William Pietri, the son of a systems analyst and an entrepreneur, started earning his lunch money with a computer at the age of thirteen. In the years since, he has worked in practically every facet of the technical world, from technical support to systems administration to software engineering to user-interface design.

In 1992, a vacation from college turned into an eighteen-month affair starting and running a company that provided hardware, software, and technical support to some of Sydney’s largest magazine publishers, with clients ranging from Australian Police Journal to Playboy. Upon his return to the US in 1994, he helped Apollo Derivatives, a Chicago-based derivatives trading firm, more than double its size, replacing legacy DOS systems with custom object-oriented software and an ocean-spanning TCP/IP network.

Since then he has worked as a freelance developer and consultant, providing software and advice to a variety of organizations, from dot-coms to brick-and-mortar companies to governments.

In his copious free time he is a writer, recently published in IDG’s Internet Secrets, 2^nd Ed., developer.com, and IBM's DeveloperWorks. He occasionally speaks at conferences, most recently presenting a workshop on UI Design as Part of an Agile Process at Agile Universe 2004. He also enjoys doing a variety of pro bono work, including recent efforts for Business for Social Responsibility, the Center For Neighborhood Technology's new site airhead.org, and the Long Now Foundation. He also led the software development for a multi-ton data-driven artwork, the G7 Stock Puppets.

Want to know more about him? See his résumé and some real-life writing samples.