Michael Metz is Senior Director of Web Marketing and Strategy, heading a team of 60 web professionals who manage the corporate website from a Marketing perspective.

Previously at Cisco he held the position of Director, E-learning Marketing, responsible for marketing the Cisco Career Certifications program, Cisco training products and e learning for Cisco field, channels and customers.

Mike is a 20-year veteran of the computer industry, focused on the application of technology to learning and performance. Prior to joining Cisco he was Director of Solutions and Services at Apple.

He's an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, with graduate work in Interactional Technology from Governor's University in Chicago Illinois.

Martin Hardee is Director of User Experience for Cisco.com, and spends his days and nights thinking about how to create great and useful experiences across the Cisco.com sites. Martin works closely with the talented design professionals across Cisco.

Before Cisco, Martin spent many years leading web experience design at Sun Microsystems where he authored a popular blog on web experience which the Sun design team continues. At Sun, Martin was active in the early days of web usability with usability guru Jakob Nielsen, grew the company's popular Java sites, and was then User Experience Director for Sun's many external web properties.

In his spare time, Martin rollerblades and maintains DesignComics.org.

Rick Lilly leads the Cisco.com Design & Development group within IT. In his nine years at Cisco, Rick has worked in a number of roles in Marketing and IT to improve the business and technical aspects of Cisco's web presence.

Rick's team is on focused on improving the Cisco.com customer experience using new web technologies and capabilities. Accessibility, global readiness, markup standards, browser/platform support and Web 2.0 are just a few of the aspects of his role that he's passionate about.

Abdul Halabieh is a User Experience Architect with Cisco Services who has extensive expertise in crafting online strategy to address business needs and delight intended users. Currently, Abdul is responsible of the overall user experience for the support site within Cisco.com. He applied the Task Based Navigation approach which he pioneered at his days at HP, and now has become an industry navigation standard for support sites. His next focus is setting the personalization strategy and driving the execution plan through user research, story boarding, detailed design, BRD, and metrics.

Kara Jariwala is a Search Marketing Strategist at Cisco responsible for securing organic listings globally in the major search engines. She works with internal clients, editors, and web masters, teaching them the art and science of search optimization.

Kara joined Cisco seven years ago, where she has served in marketing and marketing communications across small business, enterprise, and vertical segments. Previously, she worked in sales, marketing, and partner relations roles at various startup companies. She has spoken at Search Engine Strategies San Jose and Paris 2006.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in French from Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, and a master’s degree in political science from Western Michigan University. She’s a politically active member in her local community and volunteers in neighborhood programs.