interesting synchronicity --> http://advogato.org/person/hypatia/diary/312.html

Evan Prodromou — CTO & Founder

Evan Prodromou is the founder of StatusNet Inc and the creator of the StatusNet software. His 20 years of software development experience began at Intel, then at Microsoft in the early 90s, which he left in 1996 to concentrate on the growing Web. He led the development of Segasoft's pioneering Heat.Net gaming community, developed distance education software for Fourth Dimension Interactive and CourseNet, led Open Source Web-based application development for Intalio, and helped develop the SAML specification at Securant (later acquired by RSA).

His experience with Open Source software began in 1996 when he wrote the first documentation for Perl on Windows servers. He has made contributions to many Open Source projects, including Debian, Freenet and MediaWiki (the software that runs Wikipedia).

In 2003 Prodromou founded Wikitravel.org, a free, up-to-date world-wide travel guide with a Creative Commons license. The site was sold to Internet Brands in 2005, and Prodromou developed software and did community management for the next three years. He continues to run a publishing company based on the travel site (Wikitravel Press) and has founded two other wiki sites (Vinismo for wine and Keiki for parenting). Wikitravel won the 2007 Webby Award for Travel.

Prodromou created the StatusNet software in 2008 and launched the open source community Identi.ca in July of that year. He served as the company's CEO until December 2010 and now leads the development, systems, and technical support groups. Prodromou won the 2008 Google Open Source Award for his work on StatusNet.