Speaker Bio

Rasmus Lerdorf (Yahoo!)

'Rasmus Lerdorf (born November 22, 1968 in Qeqertarsuaq, Greenland) is a Danish-Canadian programmer and the creator of the PHP programming language. He authored the first two versions. Rasmus also participated in the development of later versions of PHP led by a group of developers including Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, who later founded Zend Technologies. In 1993 he graduated from the University of Waterloo with a BASc in Systems Design Engineering. Since September 2002, he has been employed by Yahoo! Inc. as an Infrastructure Architecture Engineer.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmus_Lerdorf

Andrei Zmievski (Yahoo!)

Andrei Zmievski works on internal tools at Yahoo! Inc. specializing in i18n and infrastructure software, such as PHP and Apache. He is also a core PHP developer, leader of the PHP-GTK project, and a co-author of "PHP Developer's Cookbook" and Smarty templating system. His current focus is the native Unicode support in PHP. In his free time he studies languages and linguistics, goes sailing, shoots some photos, and travels to other countries.

Brian Aker(MySQL)

Brian Aker is the director of architecture for MySQL when he helps set direction for technology and looks for opportunities to harness and shape the MySQL database for efforts in Web, OEM, and telephony. In his copious amounts of free time he works on Apache and Perl modules, and hacks on the Asterisk Telephony System (hence, never has a working home phone number). In the past, he has been involved with projects for the Army Engineer Corps, The Virtual Hospital, Splunk, and Slashdot. He lives in Seattle with his dog Rosalynd.

Chris Hartjes

Chris has almost 9 years of experience building PHP applications, currently working for VerticalScope, creating customized tools to support their network of 50+ forum sites running vBulletin. He has written magazine articles for php|architect magazine and is making the rounds on the lecture circuit with ideas on what PHP can learn from other programming languages and environments. His blog can be found at http://www.littlehart.net/atthekeyboard

Damien Seguy (Nexen)

After an engineering diploma in acoustics, I went into an informatics services firm then create my own company : nexen.net.

There, I handle Nexen.net relation with the community, which is the best channel we have to recruit customers. I run the Nexen.net website, and the Direction|PHP magazine.

I'm a PHP and MySQL Guru. I contribute to both project, and usually turn anything I encounter in French. I'm promoting the LAMP platform online and on conferences.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/b4/568

Derick Rethans (eZ systems)

Derick Rethans provides solutions for Internet related problems. He has contributed in a number of ways to the PHP project, including the mcrypt extension, bug fixes, additions and leading the QA team. He now works as a developer for eZ systems A.S.

In his spare time, he likes to work on SRM: Script Running Machine and Xdebug, watch movies and travel.

Ilia Alshanetsky (Advanced Internet Designs)

Ilia Alshanetsky is a primarily a programmer although he frequently dabbles in network/server security. Ilia is a chief software architect for Advanced Internet Designs Inc, a company supplying support and development services to a variety of corporate and government entities. Aside from commercial development, he is involved in a number of Open Source projects. Lately Ilia can be found speaking at various PHP conferences and writing articles for print and online magazines.

http://ilia.ws/who.php

James Walker (Bryght)

James is a software developer with an insatiable appetite for new, collaborative and/or disruptive internet technologies. He most recently co-founded Bryght (http://www.bryght.com/), a Vancouver- based technology company focused on providing hosting, services and expertise around Drupal, a popular open-source content management system.

http://isummit.ca/html/test_bio.php

Jeff Barr (Amazon)

Jeff Barr is focused on furthering awareness among software developers of the opportunity to innovate and build businesses using Amazon Web Services. Launched in July 2002, Amazon Web Services exposes Amazon.com technology and product data that enables developers to build innovative and entrepreneurial applications on their own. Barr meets regularly with developers in the U.S. and internationally to introduce Amazon Web Services and to help them build businesses and applications with the program’s services. He joined Amazon in August 2002 as a Senior Software Developer on the Associates team.

Applications built using Amazon Web Services range from enhanced Associates sites that advertise products from the Amazon.com Web site to integrated solutions for retailers selling merchandise through Amazon.com. Developers make money by earning referral fees from their Associates sites or by charging users for the applications they build.

Barr has a longstanding interest in Web services and programmatic information interchange. He has held development and management positions at KnowNow, eByz, Akopia, and Microsoft, and was a co-founder of Visix Software. He earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from American University and completed graduate work in computer science at George Washington University.

Jim DeLaHunt

Jim DeLaHunt is a Vancouver-based software engineer and consultant in world-ready business and technology development. He helps small tech companies get started with their international products, and larger tech companies with established international businesses by providing spare hands for big or back-burner projects.

Before moving to Vancouver, he worked in Silicon Valley for Adobe Systems, Incorporated. There he was the technical leader of the "SING Gaiji Architecture" for Japanese and Chinese publishing, which shipped in the Adobe Creative Suite 2, and Japanese OpenType font products, plus many other products over 16 years.

