Joomla Leadership Team

Michael Babker

Location: Burlington, North Carolina, USA
Timezone: GMT – 5
Position: Production Leadership Team
URL www.babdev.com/
Forum Profile: mbabker
Twitter: @mbabker
GitHub: mbabker

Michael has been developing using Joomla! since 2010, coming to the Bug Squad shortly after the first 1.6 Beta. In the time since, he has gone from being a user of the product with no programming experience to a project contributor and code maintainer for Joomla's CMS and Framework.

Beyond Joomla!, Michael has a wealth of experience in the Information Technology field having worked previously as a Systems and Network Administrator in addition to maintaining several industry related certifications. He has retired his administrative credentials for the most part though and now works as a developer full-time with WebSpark, Inc.

When not paying the bills or writing code, Michael can be found enjoying the scenery wherever he's at in the world, representing the Joomla! project within the greater Open Source community, opinionating through social media, and all in all enjoying life.

Brad Baker

Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia
Timezone: GMT +9
Position: Joomla Community Leadership Team
URL: www.joomlatutorials.com
Twitter: @xyzulu

Born and raised in South Africa, now living in Australia's biggest city, Sydney.

Brad has years of experience in the web hosting industry. As well as running his own local Web hosting and design business, he has been working for Rochen (www.rochen.com) for a number of years. He's been associated with the project since 2003, and brings his good humor and expertise to the ever-growing Joomla fold. Like many of us, he has succumbed to the hazards of the job and, after years of wearing out keyboards, his handwriting is illegible and spelling deplorable without the use of a spellchecker.

Isidro Baquero

Location: Seville, Spain, Europe
Timezone: GMT +1
Position: Community Leadership Team
URL: www.gnumla.com
Forum Profile: hefesto
Twitter: @isidrobaq

Born and living in Seville, south of Spain, Isidro met web technologies for the first time while studying telecommunications engineering in the early 2000s. He was so cautivated by the www that he finally left his studies to work full time as a web freelancer (site building, webmaster, community manager, english to spanish translations).

Related with Joomla since Mambo days, he owns a blog about Joomla in spanish (www.gnumla.org). He started collaborating actively with the Joomla project during early 2010, when joined the moderator team as local moderator for the spanish forum. After that, he continued to increase his involvement, joining JPeople community managers team and the JCM as Spanish editor during 2010, and becoming JPeople Communications Manager during 2011. Also, during the summer of 2011, he joined the Joomla Tweet Team and the Spanish Translation Team.

Guillermo Bravo O.

Location: Iquique, Chile, South America
Timezone: GMT -31
Position: Community Leadership Team
URL: www.joomla.cl 
Twitter: @JWillin

Born and living in Iquique, Guillermo meet Web Development early 2000's during his studies at Bussines Administration. Related with Joomla since 2007, when he create he's first Joomla website.

The Joomla community involvement began with the co-fundation of the local community, Joomla.cl. In that community he become administrator of the help forum and editor of the community blog. Then he start to volunteer in the Joomla Community Magazine in which he manage the International Stories section, and prepare all non-English articles for launch. He also lead the Spanish authors and translators group for the magazine, which currently produces half of the total articles in each new issue. He's working with the multilingual team to prepare the magazine for a better in-language experience, and to make it easier to translate articles. The JCM is almost ready to launch the Spanish version of the JCM, and we know that many other languages will follow!

In Social Networks you will find him always in Facebook, from that channel he's doing the effort to keep the spanish speakers Joomla community more involved in the Joomla! project, sharing news, events and bringing suport throught many Joomla related groups.

Peter Bui

Location: Sydney, Australia
Timezone: GMT +10
Position: Community Leadership Team
URL: pbwebdev.com 
Forum Profile: astroboysoup
Twitter: @astroboysoup

Peter has been working in the Joomla space since the Mambo days and then moving on to Joomla as the communities spilt. He started learning Joomla by reverse engineering templates and working out what made them tick. He now co-leads a web design and development agency based in Sydney, Australia with his girlfriend and partner providing solutions for clients using the Joomla CMS.

