Tantek

Tantek Çelik is a Turkish Cypriot–American software engineer and web standards advocate known for his role in the development of microformats and his contributions to open web technologies. He is best known for his work on microformats, including the hCard microformat, which provides a lightweight way to mark up contact information and basic identity data within HTML or XHTML. Microformats have been influential in promoting machine-readable data embedded in ordinary web pages and in shaping early efforts toward semantic markup on the web.

Çelik has been active in the web standards community, engaging with discussions and projects related to the World Wide Web Consortium and the broader ecosystem surrounding portable data, web identity, and open formats. Through his involvement with microformats and his advocacy for open web principles, he has contributed to conversations about how to balance human readability with machine readability in markup languages.

In addition to standards work, Çelik has held roles in technology organizations and startups where his focus has included interoperability, developer ecosystems, and open data. His ongoing participation in the microformats community and in web standards forums has helped establish him as a recognized voice among engineers and designers who pursue practical, interoperable approaches to embedding structured data on the web.

Çelik's contributions are frequently cited in discussions of the semantic web’s history as part of the movement toward lightweight, embedded data within HTML. His work continues to inform contemporary efforts around web data portability and accessible, standards-based markup.