and editor, and is currently editing book number three for UK-based publishing company Five Simple Steps. He’s also edited numerous e-books, and written copy for companies about everything from luxury real estate to the benefits of renting a home computer.

But as much as he loves his new role (“The sentences are so much shorter now”), Bill also plans for his own writing. He wants to resurrect his long-forgotten humour column, and possibly write a book about the joys of online dating. (“I may as well get something out of it all.”)

But for now Bill is happy to immerse himself in other people’s words—and delete a lot of them. At least it gives him an excuse for his website still being “under construction”.

Lisa Herrod

Lisa is the Director and Principal Consultant at Scenario Seven. With over ten years of hands-on experience on the web. She has a background in standards based design and development with the last 8 years focusing on design research, usability, accessibility and Inclusive strategies for diverse audiences.

Lisa believes in an inclusive, holistic approach to user experience design that permeates every layer of a site and every role on a team. Her clients range from small, non-profit organisations through to large multinationals such as Mission Australia, Microsoft, Sydney Opera House, Qantas and the Brooklyn Museum NYC.

Lisa is an experienced lecturer and conference presenter having spoken at conferences both locally and abroad in the UK, NZ and the US. She's a sporadic blogger and a crazy lover of whippets, with two little ones of her own.

Scott Hollier

Scott Hollier is a Project Manager and the Western Australia Manager for Media Access Australia, a not-for-profit, public benevolent institution.  Scott's work focuses on making computers and Internet-related technologies accessible to people with disabilities. Scott also represents MAA on the Advisory Committee of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the organisation primarily responsible for developing and promoting access to media through technology for people with disabilities.

Scott has completed a PhD titled ‘The Disability Divide: an examination into the needs of computing and Internet-related technologies on people who are blind or vision impaired’, and has a background in Computer Science and a wealth of experience in both the information technology and not-for-profit sectors. Scott is legally blind and as such understands the importance of access at a personal level.

Miraz Jordan

I love language and words, simplicity. Science and technology intrigue and excite me. I write, a lot: blogs, articles, columns, tutorials,  books. I write the daily Tech Universe column for the NZ Herald online, weekly MacTips, monthly Panui Tips, books, websites, manuals. And I provide training too. I've been using and teaching about the Internet for 20 years now. I love living in Aotearoa where it's always the future, even if it is just an accident of timezones.

Mike Kent

Mike Kent is a lecturer in the Department Internet Studies at Curtin University in Western Australia. Dr Kent's research focuses on accessibility and digital technology. His most recent book, co-written with Katie Ellis, is Disability and New Media and was published by Routledge in 2011. Details of Mikes research and teaching can be found at www.cultware.com

Simon Pascal Klein

Pascal is a standardista graphic, web and front-end designer, and a rampant typophile. Born in Mainz, Germany—the birthplace of Gutenberg—he now works in Canberra as a contract designer and studies at the Australian National University. He’s been actively engaged in the Open Source community and local web industry, notably as one of the unorganisers to first bring BarCamp to Canberra. He enjoys drinking in as much good type as he can get and has been happily bending beziers since 2004.

Andrew Lang

Andrew is a digital designer at Precedent. He is responsible for designing websites and other material for desktop and mobile platforms. Andrew often works closely with various consultants and developers, he ensures that designs are not only aesthetically pleasing, but are also useable and fulfil clients' needs. Andrew is experienced in a wide variety of digital design principles.

Andrew draws his inspiration from many sources and is always looking out for beautifully designed solutions in all design applications.

Jenn Lukas

Jenn Lukas loves coffee, kittens, and is a leading authority on structural semantic markup and CSS. She has been coding since 1999 and is currently the Interactive Development Director at Happy Cog. Jenn blogs regularly at the development focused site, The Nerdary  and maintains her own site, Jenn also speaks at a variety of design and development conferences, contributes monthly to .net Magazine, and is, of course, on Twitter.

Matthew Magain

Matthew Magain (@mattymcg) is a user experience designer based in Melbourne, and is the founder of Useractive. Previously, he worked as creative director of SitePoint, where he crafted much of the user experience behind Learnable.

Matthew spends his spare time writing and illustrating children's books.

Chris Mills

Chris Mills is a web technologist, open standards evangelist and education agitator, currently working at Opera Software in the developer relations team. He spends most of his time writing articles about web standards for dev.opera.com and other publications (such as .net mag and A List Apart), giving talks at universities and industry conferences, and lobbying universities to improve their web education courses. He believes that education is the answer to everything, but in particular he is passionate about using education to improve the overall content quality, accessibility, usability and future-viability of the Web.

He is the creator of the Opera Web standards curriculum, contributor to the WaSP InterACT project, and coauthor of InterACT with web standards: A Holistic Approach to Web Design.

Outside work he is a heavy metal drummer, proud father of three and lover of good beer.

Chris is @chrisdavidmills on twitter.