Jim O'Leary (UBC Lecturer)

Jim O'Leary is an applications developer and teacher. Jim recently completed the Bachelor of Technology degree program from BCIT in the areas of mobile applications, Internet security, and GIS. He teaches a wide range of program languages, including Python, PHP, Perl, and Java.

Johnny Bufu (Sxip Identity)

Johnny is the OpenID tech lead at Sxip Identity and is one of the three OpenID editors who helped channel the community's effort and ideas and materialize them into the latest OpenID Authentication 2.0 specification. At Sxip he is also part of the development team for Sxipper, the digital identity manager for Firefox. Johnny has a solid grounding in Linux and Network Administration and holds a BS in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania.

Julian Egelstaff (Freeform Solutions)

Julian Egelstaff is the Senior Director of Consulting Services at Freeform Solutions, a Canadian not-for-profit organization that helps other not-for-profits use technology to meet their mission goals. He has been using PHP for over 6 years, recently becoming a ZCE. Julian's formal education in Journalism and Philosophy might seem unconventional for a career in computing, but this unique perspective shapes the unconventional approach Freeform Solutions takes to meeting development needs with flexible, open source software, designed to meet a broad range of client needs.

Kevin Schroeder (Zend)

Consultant for Zend Technologies Kevin Schroeder is a technical consultant for Zend Technologies' Professional Services in North America. He has wide range of experience from large scale system administration to software development in multiple languages. Based out of Dallas, TX, he travels throughout the country providing services centered on PHP.

Marcus Boerger

Marcus Börger is a freelancer located in Germany, and is a core contributor to PHP.

Mike Potter

Mike Potter, works for Adobe Systems Inc. in developer relations. In previous jobs, Mike was a software developer building websites and communities for curling associations in Canada, including the Canadian Curling Association and his own site, InTheHack.com. After that, he worked for OEone, which built an open source desktop solution based on the Mozilla browser. Part of that work involved open sourcing the calendar application, which became the Mozilla Calendar Project. Mike ran that for a year, before leaving OEone to get his MBA at the University of Ottawa. Upon graduation he got a job at Adobe, where he's been very happy ever since.

Mike is a big fan of open source software. He led the effort to start the Mozilla Calendar Project, writes articles about PHP software, uses a combination of PHP, MySQL wherever possible on the web (especially with Drupal) and advocates for more a more open culture at Adobe.

His work at Adobe focuses on developer relations, and making it easy for developers to build compelling solutions with Adobe software. You can read his blog at www.riapedia.com

Paul Reinheimer (php|architect)

Born in Vancouver, raised in Ontario, educated in Windsor, currently roaming the streets of beautiful Montreal. When not fighting off crazy internet vixens Paul pays his hosting and internet bills by writing books for Wrox (an imprint of Wiley), and taking care of training for PHP|Architect. Paul’s first book Professional Web APIs with PHP was released July 2006, he is currently working on co-authoring Professional PHP5, also for Wrox. Paul’s primary interests are security, performance and web services as well as casually dismissing Java as a language not fit to run the fridge it was designed for (at least, until it gets that ram upgrade).

Perrick Penet (France AFUP)

Perrick Penet is the owner of the web-software company No Parking. Their main product is openTIME, a web-based time management tool (written in PHP of course).

He's also president of the AFUP (french PHP user group), co-leader on the Open Source project SimpleTest (Unit Testing for PHP) and Agile practitioner (mainly XP though).

Rick James (Microsoft)

Rick is a Microsoft developer. He was born in South Africa and did university in Victoria, BC. He owns IIS FastCGI, IIS troubleshooting and IIS performance. Lately, he has been working with Zend to improve PHP Windows performance.

Sean Coates (php|architect)

SEAN COATES is a developer and the Editor-in-Chief of php|architect magazine. He also wears many hats around the organization and works on various php.net projects.

Steven Wittens (Bryght)

Steven Wittens is one of the main developers of Drupal and has been contributing to the project since its inception 6 years ago. Having just signed up with the Vancouver-based Bryght, this 22-year old has moved to the rain city to seek his fortune. He recently graduated with an engineering degree from the KUL in Belgium. More info and his blog can be found at http://www.acko.net/.

Zak Greant (eZ systems)

Zak’s love of Free Software and Open Source is turning him into a penguin. The only visible changes (so far) are a gradual accumulation of blubber, a loss of hair (which he hopes is the prelude to feather growth) and a growing preference for raw fish. When not practicing how to waddle or wear a tuxedo, he works with eZ systems AS as their managing director for North America and with the Mozilla Foundation on various community and foundation issues. As time permits, he also volunteers with the Free Software Foundation’s Compliance Lab.

In the past, Zak worked for Sxip Identity as their Technical Evangelist and MySQL AB as their Community Advocate. Additionally, Zak has written and contributed to several books on PHP, MySQL and Free Software/Open Source, and was an early participant in the PHP community.

http://zak.greant.com/bio/