Global Partnerships & Business Development at Mozilla
Internet | Bromley, United Kingdom, GB
You should follow 'cyberdees' on Twitter, Lanyrd, Last.fm etc. or visit
http://desiganchinniah.com.
Firestarter @ Mozilla (ex-Ask/Skype/eBay/PayPal)
Startups.Angel —
Tech.Innovation.Mentoring —
Events.Unconferences —
Husband.Dad —
Travel.Music.Sport —
tl;dr
Desigan Chinniah is an enthusiastic, sociable, self-motivated and highly experienced web geek, who enjoys creating and innovating web products backed by solid user experience and community engagement.
A self-confessed geek, Dees lives in London with wife, Sanne and their kids, Summer & Kiran.
Dees is a Firestarter at Mozilla, the makers of Firefox — innovating, experimenting and engaging with their global community.
He has worked within web circles as a Designer, Developer & Product Manager for over 8 years, including stints at Ask Jeeves, Skype, BBC World Service, eBay, PayPal X and Gumtree.
Dees evolves within a magical world of VoIP calls, IRC and cross-Atlantic flights — while silently working his way through as many indie coffee shops as humanly possible.
When he's not geeking out, he can be found sporting, snapping pictures or entertaining the kids, but not at the same time.
You’ve come this far… Why not say hello?
helloATdesiganchinniahDOTcom
Sept
2011 - Present
Firestarter — Global Partnerships & Business Development / Mozilla
Part of the launch team, responsible for engaging with top tier brands and startups on a global scale — for partnerships with the Mozilla App Store.
▪ https://apps.mozillalabs.com/
▪ http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/12/mozilla-labs-apps-preview/
▪ https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Apps
[The Mozilla App Store, is an initiative to bring App experiences — built using HTML5 standards and open technologies — to all your gadgets — totally agnostic to platform, browser or device.]
Sept
2009 - Present
Mentor / Startup Funds, Accelerators & Incubators
Product, User Experience and Community advice and feedback to teams participating within various worldwide technology programs, including:
▪ Seedcamp
▪ Springboard
▪ Gamma Rebels
▪ Rockstart
▪ WebFWD
▪ TechCityUK
Jan
2008 - Present
Local Champion as 'cyberdees' / London Tech Community
A well known face within the London technology scene since 2007, attending various events, meet-ups, unconferences and conferences, with the odd bit of organisation thrown in as well.
Events include:
▪ Moz(illa) Pub(lic) — founder
▪ Mozilla Festival (Drumbeat) — organiser
▪ Knight-Mozilla Journalism Challenge — organsier
▪ MozCamp — volunteer
▪ Design Jam — co-founder
▪ BarCampLondon — organiser
▪ Team Lebowski — founder
▪ Charity Hack — co-founder
▪ UXCampLondon — co-organiser
▪ TweetCamp — co-founder
▪ SocialMediaCamp — volunteer
Jul
2010 -
Sept
2011
Community Manager & Curator of the Concept Series / Mozilla Labs
Engaging with the global community to evolving the Concept Series by innovating and experimenting with new channels:
▪ http://mozillalabs.com/conceptseries/2010/10/18/concept-series-a-time-to-evolve-into-something-new/
▪ http://mozillalabs.com/conceptseries/category/concept-series/
Aug
2009 -
Aug
2010
Platform Developer Evangelist / PayPal X.com (X.commerce)
Part of the X.com platform team organising and attending various meet-ups, hack days, unconferences and conferences around UK and Europe.
Outreach and expansion for PayPal to businesses and developers, as part of their UK & European drive to showcase the new PayPal X.com APIs.
Events include:
▪ FOWA London
▪ LeWeb
▪ London Pub Standards
▪ Warwick University Internet Enterprise Week
▪ Skillswap
▪ Charity Hack
▪ Launch48
▪ Hack North
▪ Barcamps (various)
[PayPal X.com, a new adaptive platform opens the PayPal platform to let developers lead change in the future of payments.]
Jul
2009 -
Aug
2010
Product Architect / Gumtree
Innovating and improving Gumtree.com's online presence on multiple platforms.
▪ helping maintain a prioritised roadmap
▪ driving the overall user experience strategy
▪ collaboration with and directing design, research and strategy agencies
▪ advancing search capabilities
▪ expansion of geographical outreach
▪ adding layers of trust and safety
▪ introducing effective unobtrusive monetisation
▪ getting developers to innovate with us by sharing and opening our data via APIs
▪ creating seamless third party integrations
[Gumtree.com, part of eBay Classifieds Group, is the largest website for local community classifieds and one of the top 20 websites in the UK]
Jan
2009 -
Aug
2010
Organiser of Brownbag Session / eBay
Arranging leading industry figures to speak to the eBay UK - Richmond Campus (eBay, PayPal, Gumtree, Shopping.com) during an open for all lunch time slot followed by Q&A, pizza, discussion and networking.
