Nat Burns is a professional software developer with experience in both frontend and backend technologies. He graduated from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Nat holds degrees in both computer science and music composition. He has lectured at the Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference and is an active contributor to a variety of open source projects and online forums. Currently, Nat is employed at MSCI, a leading provider of investment decision support tools with software products and services used by investors worldwide.
Ricardo Zea is originally from Medellín, Colombia. He is a passionate and seasoned full-stack designer, who is now located in Dayton, OH (USA). Ricardo is always looking for ways to level up his skills and of those around him. He constantly wonders how things are made on the Web, how they work, and why, which has made him a very good technical designer. This aspect allows Ricardo to explain to the intricacies of design and the technicalities of the Web to others in ways that are very easy to understand and assimilate.
With a master's degree in publicity and advertising and a deep passion for understanding human behavior along with a fierce and competitive PC gaming hunger, he is able to switch from the creative side of the brain to the rational side very easily. This allows him to visualize and create technically sound web and mobile designs that are responsive, perform well, and convey the proper message through design.
Ricardo is the co-organizer of the CodePen Dayton meetup group. He is also a member of the Dayton Web Developers and UX Dayton meetup groups. Ricardo is one of the first members of SitePoint's Ambassadors program. He authors the monthly newsletter Level Up! Web Design & Development Newsletter. Sass Essentials is the second book that Ricardo has participated in as a technical reviewer with Packt. He's also the author of the upcoming book Mastering Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS3 with Packt as well. For several years, he was also a Flash and CorelDRAW professor at different universities in Colombia, his home country.
Ricardo has 15 years of experience in web design and 20 years of experience in visual and graphic design.