Mike Toppa

I’ve been a web developer, product owner, and IT staff manager for over 20 years, since the days of HTML 1.0. I’m currently Director of Web Development for Hobson & Co. Highlights of my career include:

• Director of a team of 16 web developers, designers, and project managers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
• Senior Engineer at ElectNext, a 7 person start-up
• Lead Engineer of the R&D team for the Ask Jeeves Shopping Advisor
• Lead Developer for the New England Journal of Medicine website at Stanford University’s HighWire Press
• Passionate advocate for Agile and Lean practices: I’ve given dozens of conference and meetup presentations, including Philadelphia’s Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference, the Wharton Web Conference, Villanova University’s Computer Science Colloquia series, and WordCamps in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Nashville.

I have an MA in Government from Georgetown University, where I was ABD in the PhD program. I had a strong focus on statistical methods, conducting original research on American voting behavior and the US Congress.

I also blog about Japan, and occasionally other topics, at toppa.com.

You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, SlideShare, YouTube, and GitHub.