Katie is an electronics engineer and mother of two. She got interested in electronics from her brother's robot magazines (which he had little interest in), and went on to study Electronics and Programming at A-level and university. Since leaving university, she has worked in the industry doing design, fault finding and repair, and compliance and testing.

In her spare time she enjoys doing a variety of crafts, especially sewing, and frequently makes her own clothes and bags.

Katie volunteers as a STEM ambassador and runs a Code Club at a local primary school, teaching 9 to 11 year olds to code and do basic electronics. She also helps out at local events, such as Cornwall Tech Jams, meant for anyone interested in learning more about programming and electronics, and TECgirls, which run events in the local area where girls can explore coding, robotics, games, and digital making in a welcoming and supportive environment. TECgirls also produces a quarterly magazine for girls age 6 through 12 to download, full of inspiration and activities.

Since high school, I skipped around trying to find my place in an ever-changing world. Radio and TV, my high school sweethearts, were too formatted and homogenous—the heart and soul sucked out of them by a decade of corporate consolidation. I turned to my second love, aviation, and I trained as a helicopter pilot. My natural inclination toward systems gave me an edge—especially when learning radio navigation—but I never stopped building. I used my piloting skills to help NASA develop machine vision algorithms for unmanned spacecraft. I pressed for the University System of Georgia to adopt Free and Open Source Software as a cost-saving measure (a proposal that was ultimately doomed when federal grant monies were used to purchase iMacs and Windows 7 licenses for them). I designed and built specialized intrusion detection and surveillance equipment for law enforcement. Eventually, I circled back to video production—utilizing this new platform called “YouTube” and honing my skills by creating tutorial videos.

Today, I teach courses STEM in areas such as basic electronics and drone operation. I sit on the board for a hacker/maker convention in southern California. I work with a nonprofit that repurposes old computers for scientific research. I make videos about my different projects. And, on occasion, I find the time to surf.

Hi, my name is Dave Ploeger. That's okay, umlauts are tough. I'm not a David. You might have heard of me as davedarko, maybe not. Yes that is in reference to that movie with the man in a bunny suit. Like any good movie, it's set in the eighties and is about time travel!

How did I get here? Back when I started studying informatics I read this "little" tech blog. They wrote up one hardware hack a day and I was fascinated how people made (consumer) electronics do new things. Up to that point I only dabbled with LEDs, but I soon bought my first USBASP programmer and got into programming AVRs. The first time I got featured on that "little" tech blog with an AVR project was an amazing feeling. It all escalated quickly and now I'm sitting in a room that is dedicated for making things and filming my endeavors, which lead me to the Hack-Like-Heck contest and finally here!

In my day job I'm developing, supporting and maintaining a point-of-sale system for water-skiing and wake-boarding parks - while also doing some hardware bits and 3D designs along the way. When I'm not busy working on projects after hours, I'm probably on the streets of Berlin playing Pokemon GO. Yes, people really still play that, here's my trainer code: 1013 8744 3543. I acquired a lot of handhelds over the years - but weirdly don't really play any of them, I just like consoles for the technical aspect. My favorite has to be the Game Boy pocket in the Japanese "classic color" edition.