ELKE NOMINIKAT
Elke Nominikat was born and raised in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. She holds a Master of Arts degree (MA) in German Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Medieval Literature from Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich.
During her time in Munich, she wrote more than two dozen books on computer related topics, many together with her husband, Oliver Bouchard. In 1999 she joined ciao.com as Community Manager, a relatively unknown profession at that time. Two years later, Elke and Oliver left Munich to try their luck in New York City. Despite all the turbulence in the fall of 2001 and the subsequent recession in 2002, they succeeded. She also started blogging on her own site, www.nydiscovery.com, initially in German and since early 2004 in English only.
Since June 2004, Elke has actively shaped the Fotolog.com community. In her role as Head of Community, she has helped grow it from less than 400,000 registered members to today’s member base of 24 million people, and counting. She is also an active member herself: http://www.fotolog.com/nydiscovery
With more than 10 years of professional online experience, Elke constantly explores the many possibilities the Internet has to offer. In her spare time, she's a passionate blogger, food creator and photographer. Together with her husband, she's working on a couple of creative projects evolving around music, film and New Media.
Visit Elke Nominikat's professional profile on LinkedIn.
On Twitter: @elkenyc
OLIVER BOUCHARD
Oliver Bouchard was born in Binghampton, New York and has lived in various places but mostly in Würzburg, Germany, before moving to Munich, Germany to study Electrical Engineering at the renowned Technical University, Munich.
Many years before he held his Master degree in Electrical Engineering in his hands, he was fascinated by computer technology and created his first software programs when he was no older than 12 years old. Oliver has grown up with the technology landscape we know today. Where his first languages were Turbo-Pascal and C/C++, today he makes a living as a Java architect. He is currently exploring Mac and iPhone development in Objective-C as well as new promising languages such as Groovy.
During his time in Munich, Oliver wrote more than two dozens books on topics such as MS Access, Windows NT, and Java. He often teamed up with his wife, Elke Nominikat, to accelerate the writing process. After having succeeded as CTO in a Munich start-up company, and before the 2001 dot com bubble burst, he relocated with Elke to New York to start from scratch again. That's also when he first started blogging, initially in German, now in English, on his site: www.nydiscovery.com.
For the past 4 years, Oliver has been successfully developing large scale Java projects for a large financial institution, while also pursuing his other passions. Together with his wife, he's working on a couple of creative projects evolving around music, photography, film and New Media.
Visit Oliver Bouchard's professional profile on LinkedIn:
On Twitter: @oliverbo
