Hi, I'm Kevin and I Love Web Standards

It's been a while since I've written a first blog post, but here I am writing one. The developer network folks asked me to start blogging over here, and I just can't say no to them (they pout like crazy if you try). Why me? I'm still asking myself the same question...

Let's get this thing started off right, with my life story. I know you all really want to know about my formative years, high school, and all the problems I had with girls in ninth grade. No? OK, then I'll talk about something really important: web standards.

I've worked for AOL for almost twelve years, and have been building web applications for about ten of those years. I went from "what's HTML?" to throwing hissy fits if things don't validate (there's nothing better than a good nerd hissy). I documented my standards story over on my real blog a while ago, and won't repeat the whole thing here - but my pseudo-title at AOL is "web standards guy", if that helps illuminate my feelings on the subject.

I'm into several different aspects of the web standards world, most of which I'll try to explore here on a fairly regular basis. Here's a short list of things that I geek out about:

• CSS - I'm a member of the CSS Working Group, representing AOL along with internet rockstar Cindy Li, so I sort of have to be.
• Microformats - I helped invent one for AIM Pages, and have spoken at a handful of conferences in the past year about them.
• Feeds - Love them, can't get enough of them (587 feeds in NetNewsWire).
• Not re-inventing the wheel - I keep Tim Bray's Don't Invent New XML Languages handy at all times and send it out frequently when I see people trying to invent wheels that have already been meticulously crafted.

And in the not-at-all-related-to-web-standards world, I'm currently geeking out over:

• Ruby on Rails - I'm currently working on an "experiment" at work that I'll be able to talk about more in a month or so, but it's all on Rails, and I'm loving it.
• Dojo - Makes writing javascript a whole lot less painful, and we love it so much, we host a copy that people can use.
• The Cluetrain Manifesto - There's a whole series of posts coming about that... but it's kept me geeking for four years and changed the direction of my career and maybe AOL as a company - maybe something worth exploring here.

I have other internet addictions that I'll go into later, but I think that's more than enough of an introduction for now. The one last thing I wanted to be sure to make clear in this introductory blog post is that even though I work for AOL, I promise not to shamelessly plug AOL stuff unless either I built it or it's great. I've been here long enough to know that the triangle's not perfect. I won't promote something or probably even talk about it unless I would tell my friends to use it, or use it in my own mashups. No one's approving these posts before I click the Publish button, and if they start, well, you can find me over here. I'm first and foremost a geek: a geek who is a passionate believer in The Cluetrain and being as transparent as possible.

I'll see you around, and hopefully I'll write enough interesting stuff to keep you coming back. If not, there's a big wonderful world of technology and wonder for nerds and geeks to get lost in.