About the Organizers

Jason Follas
Treasurer, Board of Directors

Jason is a Sr. Software Engineer for Rocket Mortgage. He has spent the past 25 years delivering software for clients in the manufacturing, engineering, and financial services sectors. He loves the opportunity to teach as well as to learn from others and is a frequent speaker at conferences and user groups. Recently, he earned his private pilot certificate and has a lot of fun flying around and interacting with the General Aviation community.

Alyssa Diaz
Secretary, Board of Directors, Content Co-Chair

Alyssa is a Principal Engineer at Stitch Fix with 20 years of experience developing software. Prior to her current role designing and building in ruby, she taught software development at Dev Bootcamp in Chicago. Before that, she worked primarily in Enterprise Java in Columbus, OH. She has enjoyed mentoring and teaching with various organizations over the years. In her spare time, you can find her making all sorts of things. She works in many mediums (metal, wood, fiber, and glass) and is always hungry to learn more!

Christopher Judd
Content Chair

Christopher Judd is CTO and partner at Manifest Solutions (http://www.manifestcorp.com), an international speaker, Java Champion, an open source evangelist, and the Central Ohio Java Users Group (http://www.cojug.org) leader.  He is an accomplished writer having co-authored Beginning Groovy and Grails (Apress, 2008), Enterprise Java Development on a Budget (Apress, 2003) and Pro Eclipse JST (Apress, 2005) as well as the author of the children’s book “Bearable Moments”.  Based in Columbus Ohio, he has spent over 25 years architecting and developing software for organizations ranging from Fortune 50 companies to start-ups across various industries including insurance, health care, education, retail, government, manufacturing, service, and transportation.  Mr. Judd spends most of his time consulting while continuing to focus on mentoring and training in Java, mobile and related technologies.

Rick Ridgley
Registration/Front Desk/Problem Solver

Rick is an Incident Response Consultant at [Redacted]. While he is the odd one at a developer conference, he has been connected and helping with the CodeMash community for over ten years, keeping up with the latest trends and technologies and helping inspire all to have a passion for security. He also runs the Blue Team Village at Hackers Teaching Hackers. He also enjoys competing in and helping create Capture The Flag events, snowboarding, video games, and generally all things that make blinky lights.

Scott Zischerk
Volunteer Coordinator

Scott has been attending CodeMash since the beginning. He has designed t-shirts, hoodies and signs for CodeMash. He is now the CodeMash volunteer  coordinator. He currently works for Interactive Business Systems, consulting, developing software and managing projects. He primarily develops in the Microsoft stack, but has been doing some mobile projects in PhoneGap lately. He was one of the organizers of the Day of .NET in Ann Arbor and, for a short time, the Vice President of the Ann Arbor .NET User group. He is an avid snowmobiler and woodworker, dabbles in home automation and has built a few MAME arcade cabinets. In his spare time he coaches baseball, football and basketball for his 3 sons.

Melissa Webster
Co-Wrangler of Interns, Prerequisites Cowboy

Melissa is a Senior Mobile Developer for jācapps Solutions in Bingham Farms, Michigan. She graduated from an iOS Development bootcamp at Grand Circus and with an Associates in Computer Science. Melissa has interned at CodeMash since 2016 and in 2020 she was asked to step up and help manage the volunteer tasks. Outside of programming, she is has an extreme addiction to books (mostly fantasy and scifi) and is busy converting a van into a camper for a planned 2-3 year cross-countries (US and Canada) road trip.

Zagg Studios
Photography, Graphic & Web Design

Zagg Studios is based in Akron, Ohio but has clients across the country. It consists of a creative mind (Missy Walko) and a techie (Matthew Hopkins). This dynamic duo started as photographers for CM in 2012, but have picked up designing graphics for the theme, and managing the website.

