Micah Laaker (pronounced “MY-kuh LAY-kur”) leads User Experience for Yahoo!’s Open Strategy efforts. Having led the user experience design team on My Yahoo! (as well as Yahoo!’s Registration/Membership, Developer Network, and Personalization Platform teams), Micah now works to allow developers to build inside of the network and expand Yahoo! content off-network.

Previously the creative director of Island Def Jam Music Group’s in-house interactive group, Fearless Concepts, Micah has led the conceptual and visual direction of music and entertainment projects. With more than ten years in the interactive field, he has provided his entertainment, corporate, and not-for-profit clients with a range of information design, graphic design, illustration, and multimedia services.

Micah was instrumental in the founding and operations of the research and development department at Iguana Studios, a leading New York-based design firm. Thanks to the resources of Iguana and with the support of Adobe Systems, Inc., he was able to coordinate the design development of the first commercial SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) project: the redesign of BattleBots.com.

Following on the heels of this development, Micah has written extensively about design and technology, including authoring “SAMS Teach Yourself SVG in 24 Hours,” “Photoshop CS in 10 Simple Steps or Less,” and a number of articles for industry journals. He continues to lecture and teach university classes about online vector graphics and interactive production technologies, as well.His clients have included the ACLU, Island Def Jam Music Group, Disney Channel, Sprint PCS, Lockheed Martin, and Adobe Systems.
Micah has won numerous awards for both creative and Web development, including the 2005 Media That Matters Film Festival Civil Liberties award, a 2004 Billboard Digital Entertainment award, the 2002 London International Advertising Awards Gold Award and the 2001 Industrial Design Society of America’s Industrial Design Excellence Gold Award.

He lives in sunny California with his wife, son, and mammoth music collection, and he is known for his affinity to his home state: Nebraska.