Phondini Partners is a privately-held mobile application design, development and consulting firm headquartered in beautiful Half Moon Bay, California, voted the 7th Happiest Beach Town by Coastal Living Magazine.  The Phondini team has decades of experience in a variety of fields including mobile computing dating back to the Palm.  Meet the founding members of our team.

Joe Falcone, CEO & Founder   

Joe graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a BA in Computer Science. He also attended the University of California Education Abroad Program at Westfield College of the University of London. While working at Hewlett-Packard Labs, Joe earned his MS in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University (and currently sits on the board of the Stanford Coastside Club). His industry experience includes stints at Digital Equipment, Data General, Kronos and Borland. He was SVP of Engineering and CTO both at Centura/Gupta and ePocrates, where he led development of the most popular mobile medical application. He is the volunteeer technology advisor for local non-profit Coastside Hope and has served in local government. Joe resides in Half Moon Bay in a solar-powered house with an outdoor Siberian forest cat named Brewser.

Kon Lovett, CTO   

Kon is a long-time Mac user, graduate of the University of San Francisco, and contributor to the Chicken Scheme (it’s a dialect of LISP) open source project. Kon is intrigued with the application of modern software development methods (patterns, components, MVC) to mobile software development, and has developed our Ruby on Rails support infrastructure. He has long experience with project management technology, helping develop several generations of project management systems for Projectronix, Microplanner and Digital Tools. His particular interest is defining, developing, and delivering solutions to meet business requirements. He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and has an occasional interest in anime.

AMY BROOME, COMMUNITY EVENTS   

Amy is a native of Half Moon Bay (well, OK, no one is actually born here) and brings a deep knowledge of what makes communities tick to the events she organizes. She’s a multi-lingual graduate of San Diego State who took off for England, and settled in the Midlands, working for Heinz in international marketing before returning home to raise her family and become a community organizer. After a stint with the Half Moon Bay Coastside Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Center, she set up shop as Events by Amy and the rest is history.

Karri Kaiser, Communications Director   

Karri brings over 30 years of experience in a variety of industries to provide marketing advice and insights to Phondini. She brings a wealth of experience in non-profits and community service which Phondini has applied to their community application development process, particularly for the FishLine and FarmLine apps. Karri also provides human resources support for Phondini. When not advising Phondini, she is the Director of Social Work for Mission Hospice & Home Care of San Mateo. Karri has a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MSW from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.  She resides in Half Moon Bay.

Dan Blick, Database Analyst   

Dan comes to Phondini after working for over 20 years as a Mechanical Engineer in the hard disk drive industry. “What I love about this job,” Dan says, “is that I get to come up with ideas that help lots of different people. I feel like a kid in a candy store.” Dan is another Cal undergrad / Stanford grad member of the Phondini team; he played the tuba in the Cal Marching Band, and still enjoys playing in a band. Dan lived in the Peninsula and South Bay before he and his wife moved to the Coastside in 1997. They have two wonderful sons who attend school in Half Moon Bay. Both are working toward their black belt in sarcasm.

Gayle Bufo, Community Advisor

Gayle Bufo is a recent graduate of the Biology department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Throughout her college career, she pursued her passion for marine biology through coursework and consistent participation in educational outreach events at the Central Coast Aquarium. As a Morro Bay local she is highly concerned with maintaining the diversity and success of small fishing communities in her own backyard yet Gayle also also has a desire to expand her local pursuits to as many fishing communities as possible.  Growing up in over seven states from Alaska to New Jersey and traveling throughout the U. S. has given her the experience necessary to interact with people from all walks of life. This makes Fishline the perfect fit for her enthusiastic interest in marine science, education, diversity, and sustainability.

Julie Thomas, Community Advisor

Julie has been working on environmental issues in the San Luis Obispo County area for many years.  A California native, she lived in Cayucos and Morro Bay throughout her teen years before attending the University of California at Berkeley for a BA in Comparative Literature and BS in Soil Resource Management, then obtaining an MS in Soil Science from the University of California at Davis.  Julie returned to SLO County in 1997 as senior staff scientist at the Camp Roberts environmental office. From 2004-2011, Julie served as Watershed Coordinator for the Coastal San Luis Resource Conservation District (RCD) based in Morro Bay, responsible for funding, permitting and overseeing implementation of soil, water and stream conservation and restoration projects on private agricultural and range lands, as well as on natural resource preserves, throughout coastal San Luis Obispo County.  While with the RCD, Julie worked in coordination with numerous farmers and ranchers, partner organizations, agencies and municipalities in order to successfully complete projects.  Julie and her husband love to spend time kayaking on Morro Bay, scuba dive whenever possible (this past year memorably in Big Sur and Baja), and are learning to sail their 1961 O’day daysailer as members of the Morro Bay Yacht Club.  Julie lives in Morro Bay and currently works as an independent environmental consultant.