Whil Hentzen
www.hentzenwerke.com
whil -at- hentzenwerke.com
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Whil Hentzen fills the role of 'player-coach' at Hentzenwerke Publishing, a 9 year old Milwaukee-based publisher that specializes in titles covering high-end software development and, more recently, the migration of Windows developers and users to Linux.
Whil started out life as a custom software developer using dBASE II (he still has the original 8 1/2 x 11 grey binder of documentation, much to the chagrin of his kids, who will have to clean out the attic...), and switched to FoxPro in 1990. As an independent Fox developer, he billed over 15,000 hours in the 90's, including the requisite '1,000 hours in 3 months' Y2K emergency gig while recovering from leg surgery.
During that time, he presented more than 70 papers at conferences throughout North America and Europe, edited FoxTalk, Pinnacle Publishing's high end technical journal for 7 years, and hosted the Great Lakes Great Database Workshop since 1994. In 1999, Microsoft contracted with Whil to co-author (along with Ted Roche) the Certification Exam for Visual FoxPro 6.0 Distributed Applications, which has since been taken by thousands of developers to help them achieve Microsoft Certified Solution Developer credentials. He was a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional from 1995 through 2003 for his contributions to the FoxPro development community, and received the first Microsoft Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual FoxPro in 2001.
He started writing in order to develop credentials to bolster his software development career. His first book, Rapid Application Development with FoxPro, showed up in 1993, and seven more have appeared since. He started Hentzenwerke Publishing in 1996 to self-publish a specialized volume on software development, and then began producing Visual FoxPro books when the major publishers abandoned the market in 1998. Sensing the impending acceptance of Linux on the desktop and anticipating a coming demand for custom business applications on those Linux desktops, he turned his attentions to Linux in 2002, and now has eight narrowly targeted Linux and open source books available. Despite being HQ'd in Whil's house, HWP's backlist now numbers close to 40, with some 70 authors and editors worldwide on the payroll.
He currently splits his time between freelance custom development with Visual FoxPro and a host of open source tools such as MySQL, PHP, and Python, and running the publishing side of the biz.
Whil has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, named as the United States' top independent engineering school every year since 1999 by U.S. News & World Report. He served on RHIT's Commission on the Future from 1993 to 1998.
He currently spends his copious amounts of spare time with his five kids and volunteering for the local school district. An avid distance runner, he has logged over 55,000 miles lifetime, including a dozen marathons and a 5K P.R. under 15 minutes. Due to two leg surgerious since 1999, he's had to add biking and swimming to the repertoire, which has had his triathlete friends wiggling their eyebrows, saying, "You know..."
You can reach Whil at whil@hentzenwerke.com or at 414.332.9876.
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