The Big Web Show

Front-end architect and speaker Mina Markham is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Mina discusses her career path, her work at as a senior engineer at Slack, how she came to create the Hillary Clinton UI pattern library “Pantsuit,” her time at IBM, helping others and inviting women of color into STEM fields, becoming a public speaker in spite of deep introversion, a recent South African safari, air travel, conferences, the joys of visiting Italy, and more. Enjoy a relaxed and illuminating glimpse into the life of a private and highly creative person.

Legendary computer scientist, web standards pioneer, and indie-web proponent Tantek Çelik is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest.

The secret history of standards in our web browsers. How web standards moved from academic ideas that sometimes couldn’t even be implemented to the foundation of our modern web. The rift between standards-oriented, CSS-and-accessibility-loving web developers and those who rely on powerful and sophisticated toolchains: can it be bridged?

The Flash years and today. Indieweb tools and the independent web community: what it’s about and how to get started. Readers versus social readers. Taking back privacy and the ownership of our content.

Founder and business development consultant Joe Rinaldi (That Was Clutch, Philamade, Bureau of Digital) is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Agency and freelance networking, mining contacts for work, honesty in client services, what they don’t teach in design school, the value of having worked in service.

Why do companies de-prioritize accessibility? Making a digital map accessible to the blind. Pros and cons of the straw test. Why simulating a disability is not the same as working with disabled people. Using Twitter threads to prototype book chapters. How diversity (including neurodiversity and diversity of ability) makes for a better product. Changing small habits in your life leads to changing big ones.

Coder, writer, composer, and founding developer of WordPress Matt Mullenweg is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest.

Open Source will save us. The WordPress 5.0 rollout. When Matthew met Jeffrey. Browsers in the age of Blink. AMP & HTML. Gutenberg: blocks and key commands. IE5. Box models. Google: still doing no evil?

Basecamp founder, New York Times best-selling author, and web software pioneer Jason Fried is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. The two discuss Jason’s latest book (co-authored with David Heinemeier Hannson), It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, which The Economist called “by far the best thing on management published this year.” Also: the secrets of Basecamp, the magic of sleep, the sameness of agencies’ portfolio sites, why Basecamp doesn’t user test, and more.

Note: We apologize for Jeffrey's audio quality in this episode, but Jason Fried says so many smart things we decided we had to share this conversation anyway. It's worth it!

Web design pioneer, Clearleft chief executive, and UX thought leader Andy Budd chats with Big Web Show host Jeffrey Zeldman about the failings and triumphs of our design community over the past 20 years, why the success of design thinking killed the market for design studios, and how to reinvent your studio or agency for today’s market.

Jeffrey MacIntyre, a long-time independent UX consultant and researcher specializing in thoughtful digital personalization, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. The two Jeffreys discuss personalization and its intersection with AI, the business opportunity of responsible personalization, aligning personalization with business operations, the secret history of berry picking, the value of a good taxonomy, personalization versus customization, avoiding the “creep” factor, and much more. A worthwhile episode for business executives and marketers as well as the designers and coders who serve them.

Long-time (since 1994) web design practitioner Jason Pamental, author of Responsive Typography from O’Reilly, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. For more than an hour, the two designers geek out over responsive typography, the history of type on the web, and the explosive creative potential of the new variable fonts.

Multiple Masters. FF Meta. Storing the offsets of the curve points. The three second timeout. Why FOUT is a feature, not a bug. Compensating for the differences between the web font and the backup font. The tragedy of Typecast, the new hope of Figma. Adidas. Nick Sherman. Paula Scher. Mandy Michael. And more.

Katel LeDu, Co-founder of the No, You Go podcast and CEO of A Book Apart, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Topics include: Getting comfortable putting yourself out there when you’re really more of a behind-the-scenes person. Starting a podcast. The life of a photo director at National Geographic. Asking for help. Community outreach—diversity and inclusion. What it’s like to have your therapist as a guest on your podcast. Leading by example. Walking the walk. Finding new authors and new voices. Imposter anxiety and narcissism.