Interview with Mitch Pirtle on Large Scale Joomla Websites

Tell us a little bit about yourself

I'm a longtime supporter of the Joomla project, having begun my role as contributor back in the Mambo days in early 2003. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person that managed to bulldoze their way onto the core team :-) I was deeply involved in the efforts to rebrand as Open Source Matters and then Joomla; I also have the unique distinction as being the "John Hancock" of the project, as I was the only one physically present for the initial signing of incorporation documents for OSM. I'm not officially part of the project at present, but of course still an active promoter and supporter of the project. I'm also a contributor to MongoDB and getting involved with the Lithium PHP framework, and am a huge fan of emerging technologies. I am an unapologetic, unabashed FOSS homer.

Work-wise, I'm CTO at Totsy, a private sale website specialized in retailing cool and unique products for moms and their young children.

I'm a family man, so outside Joomla (and technology/career in general) I prefer to spend my time with my wife and kids. I also coach soccer (go Brooklyn Patriots!) and gaelic football (go Brooklyn Shamrocks!), and am super excited to be riding my skateboard again. I'm writing a couple books, which is startlingly difficult and time consuming.