Better Know A Speaker: Dan Cederholm

July 11, 2007

Residing in Salem, MA, with his wife and son, Dan Cederholm is the brilliant mind behind the much-linked markup riddles of SimpleQuiz and the oft-clicked wares of IconShoppe. He wrote two very popular books: Bulletproof Web Design and Web Standards Solutions. He’s the co-creator the ultimate wine-lover’s community site, Cork’d. He fights icon pirates with one hand lassoed behind his back. And he’s going to be bringing his highly acclaimed talk, “Interface Design Juggling”, to the Chicago stage. We took a few minutes to dig deeper into what’s going on with Dan these days and what he’ll have in store for us.

Who or what has had your attention of late?

Well, let’s see. For the past year, my son Jack has happily had my full attention. For the past month, I’ve been wrapping up a second edition of Bulletproof Web Design. For the past week I’ve been playing with an application called BitFonter, trying my hand at creating a pixel font with decent success. And for the past day I’ve been playing with my new iPhone, thinking about its eventual effect on the web in general, and its immediate effect on my bank account.

What’s your biggest obstacle when creating an interface?

Never being “done”. And this usually happens in two ways: if it’s a personal project, then I’ll tinker with it continuously, never knowing when to stop. Or, if it’s a client project and the check is cashed and I’m happy for a job well done, they will inevitably come back with tweaks and revisions. I’m never one to complain about repeat business, but the longer you’re in business, the more client baggage you collect. (Special note to all my clients: I love you all!)

Interesting to see discussion of microformats, a markup-based technology, in an interface talk. What’s that all about?

I’ve always had an interest in markup as a craft, and naturally microformats go right along with this. I think it makes good sense to talk about microformats from an interface design angle, as using microformats can often take the guesswork out of marking up certain blocks of information. They can assist, while at the same time offer powerful tools to other folks that actually know what to do with it. I love that, as a designer, I can write good clean semantic markup, and cool things can come out of that from the use of microformats. In other words, I can feel like I’m doing something more complex and important than I actually am.

What do you hope attendees will take away from your talk?

I hope that attendees will maybe take a bit of inspiration from some of the details I think are worth focusing on. These details might not be splashy visuals or exciting new breakthroughs in cutting edge design for the interwebs—but they can often make all the difference where it really counts. Boy, that sounds rather cocky, doesn’t it? Unintentionally!

What’s the latest inside scoop on Cork’d?

I’m happy to report that Cork’d has found a new home, and was purchased from Dan Benjamin and I by a newly formed company with Wine Library’s Gary Vaynerchuk at the helm. This was a real win for everyone involved—most especially the members of the site. Dan and I quickly realized we didn’t have the bandwidth or wine experience to take the site where it needed to go. We couldn’t have found a better home with Gary, who is the perfect marriage of web and wine. Gary hosts an insanely entertaining video weblog on wine, and is set to dominate the universe with his unrelenting enthusiasm.

So, the good news: Cork’d lives on, and has the backing behind it now to really take off. It was was an excellent learning experience, and something I’m still proud to have my name attached to.

So when does the SimpleQuiz make its return?

Now that’s an excellent question. I get asked that occasionally and I do miss the old days of debating elements and splitting semantic hairs. I also think toward the end it became a little more difficult to wade through the comments. The quality of the discussion always amazed me with the earlier questions—that was a real watershed time, before microformats (or near its inception).

I’d love to bring it back—but it’d have to be done differently. Perhaps with more editing involved. I toyed with throwing up a discussion board, but I fear that the signal to noise would be too little, and it’d become one big loud room. I’ve had a few ideas on setting up the quiz (with god help us a better name!) somewhere permanent. As anything, as time allows. Maybe it’s time?