I'm a South African with 20 years in programming and IT -- over twelve of them in the USA -- who has only recently discovered Open Source. Now I'm an evangelist. I've been doing Drupal less than a year and PHP for a couple of years. My past experience helps me immensely in many ways, but is a hindrance in others as I worked with proprietary software on giant systems. I'm adapting quite nicely and loving the Portland lifestyle and Tech groups (I only moved here about 2 years ago).
I'm big on helping others. I have helped run many conventions in the past and managed to get myself involved running DrupalCampPDX 2008.