Event Will Bring Together Wide Range of Experts to Explore How Inspired Applications Are Created
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – April 25, 2013 – Engine Yard, the leading Platform as a Service (PaaS), will be igniting creativity among the developer community and beyond with its inaugural developer conference, Distill, August 8-9 in San Francisco. Distill is a forum designed to foster the creation of inspired applications by sharing the latest techniques, technologies and experiences. The two-day event, taking place on Treasure Island, will feature more than 25 speakers on topics ranging from user experience and mobile development to the Internet of Things and architecting applications for the cloud. Registration for Distill opened today.
“Our goal with Distill is to build a stronger developer community and ensure our participants leave with new experiences, insights and friends,” said Eamon Leonard, vice president, Developers at Engine Yard. “We’ve put together an incredible line-up of speakers and activities for this first-ever conference hosted by Engine Yard, and look forward to inspiring developers to create applications that will help change the world.”
Over the course of two days, Distill participants will hear from keynote speakers including:
Nolan and Brent Bushnell – This father and son duo have a storied history in the technology industry. Nolan, who founded Atari Corp. and Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theater, is seeking ways to enhance and improve the educational process by integrating the most recent findings in brain science through his latest venture Brainrush. Nolan was inducted into the Video Game and Consumer Electronics Association halls of fame, named one of Newsweek’s “50 Men that Changed America” and is highlighted as an entrepreneurial icon in Silicon Valley’s Tech Museum of Innovation. Brent currently serves as CEO of Two Bit Circus, an L.A.-based idea factory focused on education and amusement.
Michael Lopp – Michael is an engineering director at Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley software company dedicated to radicalizing the way the world interacts with data. Before joining Palantir, Michael was on Apple’s senior leadership team for nine years. He is a noted author in Silicon Valley where his blog “Rands in Repose” and books on engineering management, “Managing Humans” and “Being Geek,” are canon.
James Whelton – Hailing from Cork, Ireland, James is a developer and social entrepreneur who is passionate about using technology to improve the world and making the opportunity to experience the awesomeness of coding available to young people around the world. James launched CoderDojo in 2011, was named the Irish Software Association Person of the Year 2012 and was honored as one of Forbes “30 under 30” in 2013 for social entrepreneurship.
For a full list of speakers, visit distill.engineyard.com/speakers.
Building Community Eamon will serve as the master of ceremonies at Distill. He is responsible for developer community outreach at Engine Yard and has recently brought on Richard Watson, a former Gartner Research analyst, as a developer evangelist.
Eamon has been a community activist in Dublin for several years and has founded many events for developers, designers and startups. He has been a developer for over a decade, started a development shop and joined Engine Yard through the acquisition of Orchestra.io, a PHP PaaS, where he was co-founder and CEO. Prior to moving into his new role, Eamon was a leader on the Engine Yard engineering team.
Before joining Engine Yard this month, Richard advised Gartner clients on application architecture, cloud computing and business process management. He has 20 years of IT experience, including two years as an analyst with Burton Group. He is a frequent blogger and speaker, long-time hacker and rugby geek. At Engine Yard, Richard is focused on educating and assisting developers in the community.
Register for Distill Distill “first batch” tickets are now available through June 1 for $400. After that time, tickets will increase to $500. There is also a student discount rate of $300. For more information, or to register for Distill, visit distill.engineyard.com.
About Distill Distill is a developer conference presented by Engine Yard (www.engineyard.com) to explore the art and science of creating inspired applications. In addition to an awesome lineup of keynote speakers, the conference thrives on participation from a community of forward-thinking developers. The inaugural Distill conference will take place August 8-9 on Treasure Island in San Francisco. For more information, visit distill.engineyard.com.
About Engine Yard Engine Yard is the leading Platform as a Service empowering developers to plan, build, deploy and manage applications in the cloud. Providing unmatched control and choice, Engine Yard delivers a trusted, complete application cloud and expert developer support that enables organizations to focus on creating great applications, instead of managing their platform. Thousands of customers in 58 countries, from explosive-growth Web startups to Fortune 500 enterprises, run on Engine Yard. Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., Engine Yard is backed by Benchmark Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Oracle and Amazon.
Media Contact Theresa Maloney Cogenta Communications for Engine Yard theresa@cogentacom.com 415-225-5261
