Evan Henshaw-Plath Keynote Speaker

Evan Henshaw-Plath is a technologist who explores the intersection of product, engineering, and the political systems in which they exist. His passion is in the space of new emerging start-ups and making the world a better place through civic technology projects.

Evan has led product and engineering teams on companies ranging from his own self funded start-ups through every stage of venture capital and at large fortune 500 companies. From 2004-06 he was the first employee, lead developer and architect in building Odeo’s Ruby on Rails web application platform, a breakthrough in lowering the barriers of entry to programming. Odeo is best known as the company which created Twitter; as such, Evan is well-placed to tell the story of how – through learning from failures, pivoting to open innovation and experimentation – Twitter came to be.

In 2007 Evan became the lead web developer and hacker at Yahoo Brickhouse where he was the architect of FireEagle – the first Ruby on Rails application to be launched at Yahoo! He funded Cubox in 2008, the premier Latin American agile Ruby on Rails consultancy that Neo Innovation – a creative agency that builds digital products for businesses – acquired in 2012. Evan joined Neo that year and became Chief Technology Officer (CTO), a position which he held until 2014.

In the NGO space, Evan helped found and grow the Indymedia network, an independent and alternative group of media activists and organisations that offers grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues. He co-founded his latest venture, Crafted Code, in 2014.