Reinventing Fire

I’m Douglas Alan Schepers (”Alan” to most of my friends, “Doug” to my family and business contacts, and “shepazu” to a lot of geeks on IRC). I’m a programmer and standards guy (at least that’s what my business card says… I’ve done a lot of other stuff in the past). I studied Computer Programming and Linguistics in college.

I’m a Web application developer with a passion for open Web standards, especially SVG.  Over the past decade, I’ve worked in various startups, and helped run a small consulting company, Vectoreal, specializing in SVG Web apps.  I’ve been involved in W3C activities for a while (heavily into Scalable Vector Graphics, and active participation in the SVG, WebAPI, WebApp Formats, and HTML Working Groups).  I joined the W3C Team in June 2007, and my mission there is making it easier for people to make rich Web content.  I edit specs, create and administer tests, chair and participate in teleconferences, read lots of technical and semi-technical stuff (specs, email, blogs, IRC logs), and try to find time to still code.

This blog will most likely contain my views on Web technology, politics, and miscellany, as well as code samples and pointers to cool links. You know… blog stuff. Obviously, everything on my blog is my own opinion, not that of any organization I’m affiliated with… trust me, I don’t need to borrow opinions from anyone else, I have opinions about things I’ve never even heard of yet.

I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA with my beautiful girlfriend in our beautiful house.  I Twitter and hang out on IRC or chat under the handle “shepazu” (the Japanese transcription of my surname, pronounced “ʃepaz” or, more humorously “shepazoo”).  You can contact me at “[insert my name here] at schepers.cc”.