Christopher Sauer
VP Digital Media

Christopher Sauer is a Web & Windows Developer, husband, father, gamer, Principle Consultant at Improving, and videographer/photographer. He enjoys videography and playing with many forms of technology. He is also an organizer for AnthrOhio and CouchCon Live. Christopher has a passion for making people’s lives better through his code and Live Streams! He is an innovator who loves “playing with code” and believes that making fun, wacky, and unexpected things is a fantastic way to exercise creativity and learn new skills. He enjoys teaching others new skills and learning from them in return.

Amanda Stamper
Communications Lead and Menus

Amanda is responsible for Communications, and she is also responsible for deciding the meal and reception menus. Amanda graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University. She is a mother, Girl Scout leader, and a room mom.

Marissa Flachs
Coordinator of Overflow Hotels and Transportation, Evening Events Coordinator

Marissa Flachs is a Software Developer for Dynatrace. She has a Masters in Computer Science from Michigan Tech up in Houghton MI. She has been a part of multiple volunteer organizations that are aimed at teaching computer science to kids in middle and high school such as Microsoft TEALS and Copper Country Coders. She also loves playing games with her friends and husband such as FFXIV, while also being a huge fan of the Zelda series.

Kristin McGee Villalobos
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chair

Kristin is the Manager of IT Platform, Operations, and Information Security at Quantum Health. She is passionate about DevOps, workplace culture, community-building, and Really Interesting Words. When not at work, she can be found throwing pottery, playing board games, and reading as many books as possible in a human lifetime. Kristin currently resides in Columbus, OH with her husband, children, and Very Good Dogs.

Brian Carnes
Director and Instructor/Speaker – Codemash CAD/3D printing room

Brian is professional creative based out of Dublin Ohio. In addition to to being a lifelong artist, he also worked for over 20 years on various IT support/infrastructure engineering teams. He runs a small studio business as well as working on various freelance and consulting projects involving digital sculpting, emerging technology, gamification, additive manufacturing, and 3D printing! His studio, Sea Dog Game Studios, is a publisher/maker of tabletop games and accessories. He is the game designer, author, and sculptor for “Sailpower: Fun Scale Combat in the Age of Sail,” a tabletop miniature ship combat game first released in 2005. He also is the owner of Valkyrie Pewter, a renaissance and fantasy pewter hand-sculpted and handcrafted jewelry maker sold at retail shops at the Ohio Renaissance Festival and Great Lakes Medieval fair. Brian hopes to be a voice for 3D printing, and agile short run customer reactive manufacturing (Industry 4.0) and empower people of all ages with the tools to bring ideas to life through CAD and 3D printing.

Elizabeth Carnes
Codemash CAD and 3D printing room Coordinator and Logistics director

A resident of Dublin Ohio, Elizabeth is the other half and CFO of Sea Dog Game Studios. She is also a Senior infrastructure support engineer for over 20 years at Nationwide Insurance. She is passionate about all things Disney and travel and is the co-founder of We Take Great Trips, a small travel agency. At Codemash Elizabeth handles logistics and coordination for the CAD and 3D printing room.

Gabrielle Sempf
KidzMash Lead

Wife. Mommy. Business owner. With over 15 years of accounting and process management experience dealing with independent owners, non-profits and fortune 500 companies, as well as 22 plus years being the official geek herder for Bill Sempf and 9 plus years as the geekling herder for their two children, she is supposedly qualified to herd the geekling masses and carry forward the amazing KidzMash tradition. Her spare time wants to be full of blacksmithing, cutting glass bottles, Diablo, and Muay Thai. Mostly it is full of running the business, teaching and raising children, and laundry.​ Gabrielle has been leading KidzMash for the past 5 years.

Robin Deems
KidzMash

Robin is a wife, mommy, and educator dedicated to making education equitable and accessible for all. Robin has been a junior high science teacher, the Education Director for a Residential Youth Treatment Facility, a Naturalist, Newspaper Columnist, and Manager of Education Services with the Center Of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio. She loves camping, cycling, hiking, reading, board- gaming, and gardening. Her current mission has been working with schools to examine the impact of school gardens on wildlife conservation and student perceptions of the natural world around them. Robin lives in Westerville, Ohio, with her husband Andy, their 10 year old twins, Peter and Laura, and their 2 super-pups, Peyton and Mia.

