About BuildingWebApps.com

BuildingWebApps.com is an information resource for web application developers, focused on the Ruby on Rails framework and related technologies.

We create our own content and also categorize other content that is available on the web and in the physical world.

Michael Slater is President of Collective Knowledge Works, Inc. He is an entrepreneur and software developer with 30 years of experience creating innovative products. In addition to developing and managing BuildingWebApps.com, he operates BoatingSF.com, a resource for boating on San Francisco Bay.

Michael was previously Director of Technology Strategy at Adobe Systems. He joined Adobe when it acquired Fotiva, a venture-funded startup he cofounded to create a better user experience for consumers moving to digital photography. Fotiva created one of the first tagging-based products for organizing photos.

Prior to Fotiva, he was President of MicroDesign Resources, where he created the Microprocessor Report newsletter and the Microprocessor Forum conference. From 1987 through 2000, he published hundreds of articles on computer technology and presented dozens of seminars and conference keynotes.

Michael began his career as an R&D engineer at Hewlett-Packard and was an independent engineering consultant from 1980 through 1987.

Michael is the author of several books, including Organize Your Photos with Photoshop Elements 3.0, The Photoshop Album 2.0 Book, RISC Microprocessors, and Microprocessor-Based Design.

Christopher Haupt is Chief Technology Officer at Collective Knowledge Works, Inc. He is a software architect, developer, and educator with over 25 years experience. Today, he is focused on rendering that experience into forms that can serve the wider community through efforts such as BuildingWebApps.com, as well as his own consultancy Mobirobo LLC.

Christopher was previously the Director of Engineering of Consumer and Hosted Application and Online Services at Adobe Systems. Much of his focus while at Adobe was on architecture and building a wide variety of online-enabled technologies and back-end infrastructure for the popular Photoshop line of products. He was also the Senior Engineering Manager on Adobe Photoshop Extended, a founding Engineering Manager for Photoshop Elements, and lead on a number of early Consumer titles such as PhotoDeluxe.

In the years before Christopher’s time at Adobe, he was a co-founder or lead engineer at a number of start-ups focused on educational and game software. Most notable was CyberPuppy Software, a Maxis affiliated studio, which produced the CODIE award winning Kid’s Studio line, which Christopher co-created with his partners. Christopher also developed a number of early on-line technologies during the 1990’s that were precursors to today’s MMOs.

Earlier in Christopher’s professional life, he was an Instructor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he focused on computer graphics and distributed systems. He was instrumental in developing some of the earliest Campus-Wide Information Systems, ahead of the introduction of the World Wide Web. He also spent a few years working for E.I. duPont as a systems and real-time process control programmer.

Christopher holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Computer Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Christopher frequently gives micro-updates about BuildingWebApps.com and life in general on Twitter.