[MACCAWS] Intro

Hi all. A brief introduction first, a few general comments.

I'm Chris Kaminski, a U.S. designer/developer currently living and 
working
in Bonn, Germany. The company I work for, functionNewMedia
<http://www.function.de> specializes in accessible sites. We worked 
on the
campaign to get a 508-style law passed here in Germany
<http://www.einfachfueralle.de> and to educate developers on how to 
comply.
We've been making the business case for standards for over a year 
now, and separately the principals and I have been doing so since 
at least '96, so I
hope to be able to contribute something.

As for me personally, I have been designing and building sites 
since spring
'95, and was with the Web Standards Project when it was still just 
an e-mail
with a looooong CC: list. I helped keep the 'to do' list through 
the launch,
was Volunteer Coordinator in Fall '98 and early '99 and was on the 
Steering
Committee until fall '99, by which time work had gotten in the way of
effective participation. As I'm sure the WaSP SC folks who remember 
me will tell you, I was effective there in some ways, less so in 
others.

I'm impressed with the CVs of the group here (at least those 
running for the
SC; I haven't had time to look through any others) and hope I can 
contribute
a bit. To that end, I have skills in design, usability, information
architecture, markup, stylesheet authoring, ECMAScript and 
copywriting. I've
also done a bit of strategic work on the business side of things, some
client contact/sales, project management and departmental 
management. It doesn't seem as if there are any open positions on 
the SC that I could fill, so I'll just jump in as I feel I am able 
or as I'm asked.

I've read the traffic on the list since I joined yesterday, and 
have perused
the Wiki, but don't necessarily know the details of what has gone 
before so
please take all my comments with the appropriate dose of NaCl.

I've responded to a number of threads, and have been a bit zealous 
with changing subject lines to accurately reflect the topic as that 
seemed to help keep discussions focused on the WaSP list. I have, 
however, attempted to respond to messages in the appropriate thread 
so that people using threading won't be fouled-up.

I look forward to working with all of you.


chris.kaminski { functionNewMedia :: <http://www.function.de> }