Obtiva's purpose is to be a role model to the software industry. And the big, hairy, audaciuos goal that we're aiming for is to become the most respected software development company on the planet. Back in 2008, when Kevin, Tyler, and I asked ourselves who we saw as the absolute best role model in our industry, we immediately and unanimously thought of Michael Feathers. Then we all laughed at the impossible propsect of Michael ever wanting to join our little company. Thanks to Obtiva's technical and delivery excellence, marketing, inspired learning, community leadership, business strategy, and recruiting over the last 3 years, we put ourselves in a position to attract Michael to join us. And he was as excited as we were about the opportunity. It's an opportunity for him to be the chief scientist of a company well on the way toward making a mark on our industry. It's an opportunity for all of us to learn from Michael and to meet new people and ideas through his work. And at the bottom line, Michael will help Obtiva's business through boosting our training and coaching opportunities. We believe an Obtiva with Michael is a more profitable Obtiva.
When it comes to hiring "names" in the software development community, we are opportunistic.
Noel joined us when his previous employer had a financial hiccup, and we've been thrilled to have someone who seems to exhale books, leads Studio projects, performs training enthusiastically, speaks prolifically at conferences, and is now overseeing Carl Thuringer's apprenticeship. As with Michael, we believe hiring Noel was in everyone's best interest.
I contacted Bo when he announced that he was looking for work after Dr. Nic left Mocra for Engine Yard. Again, as with Michael, we had put ourselves in a position to attract someone as prolific as Bo to move from Australia to Chicago. He sees our trajectory. And we need Senior Consultants like Bo to lead projects and create opportunities for our more junior people to ramp up in the midst of successful projects.
Charley Baker is our most recent hire. I've known Charley from back in the years that I was involved with the Watir project. After RubyConf last year, Ryan Briones re-connected us with Charley because Charley was an experienced Rubyist in Denver who seemed to match up well with our values. After a few conversations with us, Charley became a rabid Obtiva fan and has been working patiently with us to figure out how he can start developing new business for us in Denver. And then, when we had an opening on our Groupon Denver team, Charley jumped on the opportunity to join us as a Consultant. He intends to help us find our first long-term Denver clients while working with us on Groupon. Charley does not have a strong Rails or web development background, so we had planned on having him sit in our May Rails TDD Boot Camp. But since that was postponed until later this month, we figured we could kill two birds with one stone by having Charley get immersed in Rails and find some potential Denver projects for us by sending him to RailsConf. It's an atypical first week for an Obtivian, but from a delivery standpoint, I need Charley as strong at Rails as soon as possible, and from a Denver standpoint, the sooner we land our first local client, the sooner we can build a sustainable practice there where people aren't having to travel to Chicago every month.
Assuming we don't feel a dip in demand, we're going to continuing hiring Obtivians of all experience levels in the coming years at a responsible, sustainable pace. I'm encouraged that it feels like our culture has only improved as we've grown these last few years. This comes from apprentices growing their craftsmanship, developers with high standards, consultants that communicate effectively, senior consultants that lead by example, and our leadership team being frugal in our decision-making, but decisive when opportunity knocks. The people who join Obtiva are being hired because we firmly believe they are going to add to our culture, our bottom line, and most importantly, help us fulfill our reason for being: to be role models to our industry.
