Our Team

Jonathon Whitener has over six years of experience in developing PHP/MySQL applications on Linux-based platforms, and has studied computer science for more than 12 years. He has been working with Drupal since the 5.1 release and has worked on over a hundred Drupal sites, four of which were for Fortune 500 companies.

Jonathon is passionate about efficient and scalable code. His sites handle millions of page views per day. He is a master of key performance-boosting technologies, including reverse proxy caches, memcache, and APC. Additionally, he offers expertise in integrating Drupal with third-party applications via RESTful APIs and Web services implementations. On the front end, he rounds out his skills with a keen interest in great design and UX, and all of the fun that can be had with Ajax.

When Jonathon is not Drupaling, he spends his time with his wife and puppy in Austin, Texas. You can often find him playing some sort of FPS on X-Box Live, but you won't be able to kill him.

• Proficient in Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, DOS, AJAX (jQuery, YUI), HTML/XML,CSS, and Javascript technologies
• Drupal experience since since 2007
• Lots of expertise in custom Drupal module development
• Experience with Pressflow/Varnish caching, as well as Memcache and APC.
• Successfully developed and deployed four sites for Fortune 500 companies based on the Drupal platform
• Grounded in software development life cycle, development and documentation
• Experience in third-party authentication integration (LDAP, CAS)
• Experience with REST/XMLRPC integration into the Drupal platform
• Familiarity with Google Maps API with Memcache on an enterprise scale site
• Likes working on customizations for Ubercart/Drupal Commerce and has a good understanding of E-Commerce in general

Hally Turner comes from a client services background, having worked with numerous startups running online communications programs, including working .NET and Drupal dev shops, as well as a long-term stint with Apple Inc. Hally is passionate about open source technologies, agile development, Wordpress and especially Drupal. She has a bachelor’s degree in media from Macquarie University and a master’s degree in communications from UTS in Sydney, Australia.

At Drupal Connect, Hally is responsible for ensuring our company is thriving, managing marketing efforts, client relations, and new business.

Mike Crittenden has five years of experience in many aspects of Web development and has been working with Drupal since 2008. He loves building clean, maintainable, usable sites on top of Drupal. He has worked for a variety of clients ranging from mom-and-pop stores to Fortune 500 companies.

Mike prides himself on being well-rounded, as he has been involved in almost all aspects of Drupal and the Drupal community, including back-end development, front-end coding, theming, core development, and contributed projects. He has several popular modules and themes available on Drupal.org, and has had few patches accepted into Drupal core. He also enjoys doing Drupal core patch reviews and participating in core discussion.

Mike holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Furman University. He enjoys spending time with his wife Nancy and their son Charlie at their home in Greenville, S.C.

Lisa Lorhum comes to Drupal Connect from the International Tennis Hall of Fame, where she was director of membership sales and member relations. As a sales executive at Drupal Connect, Lisa is responsible for forging new business opportunities, marketing, creating new clients and maintaining current ones. Lisa lives in Newport, R.I. with her two children and loves playing tennis, making art, and dressing up for Halloween.

Chris Akeley has been a project manager, architect, and developer for fifteen years. He has extensive experience in higher education, having worked recently with Babson College, Bentley University, and the Roger Williams School of Law.  He also served as senior developer and architect for weei.com, a major Boston media site.  In addition to his technical skills, he is adept with Agile project management and has domain expertise in higher education, association and event management, trade show technologies, and e-commerce.

When he gets away from the computer, he enjoys spending time with his wife and two children, his dogs, and his many fretted instruments.

Nina comes to Drupal Connect with a solid background in Graphic Design. Originally from Northern California, she has always embraced a fond love of travel. She obtained her BA in Visual Communication at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. After her 5-year stint down under, she returned to North America to conquer the design world in San Francisco and later in Montreal. Now in NYC, Nina brings her creative flair to her work as Project Manager at Drupal Connect.

