Organizers
Steve Berry
Steve is a UX/UI/Usability expert with a special knack for creating usable experiences. He recently moved from Philadelphia to NYC to continue the spread of design thinking. Steve is an award winning visual and information designer with extensive experience in usability heuristics.
thoughtmerchants.comJesse Chan-Norris
Jesse Chan-Norris has been, at various times, a freelance technology consultant, photographer, lighting designer, theatre electrician and management consultant and is now the co-founder and evp of engineering at Indaba Music, a new community bringing together musicians who are looking to connect and collaborate beyond the limitations of traditional recording studios. He also enjoys brunch.
Cory Forsyth
Cory co-founded the hyperlocal news site outside.in in 2006 and runs the monthly Ruby Happy Hour in New York. Before that he attended the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU and worked on technology-meets-culture projects like the Popularity Dialer and Twitter Vote Report. He lives in Brooklyn with two roommates and two crazy dogs.
Bryan Helmkamp
Bryan Helmkamp is a Rails software engineer in New York. During his three years of professional Ruby/Rails programming he has been continually active in the community by helping organizing events like Rails Day 2007 and the annual Gotham Ruby Conference (GORUCO).
Francis Hwang
Francis Hwang is an artist, writer, and software engineer. An active member of the Ruby community, he founded Ruby-NYC in 2003, has spoken at the International Ruby Conference, and is currently CTO at Profitably. His writing on technology and culture has appeared in Spin, Wired, ArtByte, and FEED Magazine. His artwork The Unauthorized iPod U2 vs. Negativland Special Edition has received press coverage in Wired News, Art in America, and Liberátion (France). He lives in Brooklyn with one laptop and one big-boned cat.
fhwang.netJosh Knowles
Josh is an accomplished developer, trainer and consultant with over 10 years of professional development experience. Last seen consulting throughout the country for both early stage startups, as well as large international organizations, he brings with him a strong background in Agile Development practices, a passion for Open Source development, as well as a heavy dose of sarcastic humor and an unlimited supply of West Coast charm.
joshknowles.comStephen Schor
Stephen Schor is currently a software engineer at East Media where he writes rails applications. He used to write J2EE applications and a lot of XML. His favorite palindrome is "Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog."