Ben Lobaugh

Open Source fanatic, sailor of the high seas and major AirHead, my name is Ben Lobaugh and I am here to amuse.

My love affair with Open Source projects started in 1998 with my first copy of RedHat (way before enterprise!) and continues to this day. In 1999 I ditched all my closed source software and went 100% Open Source and existed that way until 2007 when I started playing synth music through a MacBook Pro with Reason. In 2000 I started doing web development with PHP using a LAMP stack. I have worked on a large range of projects from simple websites all the way up to large scale international web applications requiring high security and powerfully advanced complex features. In the early 2000s I began using WordPress to manage the blog portion of this website but as it grew over the years into a full fledged content management system I started using it on all but the most complex client sites. Today I am an active participant in the Seattle WordPress community, give regular presentations to WordPress developers, and organize the developer specific portion of the Seattle WordPress Meetup. I am also very active in the Seattle PHP community.

Due to my experience with Open Source communities and PHP, the Microsoft Interoperability team reached out to me in 2010 and I joined their unique group which is setup with a two pronged mission: Firstly, provide an awareness of Open Source inside of Microsoft and encourage Microsoft to embrace these communities and their products; Secondly, this team consistently reaches out to various communities providing support for their product as well as encouraging growth of the community. Though hired specifically to interact with the PHP community and increase the viability and support for PHP on Windows Azure, I regularly get to work with other fun Open Source projects, such as MongoDB, Node.js and PhoneGap (Callback).

When not playing with technology I can generally be found rocking out with my crazy keyboard rig (much bigger and more complex now!), sailing my gorgeous Spirit 23 sailboat zzZippety Doo Dah around Puget Sound, or leisurely cruising about in my 1965 Volkswagen Bus.