Niall Kennedy is a web technologist in San Francisco, California specializing in the platform web, syndication, and widgets. Niall is President of Hat Trick Media, a consulting, events, and product company extending the reach of Web publishing beyond a single website and into the distributed, social web. Niall produces the annual Widget Summit conference, operates web technology analyst site Startup Search, and writes software in Python, Django, and YUI on Google App Engine. Niall is currently seeking new full-time employment and consulting opportunities.
The Widget Summit conference, founded in 2006, attracts approximately 250 widget developers and product leaders to San Francisco once a year. Web publishers are introduced to new major widget platforms, learn best practices from the teams behind each product, and develop solid business strategies for embracing the widget web. Startup Search is a web technology startup directory and data hub developed in 2007 and a test bed for new feature development. Startup Search tracks key facts about web technology companies including products, teams, and investors while measuring success and perceptions over time using publicly available traffic and buzz data.
Niall's past work experience includes building a RSS infohub platform for Microsoft's Windows Live Platform division and managing syndication, community, and developer APIs for blog search engine Technorati. Niall has published websites since 1990, when the Web was still a command line. In the past two decades his work has scurried down a crater on Mars, helped geeks find the cheapest Palm Pilot, indexed millions of bloggers minutes after publication, attempted to predict the financial future, and rode the edge of the Web technology for business gain.
Niall is an nationally-recognized soccer coach with a past that includes international, professional, and college programs. He has provided coaching support for the United States Soccer Federation, San Jose Clash and Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer, and UCLA. He has managed talented teams of up to 25 players, recruited top talent into the organization, confronted international press incidents, and developed top-notch defenders.
Niall is a published photographer, an amateur foodie, and a developer bleeding on the Web's cutting edge so you don't have to.