Bill Minor has been working in Drupal for over three years and specializes in theming and module development. He also has more than ten years of experience in programming skills and systems administration. He is an advanced PHP programmer and is proficient in many of the different programming languages utilized by the Web. Coming from a graphic and musical background, Bill has the unique ability to conceptualize and theme new projects quickly. His expertise in programming, graphics and multimedia gives him a well-rounded approach to site design and the overall user experience.

Languages: PHP, SQL, PERL, JavaScript, jQuery, XML, C/C++, JAVA

Databases: mySQL, DB2

Drupal: Versions 4/5/6/7.x, Advanced CSS, Custom Module Development, API Hooks & Functions, Apache Solr Search Integration, CCK/Views, Custom Theme Development, 3rd Party Integration, jQuery, Multimedia Integration, Server Administration

Audio Production: Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic Pro, Audio conversion expert

Server Administration: LAMP, CRON, Shell Scripting, WHM/CPANEL administration, DNS, LDAP, Mail Servers

Heshan is passionate about web and is highly proficient as a developer and writer. His strengths and dexterity allows him to develop applications that are user-friendly and highly secure. Heshan initially started working as a contributor to Drupal by providing an enhancements through the modules and theme developments.

With over four years of experience in the field Heshan has handled over a many projects ensuring a 100% success rate for client satisfaction, something that most drupal developers would be envious of. Heshan worked as a Developer/Consultant on several projects involving in web development, testing and documentation. Demonstrating his expertise in the field of Drupal Heshan contributed Video, VideoJS and number of other module to the Drupal community. Heshan is a highly talented and versatile achiever with a flair for software technologies and a mind that would mystify anyone.

• Proficient in LAMP stack, Drupal, jQuery and many more technologies.
• Has been building Drupal sites since 2007.
• Lots of expertise in custom Drupal module development
• Experience with Pressflow / Varnish caching as well as Memcache and APC.
• Grounded in software development life cycle, development and documentation.
• Author and leading contributor to the Drupal Media developments.

Sean Hanover began his IT career working for the Department of the Army in Stuttgart, Germany, where he developed an accounting and tracking system utilizing Visual Basic and the on-site, secure LAN. In 2007, he began using Drupal as the programming environment of choice. Sean has certifications in network administration, Visual Basic, PHP, and MySQL, and is the owner of HHC Inc., a Virginia-based corporation specializing in multimedia and website development projects.

In addition to three years of extensive Drupal back-end development experience, Sean is also competent in front-end theming and JQUERY work. His recent projects include Drupal SME and lead developer on SBA.gov, USAID Drupal site design and project management, ACEEE public non-profit Drupal site modernization and development engagement, City of Arlington Drupal redesign and development project, InterAction CiviCRM and Drupal redesign and development, 1800LawFirm SOAP/SugarCRM Drupal development project, Ketchum, Convergenz, Kratos Defense, and a host of additional network, project management, and Drupal development projects.

Sean resides in Fairfax, V.A. with his daughter, Margaret, his very large and fluffy dog, Bella, and their cat, Tyson.

Steven Jackson has been involved in the open source community and Linux systems since 2001, and has been working with Drupal since version 5. His contributions to Drupal include hosting and presenting monthly Drupal User Group meetings and travelling around the southeastern United States to present a multitude of topics at various Drupal and Linux conferences. He has also co-authored two contributed modules on Drupal.org. His Drupal specialties are in module development and configuration and deploying the LAMP stacks upon which the sites reside.

Steven's background is in traditional computer science, with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Augusta State University and a master’s degree in applied computer science from Kennesaw State University. His strong foundation in computer science has allowed him to work on a vast array of projects ranging from online publishing to emergency management software in languages from ASP.Net to Zend PHP. Proper code management, including use of design patterns, utilizing objects, and version controlling, is Steven’s raison d'être. He is a stickler for detail while maintaining view of the big picture.

When not working in Drupal, Steven enjoys studying bioinformatics and biostatistics, and playing hockey with his kid.

