Brad Baker - Joomla Core Team

It all started in October 2003, when Brad stumbled upon Mambo in his quest for an easy to use CMS. By 2004 he was on the Core Team looking after forum administration. Since moving to Joomla, and seeing the community and team expand even further, his responsibilities have broadened to encompass looking after all the Joomla! websites and infrastructure.

Brad has years of experience in the web hosting industry. As well as running his own local Webhosting and design business he also works for Rochen and has done so for a number of yrs. He had been associated with Mambo 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, after years of wearing out keyboards; his handwriting is illegible and spelling deplorable without the use of a spell checker.

Norm Douglas - Nerds on Site

Norm has worked in IT professional for almost 10 years but has been a NERD his entire life.

Having come from a Retail management background, he was thrust into the world of computers during the early 90's. Norm wanted to know more about computers and spent many nights learning new technologies including some strange thing called HTML.

Norm is now the POD leader for Australia of Nerds On Site, and international group of IT professionals. Norm discovered Joomla whilst looking for an easy way clients could update their own websites, and now using Joomla as his primary development platform.

"Joomla is far more than a CMS, Joomla is the way websites SHOULD all be constructed. Modular, repeatable and professional" Joomla allows you to build sites that you will be proud of and your clients will thank you for. And remember… Content is KING!"

Leslie Hawthorn - Google

Leslie Hawthorn held various roles at Google before joining the Open Source Programs Office in March 2006. She manages the Google Summer of Code program, the Google Highly Open Participation contest and the Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series. She has organized and facilitated many open-source community conferences, meetups and hackathons at Google's campuses. Proud to be known as Google's geek herder, Leslie holds a B.A. in English Language and Literature from U.C. Berkeley.

Damian Hickey - ZacWare - Freeway project

Damian Hickey is a founder of the Freeway project and ZacWare CEO. Prior to starting Freeway with Durai Prasanna in 2003, Damian worked at WorkCover Queensland as a UNIX systems administrator. He has only worked in IT since 1999. Prior to then, worked in a wide range of jobs from running a hat decorating business to exploration gold drilling. Damian is the main business analyst for the Freeway project as well as managing the overall project and its transition from a company initiative to a community based project sponsored by ZacWare.

ZacWare is the creator of Freeway, the Open Source eCommerce platform and SMACKB!Z the world's first online video library software. Freeway extends open source eCommerce by allowing store owners to sell a wide range of services including appointments and bookings, event ticketing and a vast range of subscription types. SMACKB!Z applies the UGC model to video but allows companies to maintain full control over the video upload, storage, display and playing of video as well as collect detailed metadata associated with videos at the point of upload. The goal of ZacWare is to create disruptive web based technology to invigorate business. ZacWare was founded in 2003 by Durai Prasanna and Damian Hickey and headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, employing 16 staff.

Sam Moffatt - Joomla Core Team

At some point in late 2003 Sam was asked if he wanted to join the Mambo Core Team by Andrew Eddie. The team needed developers but Sam didn't have the time as a trainee and high school student, not to mention no skills. For the next year and a half Sam toyed with Mambo before Summer of Code and Joomla! came along. The rest, as they say, is history.

Sam has years of being young, he hopes that one day he'll be writing a bio and have something more to mention than just being a Uni student and the youngest member of Joomla!, you've got to have something to look forward too. Lately with Joomla! he's been working on 1.5 with authentication, migration and building cool installer doodats such as the package installer (multi-installer) and library installer. He also wonders if the bio writing skill gets better over time, must be an experience thing.

Dinah Randall - dinahrandall.com

Dinah is a geek in the 'deeply curious about technology, design, human interaction' kind of way. Aficionado of a fistful of open source technologies for the web, she is the founder of the Sydney Joomla! User Group and Sydney Joomla!Day, now in its second year.

In her work guise, Dinah used to run a team of software developers working in UK, USA and Australia, before she chose freedom and now runs her own Joomla! consultancy. She's usually up to her elbows in the tech aspects of gluing a Joomla! site together, along with graphic design, content polishing, templating, SEO and business consulting.

In rare downtime, you will mostly find her at the beach playing beach volleyball.

Russell Winter - Sedona Group

Russell Winter, has nearly 25 years of innovative and entrepreneurial experience in IT services. Before founding Sedona Group, Russ was Director of Corporate Development and Strategies at Infinity I/O Australia where he executed a combination of operational and marketing strategies that resulted in the recognition of SNIA SAN certification within the region. In 2002, he launched a new breed of storage consultancy called StorageCorp which was focused on emerging technologies and storage infrastructure simulation applications. He served as Principal and Marketing Director until moving on to developing the Infinity I/O brand in Asia Pacific in 2003. Prior to these activities Russ operated as an independent storage consultant for many years within the Asia Pacific, American and United Kingdom market places. Historically, Russ has held a number of technical and advisory roles at industry leading vendors, such as EMC, IBM and StorageTek.

Virtual presenters

Andrew Eddie 

Andrew is an accomplished PHP web developer having been involved in many project since 2002. His most significant achievements in the Open Source arena are his involvement in:

• Mambo (2003/2005). Andrew was lead developer and project lead at various times. Much of the source code in Mambo even today can have it's roots traced back to Andrew's contributions.
• Joomla! (since 2005) - following it's split from Mambo in 2005, Joomla! has become one of the most popular and successful Content Management System on the internet. Andrew has served as project lead and currently holds a lead developer position in the development working group.

Andrew also holds a Bachelor's Degree in Civil Engineer and a Graduate Diploma in Timber Engineering.

Based in southeast Queensland, Australia, Andrew is the Editor in Chief of The Art of Joomla!, a free, monthly magazine about Joomla! 1.5 for users, web masters, designers and developers alike. Andrew also runs his own web development consultancy, New Life in IT Pty Ltd, which is completely based on supporting commercial Joomla! services. He has also developed a number of free and commercial extensions for Joomla!