Feature
While covering the content management industry, we get to meet many interesting people. Today, we’ll focus on those that are young, wicked smart beyond their age and extraordinarily accomplished -- those that you want to keep an eye on.
With that, we present you the top 5 most talented C-level executives in the CMS world (who are 35 or younger).
The Why
Not to disappoint our often geeky audience, but no fancy scientific formula was used in putting togetherthis list. Mere talent, smarts, professional accomplishments,innovation and the level of activity in the industry (good looks andlevels of oenophilia didn’t count) is what went into the judge’sdecision.
Pure awesomeness is what we looked for. The selection is notall-inclusive, nor is it entirely objective.
The Who
Hence thisis not really a competition; we present the industry’s bright stars, the Empire-States of the CMS skyline, in apurely alphabetical order and let them talk about themselves and giveus a peek into their lives at and outside of work.
Arje Cahn
CTOof open source One Hippo, Cahn (31) is the main techie brain behindHippo CMS.
Place of Birth
Near Amsterdam, the Netherlands, thelovely village of Laren
Education
I studied Artificial Intelligenceat the University of Amsterdam. During high school, and later duringcollege, I wrote robotics software for motion controlled cameras, whichwas in a real pioneering phase back then but used in pretty much everymovie nowadays.
Didn't make it to a degree - I was too restless andstarted my own company instead. Next to my professional work, I followedcourses in Business Administration and management.
Professional Highlights (What are You Proud of?)
- Being invited as a Member atthe Apache Software Foundation.
- Going across the pond and acquiringBluesunrise in San Francisco, which was our introduction into the USmarket.
- I'm proud of my team, and how smart they actually are. AllI can be proud of for myself is that I managed to get the right peopletogether in a room (or on a mailing list).
- I'm proud to haveco-founded a company that is still there after 10 years and two economiccrises, and I'm proud of the level of expertise you get when stickingwith a concept for so long.
- I'm proud that we have a product thatnot just sells to the executives, but that also appeals to end-users,developers and sysadmins.
How Landed in the CMS Industry
As achild, at the age of 11, I operated a small bulletin board running RA. I got frustrated by thestatic behavior of bulletin boards, which drove me to write anapplication that contained something that you'd now call a hypertextserver, as well as a graphical client to render pages across a modemconnection. It never made it, of course, but the idea stuck and when thewww came to be, I was completely sold to it.
In 1998, as part ofmy Artificial Intelligence studies, I worked on natural languagealgorithms and got interested in automatically generating metadata fromnatural text. I was gathering natural text (content!) for my studies,and at the same time I was working on a community website for roboticsin the film industry. I wrote that first CMS not just to drive thewebsite, but the larger goal was to use the data that the communitymembers generated for my studies. My partners back then were smartenough to recognize that this was something we could actually form acompany around - and that's how we started Hippo.
Things You Loveand Hate About Your Job
Love:
- Being surrounded by really smartpeople.
- Building something. Watching it grow and get better.
- Finding simplicity in things
- Working online
- Seeing the worldand meeting people
Hate:
- Not a lot, really.
- Maybe the"me-too" syndrome that the industry seems to be stuck in every now andthen.
Life Outside of Work
- Taking care of my two lovely littledaughters
- Before that, I used to be a very active oarsman
- As aprofessional oddity, I like reading books that contain lots of context,especially journals like Linnaeus' travels through Lappland, Van Gogh'sletters and Samuel Pepys' secret diary
- I can get very excited froma good glass of wine, a cheese platter and some fig bread. And aconversation about context and metadata.
Where to Find You Online
- http://www.onehippo.com
- http://blogs.onehippo.org/arje/
- http://www.twitter.com/arjecahn
- http://nl.linkedin.com/in/arjecahn
David Nuescheler
CTO of Day Software, Nuescheler (35) holds manyother titles, including the JCP star spec lead.
A typical Scorpio,Nuescheler is surrounded by a veil of secrecy. So, here's a little more info to balance out his "thin" Life Outside of Work (see below) contribution.
Also known as Uncle D, polymathNuescheler is a Java brainiac. Ask him about micro-jax. Yet, there’s one typeof Java he is not very fond of. So don’t be shocked when you see himconsuming massive amounts of iced tea (to be exact -- two liters for atwo-hour meeting, according to our sources).
If you don’t see himon Apache.org mailing lists, try checking foursquare, which he thinks is“awesome.” Simplecheck-ins would not be very Nuescheler, as he goes into solvingtechnical venues-to-be-merged issues and giving geography lessons on hishometown.
Place of Birth
Basel, Switzerland
Education
Studies incomputer science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Professional Highlights (What are You Proud of?)
When I joined Day Software more than 15 years ago, thecompany was called Bidule. It is located in a former sausage factory onthe outskirts of Basel, Switzerland, close to the French and Germanborders, and not far from good skiing in the Alps. As chief technologyofficer, I have been significantly involved in growing Day Software froma small multimedia agency to a global content management solutioncompany.