Chad Hester is a developer and technical consultant with a background in computer science and IT management. He started his professional career programming desktop and database applications using Microsoft-based platforms. After seeing the explosion of the Web market, he quickly moved on to Web development despite the "dot-com bubble burst" in 2000. After several years of honing his skills, he made the switch to open source software development, focusing all his efforts on leveraging community-driven technologies.

With a dash of personnel management, IT hardware/software troubleshooting, and security/networking skills, Chad has become a well-rounded, well-educated computer geek.

Chad’s other interests include kickboxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, eating great food, dog walking/biking, swimming, hiking, discovering new things, and relaxing on a nice beach.

Christopher Spiker became hooked on Drupal as a CMS when it was recommended to him by a friend for a site his publishing business required. He dropped his business and now does Drupal development full-time (when not exchanging bear roars with his toddler). Chris has worked on third-party integration, custom modules, and e-commerce, and has print and online design experience. And he's happy to use his editing experience to advise on content (hint: less is usually more). His Drupal skills include PHP, custom module development, and site design and configuration, and he empathizes with non-technical users.

Felipe Fidelix is proficient in PHP, having developed many Drupal modules. Before entering the Drupal world, he created projects within the CakePHP, Kohana and Symfony frameworks. Following standards, best practices and test/quality-driven development methodologies comes naturally to him. Felipe now manages his own dedicated server, where he runs the virtualized development stage of all his projects as well as several live projects.

• Very experienced with Unix server-related technologies:
• DBMS and NoSQL (MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis);
• Uptime and Infrastructure Monitoring;
• Network-related technologies, like DNS, TCP Tunneling, VPNs, KVM and more;
• Web servers like Apache, Nginx, Cherokee, Lighttpd, and a little bit of IIS on Windows;
• Backup automation and mirroring;
• Virtualization with Xen, VMWare, Virtualbox and Virtuozzo;
• Has deep knowledge of several caching and performance solutions, such as Varnish, Nginx, PHP-FPM, Redis, MongoDB, MariaDB, APC, Memcache, performance benching softwares, not to mention the coding-layer optimizations and best practices;
• Experience with XHTML / HTML 5 / CSS / JS / jQuery;
• Speaks three languages proficiently (Portuguese, English and Spanish);
• Experienced with several Drupal Caching techniques and back-ends like Varnish, Nginx, PHP-FPM/CGI, etc.;
• Worked for two years as a Web designer, and is very good with Photoshop, Fireworks and related tools.

Hanns Porr is a Drupal expert who has worked with the Walt Disney Studios on several movies, including some that won Academy Awards, and has consulted with global companies as far away as China. Hanns also authored several books, and once took a year off in which he traveled from Alaska to Peru to Europe. Hanns holds a master's degree and worked on a Ph.D. He is bilingual in English and German.

When Jonas Flint isn’t cooking up great user experiences in Photoshop or another wireframe tool, he can be found immersed in code or trying to uncover new mysteries of Drupal's unrealized potential as a themer and developer.

In his eight years of Web experience, Jonas has taken on many roles, including designer, developer and project manager. As an artist turned coder, he can also be found designing, icon-making and doodling on paper napkins at restaurants. With his many client interactions, he has been able to bring projects from conceptualization to realization and is always eager to learn more. Jonas takes pride in being a stickler for details, great design, semantic, clean code and putting soul into everything he works on.

Jonas lives in Simpsonville, S.C. with his lovely wife and his two awesome children, and their dog, Diva. He enjoys pvp gaming, is a music fanatic, and co-hosts a weekly podcast that talks about Web design, development and everything else Internet-related.
Strongly proficient in:

• Xhtml/HTML5,
• CSS 2/3,
• Javascript & jQuery
• Cross Browser Design & Development
• Wireframing, Conceptualization & Interface Design
• SEO
• A sprinkle of PHP / MySQL (on the LAMP stack)
• ActionScript

Software:

• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Sublime Text / Notepad++
• Flash

Kathy Chavez has been doing Web design and development for sixteen years, starting with straight HTML sites made with Dreamweaver, and then moving on to Mambo and WordPress. Her first experience with Drupal was as a PM interfacing with clients doing wireframing/architecture and putting vision and goals to paper. She then moved on to development and theming, and can take a site from concept to PSD to buildout to launch. One of her specialties is reverse engineering, and she is currently ramping up her custom module building chops.