Guests speakers include:
▪ Nik SIlver, Head of Technology at The Guardian
▪ Shed Simove, Author of Ideas Man at The Talent Shed
▪ Joana Picq, Chief Operating Officer at The NextWomen
▪ Kaigani Turner, Head of Information Architecture at Agency.com
▪ Andy Budd, Director at Clearleft
▪ Colin Bruce, Co-founder at BView
▪ Pascal Finette, Director of Mozilla Labs at Mozilla Corporation
▪ Christian Heilmann - Evangelist at Yahoo Developer Network
▪ Paul Annett, Lead visual designer at Clearleft
▪ Peter Merholz, President at Adaptive Path
▪ Seedcamp teams
[eBay is The World's Online Marketplace, enabling trade on a local, national and international basis. With a diverse and passionate community of individuals and small businesses, eBay offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day]
May
2008 -
Sept
2009
User Experience (UX) & Front-End Engineering Team Lead / Gumtree
Improving the overall User Experience on Gumtree.com with the introduction of User-centered design (UCD) methodologies and principles
▪ engaging more with our users via extensive research, testing, prototyping and iterations
▪ identifying and improving pattern inconsistencies
▪ working closer with the development team and actively participating in Agile (SCRUM) processes
▪ engaging and managing visual, user interface and interaction design with agencies
▪ overseeing improvement of front-end coding standards, bringing it in line with semantic and accessible
mark-up
Member of:
▪ Information Architecture Institute (IAI)
▪ Usability Professionals Association (UPA)
▪ Interaction Design Association (IxDA)
▪ London IA
▪ UX Book Club
[Gumtree.com, part of eBay Classifieds Group, is the largest website for local community classifieds and one of the top 20 websites in the UK]
May
2007 -
Sept
2008
Lead Front-End Engineer / eBay
Worked on front-end development and solutions for local UK-based eBay projects, as part of a Local Development team within the Product division
▪ introduced standards-based coding techniques
▪ improved accessibility features
▪ worked with the UED pattern engine team
▪ developed a CSS toolbox for European/Asian developers
▪ participated as a technical adviser on weekly Design Review sessions
▪ organised BarCampLondon5 at eBay (Richmond Campus)
[eBay is The World's Online Marketplace, enabling trade on a local, national and international basis. With a diverse and passionate community of individuals and small businesses, eBay offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day]
Feb
2007 -
May
2007
Senior Designer & Information Architect / BBC World Service
Advising, the BBC Work Service on improving their search interface offering across multiple languages.
[The BBC World Service is arguably the most widely recognised international broadcaster, currently broadcasting in 32 languages to many parts of the world]
Sept
2006 -
Feb
2007
Senior Designer / Skype
Heavily involved with the team and 3rd party agency on the Skype re-branding process and finalisation.
Integrated 'Take a deep breath' brand integration into various web and application elements and modules.
[Skype is software that enables the world's conversations. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. Everyday, people also use Skype to make low-cost calls to landlines and mobiles]
Mar
2006 -
Feb
2007
User Experience Consultant / Passado Ltd
Called in ton an ad hoc freelance basis to improve and overhaul the user interface and flows on existing product features on Passado, while the management team were busy trying to secure a second round of funding.
The site has since been re-branded as Wasabi.
[Wasabi is a social networking website in Europe, with 4.5 million members. The site, initially known as Passado was started by two school friends who thought it would be interesting if people who left their school or university could just keep in touch]
Jan
2006 -
Aug
2006
Senior European Creative Designer / Ask.com
Involved in all Ask's European creative activity from search interfaces, 3rd party integrations, white label solutions, display advertising and marketing.
[Ask.com (or Ask Jeeves in the United Kingdom) is a search engine founded in 1996. The original idea behind Ask Jeeves was to allow users to get answers to questions posed in everyday, natural language, as well as traditional keyword searching. The current Ask.com still supports this, with added support for math, dictionary, and conversion questions]
Mar
2004 -
Dec
2005
European Media Designer / Ask Jeeves
Led front-end web design of interactive branded widgets, static pages, embeddable modules on 3rd party sites. Led and coordinated the project to remove references to Jeeves on any live creative when Jeeves was being axed from the brand.
[Ask.com (or Ask Jeeves in the United Kingdom) is a search engine founded in 1996. The original idea behind Ask Jeeves was to allow users to get answers to questions posed in everyday, natural language, as well as traditional keyword searching. The current Ask.com still supports this, with added support for math, dictionary, and conversion questions]
Nov
2003 -
Mar
2004
User Interface Designer and Front-End Engineer / Search Labs Ltd
Produced design and front-end development of the initial interface for this conceptual search engine start-up as they tendered for initial contracts against Autonomy, Verity and Fast.
Aug
2003 -
Nov
2003
Web Designer (Contractor) / Ask Jeeves
Junior web designer to help with html interactive bespoke display advertising modules featured on the Ask Jeeves platform.
[Ask.com (or Ask Jeeves in the United Kingdom) is a search engine founded in 1996. The original idea behind Ask Jeeves was to allow users to get answers to questions posed in everyday, natural language, as well as traditional keyword searching. The current Ask.com still supports this, with added support for math, dictionary, and conversion questions]