Sarah Mitchell

Sarah Mitchell is a Content Marketing Consultant and the owner of Global Copywriting. Her speciality is helping businesses develop content marketing strategies designed to gain competitive advantage and generate leads. She is a regular contributor at the Content Marketing Institute and edits the Australian edition of Chief Content Officer magazine. Sarah’s public speaking engagements focus on the broad topics of content marketing and social media.

Based in Western Australia, Sarah brings international experience to her work. Her writing has been published in five countries. She has been resident on five and worked in corporate environments on six continents.

In addition to running her own business, Sarah’s credentials include:

  • Australian Editor, Chief Content Officer magazine
  • Director, Braemar Presbyterian Care
  • Committee Member, Women in Technology, WA (WITWA)
  • Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors
  • Member of the Australian Computer Society

Sarah was born in the USA and became an Australian citizen in 2007.

Sarah is @globalcopywrite on twitter.

Michael Ott

Michael (AKA That Web Guy) is a twelve year veteran of front/back-end web design and development, a print designer, a custom UI designer, a usability evangelist and a practitioner of W3C guidelines, so expect plenty of preaching and finger wagging when you discuss these subjects with him. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Over the years Michael has held senior roles at some of Perth's most recognisable web development companies, and these days he is the Creative Director at Perth Web Design where his focus has gravitated more towards front and back end development.

Although his friends think he’s crazy, Michael's idea of fun involves writing code in his spare time and he occasionally extends that into other activities such as Android application development, making custom plug-ins for Wordpress, and writing about web industry best practices and other boring stuff on his blog. Apparently that constitutes ‘fun’ too.

If the legend is to be believed, Michael has not been in contact with direct sunlight since 1999.

Michael is @mikeyott on twitter.

Cindy Prosser

One minute Cindy was swimming with the dolphins, the next she was crawling the cyber highway.  Cindy has been switched on since the mid 1990's, and built her first commercial website in 1999.  At the turn of the century Cindy was in Canada building a website when she tripped over 'web standards' while looking up code on the internet.   It must have made sense to her, because she's been an advocate of web standards ever since!

In 2001 she relocated back to Australia and established herself & Attitude e-media in Mandurah.  Attitude e-media is the mothership of various web entities including Absolutely Australia and 2 successful directories.

Cindy loves the flexibility her job allows for her to travel & be mobile, so it's important to Cindy that websites are compatible with mobile devices.  Cindy also believes in delivering the web to clients in a format they understand.

Sarah Pulis

Sarah is the Manager of Digital Media and Technology at Media Access Australia.

Sarah has a Bachelor of Computer Science/Bachelor of Cognitive Science and has also completed a Master of Science entitled Interpreting the DCMI Abstract Model to support software development for Dublin Core Metadata. Her Master’s thesis was completed as part of an ARC-funded project to develop a semantic web application for cultural heritage management, during which she also worked as a developer on that project.

Sarah is an active member of the accessibility community, attending regular accessibility meetups in Sydney, and representing Media Access Australia on a number of W3C accessibility working groups. She has also attended the OZeWAI conference, Australia’s only web accessibility conference every year since 2002 and is now responsible for organising the conference.

With over four years of marketing and science communication experience in the tertiary sector including nearly two years as a Marketing Manager, Sarah is well equipped for her role as content manager for the digital media and technology. She has presented at Australian and international conferences on web accessibility and other topics. In 2011, Sarah was awarded a scholarship to attend the Non Profit Technology conference in Washington, DC for her commitment to access to technology and social media.

Jay Rogers

Jay is Design Manager at Atlassian Software in Sydney, with a 13-year history in interaction design for complex web applications. He believes that applications should recognise preferences, anticipate needs, and exceed expectations in a way similar to service at a 5-star restaurant. He stands for truth, justice, and outside-in design, often saying "It may be better than it was, but that doesn't make it good".

Micheil Smith

Micheil has been crafting things from code for the last 6 years. In that time, he has contributed to various open-source projects such as Node.js and Dojo Toolkit, judged in competitions such as The McFarlane Prize for excellence in Australian Web Design and Node.js Knockout.

His background is in JavaScript and standards based Front-end development. Despite Micheil's currently living in London, where he works for Pusher.com, he's actually an Aussie.

Nicolas Steenhout

Nicolas Steenhout is passionate and knowledgeable about web accessibility. He first encountered HTML in 1994. Nic has been interested in web accessibility issues since 1996. He "played" with websites for a few years and began developing websites for small non-profit organisations on a regular basis after that.  Nic has been involved in the core development team of Joomla! and Mambo, and has worked with several other CMSs.  As a person with disabilities, Nic intimately understands many of the issues faced by web users with disabilities. Nic's experience in web development gave him the opportunity to work with programmers, database specialists, server engineers and many other "ITS wonks". He understands the issues, and he understands the lingo. Nic is in a position to bridge the disability communities and development communities. 

Nic provides technical support on accessibility issues. He conducts accessibility & disability related advocacy and education. Nic has also spoken at various IT conferences on the topic of web accessibility.  Nic’s blog, Accessibility NZ, discusses various disability issues.  This is Nic’s 2nd year judging the Australian Web Awards.

