Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto started developing Ruby in 1993 and made it available to the public in 1995 as an open-source project. Since its release, approximately one million programmers worldwide have used the language.

Matz is currently a fellow with Network Applied Communication Laboratory Ltd. in Matsue City, Shimane Prefecture, Japan. Since 2007, he has also worked as a fellow at the Rakuten Institute of Technology, which is run by Rakuten, Inc., the largest ecommerce company in Japan. In 2010, he became a Special Advisor to the Fukuoka Ruby Business Hub Promotion Committee, supporting work on the development of lightweight Ruby. Additionally, in 2011 Matz was appointed Chief Architect of Heroku, Inc.

Derek is an industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience, specializing in high performance distributed systems. With tenures at Google and TIBCO Software, he specializes in Distributed Systems Architecture, High Performance Messaging Systems, and Event-Driven Systems. His current focus is Cloud Foundry and the Open PaaS at VMware Inc.

Katsutoshi Arie is the Director of Information Business and Security at Seiko Electric Co., Ltd. and CEO of Seiko IT Solutions Co., Ltd. In 2010, he was appointed Chairman of the Fukuoka Ruby Business Hub Promotion Committee. Katsutoshi is now actively working to spread the word about Ruby while working on measures to improve product development and production using Ruby.

In addition to lecturing on programming, databases, and embedded systems, Professor Tanaka conducts research on embedded, real-time robot control and information security. He is currently involved in research and development efforts with Ruby inventor Matz, seeking to apply Ruby to the development of embedded systems with the goal of releasing Ruby Lite (Rite VM) as an open source project by April 2012.
 
 

Eihiro Saishu is the founder and CEO of Nautilus Technologies, a Fukuoka company that specializes in distributed systems using the “Asakusa Framework” for large-scale core batch processing in Hadoop. Eihiro, as a representative of “Ruby Business Commons,” Japan’ s largest Ruby community, contributes greatly to the popularization of Ruby in Japan. In 2011, he received the Fukuoka Ruby Award Grand Prize for his development of the “Tengine Framework (formerly Monkey Magic)” middleware.

Kazuya Awazu works with Internet Initiative Japan, Inc. (IIJ), a major Internet service provider, where he started the SaaS groupware team and is actively involved in developing service and sales strategies. Kazuya is currently working to develop IIJ’ s PaaS business using open source projects. IIJ plans to launch Japan’s first Ruby PaaS in the near future.
 
 

Advanced Control and Acoustics (ACA) specializes in audio visual software solutions and services. ACA’ s products span control and automation, web-based video assessment, digital signage solutions, AV system management, and consulting services. ACA has the commercial backing of the University of Sydney, and many of ACA’ s products were developed for and by Australia’ s first university.

Banjo is a social discovery application that uses location, proximity, and context to make mobile devices and social networks more relevant to the user. Banjo works as a layer on top of all social networks, letting the user know when people who are important to the user are nearby.

Kicksend is a real-time file sharing platform for non-technical people. The 3-step sending process makes it easy to send lots of files instantly to any of the recipient’ s devices. Kicksend offers mobile applications that allow you to send and receive photos and videos from anywhere on the planet and desktop applications that automatically download files that are sent to you.

MobiCloud by Kno.e.sis aims to fill the gap in building applications for computing clouds and mobile devices by providing well-suited abstractions to the developer. The tools are easy to use for both beginner and advanced developers. Gartner forecasts over 1 billion mobile devices will be in use by 2015. These devices will need cloud connectivity. The majority of the application developers will be novices. MobiCloud aims to be the starting point for these developers.
 
 

Tom co-founded Engine Yard to provide the infrastructure and support necessary to fuel the development of Ruby on Rails applications. He has spent nearly 30 years as a software programmer and software architect and 20 years leading companies as a serial entrepreneur. Prior to co-founding Engine Yard in 2006, he created FaceBridge Research, Inc., a billing service for video-over-IM systems, and InfoMania Printing and Prepress, Inc., an innovator in Internet print procurement. He also served as systems architect at Quios.com, responsible for designing the platform that allowed the mobile messaging company to grow into a global provider with more than 130 employees.

Hitoshi Kawanabe is a technology executive specializing in enterprise software and international business with over 20 years of experience at CSK, Oracle, and IPLocks. He joined SunBridge in 2009 and soon after established the SunBridge Global Venture Habitat in Silicon Valley together with Allen Miner, CEO of SunBridge, with the goal of accelerating the global efforts of Japanese companies and entrepreneurs. At SunBridge Startups, LLP, Hitoshi co-invests in seed-stage companies and helps them successfully establish their businesses in the US and global markets.