I am also involved in Open Source and Open Standards as amember of the Apache Software Foundation and a committer on variousprojects as well the spec lead for JSR (170 and 283) (aka JCR), and theliaison and an active member on the OASIS CMIS technical committee.
How Landed in the CMS Industry
As a company we transitioned from being aInteractive CD-ROM and games manufacturer to becoming an interactiveweb agency to becoming a WCM vendor. I would say I didn't "land" in WCM,but WCM landed with me. I think external facing WCM is one of themost vibrant sectors in software altogether, as it combines the missioncritical aspects of enterprise computing with an injection of agilityand dynamics of the web age.
Things You Loveand Hate About Your Job
Ilove working with a brilliant team at Day that thinks of how to advancecontent management and the web in general, through ground breakingresearch and contributions to the general public. Working withinternationally acclaimed experts beyond the WCM space in expert groups,standards committees and open source projects is what broadens thehorizon. WCM is a subject matter where I can learn every single Day fromour customer base.
Life Outside of Work
(Editor's note: take #1)Life outside work?
(Editor's note: take #2) I am a passionate cook and anotorious "taste tester" and a massive consumer of iced tea, since Idon't drink "java."
Where to Find You Online
- http://twitter.com/davidnuescheler
- http://www.slideshare.net/uncled
- http://dev.day.com/content/ddc/blog.html
- http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidnuescheler
- https://www.xing.com/profile/David_Nuescheler
Dries Buytaert
Buytaert (31) is the main driver behind the wildlysuccessful open source Drupal CMS and the CTO of Acquia.
Place of Birth
Antwerp, Belgium
Education
I'm a techie. I obtained a PhD inComputer Science and Engineering from the University of Ghent. Prior tomy PhD, I got a Licentiate in Computer Science from the University ofAntwerp.
Professional Highlights (What are You Proud of?)
Being invited to the White House(which now runs on Drupal).
How Landed in the CMS Industry
Byaccident. I started Drupal because I needed an internal message board,and because I enjoyed experimenting with new web technology.Slowly,that message board evolved into a CMS.
Things You Loveand Hate About Your Job
I love working with the Drupal community. Not only arethere many fun and interesting people to work with, I very much enjoyDrupal's culture of openness, collaboration and innovation. It's amazingwhat we accomplished together to date, and some of the things we'recurrently working on are very exciting.
I love working with thepeople at Acquia. I was fortunate enough to be able to hire people thatare much smarter than me, and as a result, I enjoy being able to learnfrom them on a daily basis.I like being a sponge, and I like beingsurrounded by people that work really hard andthat know what they aredoing.I love the start-up culture that we've built.
As Drupal andAcquia continue to grow, it is hard to stay on top of everything that ishappening, or even to keep up with e-mail.I'm often spread thin, andas a result, I feel like I don't often respond fast enough. That is whatI don't like about my current situation, but I do think it's a problemthat can be solved.
Life Outside of Work
I have two kids, so Ilike doing fun things with my family. One of my favorite activities isjumping on the bed with my 2.5-year-old son -- we try to do that everynight for at least 15 minutes. Other than that, I'm a hopeless amateurat photography, and I like to play tennis and ski.
Where to Find You Online
I blog at http://buytaert.net and I twitter athttp://twitter.com/Dries.Other than that, I live in the issue queueson http://drupal.org.
Eric Barroca
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CEO of open sourceEnterprise CMS Nuxeo, Barroca doesn’t like to be praised for his age. Yet, he is the youngest on this top 5 list at the age of28.
Place of Birth
Saint Doulchard, France
Education
Nopost-secondary academics, I exited high school at the age of 17
Professional Highlights (What are You Proud of?)
At 17, I started as a freelance developer, worked formajor website at the peak of the “dot com” 1.0 era, later worked at astartup (linbox.com) for a year, resigned to become freelance trainerin open source technologies. I joined Nuxeo in 2001, when thecompany was only 4 people and 6 months old. From there I've grownwith the company becoming CEO in 2009 I've been presales/sales guy,project director, VP of operations and I have managed/touched prettymuch all aspect of the company -- easier when
you're 5 people :-).
How Landed in the CMS Industry
I worked a bit in the CMS world beforeNuxeo, but the game really started at Nuxeo when we started CPS in 2003.CPS was a collaborative document management system based on the Zopeplatform. CPS was the Nuxeo "Collaborative Portal Server" - a cool userexperience, flexibility, overall functional paradigm. CPS was veryflexible and full featured, I would say ahead of his time, actually. But,as a young company, we neglected to invest in the marketing effortsto showcase its strengths - so a valuable lesson learned about ensuringgreat technology gets its story out to potential users.
We usedthis experience, as a company, to build today's Nuxeo EnterprisePlatform, which was developed in Java in 2005. I'm very passionateabout the topic of content management, since I've pretty much spent thelast 10 years (and all my professional life) in this space. I amdeeply involved in Nuxeo product choices / strategy, technical/architectureorientation, marketing strategy, positioning and key sales effort.But I've never really done any meaningful coding, actually. My teamis way better than me at transforming a product vision into workingsoftware.
