Team
The cogs that make up our well-oiled machine
Peter Baumgartner
Founder, Technical Director
After graduating from University of Michigan, Peter headed west and landed in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Peter founded Lincoln Loop in 2006 as a freelance web developer building PHP websites. In 2007 he fell in love with Django and hasn’t looked back since. While mostly involved with the business side of Lincoln Loop these days, Peter still enjoys tinkering with code and some of his work can be found at GitHub.
Peter is married with two children and in his free time enjoys all that mountain living has to offer, including telemark skiing, mountain biking and whitewater kayaking.
Michael Trythall
User Experience Director, Developer
After working as a freelancer for several years, Michael’s passion for user experience and open source brought him to Lincoln Loop in 2008. Prior to joining the team, he used his background in software development and interaction design to create engaging experiences for several high traffic websites. Since 2007, he has utilized Django for rapid, high fidelity prototyping efforts. On most days he can be found working closely with clients and team members to ensure that products are both easy to use and in sync with requirements.
Originally from the Philadelphia area, Michael currently lives in South Dakota with his wife and an assortment of pets. He enjoys fine wine, home projects, local politics, and all things geeky. When he’s not working at Lincoln Loop, he can usually be found with his head buried in the latest user experience book.
Chris Beaven
Senior Developer
It’s hard to get very far in the Django community without bumping into SmileyChris. He is a member of the core triage team for Django and also contributes code to the project. In addition, he helps support the de-facto image manipulation app for Django, sorl-thumbnail.
Chris joined a small programming company after completing a computing systems degree and went on to become lead developer for a related web design firm. In 2006, Chris started his own business (Tactful Ltd) to focus on developing user-driven web applications in Django. Preferring hands-on coding to management, he joined the Lincoln Loop team to retain an active role in developing elegant solutions.
Chris has a loving wife and two energetic young children. Often found socializing with friends over a strategic board game, Chris also enjoys creating music and frequent family outings throughout the scenic countryside of New Zealand.
Nicolas Lara
Developer
Nicolas is a young software engineer who enjoys exploring different aspects of computer science on a daily basis. He loves a challenge and is always looking to interact with the latest technologies and solve hard problems. Lately he has been working mainly with Python as a programming language and Django as a web framework and loves the clean and concise style of both.
When not sitting in front of a computer, Nicolas enjoys traveling, cooking and any activities that involve people and outdoors. He also likes to learn about different topics, from juggling to politics and business to psychology; anything that’s food for thought.
Brian Luft
Senior Developer
Having worked in a variety of environments – rapidly growing startup, web hosting, eCommerce, search marketing – Brian has had a chance to interface with many different languages, frameworks, and platforms. The decision to focus on open source technologies a few years back was a crucial step toward career bliss. Contributing for a while as a prolific forum member and platform evangelist for the Prado framework helped cement the value of how working together and sharing information can benefit both the individual and the group. Unfortunately the specific companies Brian worked for always treated Python like the girlfriend your parents draw the wrong conclusions about, but he kept the affair going over the years and now with Lincoln Loop the two are happily together on a full-time basis.
As a serial enthusiast, Brian is often absorbing various tech-related feeds, learning about different ways to apply technology, and lurking on mail lists. Free from the overhead of office life, he is now able to seriously pursue his own projects which mostly revolve around internet radio and digital media. When away from the warm glow of the monitor you’ll find him mountain biking, skiing, traveling, debating politics, enjoying music, taking your money at poker or watching a Laker game. Brian is thankful to have his wife of several years and enjoys living in Claremont, CA.
Yann Malet
Engineer
Also known as yml, you can usually find Yann hanging around the Pinax and other Django-related IRC channels. He contributes to a number of open source apps in the Django ecosystem including django-survey, django-schedule and the soon to be announced django-geotagging.
Prior to his involvement in the Django community, Yann focused on Product Lifecycle Management systems (PLM) for several large industries as a PLM> consultant for Dassault Systémes. These days, Yann enjoys a more agile career free from red tape, delivering creative and efficient software in a lean development environment.
Currently residing in Guadeloupe, Yann enjoys diving, running and traveling in the Caribbean.
Vlada Macek
Engineer, System Administrator
During his software engineering studies at Czech Technical University in Prague, Vlada’s love of things simple, straightforward and elegant attracted him to UNIX and led him towards a career as a full-time system administrator. Upon discovering Python, however, he found a creative outlet for his technical skills and began shifting his career path from sysadmin to developer. He was immediately attracted to Django not only for its clean, concise and reusable code, but also its friendly and vibrant user community. Currently, he specializes in back-end and system programming in both Python and C.
Beyond the computer, Vlada enjoys time spent with his family and energetic young daughter in Liberec, Czech Republic.
Marco Louro
Developer
A versatile web developer, Marco likes to explore every aspect of web development, but focuses mostly on front-end development. Before joining Lincoln Loop he worked in a digital agency for some of the most popular and well known brands in Portugal. Mostly self-taught, he is currently finishing an Informatics degree and using some of his free time to dig deeper into user experience design.
Marco currently lives with his girlfriend in the Portugal, and they both enjoy taking short travel vacations. Apart from traveling, he also likes cooking (mainly Italian cuisine), reading and Photography.
