Danny has his PhD from the University of Michigan, studying computational game theory, and previously was a research scientist at Yahoo, working on incentive systems. This makes him a (self-proclaimed-but-he's-kinda-serious) Expert on Akrasia. He likes transfinite set theory, mechanism design, and chasing bikes on his skates.
Bethany (Soule) is a Master of Science by authority of Columbia University (in CS and Machine Learning), and our local Ruby on Rails expert. Aside from building Beeminder she's also into lifting heavy things, riding her bicycle as fast as she can, and climbing stairs competitively. She speaks publicly about her crazy Quantified Self life-hackery and sources say she's pretty nice.
Mary Renaud, Dept. of Treasury
Hours: countless (literally)
Mary has a background in analytic philosophy from Brown University, with part of her research focusing on moral responsibility, the philosophy of action, and the truth conditions for claims about future actions. She was a user of the site for 6 years before joining the team, and is into gamification, behavioural economics, and repeatedly falling off of a windsurfing rig.
Andrew P. Brett, iOS
Hours: countless (literally)
Andy is an itinerant gentleman farmer, engineer, and philosopher. He has run a marathon on every continent, including a 100k ultramarathon through the Blue Mountains of Australia during which he did not lose control of his bodily functions even once. He loves trains and enjoys making things out of trees.
Adam hails from that strange northern country where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. He's been a long-time Beeminder fan, and in addition to a day job in engineering design, and running his own open source hardware company, Wayne and Layne, he's now helping out with our Android app. Which means Beeminder is really lucky to have him. He spends his free time baking tasty looking things, wiping noses and tickling toeses of his cuter-than-average children, and DMing D&D; campaigns. The 'D' is for 'Dire'.
Uluç is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science of Middle East Technical University, in Ankara, Turkey. His research interests also include robot programming architectures with formal properties as well as physically realistic simulation systems and embedded systems. Aside from some Very Serious computer science, e.g., building robots that can climb walls (I'm pretty sure that's true), he also works on the Beeminder Android app, and is a great ballroom dancer.
Nicky breathes books and raises rabbits. Also they are consummately crafty, beguilingly British, and eat university degrees like candy (3 and counting!). Like Alys, Nicky works for both Habitica and Beeminder, mostly helping with support, and in Beeminder's case, wrangling other support workerbees. Nicky's superhero name is Inbox Zero. (RIP Breakfast Bun, also pictured)
Simone is our weekend helper and is currently studying law. She's turned insomnia into an art, and spends her many waking hours reading, playing video games, watching sci-fi and writing, when she's not studying. She is Nicky's younger sister, and took a risk in asking Nicky to write this blurb. It worked out okay.
Nathan is the creator of TaskRatchet, and a key member of the Beeminder community since 2018. He even created the Beeminder community Discord! He’s lived all over the country, including a brief stay in Portland (aka Beeminder HQ). He’s in Michigan now, working hard and hustling his side gigs (the latest being a prognosticating project tracker) like a true millennial.
After some decades of noodling in IT and management, Clive finds himself once again in full minion status, slowly earning his black-and-yellow stripes as a Beeminder support workerbee. Amongst other curious career highlights, he was once granted a patent in predictive algorithms for self-service banking. Nowadays, he takes what comfort he can in astrophotography, data science, python, meditation, and philosophy. Occasionally, one of his cats takes pity on him and brings him a mouse.
Philip walks on both sides of the strategy fence, both technical and business-oriented. As an enterprise architect, he sits between IT and the rest of the business, like a kind of strategic interpreter. As a mentor, he helps entrepreneurs think more clearly about their priorities and aspirations. As a speaker, he delights audiences by finding new perspectives on familiar topics. And as a flying trapeze "board monkey", he spends his summers encouraging people to jump. If you squint just right, it's all the same thing.
Alice Harris aka Alys is a secret agent minus the secrecy. She's not only a hardcore fan of both Habitica and Beeminder, but also works for both them and us. At Habitica she's an admin and moderator and programmer. At Beeminder she helps answer support emails and hacks on the Beeminder + Habitica autodata integration. Sources say she lives in Australia.
David Yang, Advisor
Hours: countless (literally)
David has a BS from University of Illinois and has previously worked at BrightWire, Gilt Groupe, RecycleBank, Yahoo, and Deloitte on web technology. He met Dan while at Yahoo where they created an internal prediction market and has used Beeminder for everything from losing weight to writing code. He loves sitting in front of his three monitors, biking on 9W, and hacking on cool projects. He is probably trying to finish one up right now if he could only find a way to keep himself on task... P.S. While we weren't looking he founded the most prestigious coding bootcamp in the world, Fullstack Academy.
Patrick Jordan, Advisor
Hours: countless (literally)
Dr. Patrick Jordan is a marketplace and agent designer with expertise in modeling and reasoning about complex strategic environments through theory and experimentation. He has experience in designing automated and mix-initiative systems based on principles of decision theory, game theory, optimization, economic theory, and artificial intelligence.