Kathy is very active in the Drupal Community, and is currently working on DrupalCon Denver, helping to organize the pre-conference trainings. She is also involved with the Denver/Bolder DrupalChix meetup group as a co-organizer and presenter. In addition, Kathy has started her own online study group, Drupalista Study Group, which works together to learn more about custom module building and Drupal stuff in general.

The one thing Kathy loves better than anything is being a mom to her two wonderful daughters. When she's not being a track mom, playing with Drupal, or trying to keep up on her skills you'll find her listening to books, playing RockBand or in the battlefields on WoW.

René has been building Drupal websites for over five years, and often plays a key role in helping clients achieve the right functionality and aesthetic. René’s skills include building and theming websites and implementing the graphic designer’s template. In many ways, his work is a hybrid of IT and graphic design. René has fifteen years of experience in design and desktop publishing, and is particularly adept in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. He also has extensive teaching experience in the field of design and CMS Web development.

René is passionate about color correction and photography. In his view, color correction is the science of recapturing the full beauty of what was actually seen with the human eye in the photographic moment.

In addition to his technical expertise, René brings positive energy and enthusiasm to his work environment. René loves what he does, so he feels like he never works a day in his life!

Trent Wyman is a detail-oriented, highly versatile, and self motivated web developer, with skills in graphic design, Drupal development, and Drupal theming.  Experienced in all phases of the project life cycle, including requirements gathering, labor estimations, project management, and project development, he is able to see the bigger picture when undertaking even the smallest of tasks. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Interactive Media Design from The Art Institute of Atlanta, Trent is also a passionate visual designer, well versed in visual communications and UI design. It is Trent’s philosophy that “traditional and innovative design should be harmonious in order to create eye-catching designs that are both cutting-edge and user-friendly – usability should not be sacrificed for the sake of ‘eye-candy’”.

• Detail-oriented professional, skilled in graphic design, project management, and web development
• 9+ years experience in creating graphics and content for print and web production
• 7+ years experience creating web sites and online media for medium-sized businesses and corporations
• 5 years as a full-time Drupal developer and theming specialist, creating, maintaining, and supporting many custom Drupal sites for large-scale and enterprise level businesses
• Key strengths include: client interaction, front-end design, CSS, Drupal development and Drupal theming

When it comes to Drupal development, Trent considers himself an “Everyday Drupalist”. One who is not an uber-code wiz, but rather a practical problem solver who leans more towards simplicity and community leverage versus over-thinking, over-developing, and re-inventing the wheel. Trent also gives back to the Drupal Community through Drupalcamp lectures, sessions, and sponsorship participation. In his spare time, he enjoys life with his lovely wife and daughter and manages to squeeze in a little time to work the restoration of his 1955 Cadillac Coupe DeVille.

Yao Gbanaglo has over 5 years of experience developing unique and engaging websites using Drupal. Yao started out as a developer by creating sites from the bottom up, combining functional and beautiful websites with marketing strategies that covered search engine optimization, rich media engagement, and social media.  Yao's experiences have fostered a passion for open source technology and entrepreneurship that eventually led him to the Drupal community. Mixing a diverse background both the arts and the sciences, Yao brings a comprehensive skillset to provide clients with the things they need to bring their web ideas to fruition.

Yao enjoys an active lifestyle of travelling around the world and finding new ways to use technology to solve everyday problems.  Yao also enjoys dancing, writing, and is an avid cyclist.

Bri is a New Hampshire native, but currently lives in Newport and attends Salve Regina University. She studies Social work, and Biology. In her free time she enjoy yoga, running, traveling, shopping and volunteering in third world countries.