Self-Introduction: Brian Wisti

[Brian Wisti]

Hi all,

I have been looking at the Bugzilla code - partly because I saw a job
posting, but also because I want to be more useful to the Free/Open
Source Software world at large. That led me to
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bugzilla:Developers:Introduction - so I'm
introducing myself.

* Full legal name: Brian Wisti

* Your IRC nick on irc.mozilla.org: Don't have one just yet.

* City, Country: Seattle (Washington) USA

* Profession or Student status: The titles vary, but the jobs have
been mostly Web dev, and mostly Perl.

* Company, School, or other affiliation: Currently working for
McKesson, a medical technology company

* What do you want to help out with?

My plan was to start by going through the "Good Intro Bugs" and
picking some particularly low-hanging fruit to familiarize with the
process. Maybe "Move JS code out of bug/edit.html.tmpl"
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=566331>

* Historical qualifications

** What other technical projects have you worked on in the past?

I have not contributed significantly to any major open source
projects. Since I do Perl so much at work, a lot of the free time play
has been exploring other languages like Ruby, Python, and recently
JavaScript. Oh - I did add Markdown formatting to posts in Diaspora
<https://joindiaspora.com/>, a feature which was widely loved and
hated. So there's that. My major personal project at the moment is a
Ruby on Rails floor management application for a local day shelter
<https://github.com/brianwisti/marysplace-rails>. It helps staff track
client checkins, chores, incentive points, disciplinary flags, and
whatever else is requested by staff members. Thanks to Twitter
Bootstrap, I was able to develop the interface in such a way that it
is useful on staff smartphones.

Perl is still my most comfortable language, despite all that Ruby in
the paragraph above.

** What level and type of computer skills do you have?

I would describe myself as comfortable with FOSS development in
general and Perl in particular. I've been living on Linux (or a full
screen iTerm on OS X) for a while, writing Perl for pay for most of
that time.

** What other skills do you have that might be applicable? User
interface design, other so-called soft skills (people skills), etc.

Definitely not a UX guy, though I have been able to fake it when
working closely with my users.

I can write tutorial material. Spent some time working on a Parrot PIR
tutorial a few years back when I started exploring Perl 6, and those
pages still get a little traffic
<http://randomgeekery.org/pages/geekery/parrot/learn/index.html>.

** Anything else you'd like to say.

Just hoping that this long and rambling email isn't overkill for
saying "hey all, I would like to help out."

Kind Regards,
Brian Wisti
http://randomgeekery.org