In a 10-year-career with nonprofits and technology, Joel Burton has served in critical roles as Director of Information Systems several organizations, including Planned Parenthood of Maryland and the Support Center of Washington. He has designed system networks, information systems business structures, and managed IT departments.

An early supporter of the use of Open Source software among nonprofits, Joel has been involved as a developer and community organizer for several Open Source projects, including the PostgreSQL database server and the Plone content management system. Joel continues to be an active member of the Plone development community, serving as chair of the documentation group and as a member of the nonprofit Plone Foundation.

As a consultant, Joel focuses on training and system development for knowledge management applications. This is most often in the form of development of web applications and web content management systems for organizations looking to increase their web presence while reducing their staff-effort in maintaining and updating web sites.

Joel is a frequent trainer and a presenter on Open Source topics at conferences, including:

• International Plone Conference (2004, 2005, 2006)

• O'Reilly Open Source Conference (2003, 2004, 2005) 

• O'Reilly European Open Source Conference (2005) 

• PyCon (2003, 2004)EuroPython (2004, 2005)

• Plone North American Symposium (2005 and 2006)
• Vancouver Python Conference (2004 and 2006)