Jim Weirich Chief Scientist

Jim Weirich first learned about computers when his college adviser suggested he take a computer science course: "It will be useful, and you might enjoy it." With those prophetic words, Jim has been developing now for over 25 years, working with everything from crunching rocket launch data on supercomputers to wiring up servos and LEDs on micro-controllers. Currently he loves working in Ruby and Rails as the Chief Scientist at EdgeCase, but you can also find him strumming on his ukulele as time permits.

Scott Barron Volcanoer

Scott was set to swear off computers forever and become a plumber when he found salvation in the warm embrace of Ruby. Soon thereafter, Scott became a member of the Ruby on Rails core team and had the privilege of contributing to many of the innovations that have made the framework what it is today. In addition to his obvious passion for Ruby and Rails, Scott has more recently developed an interest in creating mobile phone apps. Scott has been crafting code for over ten years, and since he joined EdgeCase he has helped successfully deliver solutions for clients such as SCRIP-SAFE International and AT&T Interactive.

Scott attended Ohio University where he studied Computer Science and Linguistics. He is also a U.S. Army veteran where he served as a test equipment engineer. Scott also has a very cool 6-year-old son, fancies himself a coffee connoisseur, aspires to soon run his first marathon, and loves to cook, brew beer, and play the drums (but he's starting to suspect that he's more fond of his drum playing than others are).

Paul Wilson Artisan

Paul is an Agile/Extreme Programming coach and coder who has worked with many teams to improve their process and 'Agility'. He has been practicing Test-Driven Development since 2000, and other Agile practices since 2002. He is an active member of the local Ruby and Agile communities, and co-organiser of the Scotland on Rails conference.

Paul currently codes mostly in Ruby, and Objective-C, and Java but is open minded about other languages. He has spoken on topics such as organizing a regional conference.

Joe O'Brien Artisan

Joe is a father, business owner, speaker and developer. In 2006 he co-founded EdgeCase, a leading Ruby and Ruby on Rails training and consulting company. They have had a tremendous amount of success helping companies as large as Ingersoll Rand, GAP and AT&T Interactive as well as those startups still in the inception stage. Through a partnership he has been giving training for well over three years on testing and development with Ruby on Rails. He is a speaker and has spoken at conferences ranging from RailsConf to numerous regional conferences and countless user groups.

Ken Barker Artisan

Ken is a Technical Project manager / Development Generalist who has successfully delivered software solutions in the Healthcare, State Government, Online Retail, and Tourism industries. He has over 10 years of IT experience, excelling in roles where he can build strong customer relationships by understanding their business needs and by translating those needs into technical solutions. His core skills include: communication, relationship building, leadership, technical and relational problem solving, release management, and automation.

Prior to partnering in the formation of EdgeCase, Ken helped found the Columbus Ruby Brigade a burgeoning group of professionals who are passionate about the Ruby programming language. He began using Ruby over three years ago on the job in a wide range of applications. In addition to being passionate about Ruby, Ken is an agile software development process evangelist.

Jerry Nümmi Designer, Developer, Photographer, Mixologist, Barista, Other Duties as Assigned

Jerry can be found spending most of his time in Photoshop or coding the front-end of your web applications. He also has extensive experience with photography, iOS apps, and squashing Internet Explorer bugs. Jerry is definitely a designer first, but he's also a talented programmer and enjoys getting his hands dirty in code when needed.

Adam McCrea Logician

As the logician at EdgeCase, Adam is responsible for ensuring that logic trumps nonsense at all times. He comes to EdgeCase after fighting The Machine of corporate IT for many years, so he is no stranger to nonsense.

Adam's passions include creating intuitive user interfaces, mastering the Ruby Way, and showing the world that JavaScript can be powerful and elegant. He is also a husband, father, and all-around swell guy.

Monica McJunkin Client Advocate

Monica's on and off love affair with computers began with a high school course in BASIC. After graduating from The Ohio State University, she found herself writing assembly language code for IBM. She left to pursue an MLS from Kent State, and has been a librarian, software trainer, Java developer, and PTA president.

Monica finally found her niche as a business analyst and project manager, and enjoys playing the middle role between the technical and business sides of things. She especially enjoys analyzing business requirements so that we build the right products for our clients. She's also thrilled to be part of a team that understands and embraces agile processes, and hopes to never again write 60-page formal requirements documents.

Marc Peabody Brew Master

Marc comes from a deeply rooted background in Java but began his fascination with other JVM languages after discovering the power and elegance of Ruby not possible in his beloved Java language. He has been exploring new language paradigms ever since.

Marc now sets out to bring the power of the Ruby language to Java enterprises everywhere with the help of his trusty sidekick: JRuby, the Ruby implementation on the Java platform. Together, he and JRuby shall achieve unparalleled prosperity and business value for all who are willing to taste the glory of its sweet IT nectar.

