Valentin Crettaz holds a master degree in Information and Computer Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL). After he finished studying in 2000, Valentin worked as a software engineer with SRI International in the Silicon Valley (Menlo Park, USA) and as a principal engineer in the Software Engineering Laboratory at EPFL. In 2002, as a good patriot, he came back to Switzerland to co-create a start-up called Condris Technologies, a new venture that provides IT development and consulting services and specializes in the creation of innovative next-generation software architecture solutions as well as secure wireless telecommunication infrastructures.

From 2004 to 2008, Valentin served as a senior IT consultant in one of the largest private banks in Switzerland, where he worked on next-generation e-banking platforms.

Starting in 2008, Valentin joined Goomzee Corporation as Chief Software Guru. Goomzee is a Montana based mobile marketing company that provides solutions for connecting buyers and sellers in any market vertical through mobile interactions.

Valentin also owns a small consultancy business called Consulthys, a new venture that strongly focuses on leveraging Web 2.0 technologies in order to reduce the cultural gap between IT and business people.

Marcus Povey is a software architect with a wide range of commercial experience, including portable medical systems, point-of-sale hardware, web platform development, and secure messaging.

Formerly a Senior Architect at Curverider, Marcus worked with Ben Werdmuller to develop the open source social networking platform Elgg, and was an integral part of its architecture design process from version 1.0 onwards.

Marcus left Curverider in 2009 to form his own consultancy company; he also organizes BarCamp Transparency, an annual event to discuss openness and direct democracy in government.

Marcus maintains a blog at http://www.marcus-povey.co.uk

Brett Profitt has been interested in computers and programming since his youth. Whether it was pecking at keys on a Commodore 64 until a monochrome display echoed his name, leading a middle school computer club, or writing apps on his TI-83 calculator during chemistry class, computers have always been an important part of his life as one of his passions.

Brett received two degrees from The Ohio State University: A Bachelor of Instrumental Music Education and a Bachelor of Art in Japanese Language and Culture. Before adopting software development as a career, he held positions as a pre-school teacher, website designer, Kindergarten music teacher, and tutor for Japanese-speaking students in America.

Brett strongly believes in and supports open source philosophies. He is proud to be a member of this powerful community and enjoys interacting and co-developing with the larger open source community through Elgg.

Liran Tal is a leading software developer, expert Linux engineer, and an avid supporter of the open source movement. In 2007, he has redefined network RADIUS management by establishing daloRADIUS, a world-recognized and industry-leading open source project. Passionate about creating software and enjoys taking on new ventures, he is mostly focused on building web applications and social networking technologies.

He graduated cum laude in his Bachelor of Business and Information Systems Analysis studies and enjoys spending his time playing the guitar, hacking all things Linux, and continuously experimenting and contributing to open source projects.

Sincere thanks to Curverider for creating Elgg and making it available and to everyone on the Elgg community who has been there to push it forward.

Evan Winslow holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. He has been working with Elgg since 2009 and has been a member of the Core Development Team since 2010. As a member of the Core Team, he contributed significantly to the JavaScript and CSS advances in Elgg 1.8. Evan lives in Aliso Viejo, California with his wife Julie and son James, and works his dream job doing front-end web development full-time. You can reach him at <[email protected]>.