A recognized expert in the field of software development, Mike has consulted and trained teams at companies such as Chrysler, Fidelity Investments, Great-West Life, IHS Energy, Lands' End, OppenheimerFunds, Pfizer, and Veritas. He helped build one of the first commercial Ruby on Rails applications in the summer of 2005, and continues to build Rails apps for clients.
Mike is the author of the book Pragmatic Project Automation and co-authored the book Agile Web Development with Rails. He's also written a number of articles covering software development for Apple Developer Connection, Better Software Magazine, and others. Mike publishes his ongoing software experiences in his popular blog.
Mike is also a frequent speaker at software development conferences and user groups. He's given talks at OSCON, RailsConf, O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference, and more.
Growing up under the big sky of Montana, Mike fell in love with aviation. He graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and spent his early software years in virtual seclusion working on embedded software systems in the aerospace industry for companies such as Lockheed Martin, TRW, Honeywell, and AlliedSignal. When the web took off, Mike came out of hiding. Now he mostly just rides on airplanes.