He and his wife also bake cookies. Those are pretty tasty, too.

Leon Gersing The Buddha

Leon has been bringing value to clients large and small for over ten years, and has a passion for technology, art and community. He has experience using technologies ranging from ASP.Net and C++, to Objective-C, Ajax, and Actionscript – and of course, Ruby and Rails. A believer in building strong communities, Leon spends time presenting on a wide variety of development topics at events and user groups in the region. He loves nothing more than to be around other developers, working together to create something unique and fresh; something that has never been done before. He believes there is no challenge that can't be overcome with passion and creativity. He can be found tending binary zen gardens with fellow artisans at EdgeCase in Columbus.

Mark Connell Artisan

Mark is an Artisan at the EdgeCase office in Edinburgh, Scotland. He graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 2008 (MSc E-Commerce Technology). Since then, he has specialised in developing web applications using Ruby and Rails. Prior to joining EdgeCase, Mark worked with a number of clients developing Ruby applications across a variety of business domains.

Mark is passionate about programming, business process, and producing maintainable software that provides real business value.

Shelley Byers Ninja of Numbers

Shelley is an American actress best known for her role as Diane Chambers on the sitcom Cheers, for which she won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress and two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress. Shelley has also starred in several motion pictures throughout her career like Night Shift (1982), her Golden Globe nominated role in Irreconcilable Differences (1984), The Money Pit (1986), Outrageous Fortune (1987), Hello Again (1987), Troop Beverly Hills (1989), The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), and Dr. T & the Women (2000).

Felix Flores Artisan

Felix Flores has been doing web development since he built his first computer at the age of seven. He taught himself MYSQL and PHP to write a social network for his high school and later discovered the wonders of Rails in college through curious investigation.

While in college, Felix received his formal training in Computer Science and Engineering, changing his view of programming from a hobby, to a craft governed by both art and science. Today, he explores the possibility of web-technology by constant research and experimentation.

John Andrews Renaissance Man

John is a strong believer in open-source software, pair-programming, and life-long learning. He has been a linux user for over a decade and a Rubyist since 2006. He graduated with a CS degree from Ohio University and has worked in the financial and credit-card industries.

He hangs onto his hobbies about as long as most people hang onto a pair of socks, and he hangs onto his socks longer than he should. Hobbies that he stuck with include reading, backpacking, and bread-making.

Currently he is stubbornly clinging to emacs in the face of a full-scale vim assault.

Matt Yoho Hep Cat

His exact origins are unknown; some say he rocketed to Earth in a spaceship fleeing a doomed planet and was later raised by wolves; others insist he escaped from a government research program that sought to produce the perfect karaoke singer. Whatever his genesis, Matt Yoho works for EdgeCase writing Ruby code and Rails applications.

Matt considers himself a web-oriented developer who believes in small-a agile process. His previous work found him at various times in small ecommerce business, inside the enormous enterprise, giving his lifeblood to a tech startup, and doing internal development at a major public university. He worked professionally in PHP and .Net, prior to finding the joy of being a member of the Ruby community. He graduated from the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio with dual B.S. degrees in Computer Science & Engineering and Psychology.

Matt has spent several quarters facilitating a Ruby student group at the Ohio State University, and he values community involvement and reaching out to new or upcoming developers who are passionate about learning. He loves teaching and speaking at conferences, and is the coordinator for EdgeCase's apprenticeship efforts.

Mike Enriquez Artisan

Mike started creating for the web at an early age after picking up a book on HTML. He has gone on to learn much more about web development since those days. He now has a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Ohio State University and has professional experience with Adobe Flash, ASP.NET, PHP, and of course Ruby on Rails.

When he's not building awesome stuff you can find Mike playing golf, snowboarding, and eating Ramen Noodles.

Dan Windle Artisan

An"Artisan" or "Developer" of a different sort, Dan's role with EdgeCase is on the Business Development side of things. With a background of more than 25 years in Sales, Marketing, and Management he loves collaborating with people and sharing ideas and vision to form productive partnerships.

Most recently Dan lead both Direct, and Channel Sales teams of a Global e-Learning provider and found it rewarding to build creative marketing partnerships with internet entrepreneurs, as well as Sr. Executives of F500 businesses in the U.S. and abroad. He has developed an understanding of how to use the internet to achieve success in retail, financial, academic, government, and service ventures. A degree in Marketing from The Ohio State University helped prepare him for the post college real world.

In addition to EdgeCase and its business partners, Dan's interests include travel to find fun filled days at the beach, an occasional round of golf, and enjoying life's experiences with family and friends.