While he isn't working in the studio, he podcasts and videocasts all about Joomla on his weekly show the Joomla Beat where he connects with members of the community from around the world to share their Joomla stories no matter how big or small they are. Some would say it has become more of an obsession than just a hobby.

When he isn't working he is enjoying life with his girlfriend, sipping away on sake on the water of the beautiful harbour city or bending over backwards on the floor of a hot yoga room.

Ruth Cheesley

Location: United Kingdom, Europe
Timezone: GMT
Position: Community Leadership Team
URL: www.viryatechnologies.com 
Forum Profile: RCheesley
Twitter: @RCheesley

Ruth has always been a passionate supporter of free and open source software, and came across Joomla! in the early days when asked to design a website during her time as IT Technician at a school, and the rest, as they say, is history! She now runs a business - Virya Technologies and Virya Software - which specialises in Open Source technologies including Joomla! website design, management and extension creation, and Linux server management. Her personal area of interest lies within search engine optimisation and helping websites to recover from poor SEO practices. Ruth also founded Joomla! User Group Suffolk and is on the team for Joomla!Day UK events.

When she's not in front of a computer screen she can be found lurking in the countryside assessing young people completing their Duke of Edinburgh's Expedition or hunting out geocaches. She's also training for ordination with the Triratna Buddhist Community and is a field hockey goalkeeper.

Chris Davenport

Location: Shrewsbury, Shropshire, United Kingdom
Timezone: GMT
Position: Documentation Working Group Coordinator

Born 1958, Chris first began programming on a DEC PDP8 in 1975. He gained a degree in mathematics in 1979 and, after a brief spell as a mathematician in the aerospace industry, got sucked into the rapidly growing computer industry. Chris has developed software at all levels from assembly language upwards, on everything from microprocessors to mainframes, and has learnt through hard experience the value of good, disciplined commenting and thorough documentation. "Documentation is as much a part of the finished product as the code itself."

He discovered Mambo in 2003 while searching for a content management system for an intranet project. Although impressed by the product itself, he felt that the lack of documentation was a major weakness. Rather than complaining, he set about trying to fix the problem by writing his own and was soon recruited to the Documentation Team. He switched to Joomla as soon as the split occurred and is now responsible for developer documentation.

Javier Gomez

Location: Barcelona, Spain
Timezone: GMT +1
Position: Production Leadership Team
Twitter: @JAVI_GOMEZ
GitHub: javigomez

Javier Gomez was born in Barcelona (Spain) and works as Quality Assurance at redCOMPONENT.com. Since 2010 Javier became a board member of Open Source Matters, the non-for-profit that provides organizational, legal, and financial support for the Joomla! open-source project. In 2013 Javier joined the Joomla Production Leadership Team where he volunteers his time to the project.

He became active in the community in 2007 by organizing the first national Joomla! meeting in Barcelona and has participated in several Joomla events in different countries: United States, Chile, Spain, Guatemala, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Germany or Netherlands... he is passionate about the Joomla! community and is focused on enhancing the internationalisation of the project. One of his most known contributions to the project is the Joomla! language installer

Alice Grevet

Location: Paris, France
Timezone: GMT +1 
Position: Community Leadership Team
Forum Profile: agrevet
Twitter: @agrevet

After completing a professional certificate in website design at the American University of Paris in 2001, Alice became a Mambo user, followed soon thereafter by Joomla! In 2005 she became a free-lance website developer, specializing in Joomla! website solutions for Paris-based non-profits.

She served a seven year term as Webmanager for FAWCO, the largest federation of American clubs overseas, earning the Circle of Honor award. She is Operations Manager for the Online Publishers Association Europe, a non-profit organization whose mission is the viability of digital media for producers of quality news content.

Alice is Co-Lead Editor on the Joomla! Community Magazine with Dianne Henning.

