We are eleven designers and developers with a passion for making things simple. Our designs are clear and our tools are intuitive. We build exceptional websites and applications that never require training sessions or instruction manuals. We realize that creating content is difficult—managing it shouldn't be.
Working from our South Philadelphia studio are:
Geoff DiMasi leads up P'unk Avenue. He is also a co-founder of Independents Hall, the coworking space in Philadelphia. He was identified as one of 76 Creative Connectors in Philadelphia.
As part of his role as all-around community rabble-rouser he organizes the Junto, co-founded and currently curates Ignite Philly, and has lent a hand in getting events like BarCamp Philly started.
He was a full time Multimedia professor at the University of the Arts for several years and currently serves as an adjunct member of the faculty.
Other community experience includes co-founding the Passyunk Square Civic Association in South Philadelphia, serving on the marketing committee of the board of the Free Library of Philadelphia, and being an artist and board member of Vox Populi, a respected cooperative gallery. He has deep experience in design and communication that go back to his first job out of college with Rolling Stone magazine.
He holds a B.A. from Rutgers College in History and an M.F.A. in Book Arts & Printmaking from The University of the Arts.
Alex Gilbert, P’unk Avenue’s lead developer, is a graduate of The University of Art’s Multimedia program. He has been developing web solutions since 2000. He previously worked at Mobius New Media in Wilmington, Delaware. Alex has been working with the Symfony PHP Web Framework since early 2006 and has developed numerous projects with it.
Rick Banister, a graduate of The University of the Arts Multimedia program, is our lead designer, creating graphic and interface solutions. Before joining P’unk Avenue he worked in interactive advertising then moved to art direction at the Philadelphia agency, Red Tettemer. There he developed campaigns for educational, telecommunications, and tourism clients including Wharton Business School, TimeWarner Cable, Pennsylvania Tourism, and The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation. He has been making things beautiful since 2001.
Tom Boutell is a developer for P’unk Avenue. His background in software development and long experience with the web brings a unique perspective to the team. As the head of Boutell.Com, Inc., Tom created the original WWW FAQ, which continues to be a frequently-consulted “how-to” resource for web developers. At RealNetworks (then Progressive Networks), Tom was instrumental in the creation of RealAudio 1.0, the first streaming audio solution for the web.
In the open source world, he is best known as the author of GD Library, a dynamic graphics code library for websites, now standard in PHP distribution and for originating the PNG project that lead to the creation of the PNG image format. He is currently contributing to the Symfony PHP web framework as part of his work at P’unk Avenue.
He is the author of a book on Windows and Linux Integration published by Sybex and a book on CGI Programming in C and Perl published by Addison- Wesley. He has recently written a number of Facebook and iPhone applications and has expertise in social media programming.
John Benson is P’unk Avenue’s front-end engineer, a hybrid designer and developer. Before joining P'unk Avenue full-time, John co-founded and operated a physical computing & design firm, Educated Guess Work, from 2006-2010. He is also an adjunct lecturer at The University of the Arts. He obtained a BFA in Multimedia from The University of the Arts in 2005 and worked for Design Science designing interactive applications for medical usability studies.
Dan Ordille is one of P’unk Avenue’s developers. He was the lead developer of National Field which is a web based staff and volunteer management application currently in use by the Democratic National Committee. He is a graduate of Rutgers with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Jake Hiller started with P’unk Ave as an intern and joined the team full time as a designer and front-end developer. He graduated from the University of Delaware with a BFA in Visual Communications.
Dana Vachon leads up the customer and client support of our projects and is especially proficient with Apostrophe. She also helps plan our events, and particularly loves being a curator of Ignite Philly. Dana graduated from The College of New Jersey with a BFA in Fine Arts. She migrated to Philadelphia to help manage the coworking space Indy Hall and moved on to customer support and consultation for projects like Beanstalk, Freckle, and Ripit.
Matt Grosse is a member of the development team at P’unk Avenue. After graduating from Rowan University in 2003 with a degree in Computer Science, he continued his work in the web application field. He has worked on numerous web applications including the IndieMerchstore and10bestthings. com. Matt also has a passion for game design and the indie development community. He is a member of the IGDA and started a small game design studio in 2010.
Wes John-Alder is a developer at P'unk Avenue. He graduated from Oberlin College where he studied computer science and digital signal processing. After graduating he thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. He maintained a freelance practice developing a highly customized content management system for The Keewaydin Foundation as well as maintaining an escrow management system for Vertecto. His programming experience ranges from web applications to software synthesizers in programming languages from old-school C to PHP.
Kerry Gilbert is a front end developer/designer at P’unk Avenue. After studying Multimedia at The University of the Arts, Kerry went on to work at Cipher Prime Studios, an interactive design firm in Old City. There, he played the role of content developer for a number of games including Auditorium HD, Fractal and co-created the acclaimed iOS hit, Pulse: Volume One.
