Volunteer Biographies

Lead Organizers

Dan Wright

Our lead organizer in 2016 is Dan Wright.

Dan arrived on the Perl scene when he landed his first “real job” as a network programmer for pair Networks, Inc. in 2000. At the time, he was finishing up his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Sixteen years later, Dan is still working for pair as their Director of Technical Operations for pairNIC.com. Dan still works with Perl code on a daily basis.

In 2006, Dan was a founding organizer for the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop, which has run 8 out of the last 10 years. He is the only Pittsburgh Perl Monger to have taken an organizer role in every single PPW. Dan was also served as a lead organizer for YAPC::NA in 2009. In 2010, Dan became the Treasurer for The Perl Foundation and has assisted with the running of every YAPC::NA since then in that capacity.

Karen Pauley

Karen holds many roles in this year’s event: she worked with the tutorial instructors to get them here; she coordinated the schedule for the beginner track; and she will be serving as the chairperson for the SoC committee this year.

Karen is the current President of The Perl Foundation. She has been involved with the Perl community for over 15 years and has been working with The Perl Foundation since 2008. A founding member of Belfast.pm she now lives in Tokyo, Japan.

John “Genehack” Anderson

John is serving as the Speaker Coordinator for YAPC::NA::2016. He has worked tirelessly to make sure we all have a schedule packed with amazing talks.

John is the VP of Technology for Infinity Interactive, a virtual IT consultancy. When he's not maintaining Perl modules or tweaking his Emacs config, he likes to play around with new languages and write about himself in the third person.

Doran “Fozz” Barton

Doran is heading up this year’s video team. He has been tasked with the videography and A/V at YAPC::NA and has over 25 years experience with video editing, video streaming, and A/V production.

Doran is a senior developer at Bluehost where he writes code primarily in Perl and manages RPM packages of hundreds of CPAN modules. He has been using Perl since 1997.

Assistant Organizers

Brett Estrade

Brett will be running our Pull Request Challenge on Wednesday.

Brett has been a Perl developer at cPanel for the last 5 years, but has been shamelessly wielding Perl since he was called to it in the very late 90s. He is a member of Houston.pm, a founding member (now expat) of NewOrleans.pm, and an active participant of the CPAN PRC. This is his second YAPC and first year assisting with its organization.

Carl Blakemore

Carl can be seen working in various places during the breakout sessions, keeping our rooms running smoothly.

Carl has worked with Perl in some fashion since the late 90's, and has worked at Liquid Web as a Perl developer for the past three years. This is his second time attending YAPC and his first as an organizer.

Dave Rolsky

In addition to serving on our SoC committee, Dave has served this year as an adviser to the organizers on all things vegan.

Dave has been a Perl developer since 1999, and has created or contributed to dozens of CPAN modules. In addition to his work with YAPC, he also helped organize the Frozen Perl workshops in Minneapolis. He’s around on IRC as ‘autarch’. Lena asked if he was a little teapot, so he checked, and he is not.

He spends a lot of his free time on animal advocacy with Compassionate Action for Animals, working on a variety of programs including fundraising and planning Twin Cities Veg Fest.

David Hand

All-around helpful guy, David has been working on the organizer team all year, doing whatever needed to be done.

David has been programming Perl professionally since 1999. Formerly known as 'cogent', he adopted the handle 'Ptolemarch' after being led astray at St. John's College. He would like to remind you that heliocentrism is just a theory. David has recently resurrected Detroit.pm, and serves as its lead organizer. This is David’s first year serving as a YAPC organizer. He is a little teapot; perhaps Karen had the wrong Dave.

David Oswald

After pulling off an amazing YAPC::NA last year in Salt Lake City, David hung around this year to help us out with the newbie program as well as our SoC committee. You’ll also see David running a video camera here and there at this year’s event. This is his second year as a YAPC organizer.

David is a senior software engineer at Endurance International Group / Bluehost, and has been enjoying Perl since the late 1990's. He organizes Salt Lake Perl Mongers, and is active with the Utah OpenSource organization.

James Lance

A member of the Salt Lake City crew, James is also working on the video team this year.

James has been involved with Open Source for most of his career. He has helped organize YAPC::NA 2015, OpenWest Conference, and Northern Utah Perl Mongers. He also likes to have a yoyo with him at all times.

Jason “Jayce” Hall

Also hailing from Utah, Jason will be working to keep our beginner track running smoothly. Additionally he is helping out with our pre and post-conference tutorials, and will be working on the video team.

Jayce^ has been working with Perl since 1998. His specialty is payments and billing systems helping large enterprises keep money flowing optimally and safely. After helping launch and run the OpenWest conference in Utah, he felt that YAPC was the next great place to help in the community.

Lena Jordan

The head of our communications team, Lena has been working all year long to keep us up to date with what’s going on with the conference through 11 different newsletters plus several other communications. She will also be heading up our registration desk this year. This is her first year with YAPC.

Lena (aka Pebbles/IrishPebbles) is not a Perl programmer, but has spent time programming with C++, Java, and MySQL. She currently serves as an Assistant Organizer for Detroit.pm. Lena is a tea aficionado and teapot lover.

R Geoffrey Avery

The undisputed forever-master of lightning talks is R Geoffrey Avery and he currently serves as Keeper of the Lightning Talks gong.

R Geoffrey spent many years as a Perl Bioinformatics programmer in Philadelphia for a major pharma company helping scientists load, process, analyze and view their data. He now works as a programmer with sysadmin tendencies, managing the builds and Jenkins for a team that causes credit card swipes to do the right thing. YAPC::NA plus YAPC::EU this year will make 179 days of conference attended where Perl is the topic, or at least a major track.

Ruth Bavousett

Ruth will be serving on the SoC committee this year. She has also been a general adviser to the organizers on certain matters, and will be moderating the Q&A session with Larry Wall.

Ruth is a geek girl, programmer, writer, and transgender activist from Houston, TX. She has been in the IT industry for thirty years, in system administration and software development roles, concentrating on the needs of libraries. Ruth is also a published author on library technology, a columnist for opensource.com, and is working on her first novel. Ruth does woodturning in her home woodshop. She is the proud parent of two grown daughters and grandparent of the cutest baby boy you'll ever meet.

Sterling Hanenkamp

Sterling is helping us out this year as a room moderator and will also be working at the registration desk.

Sterling is a native Kansan and spends most of his time with his wife and kids and/or avoiding yard work. Otherwise, he writes Perl for ZipRecruiter, dabbles in Perl 6, and is learning to play the guitar.

Steve Nolte

Steve headed up our Girl Develop It initiative this year. He’ll also be seen helping out in various places throughout the conference.

Steve (mcsnolte) has been using, learning, and teaching Perl for about 15 years. He currently works for Assurant where they build SaaS web applications for the mortgage industry. About three years ago he resurrected the Milwaukee Perl Mongers and has been running it since. Very happily married for over 10 years with three kids and two dogs.

Timm Murray

Timm negotiated the awesome deal for us with the Linux Journal. We were able to advertise our event in their publication for free, and offer all of you a free 6-month subscription.

Timm has been a Perl developer for 16 years out of Madison, WI. He specializes in hardware-related CPAN modules. He also is known to sometimes point at random objects and declare "not a typewriter", but nobody laughs because they changed it to "inappropriate ioctl for device" years ago.

Todd Rinaldo

Our hard working webmaster, Todd has kept our web site up and running this year.

Todd works at cPanel as a Perl Developer and sometimes B::C / p5p hacker. He lives with his wife and son in Houston, TX. Todd is a CPAN maintainer and has been a YAPC organizer since 2013.