Contacts

About the Committee Members

Ben BalboBen Balbo was born in Germany, grew up in the UK, lives in Melbourne and likes Guinness.

While he isn't drinking Guinness (which is most of the time in Melbourne, as it just doesn't taste the same), he earns a living as a PHP developer and trainer, security consultant and Open Source developer. He also drinks a fair amount of coffee.

He has been known to talk in public about web development related topics, which comes as part of the package of being on the committee of both the Melbourne PHP User Group and Open Source Developers' Club. Although he wouldn't admit this, his participation at this level is secretly only in order to go to restaurants or pubs after the meetings.

When he doesn't work, Ben enjoys riding his motorbike and spending weekends in the bush. The latter is made even more enjoyable through the liberal lighting of camp fires, and the prerequisite chopping of wood with his shiny new chainsaw.

Fellow coffee drinking, beer swilling, chainsaw wielding security consultants should register their interest in Ben's latest multi-level marketing programme by posting highly articulate and thought provoking comments at benbalbo.com.

 

Richard JonesRichard Jones is Common Ground's Senior Software Developer with 8 years' broad experience working with multiple languages and tools in data archive, metadata systems, business systems, e-commerce and communications. Before joining Common Ground, Richard developed Web-based interfaces and support systems for eKit.com, a telecommunications service provider for travellers, and Bizar Software, developing online store software.

Richard was an early adopter of the World Wide Web, implementing the Bureau of Meteorology's website in the early 1990s. He is also very active in Open Source communities, developing several software systems that are widely used, and contributing to the core Python and Zope technologies that Common Ground uses.

Richard's other home on the Internet is www.mechanicalcat.net/richard.

 

Amanda PenroseAmanda Penrose was on the OSDC committee in 2004, a helper in 2005, and is on the committee again as Secretary and Publications Officer for 2006. In 2005 she presented two papers on Cascading Style Sheets and accessibility, and a lightning talk against 'language bashing'. These can be seen at amanda.dd.com.au/advice/presentations.

Amanda has over ten years experience in the multimedia industry; including web design, publishing and content creation. She has worked on hundreds of websites, both personally and professionally. Her day job is Web Officer for RMIT Union, whose site (initiated, designed and maintained by Amanda) won the ACUMA award for Best Web Site in 2005.

Amanda spends far too much time on the computer and belongs to numerous online communities and projects. She is also a fantasy artist with two children's books published and a third on the way. Amanda's art (and more) can be seen at amanda.dd.com.au.

 

Scott PenroseScott Penrose has been a full time developer for 15 years and has been developing in Linux for 12 years. He works full time for Editure, who produce excellent education access software for the Internet.

Over time, Scott has produced many Open Source applications and libraries: from load limiters written in C for Apache; to parallel port controllers in Perl; to soaring navigation software in C++ for the pocket PC. His passions are abstraction, writing APIs for things in Perl and more recently, internationalisation.

Scott is currently working his largest Open Source adventure - zaltana.org - which will change the way that web applications are integrated. He is deeply involved in the Open Source community and is president of Melbourne Perl Mongers and the Open Source Developers' Conference.

When he is not at home or work, Scott lurks around - or rather above - Benalla in his glider.

 

Deborah Pickett is an academic refugee who is now in servitude to Moldflow writing documentation with US spelling.  Having thus sold her soul, she figures there's no more harm in converting the documentation team to XML, XSLT and other things starting with X. A bit of Perl hasn't gone astray either. Please don't tell her boss that she knows JavaScript.

While at home, Debbie makes phenomenal messes in the kitchen creating things totally unlike the picture in the recipe book.  Debbie lives in perpetual fear of having to go without bagels.

 

Jacinta RichardsonJacinta Richardson, B Software Eng (Hons), B Sci, has more than eight years of commercial Perl and teaching experience. She is a qualified software engineer and the chief technical writer and course coordinator for Perl Training Australia.

Jacinta is a prominent figure on perlmonks where she holds the title of Saint. She actively supports many local Australian Open Source user groups such as Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane Perl Mongers, Melbourne and Sydney LinuxChix and various Linux and BSD user groups. In her free time she likes to work in her garden, scuba dive and cook.