Ed Letifov, Atlassian Expert, has been in IT for 17 years.
Originally from Russia, though born in the last decade of the Soviet Union era, he's been moving around for the last 14 years, has been employed by various international companies, and has worked with clients on five different continents.
His first encounter with JIRA was in 2003, and he still remembers shaking hands with the Atlassian founding fathers at the time when Atlassian was a "cute, small start-up down under" ready to take on the world.
Atlassian was and remains one of the very few companies he has worked for for any length of time, if only he hadn't discovered New Zealand.
He is the co-founder of TechTime Initiative Group—an accredited Atlassian Expert in New Zealand. Through their TurningRight Service for "all products Atlassian", he provides support, maintenance, implementation, and custom development services to the government, educational institutions, and commercial organizations in New Zealand and worldwide.
Ed's favorite activity is problem solving and solution design. His endless personal quest is for "a product he can identify with", and he's been looking for it in the fields of automatic personal task planning and voice-driven programming.
He mixes this quest with volunteering at various community organizations, playing basketball and bass guitar (usually not at the same time), and writing poetry (whenever inspiration strikes).
In a world of search engines, wikis, and instant knowledge of dubious quality, he still loves the feel of a good book in his hand.
Ed can be contacted at LinkedIn (http://nz.linkedin.com/in/edletifov/), LiveJournal (http://techtime.livejournal.com/), or through his company websites—TurningRight (http://turningright.co.nz) and TechTime (http://techtime.co.nz).
Felix Martineau runs the Atlassian Practice at TechSolCom and has a rare blend of deep IT expertise, people skills, and business acumen. While he thinks of himself as a jack-of-all-trades, he has developed world-class JIRA expertise. A recognized player in the Atlassian community, Felix is a regular contributor to top JIRA plugins and has been involved with several JIRA books.
Felix started using JIRA in 2007, and what started out as purely technical expertise evolved into Business Process Management, Enterprise Collaboration, Application Lifecycle Management, Agile Methodology, change management, and personal productivity. Nowadays, he works to bring JIRA outside of IT and make it a household name for business users. A confessed self-improvement geek, Felix is always looking for ways to improve and take on new challenges.
Ravi Sagar is a Drupal and JIRA expert with over 11 years of experience in Web Development and Business Analysis. He has done extensive work implementing and customizing big JIRA instances for Issue and Project Tracking, Test Management with JIRA, Support Tickets, and Agile Tracking.
Ravi founded Sparxsys Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (www.sparxsys.com) in 2010—a start-up company that provides consultancy and training services in Drupal and JIRA/Agile.
He also writes a lot about technology and entrepreneurship on his blog, www.ravisagar.in, and loves photography and running marathons.
You can connect with him at http://www.linkedin.com/in/ravisagar or e-mail him at <[email protected]>
Mizan Ali Sayed works as an Atlassian tools specialist with eQuest Technologies (http://www.equestind.com), and has experience in implementing, customizing, and supporting Atlassian tools, chiefly JIRA and Confluence. Mizan has a good blend of technical expertise, people skills, and troubleshooting skills. He is active within the Atlassian community and has published free add-ons on the Atlassian Marketplace. You can reach him at <[email protected]>.