Star Contributor of the Month – Keith Pierce
For the month of December, we’re showcasing Keith Pierce, a man of many talents, who has contributed to Mifos in all capacities. This time, we’re recognizing him for his Drupal expertise. Keith has been maintaining the face of Mifos, keeping our mifos.org and mifos.com sites running smoothly and securely.
Each month we honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world. This time around we’re recognizing Keith Pierce. Keith, father-in-law to our very own Adam Monsen is a former volunteer, contract, and full-time developer for Mifos. Now he’s volunteering his time to help us in maintaining our websites built on Drupal. In only a couple months time, he’s helped implement a solid and secure development workflow, fixed bugs on the sites, and built out functionality to make the sites more usable for the community. Keith’s continued commitment to Mifos shows that there are many ways you can get involved.
Read on to learn more about Keith!
Keith Pierce – Minneapolis, Minnesota
Brief Bio (in the words of Keith): After several decades teaching math and computer science in college, I left academia for a career in software development. My journey to Mifos passed through several industries — insurance, grocery, and banking — and languages —Smalltalk, VB, Java and finally, PHP. For several years I’ve contributed to the Mifos Java application as a volunteer, contractor, and employee. For several months now I’ve maintained the public face of Mifos — web sites mifos.org and mifos.com based on the Drupal CMS.
Relevant Skills: Java/J2EE/Spring, PHP, Drupal CMS, CSS. Unix flavors, Windows, Mac OS.
Keith’s Impact:
Discovering Mifos: After retiring from the Federal Reserve Bank, I learned of Mifos from Adam Monsen, a developer for the Grameen Technology Center and my son-in-law.
Contributions Made to Date: I’ve fixed many bugs, worked on a prototype data warehouse component for Mifos, re-implemented financial loan calculations, and enhanced holiday-handling features. Lately while maintaining the web sites I’ve fixed bugs, periodically updated its code base, enhanced features, and updated the development workflow.
Current Projects: I will continue to maintain the web sites, and plan for major upgrades such as porting the sites to Drupal 7 and re-theming the sites’ layouts.
Impact on the Poor: I hope that the web sites will allow more people to learn about Mifos and what it can do to alleviate poverty.
What’s Rewarding about Working on Mifos:
“Working with great people; contributing to a project whose goal is to remove poverty.”
Advice for Others in Mifos Community:
“Get involved!”
Fun Facts about Keith:
Favorite Food: It was chocolate (before GERD); now I have to find a substitute craving.
Favorite Open Source Project: Drupal
If Keith Could Travel to One Place in the World: Anywhere near the ocean.
Interesting fact about Keith: My wife and I have raised 10 children, 6 of them adopted.
