Chris Messina currently works at Google as an User Experience designer on Google+ and resides in San Francisco.
He became a well-known advocate of the open web by helping to lead the community marketing of the popular Firefox web browser in 2004. Later, he invented the hashtag.
He has since served on the boards of the OpenID and Open Web Foundations, and has played an instrumental role in advancing OAuth and safer online computing. A frequent speaker at technology conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo and SXSW, he has been quoted in The New York Times, Business Week, LA Times, Washington Post, ReadWriteWeb, and Wired. In 2008, Chris received the Google Open Source Award recognizing his community work on initiatives like microformats. He also co-founded the coworking and BarCamp communities.
