I am a Partner in Heavybit, the leading early stage investor and program for developer tools and infrastructure startups.
I am Founder of Orion Labs, a real-time communication company for frontline workers. Before that I founded Chef and served for 3 years as CEO, then Chief Community Officer, and now continue to serve as an advisor.
I was founding chair of the Velocity Web Performance, & Operations Conference, editor of the Web Operations book, and a contributor to the O’Reilly Radar. These efforts became in what we now call the DevOps movement.
Prior to O’Reilly, I served for 5 years as Amazon.com’s “Master of Disaster” where I was responsible for Website Availability for every website bearing the Amazon brand. I created the GameDay Program, which has been widely adopted by many other leading websites. The knowledge, experiences, and opportunities to make big changes at Amazon set the direction & trajectory of my career.
I am a Volunteer Firefighter and Emergency Manager, and I led a task force deployed in Operation Hurricane Katrina. My experiences in the fire service profoundly influence my work in technology, and I strive to distill my knowledge from these two worlds and apply it in service of both.