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The Team

The Team

Andre Charland, CEO

Andre Charland is the co-founder and CEO at Nitobi Inc. He's been at the forefront of Web 2.0 software development for almost a decade and is an expert on the next generation web. Andre is an advocate for usability and user experience and speaks regularly about how to keep users engaged and active on websites or web-based application.

You can read Andre's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/andre.

Dave Johnson, Chief Technical Officer

Dave is a co-founder of Nitobi. He holds a BASc in Electrical Engineering (UBC) and a PhD in Solid State Physics from London's Imperial College which both have pretty much nothing to do with mobile phones or software development. Dave spends most of his time working on and talking about the PhoneGap project.

You can read Dave's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/dave.

James Douma, Senior Developer

James is an experienced software and Internet application developer with strengths in application and database design. While James is fluent in many technologies, his current focuses are JavaScript, C#, XML, SQL, JAVA and C++.

James began his career in software development with a computer science and applied mathematics degree from York University, and subsequently worked as a software developer and systems analyst for the likes of Royal Bank, Sun Microsystems and Sierra Systems.

James has been the lead developer and system architect in most of Nitobi's internal and client software development projects. His work is pushing the envelope for web-based software applications. He particularly focuses on client side processing and data caching to enhance interoperability, reliability and efficiency of web-based applications.

You can read James's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/james.

Brian LeRoux, SPACELORD!!!1!

A leader in user experience and all things AJAX, Brian is Nitobi's Software Architect. Experienced in developing web applications from concept to creation, Brian believes simplicity is the hallmark of exceptional software. When he is not striving to create bulletproof code, Brian is a founding member of the Vancouver AJAX and Beer Meetup and a regular participant in software events.

You can read Brian's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/brian.

Joe Bowser, Senior Software Developer

Joe currently works on various client projects at Nitobi, which mostly involve working with Ruby and various Ruby frameworks. In addition to that, he is the creator and maintainer of the Android implementation of PhoneGap, which has been used in products featured in Popular Science, and as part of the Sony Web SDK. He spends his spare time going to various security conferences, and helping run the Vancouver Hacker Space, which he co-founded, as well as contributing to other Open Source projects.

You can read Joe's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/joe.

Andrew Lunny, Trequartista

Andrew is responsible for creating documentation for Nitobi's full suite of products and facilitating a seamless relationship between its customers and developers. He holds a Bachelors degree in Honours English and another one in Computer Science. He can't believe he ate the whole thing.

You can read Andrew's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/andrew.

Ryan Betts, Interaction Designer

Ryan Betts (@hitsmachines) is an interaction designer, drummer, and regular contributor to UXMag.com. He holds a BSc in Interaction Design from Simon Fraser University; he also holds up, holds on, and holds the phone. He is quite thrilled about the future mobile devices in relation to networked cities, the "internet of things" and urban computing. He once met someone who claimed to be - but was likely not at all - Gary Wright, singer of the hit single "Dreamweaver."

Yohei Shimomae, Interaction Developer

Yohei is Nitobi's jack of all trades, primary focusing on UX design, graphic work, as well as web development. Yohei's formidable design skills earned him a Best Canadian Student Website award in FITC09 and a nomination for Best Student Art Direction in Game Production at ELANS 2008. During his free time, Yohei composes electronic music and designs cool stuff. His personal website is yoheishimomae.com.

You can read Yohei's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/yohei.

Jesse MacFadyen, Senior Developer

Jesse MacFadyen is a senior software engineer at Nitobi, specializing in presentation layer programming for Rich Internet applications. Jesse has developed large scale applications in Silverlight, Flash, Flex, Air, .net, and JavaScript.

As an active and contributing member of the PhoneGap open-source project, Jesse is passionate about bringing device level functionality across multiple mobile devices through simple web-tech APIs.

Jesse enjoys sharing his in depth knowledge by leading PhoneGap and Flash/Flex training sessions as well as speaking at developer conferences and meetups. He has also developed YuTuplr, a simple, easy to use Air application for uploading videos to YouTube. You can download it at yutuplr.com

Jesse is also a kick ass guitar player and spends his free time playing blistering solos over hard rock grooves. Check out http://myspace.com/risingj/ for a small sampling of his work.

You can read Jesse's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/jesse.

