I'm a little bit of everything. Growing up, my father taught me the value of problem-solving, and instilled in me a hunger for knowledge. That ethos has turned me into a life-long learner, and I am interested in and skilled at a great many things.
I'm a public speaker, a writer, a software developer, a project manager, a wife, a parent, a grandparent, an occasional activist, a skilled cook, an artist, and an autoharpist.
Today, anyway. That list may change at any time, with no notice at all.
I've presented and trained on a wide range of technical and soft-skills topics over the last twenty years. If you're looking for a keynoter, breakout session speaker, or trainer with a proven track record of excellence, get in touch with me to discuss your needs, and my pricing and availability.
Topics of special interest for me include:
I write words. Many, many words, at times.
I spent three years, about, as a Community Moderator at Opensource.com, and had a column there for a couple of years, called "Nooks & Crannies," where we explored lesser-known open source projects.
I do occasional fiction reviews as a guest poster at Reading Reality, under the pen name Amy Daltry.
I have released a novel! Learn more about my novelist alter ego at Lyla Hopper's website.
Over the course of a 30+ year career, I’ve done just about everything a nerd can do in the IT space: front- and back-end developer, system and network administrator, documentation, training, big-data migrations, just a taste of DevOps, even (briefly) management. There were some things I was much better at than others, of course, and a couple that I didn’t enjoy very much, so I respect the folks that do those things quite a lot! I think of myself as a generalist.
Over the years, I’ve made money writing code in COBOL, Pascal, IBM 4381 Assembler, C, Java, JavaScript, and Perl. I’ve been coding mostly in Perl now for 18 years.
Currently, I work as a Perl developer and project lead at Clearbuilt. We’re a small team of really talented folks, doing business process automation that helps some pretty interesting businesses grow! I've been at the jobs with the nifty perks: free lunch, free cell phone, guarded parking lots, outings with free booze, and much more. At Clearbuilt, I get the best benefit of all — it doesn't cost my boss a single dime, and most of my previous employers couldn't deliver it: respect. Catch me in person if you want to hear me rave about how much I love my job!