Dianne Henning

Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Timezone: GMT -5
Position: Community Leadership Team
URL: www.joomladayboston.com
Forum Profile: qbparis
Twitter: @qbparis

Dianne lived in Paris, France for 20 years where she received a professional certificate in Web Design and Site Management from the American University in Paris in 2001-02. She has been using Joomla! since 2005 but became more actively involved as a volunteer in the Joomla community in 2010. In October 2013 she completed three years of service on the Board of Directors of Open Source Matters, Inc. Dianne is currently the Co-Lead Editor of the Joomla! Community Magazine, serves on the Joomla Events Team, and the 2013 and 2014 Joomla World Conference team. She also organizes the annual JoomlaDay Boston event held in March for local Joomla users.

In her spare time, Dianne enjoys photography, knitting, ceramics, cooking and networking.

Thomas Hunziker

Location: Oberentfelden, Switzerland (Europe)
Timezone: GMT +1
Position: Production Leadership Team
URL: www.bakual.ch
Forum: Bakual
Twitter: @bakual

Thomas Hunziker works in informatics for a Swiss telecommunication company. He started with Joomla! 1.5 around end of 2007 because the text editor wasn’t working anymore. About two years later he started writing his own extensions. From there it was a small step to help other users in the forums and also to fixing bugs. This is what he still loves doing, especially on the coding side of things.

David Hurley

Location: Graham, North Carolina, USA
Timezone: GMT -5
Position: Production Leadership Team / Community Development Manager
URL: websparkinc.com
Twitter: @dbhurley
Skype: davidbhurley

David is committed to open source development working with Joomla! since Mambo and serves as both the Community Development Manager for Joomla as well as a member of the Production Leadership Team. He is always looking for other ways to help and writes for the Joomla Community Magazine for developers, a member of the bug squad, the security strike team, the CMS and framework maintainers list, and every other group he can find to join!

David is a founding partner at WebSpark. A company built on making incredible business-oriented solutions. They have created the first and only true Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system built specifically for Joomla. They have also created project management (JForce) and live group chat (Banter) solutions. In addition to creating Joomla based components, under David's direction WebSpark has continued to innovate and create both cutting edge components as well as unique standalone web-based applications built on the Joomla Framework.

In addition to coding and contributing to open source, David speaks extensively around the world on the topics of code, frameworks, open source, business organization, and other topics. But more importantly, he travels around the world to listen to the ideas and gain inspiration from others!

David Jardin

Location: Cologne (Köln), Germany
Timezone: GMT +1
Position: Community Leadership Team
URL: www.djumla.de
Twitter: SniperSister

Born and living in Cologne, Germany, David got in touch with web development during school in 2002. After a few years working with plain HTML sites, he started to develop his own CMS in 2004 and switched to Mambo shortly after. He quickly became an active member of the German community and met them in person for the first time during JoomlaDay Germany 2006. After school, he started his business as a freelance webdeveloper and quickly got more involved in the community by giving support in the forums, co-organizing the German JoomlaDay and the J&Beyond conference, starting a Joomla Usergroup in his home town, developing own extensions and joining the board of the German Joomla association "J&Beyond e.V.". In 2012, he joined the Bug Squad and started contributing to the CMS code.

In late 2012, he co-founded the CMS-Garden project, which is cooperation of 12 opensource CMS. In the CMS-Garden, volunteers from all participating systems combine their forces to improve their marketing and reach new potential users.

Besides that he's interested in open source sofware, linux, pasta and archery.

Peter Martin

Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands, Europe
Timezone: GMT +1
Position: Community Leadership Team
URL: www.db8.nl
Forum Profile: pe7er
Twitter: @pe7er

Like millions of others, Peter's computer career began in 1984 with the Commodore 64. Ten years later he got hooked to the Internet during his studies Marketing and Mass Communication. When plain HTML wasn't sufficient anymore he learned PHP/MySQL. In 2003 Peter discovered Mambo CMS but only got actively involved in the Joomla community in 2005 when he started helping other users at Joomla forum. Peter has been a forum Moderator since 2006 & Global Moderator since 2007. 

In his hometown he organizes Open Coffee Nijmegen (a monthly networking event for small businesses and self employed people) and Linux User Group Nijmegen. Peter has his own business www.db8.nl (founded in 2005) and supports companies and organizations with Joomla implementations, support and custom Joomla extension development.

His other interests are open source software, Linux (Debian), Nginx, Raspberry Pi, music (collecting vinyl records) and art house movies.

