Steve PortigalSteve Portigal is the founder of Portigal Consulting, a bite-sized San Francisco firm that helps clients to discover and act on new insights about themselves and their customers. That means that he's important enough to have a company named after him, but not important enough to have an invincible army of minions... yet. Oh, and he talks to lots of people to figure out how they can have better businesses and happier customers.

In the past 15 years, Steve has interviewed hundreds of people, including families eating breakfast, hotel maintenance staff, architects, rock musicians, home-automation enthusiasts, credit-default swap traders, and radiologists. Steve knows how to throw a rockin', if weird, soiree. His work has informed the development of mobile devices, medical information systems, music gear, wine packaging, financial services, corporate intranets, videoconferencing systems, and iPod accessories. That means he has the best stories and anecdotes if you run into him at one of those soirees. And a secret cave full of really cool, if eclectic, gadgets.

An in-demand conference speaker and contributor to publications like interactions, Core77 and Johnny Holland, Steve is the author of Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights, a Rosenfeld Media book. That means that in addition to those great stories, he's pretty smart and can write as well as he talks.

Twitter: @steveportigal

Web: Portigal Consulting

Steve's book:  Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights