Sometimes you simply know when something is right, when a thing or a person is going to fit... or work out perfectly, it's just a matter of taking a deep breath and jumping full force into the abyss and hoping like hell that the tide takes you to where you are meant to be. That's kinda what happened with Ben. 

Ben is awesome. Not just regular, everyday vegemite on hot buttered vogels awesome... but the kind of awesome that takes your breath away and leaves you wondering how the universe "knew" that was what you needed, at that very time, kind of awesome. 

The day we decided to deliver Ben from the depths of web design and drag him kicking and screaming into the clutches of Hail was the best day ever for him, and us. 

Ben leads the development of Hail and keeps the team firmly focussed on the utmost important features and issues at all times. 

Born and raised in Dunedin, Ben's earliest claim to fame was being crowned the tallest baby at Queen Mary Maternity Hospital.

I think we all know deep down inside of us what we are destined to do long before we even step foot into that first classroom at aged 5. It's just that sometimes it takes us 20 years or more before that realization comes crashing down upon us and we are reunited with our life's purpose.

Ben's passion for mathematics and problem solving was evident from a very early age, teaching himself to program in BASIC on a Commodore 64 when he was 6 may have been a subtle move on the universes behalf, nudging him towards what would prove to be an outstanding career. 

Much of Ben's childhood was spent pulling apart broken stereo players and VHS units, ripping out the motors and LEDs and trying to build robots.  Ben continued his learning through textbooks and practice, learning Java, C, Perl, and eventually PHP and JavaScript. Never grasping that this could be a job. 

"I remember being in awe seeing Rasmus Lerdorf present at linux.conf.au in 2006, taking URL suggestions from the audience and running exploits on them. It was around this time that JavaScript started getting interesting for me. New frameworks were coming out which made it a lot easier to build complex frontend interactions. My fascination with JavaScript grew and never really stopped growing" 

Ben then moved through IT tech support, system administration, database administration, hardware and network infrastructure and eventually into BI and solving business problems with web based solutions. Until he made the cleverest decision ever to join Hail. 

Outside of being a developer of awesomeness, Ben enjoys climbing things, all the things. Playing music. And traveling.