Ross Brunson

At the impressionable age of 14, William “Bo” Rothwell crossed paths with a TRS-80 Micro Computer System (affectionally known as a “Trash 80”). Soon after, the adults responsible for Bo made the mistake of leaving him alone with the TSR-80. He immediately dismantled it and held his first computer class, showing his friends what made this “computer thing” work.

Since that experience, Bo’s passion for understanding how computers work and sharing this knowledge with others has resulting in a rewarding career in IT training. His experience includes Linux, Unix, IT security, devops, and programming languages such as Perl, Python, Tcl, and BASH. He is the founder and lead instructor of One Course Source, an IT training organization.

Ross Brunson has more than 25 years of experience as a Linux and open source trainer, training manager, and technologist and is author of the popular LPIC-1 Exam Cram 2 (Que Publishing) and the Pearson CompTIA Linux+ / LPIC-1 Cert Guide (2014).

Ross is currently a training architect at Linux Academy (www.linuxacademy.com), where he focuses on Linux and open source training, giving helpful talks at the various FLOSS shows, and supporting the amazing Linux Academy community. Ross has very recently been the certification architect at SUSE, where he helped redesign and modernize that program. Just before that, he spent five years as the director of member services for the Linux Professional Institute, where he contributed to placing several LPI courses into the Cisco Networking Academy, conducted dozens of train-the-trainer sessions, and provided sales enablement support for the worldwide Master Affiliate network, spanning more than 100 countries.

Ross holds a number of key IT certifications and is author of several successful technical books and dozens of technical courses for major organizations (including the first U.S. LPI Certification Bootcamps). He is skilled at both contributing to and building community around IT products.

Ross lives in Paradise Valley, Montana, with his family and enjoys traveling far and wide, participating in winter sports, photography, and playing the drums (although not everyone around him appreciates it).