The Code Blacks
Amanda Wood – Project Manager
Amanda loves the internet so much she dropped out of law school a decade ago to work with the web full time.
Since then, she has managed digital projects from both the client and agency side for organisations such as CanTeen, Genesis Energy, Tourism New Zealand, ASB and The Radio Network. Amanda is now the Online Manager for the New Zealand Automobile Association.
When not online, Amanda likes to mount ambitious DIY projects and once drove a New York City subway train over the Brooklyn Bridge.
On twitter: http://twitter.com/mandamonium
Lulu Pachuau – User Experience Advocate
Lulu has been around the block for about a decade now, in the field of user experience for websites and applications. She cares about people’s experiences and strives to foster relationships through empathy and an understanding of people’s goals.
As the director of Lushai, her Wellington-based User Experience Agency, Lulu wears different hats as an information architect, interaction designer, mentor and a strategist for online products and services.
She has worked with top design agencies in Wellington and consulted to a wide range of clients including government, utilities, banking and telecommunications sectors where she has designed solutions for websites, online commerce, intranets, desktop and web applications.
She’s looking forward to a whole bunch of rapid prototyping at FullCodePress and turning up the volume on designing a fantastic user experience. Her favourite saying is “I help people think out loud. I am loud.”
On twitter: http://twitter.com/lulup
Matthew Buchanan – Designer
Matthew built his first website — for the All Blacks — over fifteen years ago. He has a background in publication design and 3D animation, and has worked full-time designing websites for the past decade.
Matthew is a co-founder of Cactuslab, a boutique web and iPhone development studio in Auckland, whose clients include 95bFM, Amplifier, ACP Media, NZ Winegrowers, Mighty River Power, the Ministry of Health and the NZ Music Commission. His eye for detail, love of good typography, standards-based approach and wealth of experience designing sites large and small will all be valuable contributions to the New Zealand team.
On twitter: http://twitter.com/matthewbuchanan
Mike Harding – HTML/CSS marker-upper
Mike trained in graphic design, but was won over by the internet and has been designing & building websites for over a decade.
He is deputy designer and front-end developer for Auckland web studio Cactuslab, where his lightning-quick markup skills are matched only by his masterful wrangling of IE6.
In his downtime Mike develops themes for Tumblr, turns his guitar up to 11, and drinks a little too much coffee.
On twitter: http://twitter.com/sneak
Sam Minnée – Programmer
Sam helped found SilverStripe 10 years ago and he’s spent his working life there ever since. He is lead developer of the open-source PHP CMS, SilverStripe, and is a fan of jQuery, Git, RESTful APIs, Drum & Bass, MVC/ORM frameworks, and Kierkegaard. He likes it when he writes code that makes other people’s lives easier, and is happiest when a designer is telling him how that code should behave. Sam laughs more than is necessary, but not as much as he should.
On twitter: http://twitter.com/sminnee
Hadyn Green – Wordsmith
Hadyn Green can’t stop writing. He’s written short stories and short films; essays and reports; blogs and wikis and trans-media stories.
Hadyn is currently the technology writer for Consumer NZ and when he’s not writing reviews of DVD recorders he writes sports and leisure for Public Address.net. He is also a veteran of the 48 Hours film competition, an experience he hopes to use to his advantage in FullCodePress – the experience of learning to live without sleep.
On twitter: http://twitter.com/hadyngreen