Andrew Tetlaw

Andrew discovered HTML in 1995 and has been working on the web as a back and front-end developer ever since. He's a passionate believer that the world can be a better place through the use of open web standards, that server-side JavaScript will be as popular as PHP and that Boba Fett deserved a better ending. He's written many tutorials and articles for SitePoint.com and has been the Technical Editor for a number of SitePoint books. He's currently the Information Systems Manager at an award winning Australian Architectural company.

Matt Voerman

Based out of Sydney – Matt is a 15 year veteran of the digital media and application development industries. During this time he has undertaken a number of senior technical and customer facing roles within Asia Pacific and the United States.

He is an internationally published author, having written or contributed to, a number of books, whitepapers and articles on rich internet applications (RIA), streaming media, and the Adobe Flash Platform.

His current role, as an Engagement Manager with cloud-based managed services provider Akamai, see's him assisting organisations optimise, and accelerate, the delivery of streaming media, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications to millions of customers on a daily basis.

An active web community participant, Matt is also a regular speaker at local, and international, industry events including Adobe MAX, Web on the Piste, Full Code Press, and WebDU.

Russ Weakley

Russ has worked as a web designer for over 20 years. His expertise covers graphic design, interface design, site architecture and standards based development especially in the area of HTML/CSS. Russ chairs the Web Standards Group which was set up to assist web developers learn about new technologies and accessibility issues. Russ has produced a series of widely acclaimed CSS-based tutorials as well as a book, "Teach Yourself CSS in TenMinutes".

Oliver Weidlich

With a background in Psychology, Oliver has been watching people interact with technology for over ten years, and learning from their experiences to design solutions.  He has worked across (and between) a range of interfaces from kiosks, to speech systems, to in-car HMI, but now focuses on mobile and tablet user experiences. He has had his own UX consulting company since 2003 and recently started Mobile Experience with Dr Rod Farmer to help create solutions for continuous experiences.  He has worked with Australia's leading corporates such as; Qantas, Jetstar, Westpac, Three, Telstra, ABC, Optus, Fox Sports, ninemsn & Yahoo!7.

Earlier this year Oliver was recognised with the AIMIA Outstanding Contribution award for his work in the local mobile industry including; Mobile Monday Sydney and the Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index, a research project looking at how Australia's use their mobile phones conducted annually for 6 years.

Gian Wild

Gian Wild has worked in the accessibility industry since 1998, and been involved in the development of specific cognitive disability standards, web site accessibility guidelines, and toolkits. She spent six years on the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group working on WCAG2. Additionally, she has presented a range of seminars, training courses and conference papers. She has also reviewed web sites, to ensure that they meet accessibility criteria, and has judged the accessibility aspect of web awards. Gian ran the accessibility consultancy PurpleTop from 2000 to 2005. She has also collaborated with a number of major web-related companies, including Google, Microsoft and IBM.

2010 Judges

The previous judges for the 2010 Australian Web Awards where:

Australians

  • Dmitry Baranovskiy, NSW
  • Gary Barber, WA
  • Sonja Bernhardt, QLD
  • Nathanael Boehm, ACT
  • Ben Buchanan, NSW
  • Warren Duff, WA
  • Simon Eder, WA
  • Ruth Ellison, ACT
  • Jessica Enders, WA
  • Linda Gehard, NSW
  • Penny Hagen, NSW
  • Nic Hodge, NSW
  • Keith Lang, ACT
  • Ben Melbourne, QLD
  • Duncan Riley, VIC
  • Russ Weakley, NSW
  • Gian Wild, VIC
  • Ben Winter-Giles, ACT

Internationals

  • Mike Brown, New Zealand
  • Leslie Doherty, USA
  • April Garvey, USA
  • Chris Mills, UK
  • Brandy Shapiro-Babin, USA
  • Nicolas Steenhout, New Zealand

2009 Judges

The previous judges for the 2009 Australian Web Awards where:

Australians

  • Cameron Adam, NSW
  • Matt Balara, NSW
  • Steve Baty, NSW
  • Sonja Bernhardt, QLD
  • Ben Buchanan, NSW
  • Megyn Carpenter, QLD
  • Matt Didcoe, WA
  • Simon Eder, WA
  • Ruth Ellison, ACT
  • Nick Hodge, NSW
  • Marc Lehmann, NSW
  • Lawrence Meckan, QLD
  • Russ Weakley, NSW
  • Matt Voermann, NSW
  • Kevin Yank, VIC

Important Dates

@auswebawards

23 Nov, 2:27
@damienpbuckley they will go out shortly, of course people that attended got them on the night ;) ^gb
22 Nov, 5:03
@damienpbuckley Most outstanding runners up don't get a certificate because they are taken from previous winners. ^ gb
22 Nov, 5:01
@damienpbuckley yes all finalists from regional & nationals get certificates (most of which were handed out) + client get a cert too
14 Nov, 11:14
For those that didn't attend the Web Awards ceremony - the 2011 winners are - http://t.co/juoIwjm9
12 Nov, 7:00
Congrats to the #awa2011 award winners, entrants, judges and every1 who attended the amazing event in melb tonite! Drink up!