Jeffery Zeldman is the king of web standards. He, and a few others, have done so much to make life on the world wide web more enjoyable for designers and developers. This video gives you the chance to hear from him in person.
Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards is a must read if you do work on the web. Also, he, and Eric Meyer put on an excellent conference in four cities every year called An Event Apart.