About the Team
Mahara is looked after by a crack team of e-learning specialists, mostly heralding from New Zealand. The project is managed by the Mahara Governance Group, which is made up of members from project leaders Flexible Learning Network, lead developers Catalyst IT and other core developers.
Richard Wyles - Project Leader
Richard has helped guide the direction of Mahara since its inception as a Massey University led project starting in 2006. His work with open source in education began in 2003 with the establishment of the New Zealand Open Source Virtual Learning Environment Project, involving a consortium of 20 universities, institutes of technology and polytechnics. This project had a major influence in the dramatic rise of Moodle in New Zealand and beyond. Richard also founded Eduforge that year and has recently focused on Moodle Networks (MNet).
Richard is also director and co-founder of Flexible Learning Network Ltd. Flexible Learning specialises in learning solutions with innovative courseware developments and has a particular focus on the benefits of open source. Flexible Learning is an associate company of Catalyst IT and is located in the same building in Wellington, New Zealand.
Mahara Governance Group
From left to right - Nigel McNie, Don Christie, Nolen Smith, Mike O'Connor, Richard Wyles
Absent: Penny Leach
Core Project Team
Since the year 2000, Richard Wyles has worked closely with Catalyst IT culminating in the formation of an associate company, Flexible Learning Network, in 2006. Flexible Learning is located on the 4th floor of Catalyst House while Nigel, Richard and the other e-learning coders (many who work on Moodle) are located on the 6th floor. It makes it easy to drop by and discuss ideas in person although the team is geographically spread with Penny now located in Switzerland.
Penny Leach
Penny has been working on Mahara since the project started. She came to Mahara after years of Moodle development, and these days manages a happy balance as a core developer of both projects, although she wishes she had more time for Mahara.
Recently, she's been working on Moodle/Mahara integration, but is currently interested in portfolio interoperability and is writing a LEAP implementation for Mahara.
Penny now lives in Switzerland, but retains a fierce identity as a New Zealander.
Nigel McNie - Lead Developer
Nigel is the lead developer of Mahara, having been involved in the project since the beginning in 2006. His entire IT career has been spent developing open source software, with previous achievements including the popular GeSHi syntax highlighter.
When not coding, Nigel can be found out and about on his motorbike, or playing as much football as possible.
Richard Mansfield
After way too many years studying, Richard began life as a web developer at the start of the Mahara project in 2006.
He lives in Wellington and tends to spend his free time riding bicycles.
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