Shazron Abdullah, Senior Software Developer

A 13 year tech veteran of several startups, Shazron has spent the last five years developing Mac desktop apps for pretty well-known companies and is now venturing into the mobile space, focusing on the iPhone and iPad. He has extensive experience with web technologies especially with the Microsoft ASP.NET platform, and has dabbled with Java on the server side. He believes that Mac and PC should and can co-exist in peace. In his spare time, he trains cats to program in C.

You can read Shazron's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/shazron

Ryan Willoughby, Software Developer

After a one-year hiatus traveling around the world, Ryan recently returned to Nitobi, and has since been splitting his time on mobile & web client projects, PhoneGap Palm & PhoneGap Symbian. When not developing rad apps, he enjoys drinking caesars, traveling, playing ice hockey, shredding, and just being as gnarly as possible in general. He holds a B. Sc. in Physics from the University of Victoria.

You can read Ryan's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/ryan

Fil Maj, Master Exploder

Fil works on .NET-based and PhoneGap-based projects at Nitobi, and wrote the original PhoneGap BlackBerry implementation. Fil is a fan of the Android platform and likes to hack on Android PhoneGap projects for fun. He has a B.Sc. in Computing Science, with a strong interest in artificial intelligence, neural networks and human cognition. In his spare time Fil enjoys being outdoors, playing sports and games, playing his drums, watching hockey and eating food.

You can read Fil's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/fil.

Herm Wong, Jedi Master

Herm used to work for at Nitobi but left to go work with fairies & stuff; decided he didn't like that, so he's returned to Nitobi.

Tim Kim, Software Developer

After spending a year of providing support at Nitobi, Tim has switched roles to primarily working on client projects. This new opportunity has allowed him to develop his web-fu from writing JavaScript components to configuring a server's back end. He has recently got his Bachelor of Science in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University. When he is not working on client projects or worrying about his degree, he enjoys designing games, drawing, or reading reddit.

You can read Tim's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/tim

Brett Rudd, Software Developer

Brett is a new addition to the Nitobi team. As an 8 year veteran of the startup wars, his grizzled visage has many scars, each with a hard lesson learned. While his career has focused on .NET enterprise software he brings his experience to the mobile realm, helping clients fulfil their goals in addition to outlining strategies that make our software robust, secure and flexible. He has no hobbies.

You can read Brett's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/brett

Anis Kadri, Software Developer

Anis works on Ruby on Rails as well as Android based-projects. He holds a MA Degree in Computer Science from Infosup Paris (France) and a BA degree from Université de Marne la Vallée (France). Anis worked for a payment services provider where he built and maintained payment systems in Ruby/Rails. He also spent some time building projects for various high-profile clients in France. Anis enjoys using the Python programming language in his spare time. When he is not in front of a computer, Anis likes to read, snowboard, watch movies, cycle, play video games and drink coffee/tea from all over the world.

You can read Anis's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/anis

Michael Brooks, Software Barista

Orphaned as a child, Michael Brooks was raised by his elderly Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Academically gifted, Michael displayed an uncanny affinity for Computer Science with speciality in signal processing and computer vision. While attending a public programmer meetup at the age of 26, Michael was bitten on the hand by a radioactive Nitobi employee, empowering him with the company's proportional open source belief, community, and ability to ship products. Now disguised as mwbrooks, Michael slings between vi, GitHub, Twitter, and IRC to protect the innocent, confront evil, and make PhoneGap a safer platform for the future of application development.*

* His life story has recently been optioned by Marvel comics.

You can read Mike's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/mike

Steve Gill, PhoneGap Community Champ

Steve has been at Nitobi for about a year and a half. He is currently in charge of support, maintaining the company website, blogging on PhoneGap.com and being available to help on any project he is needed for. He is currently completing his degree in computing science at SFU. He is considered the 'muscle' at Nitobi and has a black belt in taekwondo. He enjoys playing sports, watching hockey, drinking beer and hurting people.

You can read Steve's blog at http://blogs.nitobi.com/steve

Rhonda Friesen, Office Manager

Rhonda has made sure that day-to-day business at Nitobi runs smoothly. She's responsible for office management and accounting. She absolutely loves animals and owns a dog and cat at home.

About Nitobi