Richard Monson-Haefel joins Curl as VP of Developer Relations

I'm a bit late on this news but Richard Monson-Haefel, an analyst with the Burton Group, is leaving to join Curl and take the position of VP of Developer Relations. Richard has been tracking RIAs for quite a while so he's a great hire for Curl. Curl has never had a technology problem and a lot of people in the RIA world consider their technology quite good. They still have some hurdles such as good designer-developer workflow and getting plugin penetration but someone like Richard who has been following the space will help bring in more developers and get the word out about the Curl platform. He sounds up to the challenge:

Curl is not as well known as other solutions and so I'm joining the Curl team based on my faith that a great technology can succeed if it has a great community. That's where I hope to make a difference. I plan to engage software developers, the men and women in the IT trenches, in the hope of creating a vibrant community that advocates the use of Curl as a richer internet application technology. If I can show developers what Curl can do, the Curl community will grow naturally.

Richard is a big name in the Enterprise world as a major contributer of OpenEJB. The enterprise is definitely Curl's strong point so it's going to be a great fit. Previously the VP of Development was Marc Orchant, one of my favorite bloggers, who passed away last year.