The Dev Team is a rather eccentric collection of individuals. To hold together such a team requires a particular kind of person. John is that person. He is the bridge between the real world, and the bizarre reality in which the team operates. At first glance he appears well adjusted, with a liking for sports, a passion for reading, a girlfriend and a nice house in the suburbs.

Look closer however, and this appearance of normality is simply a veneer. Next to his soccer trophy is his 2008 reversing champion trophy. A very fitting trophy for a very backwards man. His wooly sweaters, personal library, and unapologetic flatulence are traits more appropriate for a granddad than a 20-something. He even started using his skating knee pads to protect his knees while gardening.

Then there is his addiction. Almost every day a little white package arrives on his desk. Some days there are two or three. No one likes being around John if it’s been too long since he got his last delivery, and the kicked-puppy look on his face when the mail woman passes with nothing for him is a sight to behold. We’re still not sure if any of this is related to him dressing up in lycra every Thursday and prancing around the office like a very clumsy, hairy, gymnast.

With one foot in the normal and the other firmly planted in the peculiar, John is the silly string that holds the team together. Just don’t accuse him of having used the word synergy - he will vehemently deny it.

Ryan Allen, “Creator of FlashDen”, is a compulsive programmer. If you like using Envato’s marketplaces, you can thank him cos it’s his baby. He’s always full of new ideas. In fact, if there’s a better way of doing anything, he’s thought of it and is sitting on the domain right now.

Ryan takes a very unique approach to life. He likes to watch dev meetings from the shadows, perched on a windowsill like Batman. He’s fascinated by anything that can modify your voice for under $5, uses Ride of the Valkyries as his ‘deploy music’ and invents shop names in his spare time! He’s a dark horse at a greyhound meet. Guaranteed to succeed, but never by the book.

On more than one occasion, he’s threatened to run away and travel the world. We’re taking bets on how many lampposts he passes before running back to his home-away-from-home, The OpenHub. Nevertheless, it’s forced us to contemplate Envato without the guy and we don’t like the idea. If anyone else knows another Ryan, who’s alright at haki-sack and could refactor for Australia, we promise to give him a good home and feed him as many mini-skittles as he can fit in his mouth at one time.

Ryan owns a black Kawasaki Ninja which he secretly calls ‘Lua’. It’s a very nice bike. Don’t tell Lua, but Ryan’s gonna upgrade to an even newer model the instant he gets off his restrictions.

Oh, and Ryan’s crazy. Did I mention that? Yeah, he’s nuts. Check out his tumblelog (http://tumble.yeahnah.org) for numerous examples.

Clinton Forbes has been a big baby professionally for the last 11 years. He routinely cries and stamps his feet and wails for his mummy. Everyone on the team thinks he’s such a big baby they always buy him lolly pops. He lives in a house with his wife and two dogs and two cats and about three hundred computers. His favourite computer is the one that makes noises of farm animals.

James “Punchy Irish” is the only Irish developer here at Envato. He came over to Australia 3 and a half years ago and since then has been involved in a number of software developer positions, making substantial donations to Melbourne’s hospitality industry (mainly focused towards the bar) and showing the locals how to dress during winter.

James is currently learning how to walk again after breaking his leg quite severely whilst participating in the extreme event of crossing the road however the path to recovery is almost complete….I think.

Before James was working at Envato he did his fair share of traveling around the planet, his favorite places include Luang Prabang, Bangkok, Paris, Rome and London which is probably why he is convinced that he works with people who dress like children.

Miami Vice is James all time favorite movie.

Erin is a reformed PHP programmer and the youngest member of the Envato dev team. Despite his first, middle and last names all being girl’s names, he is very much male. Some say that he looks like Matt Damon, but we try not to hold that against him.

Being but a child, he obviously suffers from a lack of wisdom and general knowledge. However, Erin never lets this lack of knowledge prevent him from arguing vigorously on any topic - ranging from quantum physics to macroeconomic policy in sub-Saharan Africa. In his high-school debating team, he successfully argued that cheese companies are part of a cheese cartel and that they are gradually making their cheeses less tasty in a conspiracy to force consumers to buy more expensive vintage cheeses.

His caustic personality aside, Erin gets more work done than the rest of the development team combined. Of course only a very tiny portion of his huge output is actually usable. Over time we hope to convince him that our requirements cannot be met by simply copying random Ruby snippets from tutorial sites into our code-base, deploying the changes and hoping for the best. Granted, this approach does work on occasion.

Girl’s name, Matt Damon looks, gargantuan ego, haphazard coding- standards; these all seem like negative points. In contrast to these points, Erin is the fastest cyclist, strongest rock-climber and most accomplished urban-golf player in the whole company. It is up to Envato to harness these seemingly irrelevant skills to take full advantage of the Bad Boy of Ruby on Rails, Erin Darcy Francis.

Stu is our front end developer; someone we thought that was much cooler than the rest of the team. That was until we discovered he had a level 46 whats-a-ma-thingo on World of Warcraft.

Initial signs were good. He dresses much better than the rest of us. He has a nicer haircut. Spends his weekends surfing at either Ocean Grove or Anglesea. Can be found in many photos on his Facebook profile with attractive members of the opposite sex.

But.

Seriously. A level 46 rogue.

When not back stabbing wizards and such in Azeroth he’s pretty handy with CSS and javascript. Aside from occasionally (OK, it was just once) resetting half the styles on the marketplace with a poorly placed cascade his work is rock solid, good looking, and standards compliant.

He’s an Aries, looks like Mr. Sheffield from the Nanny, enjoys a kebab every now and then, and would be hard pressed to choose a favourite text editor.

Lucas, as far as anyone can tell, does exactly three things - coding, brewing beer, and scuba diving. By a strange coincidence, all three produce the same amount of zen-like calm, thorough confusion and overwhelming nausea, albeit in a different order. He joined the team shortly before Movember last year and quickly established himself as the finest moustache-grower any of us had ever met. And despite looking like a cross between Angry Anderson and Merv Hughes (no mean feat) picked up and ran with the codebase like a pro.

His output is somewhat hindered by his proximity to Clinton, but we don’t hold that against him. Clinton does, of course, often remind him that his name sounds like both of ‘puke’ and ‘mucus’. Thankfully Lucas hasn’t taken this to heart, and instead chooses to quietly produce quality code in order to make us all look bad.

But then, he uses VI, so who _really_ looks bad?