Olaf Offick

Location: Galway, Ireland, Europe
Timezone: GMT
Position: Community Leadership Team
URL: www.learnskills.org
Forum Profile: ooffick

Olaf is an Internet Engineer (M.Sc.) working in Galway, Ireland. He is the founder of Learn Skills, a company providing high quality Learning Management Systems (LMS / LCMS / VLE) and Educational Materials to businesses, schools and government organisations. In the Joomla community, Olaf is working in the Joomla Global Moderator Team and the Joomla Forum Administrator Team.

Sander Potjer

Location: Weesp, The Netherlands, Europe
Timezone: GMT +1
Position: Community Leadership Team
URL: www.perfectwebteam.nl
Forum Profile: zanderp
Twitter: @sanderpotjer

Sander’s Joomla passion started back in 2005 by building a Joomla website for his rowing team. Next to his studies Architecture at Delft University of Technology Sander is a Joomla freelancer working on all kinds of Joomla projects.

The involvement with the Joomla community started back in 2008, as co-founder of the local Dutch community www.joomlacommunity.eu. In a short period they established a solid community with an active team of volunteers. The volunteers contribute by providing news, translations, documentation, forum support and by organization the Joomla User Groups (14 in a small country!) and the yearly Dutch JoomlaDays.

He is chairman of “Stichting Sympathy,” a Dutch foundation founded in January 2011 that covers all Joomla activities and promoting the Joomla project in The Netherlands.

Nick Savov

Location:  Iowa, USA
Timezone: GMT – 6
Position: Production Leadership Team
URL: www.ostraining.com/
Forum Profile: NickSavov
Twitter: @NickSavov

Nick Savov has been involved with Joomla for about two and a half years and web related work for only three years. He's a quick learner and enjoys learning new things by applying himself until a goal is accomplished. During his time with Joomla, he's been involved in a lot of areas of the project including documentation, Joomla Bug Squad, marketing, communication, and helping out on the developer mailing lists and the forum.

One of his favorite parts about Joomla is meeting other people in the community, getting to know them better, and working with them to accomplish common goals. He especially loves helping others to learn something new, to solve problems, and to contribute to the Joomla core.

Nick's employed at OSTraining, as the Director of Sites, where he's helped answer thousands of Joomla-related questions. As part of the job, he also gets to work with Joomla and Joomla-related products throughout the day. Having those opportunities and his colleagues as co-workers has made the position a dream job for him.

Roberto Segura

Location: Valencia, Spain
Timezone: GMT +1
Position: Production Leadership Team
URL: phproberto.com
Twitter: @phproberto
Forum Profile: phproberto
GitHub: phproberto

Roberto has been working in web development from 2010 and with Joomla! from 2011. Member the Bug Squad and Security Team. He has contributed to both Joomla! CMS & Joomla! Framework.

Roberto currently works as a Freelance PHP Developer. Mainly involved on extension development and e-commerce solutions. He has contributed to other opensource projects like Twitter Bootstrap, Prestashop or K2. His main coding languages are Javascript & PHP. Git maniac, Sublime Text lover and Linux user.

Matt Thomas

Location: Harwinton, CT, USA
Timezone: Eastern (GMT - 5:00)
Position: Production Leadership Team
URL: betweenbrain.com
Twitter: @betweenbrain
Forum Profile: betweenbrain
GitHub: betweenbrain

Matt's web career formally began in 2000 when he joined a start-up venture in Connecticut. At that same time, he founded betweenbrain™ to aid and empower colleagues and local businesses in need of unique problem solving and technology services. After discovering Joomla in 2006, and subsequently becoming an active member in the community, Matt re-aligned his business to focus primarily on Joomla services and solutions.

Along the way, Matt has been a team leader in the Joomla Bug Squad, presenter at numerous Joomla events, and created the Construct Template Framework and the Joomla Ajax Interface. As a developer and consultant, Matt works one-on-one with his clients to carefully develop appropriate solutions complimented by client education. He is an avid evangelist of open source software and has been known to spend his free time building and managing Linux servers via Terminal.