Aaron Christy Solutioneer

After serving 10 years in the corporate world developing online solutions for banking, financial, and insurance institutions, Aaron finally shed his business attire to streak through the world of energetic, fast paced development wearing his favorite Ruby t-shirt.

Aaron prides himself on creativity and studying problems from oddball angles. He has great admiration for simplicity, usability, and weightlifting pandas (they are super strong). During his spare time Aaron enjoys photography, nonsensical side projects, and being mind controlled by his amazing kids.

Justine Arreche Vegan Housewife

Justine has been designing since she received Paint Shop Pro for her Windows ME desktop on Christmas in 2000. Now converted to Mac, Justine is still specializing in print design galavanting around in the lands of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign as well as the occasional vacation to the world of letterpress. In the rare times when Justine is unplugged she's a vegan housewife-in-training and loves caffeine, Seinfeld and her dog Roscoe.

Dave Anderson 21st Century Viking

From humble beginnings studying mathematics, music, physics and electrical engineering, Dave began focussing on software development in the golden age of the mid-1970s. Since then, he has spent time at both startups and established companies working in the telecommunications, publishing, online information, federal and military, architecture and construction, education, entertainment, logistics and financial industries producing infrastructure, tools and products. Staying on the technical edge, he's lived through the evolution of computing, helping business deal with everthing from standalone systems to client-server technology, object-oriented programming, the Internet, and web pages and applications. He speaks Ruby, Lisp and most of the web and programming languages, as well as many others - including some dying or dead. Ahh, the Zen of change.

Dave is a husband, father and grandfather. He likes his coffee, beer, jazz and philosophy, has wrestled with the art of cooking for many years, and still battles the lawn and landscaping. For fun, he's taught, written, lectured and done original work in algorithms, geometry, structural analysis and graph theory. He's even designed a few buildings that are still standing!

Scott Walker Artisan

Scott's experience with programming began as a child with QBasic when he grew tired of playing around with banana throwing gorillas, and snakes with an insatiable appetite for numbers, and decided to write his own games for fun. His interest in programming continued to stubbornly survive in the face of some decidedly awful pre-college computer education that would have scared a "normal" person away from ever touching a computer again. Scott got into the web before Geocities became all the rage by creating personal web sites for family and friends, as well as publishing an online magazine with his high school friends. From there he went on to get a degree in Computer Science from Virginia Tech

Professionally, Scott has worked for clients in law enforcement, banking, manufacturing, product configuration, and quoting, using technologies as diverse as the obscure DIBOL language, C++, .NET, and Ruby. He worked for many years on the Microsoft technology stack before he fell in love with open source and began moonlighting on Rails projects. It was only a matter of time before he decided to throw off the static language shackles and embrace dynamic languages full-time.

Scott has a passion for life-long learning, and loves sharing what he learns with others. He has spoken at several regional conferences and events, and has been featured on a podcast or two. He's also a life-long fitness devotee, self-described tea-snob, and the father of two wonderful children.

Matt Darby Chief Meteorologist

Matt has a Masters Degree in Computer Science and has been developing on the web since 1998. He started with PHP and then smartened up and moved to Rails in 2007. When not crafting code he's likely at home with his wife and Pug listening to old school Metal, Country or Punk music and/or brewing beer.

Andrew Grieser Artisan

A long time Linux user, Andrew's interest in web development took off after he installed his first LAMP stack. After a good run with PHP and a brief stint in Java, he was introduced to Ruby by several EdgeCase developers and hasn't looked back since.

When he's not writing web applications, Andrew can be found running, reading, or re-compiling his kernel.

Carin Meier Artisan

Carin started off as a professional ballet dancer, studied Physics in college, and has been developing software for both the enterprise and entrepreneur for the past 15 years. She comes from a solid Java background, but has discovered a passion for the power and elegance the dynamic languages of Ruby and Clojure. She brings fun, enthusiasm, and hot tea to all her projects and especially enjoys participating in the developer and Open Source communities.

Carin lives in Cincinnati, OH with her husband and two young children where she helps tend their large garden small flock of chickens. When left to daydream, she thinks about the dynamics of flocks of birds, what the Giant Squids might really be doing down there in the deep, and maybe opening a first-rate cheese shop one day.

Tyler Wymer Artisan

Tyler is a graduate of Computer Science & Engineering at Ohio State University. While pursuing his degree, he studied computer graphics, game development, high performance computing, data visualization and many other topics. He has spent his short career since college doing ASP.NET and agile consulting before finding relief from this world in Ruby and joining the team at EdgeCase. He began using Linux in high school and Vim in college, and is terribly opinionated about both.

When not working he can be found riding his bike, drinking craft beer or losing his life-long fight against video game addiction.

