Ben Collins-Sussman
Engineering Manager, Google, Inc.

Ben Collins-Sussman is one of the founding developers of the Subversion version control system, and co-authored O’Reilly’s “Version Control with Subversion” book and more recently O’Reilly’s “Team Geek: a Software Developer’s Guide to Working Well with Others.”

Ben co-founded Google’s engineering office in Chicago, ported Subversion to Google’s Bigtable platform, led Google Code’s Project Hosting team, and now manages the engineering team for the Google Affiliate Network. Prior to joining Google, Ben was a senior software engineer on the version control team at CollabNet. He has been an active open source contributor for over twelve years, contributing to projects related to version control and gaming.

Ben collects hobbies which tend to explore the tension between art and science. He has given numerous talks about the social challenges of software development. He writes interactive fiction games and tools, and was the co-winner of the 15th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition. He has co-authored several original musicals and received multiple awards for musical theater composition. He has an Extra-class FCC license for amateur radio, and also spends time learning DSLR photography and playing bluegrass banjo. Ben is a proud native of Chicago, and holds Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Chicago with a major in Mathematics and minor in Linguistics. He still lives in Chicago with his wife, kids, and cats.