Julie Fuller
KidzMash

I am wife to Russ and Mom to Alex -19, Mackenzie-17 and Andrew-16. I enjoy traveling, Bible study and our home zoo (4 cats, 1 lizard, 1 snake and lots of fish). My family and I have been attending CodeMash since Russ first noticed a little obscure conference at Kalahari in January in its first year. It’s been an annual excuse to pull kids out of school ever since. I have also been a part of Kidzmash since the early days of walking the water park in search of CM widows for get togethers in restaurants and eventually Hangoutz.

Courtney Eaton
KidzMash

Kidzmash attendee since it began and family attendee since year two of Codemash. Kidzmash staff for the last 5+ years. Wife of speaker and attendee, Michael; Mom to two teenagers, Katie and Jacob; Teacher to 4-year-old preschoolers; and finally, friend to many! My philosophy – “Roll with it, there’s a reason for everything!”

Nathan Loding
KidzMash

Nathan is a nerd. He’s always been a geek, dork, or nerd, and probably will always be. He loves solving problems, and technology is the best way to do that. Nathan works professionally as a Senior Consultant for OST, in Grand Rapids, MI, and is the co-founder and lead developer of CareCircle, a patient-centered healthcare product. Outside of work he’s a husband, father, movie lover, and wanna-be writer. Nathan enjoys woodworking and builds his own canoes and kayaks; he hates chores and cleaning up after himself.

Jim Holmes

Jim is a Father.  Husband.  Geek. Veteran. Around 25 years IT experience. Co-author of “Windows Developer Power Tools.” Coffee Roaster.  MVP for C#.  Ex-Chief Cat Herder of the CodeMash Conference. Diabetic. Runner. Liked 5^th grade so much he did it twice. One-time setter, middle blocker, and weakside hitter. Blogger (http://FrazzledDad.com). Big fan of naps.

W. Jason Gilmore

W. Jason Gilmore is a software developer (http://www.wjgilmore.com/) and consultant with more than 15 years of experience helping companies of all sizes build amazing solutions. He is the author of over six books, including the bestselling “Beginning PHP and MySQL, Fourth Edition” and “Easy PHP Websites with the Zend Framework, Second Edition”. Over the years Jason has published more than 300 articles within popular publications such as Developer.com, PHPBuilder.com, JSMag, and Linux Magazine, and instructed hundreds of students in the United States and Europe. He’s recently led the successful development and deployment of a 10,000+ product e-commerce project, and is currently the lead developer of an e-commerce analytics project for a globally recognized publisher. Jason is cofounder of the wildly popular CodeMash Conference (https://codemash.org), the largest multi-day developer event in the Midwest. Away from the keyboard, you’ll often find Jason hunched over a chess board or having fun with DIY electronics.

Rob Gillen

Rob is a member of the Intelligent Computing Research Team within the Computational Data Analytics Group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In his role as a research professional, works alongside domain scientists to deliver solutions to complex problems at a national scale. Prior to coming to ORNL, Rob spent 11 years as a software developer and architect consultant helping companies around the world deploy various technologies in support of the businesses. When he’s not at the lab, he can be found with his family, on his bike, or at a conference talking about cyber security topics.

Greg Huber

Greg has been involved with CodeMash since the beginning- initially as a speaker, and later as an organizer/committee member. Greg started several user groups in the Toledo area (including NWNUG, NWSPUG), is a former Microsoft MVP (ASP.NET),  and has presented at developer and IT Leadership conferences over the years. Professionally, Greg is the IT Director for The Andersons, Inc. and responsible for App Dev, Business Intelligence, and Digital Solutions. He is also involved in the Maker/3d printing community and publishes videos at Greg’s Maker Corner on topics including 3d printing, Laser cutting, and DIY electronics.