Things You Loveand Hate About Your Job
What I love:Actually building a company and the team powering it. Everything fromimagining the strategy, working with the whole team to define andexecute it, designing products, talking with customers and partners tounderstand their business, seeking for talents.
What I hate: Therearen't many things I 'hate', actually, there is just bad aspects to dealwith. Worst ones being: having a team member not work out and lettingthem go or piloting the company through tough times when cash flow wastight.
Life Outside of Work
I work long hours, but have a passionfor good food, love to experience interesting and unusual cuisine whentraveling, and cooking for friends.I cook French food mainly, ofcourse, but very open on anything good actually.
Important point is:made with fresh stuff I get from the local market. I enjoy choosingand buying some nice fresh things and make some plan how to preparethem. The most recent experiment was with black truffles when inseason earlier this year.
I read constantly and love my Kindle.Ioften have 2-3 books on the go, usually current events, world analysisand biographies.
Where to Find You Online
Niels Hartvig
Founder of Umbraco -- opensource and “friendly” CMS -- Hartvig (31) is too shy to put himself inthe C-level position, but he really is the mastermind behind thesuccessful Umbraco that has more than 250k downloads in 2009 and morethan 7,000 active community members.
(Photo credit: Douglas Robar)
Place of Birth
Outskirts ofCopenhagen, Denmark.
Education
By miracle I managed to pass highschool but that's it as...
How Landed in the CMS Industry
I gotstraight into the CMS industry from high school in 1997 and apparentlyliked it enough to never really leave it. I got hired in 1997 as a webdeveloper for a Danish company called "Snabel & Co" that producedwhat is likely to be the first Danish CMS - Site In A Box (SIAB).However, when I started what we did wasn't called CMS. It was referredto as Online Administration Systems and likewise until a day in 1998,when our Managing Director called us together and told us that what wedid was now called CMS. As he was talking to a handful us geeks theresponse was giggling and "why-is-that-important" type of sentences.Little did we know!
In 1999-2000, I went freelance and swore never todo CMS again, fed up with mostly doing website implementations and notimproving the CMS. After six months of producing 3D online games, I wasback in web development and it didn't take long until I had to admit Iwas on my way to producing a CMS again. Despite the insane number ofCMSes that existed, I decided that mine had something special, and in2003 I bought the domain "Umbraco" and decided to believe in doing itfull time. In late 2004, the beta of "Umbraco CMS" as open source came,and in February 2005 it was finally an official release. With a fewbumps along the way the past five years have been incredible.
Professional Highlights (What are You Proud of?)
Founder of Umbraco. The most popular .NET based CMS inEurope.
Things You Loveand Hate About Your Job
I love being atthe fore front of a big change - open source - going on in the softwareindustry in general and the CMS industry in full effect. I love howUmbraco and the community of Umbraco really is being more and moresuccessful. And how I've managed to help keeping the focus of Umbraco tobe simple but extensible, despite the ongoing pressure for morecomplexity. I believe the world needs simpler solutions.
Hate is astrong word, but I wish the CMS world was a little less conservative. Ialso wish we could split "Web CMS" from "Enterprise CMS" -- the latterhas no "Web" in its "DNA" just like a Web CMS is much more abouthandling presentation than managing documents. Oh, I do hate one thing:the term "Portal. That is pure nonsense.
Life Outside of Work
Mywonderful family, of course. Even though my three kids prevents me fromgetting my fantasy car(A Tesla Roadster powered by a local windturbine.0-60 in four seconds powered by wind.)! In the few moments withoutUmbraco and family, you'll likely find me tweaking sounds on my evergrowing collection of synthesizers or experimenting with moleculargastronomy.
I've been fascinated by synthesizers since my sisterintroduced me to Depeche Mode in mid-80’s. In the last couple of years,I've started collecting the old analogue synths that I drooled at backwhen MTV actually showed music videos. The current collection of sixhardware synths contains good old classics, such as a Roland Juno-106and a SH-101.
I've loved cooking for ages and while chocolate is mymajor indulgence, I got a hold of the El Bulli Texturas Starter Kitlast year and that's loads of fun. Molecular gastronomy is yet anothergreat way to combine the geeky passion with something that I can sharewith my wife, even though she does think I'm an idiot, when I spend halfa day making weird orange spheres, Cafe Latte Caviar and fake spaghettiof liquidized herbs.
Where to Find You Online
I'm @umbraco on Twitter. In real life, I'm often found atCMS events including the Gilbane SF and JBoye.
Epilogue
So, nowyou know how the most talented CMS execs found their way into theindustry and what they do when AFK. Keep an eye on these guys, we’repretty sure you’ll hear about them and their accomplishments more in thefuture. Purely by accident, all of them are either in open source,or support OSS outside their proprietary worlds. None of them are women.Sign of times?
