Bio

Biography

This is my "official" biography. There are three versions on this page: A long version, a short version, and a mini version. There are also different sized photos at the bottom.

Founder / Chief Technology Officer, Tock

Long version

Brian Fitzpatrick is Founder and CTO of Tock, a company that is working to fundamentally change the way the hospitality industry creates and manage bookings.

Brian started Google's Chicago engineering office in 2005, and founded and led Google's Transparency Engineering team, which uses data to help protect free expression and free speech on the web. He also founded and led Google's Data Liberation Front, a team that systematically works to make it easy for users to move their data both to and from Google (e.g. via Google Takeout). He served as both thought leader and internal advisor for Google's open data efforts and has previously led the Google Code and The Google Affiliate Network teams.

Prior to joining Google, Brian was a senior software engineer on the version control team at CollabNet, working on Subversion, cvs2svn, and CVS. He has also worked at Apple Computer as a senior engineer in their professional services division, developing both client and web applications for Apple's largest corporate customers.

Brian first started contributing to open source software in 1998 and was a core Subversion developer from 2000 to 2005 as well as the lead developer of the cvs2svn utility. He was nominated as a member of the Apache Software Foundation in 2002 and spent two years as the ASF's VP of Public Relations. Brian has written several books, numerous articles, and given many presentations on a wide variety of subjects from open data to version control to software development. He is the co-author of "Debugging Teams: Better Productivity Through Collaboration," "Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others," "Version Control with Subversion" (now in its second edition), and chapters for "Software Engineering at Google," "Unix in a Nutshell" and "Linux in a Nutshell."

Brian has an A.B. in Classics from Loyola University Chicago with a major in Latin, a minor in Greek, and a concentration in Fine Arts and Ceramics. Despite growing up in New Orleans and working for Silicon Valley companies for most of his career, he decided years ago that Chicago was his home and stubbornly refuses to move to California.
Other affiliations

Co-Founded ORD Camp, an invitation-only unconference in Chicago, in 2009.

Named one of Chicago's Top 40 under 40 by Crain's Chicago Business

Member of the John Felice Rome Center Advisory Board (Rome, Italy)

Member, The Apache Software Foundation

Member of the Illinois Tech Computer Science Department Advisory Board

Member of the Loyola University Chicago Computer Science Program Advisory Committee

Sometime Member of the Genomic Data Commons advisory board at the University of Chicago

Sometime Member of the Museum of Science and Industry's Fast Forward advisory board

Sometime Member of the Goodman Theatre Innovation Forum

Sometime member of the John Felice Rome Center Alumni Board

Sometime member of the FIRST Illinois board

Sometime member of the 1871 selection committee

Board member and Committer Emeritus, Subversion Version Control Project

Committer Emeritus, cvs2svn CVS to Subversion Converter Project

Committer Emeritus, Apache Portable Runtime Project

Short version

Brian Fitzpatrick is Founder and CTO of Tock.

Brian started Google's Chicago engineering office in 2005 and led several of Google's global engineering efforts, including the Data Liberation Front, and Transparency Engineering. He also served as internal advisor for Google's open data efforts, having previously led the Google Code and Google Affiliate Network teams. Prior to joining Google, Brian worked as an engineer at CollabNet, Apple, and a local Chicago development shop.

Brian first started contributing to open source software in 1998 and was a core Subversion developer from 2000 to 2005 as well as the lead developer of the cvs2svn utility. He is a member of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and former VP of Public Relations for the ASF. Brian has written numerous articles and given dozens of presentations, including co-writing "Debugging Teams: Better Productivity Through Collaboration," "Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others," "Version Control with Subversion" (now in its second edition), and chapters for "Software Engineering at Google," "Unix in a Nutshell" and "Linux in a Nutshell."

Brian has an A.B. in Classics from Loyola University Chicago with a major in Latin, a minor in Greek, and a concentration in Fine Arts and Ceramics. Brian resides in Chicago.

Mini version

Brian Fitzpatrick is Founder and CTO of Tock, and he started Google's Chicago engineering office in 2005. An open source contributor for over 13 years, Brian was the engineering manager for several Google products, and is a member of the Apache Software Foundation, a former engineer at Apple and CollabNet, a Subversion developer, a author of several books, and a resident of Chicago

Photos

Sizes:

Informal Bio

I'm Fitz
I founded and work at Tock.
I used to work at Google.
I used to work at Apple.
I used to work at Collabnet.
I restored my 99 year-old Arts and Crafts American Foursquare house.
I live in Chicago.
I used to live in Rome.
I grew up in New Orleans.
I refuse to move to Silicon Valley.
I've worked on open source software on and off for 16 years.
I'm a Subversion author, but I haven't worked on it since 2006.
I use Mercurial and Git now.
I wrote cvs2svn, which was one of the hardest problems I ever solved.
I founded and led Google's Data Liberation Front.
I led Google's Transparency Engineering Team.
I used to travel too much.
I am not a werewolf.
I am just a simple villager, although frequently a moderator.
I have a website.
I have a twitter.
I have a email address.
That is all.