Toby Zerner
Toby Jordan Zerner (born April 1993) is a web developer and junior doctor from South Australia. He is most well known for co-developing esoTalk along with his brother Simon from early 2008 until 2010. Toby also started the Flarum forum software, which later merged with FluxBB.
Toby is currently working on eMedici, a web app for Australian medical students to take mock exams and emulate patient encounters.
Early life
Toby Jordan Zerner was born on April 1993 at Calvary Adelaide Hospital in South Australia, the fourth child of Marvin Kelford Zerner and Louanne Margaret Ebert. According to Toby, he grew up playing video games with his brother Simon, who was 4 years older than him.
Education
Toby attended Adelaide High School between 2007 and 2011. In April 2011, Toby took a gap year between graduating from high school and attending university "to save up some money." While little is known about Toby's undergraduate years, it is presumed that he attended undergraduate medical school between 2012 and 2016. In 2017, Toby Zerner received the Adelaide Medical Students' Foundation (AMSF) Recognition Award "for his enormous contribution to the AMSS website over the years." Toby graduated from Adelaide Medical School in April 2019.
Forum software
Beginning in early 2008, the esoTalk forum software was developed by Simon alongside Toby. Over a half part of the original code was written by Simon, but when Simon died in mid-2009, Toby continued the development. After Simon's death, Toby took a break from working on esoTalk and the pace of development became notably sluggish, however esoTalk continued to receive another beta release on 10 October. On June 15 2010, Toby discussed "rethinking every part of the software", and this ultimately led to a complete re-write of the forum software that took over a year and led to a decline of outside interest in the project.
In October 2015, Toby wrote at great length about the Flarum forum software he tried (and failed) to turn into a Kickstarter, referencing Simon's death and the mock-ups for "esoTalk 2.0" in the Flarum Story. At this point, the Flarum project had already merged with FluxBB, and Franz Liedke (FluxBB developer) was part of the Flarum team.
