Aaron Gustafson began teaching himself HTML in 1996 when he wanted to create a website for the music and entertainment magazine he was publishing while living in Florida. In 2000, Aaron relocated to Connecticut, where he began his web career in earnest. Soon after making the move, Aaron began working for many top companies, including Deloitte & Touche, Gartner, Scholastic, Dime Bank, Guinness, Kemper, Spalding, American Skandia, Delta Airlines, IBM and Aetna, which provided ample opportunities to apply his skills in design, markup, scripting, back-end development and Flash. In his spare time, Aaron also started his own freelance web design firm, which catered to the needs of smaller companies to improve their overall design, code and online presence. In the last three years, Aaron has become a student and advocate of standards-based web development. He also campaigns for the use of open-source software and languages, especially PHP and Ruby on Rails, even at the corporate level. In late 2002, Aaron was hired by a Connecticut-based advertising agency, Cronin and Company, to breathe new life into their Digital department. As Senior Web Designer / Developer at Cronin, Aaron has brought the use of web standards and open-source technology into the forefront of nearly every project his department has undertaken. Recent projects include web work for Bertucci’s Restaurants, the Connecticut Department of Transportation, the Connecticut Energy Conservation Management Board, the Connecticut Lottery, Garelick Farms, Konica Minolta, Liberty Bank, Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration and TriZetto. Aaron Gustafson sits on the Advisory Panel for the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW), is a contributing writer and editor for A List Apart and writer for Digital Web Magazine, and has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences including COMDEX and MacWorld. He also provides web standards training to organizations and businesses, including Gartner and the EPA. To learn more about Aaron visit his Website Easy-Design.net.