Tony Schneider Artisan

Tony was introduced to web development in ASP.NET while working for The Ohio State University. After attending an introductory Ruby course taught by EdgeCase, he took up programming, as a hobby, for the first time. Tony continued to attend the OSU Ruby group for several quarters, and ran the group during his last two years of college. After working for several Columbus startups, he found himself enrolled in the EdgeCase Apprenticeship Program. Legend has it that Tony won his employment in an epic ping-pong match against Ken Barker.

When not in front of the computer, Tony obsessively follows new music releases, hangs out with friends, and occasionally wears his homemade ewok costume.

Mike Doel Artisan

Mike has served in many roles in software development during the course of his 20 year career. His first two jobs were at research labs doing software development for projects with telephony, military, and industrial design applications. He then spent nearly a dozen years leading development, QA, and operations teams at the largest ISPs that helped bring the world online starting in the late 90's. Most recently, Mike was the co-founder of a startup that allows timeshare owners to rent properties they aren't going to use directly to vacationers looking for something better than a standard hotel room.

Mike's role at EdgeCase is to nurture the relationship between development and client teams. In that role, he helps to flesh out acceptance criteria, leads project retrospectives, and makes blockers disappear. Mike has both a BS and MBA from Ohio State and a MS from Rensselaer.

Scott Burwinkel Artisan

Scott first started programming on a Commodore 64 borrowed from school over summer vacation, never suspecting it could be more than a hobby. That all changed when he arrived in the NeXT labs at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, from which he graduated with a degree in Computer Science.

Scott cut his teeth in the defense industry working on battlefield communications and mission management for satellite ground stations. He served a 10 year tour of duty in the enterprise, delighting financial service customers with continual improvements in image capture, workflow automation and data transformations. After a palate cleansing sabbatical filled with national parks and European backpacking, Scott joined EdgeCase. He is excited to be diving more deeply into the Ruby and Rails ecosystem.

Scott enjoys the outdoor sports of hiking and world travel, and the indoor sports of Tol Barad, volleyball and live theatergoing. He intends to continue coding until they nail shut his coffin.

Matt Jones Artisan

Matt #3 has been fascinated by computers since picking up Logo on the Apple II. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics (minor in Computer Science) from Ohio State University in 1999, and has worked on everything from particle accelerator control interfaces to web applications.

In the Ruby world, he was one of the major contributors to the Rails 2 gem dependency system and has worked on a package of Rails extensions called Hobo since 2008.

Outside of the office, he enjoys working with music (from recording to live sound) and playing video games.

Matthew Boston Artisan

Matthew is passionate about delivering quality software at ludicrous speed. He believes in collaborative thinking in an open community based on trust, teamwork and transparency. Thirsty for knowledge, Matthew constantly finds himself at the business end of the firehose.

A product of The Ohio State University, Matthew received his B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering as well as minors in both Business and Japanese. In a previous life, Matthew spent time in the world of Java development and agile consulting. His love of dynamic languages has lead him to Ruby and an order of Clojure à la carte.

When he's not writing some wicked code, Matthew enjoys life outdoors on a sailboat, cycling, hiking, or laying in a hammock drinking craft beer.

No, he is not from Boston.

Peter Aitken Artisan

Peter is an agile/xp coach and ruby developer who has helped charities, pension firms, investment banks, mobile phone repair shops and global media firms improve their process and codebase.

Having graduated from Strathclyde University, Peter landed in the first XP team in Scotland and quickly became test infected. Since then he has come to appreciate that there is a lot more to development than coding and that getting people together is nearly always the solution.

Adrian Mowat Artisan

Adrian spent 11 years of his career living out of a suitcase in hotels across the UK and Europe while working as a Ab Initio data integration consultant. He estimates he has spent over 4 months of his life in waiting in airports (3 days of which was in queues for security). Although it was boring and frustrating at times, it gave him plenty of time to indulge his unhealthy interest in programming techniques and reading about Agile. He now enjoys a much more settled life working on Ruby projects EdgeCase's Edinburgh office where he loves being able to program Ruby all day every day, working with a great team and getting to go home every night.

When he is not obsessing about the finer points of TDD at 30,000 feet, Adrian enjoys burning calories walking and climbing in the Scottish mountains and putting them all back in again at a good restaurant or pub.

Alan Gardner Parmisan

Alan is a developer with a deep love, some would say unnaturally so, for the Ruby language. He has developed software in Ruby, Java and Delphi for international oil companies, social networking sites and even New York fashion houses (despite appearing to get dressed in the middle of a hedge).

Hailing from the frozen north, Alan is used to extended periods without sunlight, making him well suited to life as a codemonger. He has worn a mullet for longer than was decent, almost flown a helicopter into a pylon and was once bitten in the eye by a sandfly. It was as painful as it sounds.

He lives in Scotland with his long-suffering wife, their gorgeous little girl and a West Highland Terrier called Ruby (but not after the language, honest).