The Essentials:

Name: Graham Knop
Age: 23
Profession/Employer: Senior Diagnostician / Plain Black
Place of Residence: Madison, WI

WebGUI Related Questions:

In what way(s) do you contribute to WebGUI or the WebGUI Community?
I provide support for Plain Black clients, and work on bug fixing in the WebGUI core.

When did you first hear of WebGUI?
In March, 2007, I saw a job listing on jobs.perl.org, which lead me to discover MadMongers, the Madison Perl user group.  At a meeting I met JT who was doing a presentation on WebGUI.

How and when did you get involved in WebGUI?
I was hired by Plain Black shortly after that to deal with support and bugs.

Are you paid to work on WebGUI?
Yes.

How much time do you spend on WebGUI?
I'm working on or with WebGUI full time.

What do you think is still missing from WebGUI or the WebGUI Community?
From a CMS side, the style templates are always going to be one of the hardest parts. WebGUI 7.4 helped a lot with this, but it's always hard to match the look of a site to what you envision in your mind.  Better tools for adjusting the style and layout would help a lot. From a developer side, more robust error handling.

What keeps you motivated to keep working on WebGUI?
Obviously I'm paid to continue working on it, but also because it can easily become whatever you need it to be. Need a CMS? It's just point and click. Need to develop something custom? There's a framework in place that makes it easy, and allows you to integrate it with the rest of your website.

What's WebGUI's killer feature and why?
I think the asset system is very nice. Allowing very different types of content to all interact in a predictable manner.

What's WebGUI's greatest weakness and why?
Server requirements. Many competing products are easy to deploy on any web host you'll find. WebGUI requires complete control of the server to set up, which influences the cost of seting up a server, and also prevents hobbyists from contributing easily.

What makes you work on WebGUI over the competition?
Perl is my favorite language to work with. I work on some projects in my spare time that use PHP, and it is always painful compared to using Perl.

What's your most brilliant WebGUI hack?
Building a data entry system entirely with SQL Reports was pretty fun, if a rather silly way to create such a thing.

Have you attended the WebGUI User's Conference?
Yes

Where do you keep your Gooey doll?
On my coffee maker

Personal Questions:

How would you describe yourself?
I've never been able to come up with an answer to this type of question.

Are you married, dating, or otherwise involved?
Nope

Do you have any kids?
Nope

Do you have any pets?
I share an apartment with two cats, but they aren't mine.

If someone visits your area, what's something they must see or do?
There's plenty to do right around the capital, whether it's the farmer's market, the restaurants, or the bars.

What do you hate?
Hot dogs

What do you love?
Any Indian food

What's the last book you read?
Connie Willis – To Say Nothing of the Dog

What's the last CD/MP3 you bought?
Suzanne Vega – Beauty and Crime

What's the last movie you watched?
The Prestige

You're stuck on a train/plane for 6 hours and bored out of your mind, what do you do to amuse yourself?
Listen to music or sleep

Any last words?
Nope