Steve Souders

Steve works at Google on web performance and open-source initiatives. His book High Performance Web Sites explains his best practices for performance along with the research and real-world results behind them. Steve is the creator of YSlow, the performance analysis extension to Firebug. He is the co-chair of Velocity 2008, the web performance and operations conference from O'Reilly, and is co-founder of the Firebug Working Group.

Steve previously worked at Yahoo! as the Chief Performance Yahoo!, where he blogged about web performance on Yahoo! Developer Network. He was named a Yahoo! Superstar. Steve worked on many of the platforms and products within the company, including running the development team for My Yahoo!. Prior to Yahoo!, Steve worked at several small to mid-sized startups including two companies he co-founded, Helix Systems and CoolSync. He also worked at General Magic, WhoWhere?, and Lycos.

In the early 80's Steve caught the Artificial Intelligence bug and worked at a few companies doing research on Machine Learning, including several publications and conference appearances. He received a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and a MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

Steve's interests are varied. He sits on the board of Freehand Systems and Fremont Hills Country Club. He's played basketball with several NBA and WNBA players. He was a member of the Universal Studios Internet Task Force. He participated in setting a Guinness world record. He rebuilt a 90-year-old carriage house. He has a wonderful wife and three daughters.