Under 35: The Top Five CMS Executives

Content management systems (CMS) have become a vital part of the internet for storing large media files like photos and videos as well as text content. Although there are many in existence, a few have exploded and are the most popular in the virtual world.

The top content management system executives have either invented the particular system or have improved it to the success it is today. The top five CMS executive list includes:

1. Arje Cahn
2. David Nuescheler
3. Dries Buytaert
4. Eric Barroca
5. Niels Hartvig

Born near Amsterdam, Netherlands, the current Chief Technology Officer of One Hippo is the intelligence behind Hippo CMS. As the co-founder of One Hippo, he offers a product that appeals to end-users and developers. At the University of Amsterdam, Cahn studied Artificial Intelligence and wrote robotics software for motion controlled cameras. Ironically he never finished his degree and instead started his own business.

David Nuescheler is the Chief Technology Officer of Day Software which is a global content management solution company. Born in Basel, Switzerland and studying computer science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, he entered the CMS industry through a transition from Interactive CD-ROW manufacturer to an interactive web agency.

Dries Buytaert is the primary brain behind the popular open source Drupal CMS and is also the Chief Technology Officer of Acquia. He started Drupal accidentally when needing an internal message board that evolved into a content management system. The combination of experimentation and intelligence allowed Drupal to evolve into the success it is today.

At age 28, Eric Barroca is the youngest on the list. As the current CEO of Nuxeo, which is an enterprise open source CMS, he started his career as a freelance developer during the dot com boom. A high school dropout, Barroca joined Nuxeo in 2001 and advanced from sales to VP of operations and finally to CEO.

Finally, Niels Hartvig is the founder of Umbraco which is another open source content management system. Umbraco had over 250,000 downloads in 2009 and hosts 7,000 active community members. Hartvig began his career in 1997 as a web developer before content management systems existed; they were referred to as online administrative systems. He enjoyed the job so much, he never left.

As the youngest CMS executives, they all display high intelligence, good programming skills and excellent business sense. These traits allow the five youngest CMS executives to continue to prosper in this ever-growing industry.