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 There are also different sized out-of-date photos at the bottom.

You can also see my resume

Long version

Brian "Fitz" Fitzpatrick is currently enjoying life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Fitz was Founder and CTO of Tock, a company that worked to fundamentally change the way the hospitality industry creates and manage bookings. Tock was acquired by Squarespace in 2021, and by AMEX in 2024.

Fitz 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, Fitz 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.

Fitz 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. Fitz 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."

Fitz 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 spent 31 years in Chicago and only moved to California in the 2020s.

Other affiliations

• Trustee, Loyola University Chicago
• Member, Council of advisors, Vatican Observatory Foundation
• Co-Founder Chasing Wonder, an invitation-only unconference in the San Francisco Bay Area, in 2023.
• 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
• Former Member of the Loyola Rome Advisory Board (Rome, Italy)
• Member Emeritus, The Apache Software Foundation
• Former Member of the Illinois Tech Computer Science Department Advisory Board
• Former Member of the Loyola University Chicago Computer Science Program Advisory Committee
• Former Member of the Genomic Data Commons advisory board at the University of Chicago
• Former Member of the Museum of Science and Industry's Fast Forward advisory board
• Former Member of the Goodman Theatre Innovation Forum
• Former member of the Loyola Rome Alumni Board
• Former member of the FIRST Illinois board
• Former member of the 1871 selection committee
• Former Board member and Committer Emeritus, Apache Subversion Version Control Project
• Committer Emeritus, cvs2svn CVS to Subversion Converter Project
• Committer Emeritus, Apache Portable Runtime Project

Short version

Brian "Fitz" Fitzpatrick was most recently Founder and CTO of Tock.

Fitz 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, Fitz worked as an engineer at CollabNet, Apple, and a local Chicago development shop.

Fitz 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. Fitz 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."

Fitz 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. Fitz resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Mini version

Brian "Fitz" Fitzpatrick was most recently Founder and CTO of Tock, and he started Google's Chicago engineering office in 2005. An open source contributor for over 13 years, Fitz 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 the San Francisco Bay Area

Extremely out-of-date Photos

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