Monty Taylor (born 12 August 1975) is a

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

, theatre director and

lighting designer In theatre, a lighting designer (or LD) works with the director, choreographer, set designer, costume designer, and sound designer to create the lighting, atmosphere, and time of day for the production in response to the text while keeping ...

. He has been named one of the most important people in cloud computing and was featured by

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

as part of 'The New Hackers'.

Free software

MySQL

Monty was a Senior Consultant at

MySQL AB MySQL AB was a Swedish software company founded in 1995. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008, Sun was in turn acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010. MySQL AB is the creator of MySQL, a relational database management system, as well as r ...

. While there he was a specialist in High Availability and

MySQL Cluster MySQL Cluster is a technology providing shared-nothing clustering and auto-sharding for the MySQL database management system. It is designed to provide high availability and high throughput with low latency, while allowing for near linear sca ...

which led to the creation of NDB-connector, a set of bindings to the underlying NDB API of MySQL Cluster. After MySQL was acquired by Sun, Monty joined the team working on Drizzle. which subsequently moved to

Rackspace Rackspace Technology, Inc. is an American cloud computing company based in Windcrest, Texas, an inner suburb of San Antonio, Texas. The company also has offices in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Austin, Texas, as well as in Australia, Canada, United ...

after the

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

acquisition of Sun.

OpenStack

While at Rackspace, Monty helped to launch the

OpenStack OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users. The software plat ...

project. He was responsible for the original creation of OpenStack's "Gating" system and is the founder and past PTL of the OpenStack Infra project. He is one of the top overall contributors to OpenStack over the history of the project,. Monty serves as an Individual Member on the OpenStack Foundation board of directors as well as the OpenStack Technical Committee In 2011, Monty moved from Rackspace to HP. There he formed a team that developed TripleO project for deploying OpenStack which went on to become the basis for the first release of HP's Helion OpenStack and Red Hat's RDO In 2013, Monty was honored by the Brazilian Government for his contributions to Free Software. In 2015, Monty moved to IBM to lead the OpenStack Innovation team as a Distinguished Engineer. From 2016 to 2020, Monty was a Member of Technical Staff at

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

working on CI with

Zuul ''Zuul'' is a genus of herbivorous ankylosaurine dinosaur from the Campanian Judith River Formation of Montana. The type species is ''Zuul crurivastator''. It is known from a complete skull and tail, which represents the first ankylosaurin know ...

and

Ansible An ansible is a category of fictional devices or technology capable of near-instantaneous or faster-than-light communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no d ...

Theatre

Monty started his Theatre career as a

stagehand A stagehand is a person who works backstage or behind the scenes in theatres, film, television, or location performance. Their work include setting up the scenery, lights, sound, props, rigging, and special effects for a production. General S ...

at Stewart Theatre in

Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the List of North Carolina county seats, seat of Wake County, North Carolina, Wake County in the United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, second-most ...

while enrolled at

North Carolina State University North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The universit ...

. Monty later transferred to

Abilene Christian University Abilene Christian University (ACU) is a Private university, private Churches of Christ, Christian university in Abilene, Texas. It was founded in 1906 as ''Childers Classical Institute''. ACU is one of the largest private universities in the Sout ...

where he got a BFA in Theatre with a focus on directing. While there, he served as lighting designer and technical director for ACU's Sing Song event. He continued his education in the MFA program at

CalArts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of bot ...

, but left and moved to Seattle in 2005. Monty directed a mildly controversial adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V called King Henry for Ghostlight Theatricals. He was also a frequent collaborator at Taproot Theatre in Seattle, Penfold Theatre in Austin and with The Bengsons on their rock opera Hundred Days in Seattle, New York and San Francisco. In celebration of the first day of legal same-sex marriage in the State of Washington, Monty lit Seattle's City Hall. Monty is an associate artist with Seattle's The Satori Group. He designed the lighting for all of Satori's productions from 2009–2011. During that time, The Satori Group was runner up for the Seattle Times' "Friskiest Fringe Establishment" award in 2009, and won the "Avant-garde Afterglow" award for their production of and adaptation of

George Saunders George Saunders (born December 2, 1958) is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in ''The New Yorker'', '' Harper's'', ''McSweeney's'', and '' GQ''. He also contributed a w ...

' short story "Winky".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Monty American computer programmers Abilene Christian University alumni California Institute of the Arts alumni Living people 1975 births