As we all know, February is Black History Month. It’s a month where we honor those who have made an impact on American culture for equal rights, those who have invented, those who have a helped others and those who have inspired everyone to be the best they can be, not only as a person of color but as a human.
As someone in the technology/web/social space, I often travel and attend various events in the industry and notice a huge lack of diversity, and when it comes to getting attention from mainstream media/tech blogs it’s almost impossible. That’s why I’m starting 28 Days of Diversity on SocialWayne.com. The goal of 28 Days of Diversity is to feature someone new everyday for the month of February for just being awesome in their own right. The list will include some of leaders in the social web space, startups, bloggers, conference organizers, IT professionals and friends not ranked in any particular order. Each post will include a picture, bio, two links from the selected person and this paragraph. So for the next 28 days, come back to visit SocialWayne.com to see who’s on the list. For day 18, I would like to introduce to some and present to others: Marcus Whitney
Website/Product: http://www.moontoast.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MarcusWhitney
Marcus Whitney CTO – Moontoast / CEO – Remarkable Wit
Mr. Whitney currently serves in dual roles as CEO of Remarkable Wit and CTO of Moontoast. Founded in September 2007, Remarkable Wit is a leading open source development company based in Nashville, TN. Remarkable Wit unique business model supports multiple local companies in the area of software development, website development, and creates its own products on an opportunities basis. We support companies that offer users friendly, stylish interfaces that link behind the scenes to industrial strength platforms that quietly and efficiently generate income.
As CTO at Moontoast, a “Social Commerce Network” launched in December 2009, Mr. Whitney leads product development and also engages with customers to design and execute marketing and merchandising strategies that best leverage the features of the Moontoast platform.
In addition to his current duties, Mr. Whitney is spearheading a new movement via his thought leadership relationships in the Open Source community called Enterprise LAMP. The movement is being introduced through a flagship event in November called the Enterprise LAMP Summit, which will feature industry leaders such as Red Hat Linux CIO, Lee Congdon and Assurion CTO, Robert “R0ml” Lefkowitz.
Prior to Remarkable Wit, Mr. Whitney was recruited in September, 2003 to email marketing firm Emma.
Marcus managed the redevelopment of a prototype into a scalable application, using Enterprise LAMP to build a framework similar to Ruby on Rails two years before RoR emerged. To accommodate Emma’s growing client base, which expanded from 250 clients to 10,000 during his four year tenure, Marcus built a mailer capable of sending one million emails per hour and supervised the addition of some 100+ features to the user interface. He rose to partner at Emma in 2004.
Prior to Emma, Mr. Whitney worked for Nashville-based Firesign, Marcus oversaw design, testing and installation of the company’s signature offering, dynamic digital signage that allows scheduled messaging and streaming of real-time data. Debuted at the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Frist Center for the Visual Art, the platform performed with zero downtime.
Recognized as an Open Source thought leader, Mr. Whitney has presented at PHP::Works in Toronto and contributed a column to International PHP magazine. For his Pro: PHP Podcast, which rose to a Top 100 slot among podcasts on iTunes, he interviewed top open source champions, including Andi Gutmans, CTO of Zend, and Rod Smith, Vice President of Emerging Technologies at IBM.
Locally, Marcus established a Nashville PHP Users Group and with colleague Dave Delaney established Nashville’s first BarCamp, a user- generated conference with open, participatory workshop-events for enthusiasts and professionals in design, technology and innovation, new media, digital music and entrepreneurship. The pair also organized PodCamp Nashville, an “unconference” for new media enthusiasts and professionals including bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers and social networkers.
Educated at the University of Virginia and the City University of New York, Marcus Whitney served in his early career as a content programmer for national health learning systems leader HealthStream and a systems architect for Anode, a marketing and branding firm specializing in visual information design and interactive media.
Board Positions:
Nashville Technology Council Advisory Board – Nashville Entrepreneur Center Interim Board Chair: Global Education Center – http://globaleducationcenter.net/
Marcus resides in Nashville, TN with his two sons, Tristan and Ciaran.
Nashville Business Journal:
http://nashville.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2009/05/18/smallb1. html
Read Write Web:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/video_interview_with_venture _tech_firm_founder_on.php
Venture Nashville:
http://www.venturenashville.com/star-backed-nashville-startup- toasts-global-knowledge-cms-250
http://www.venturenashville.com/whitney-nv-techies-should-think- not-just-follow-cms-363
PHP|Architect:
http://www.phparch.com/podcast/index/20091019
Come back tomorrow to see who’s next on the list.
Also check out past entires on http://28daysofdiversity.com
