ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ben Forta is Macromedia Inc.'s Senior Technical Evangelist, and has over two decades of experience in the computer industry in product development, support, training, and marketing. Ben is the author of the best-selling ColdFusion book of all time, Macromedia ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit, and its sequel, Advanced Macromedia ColdFusion Application Development, as well as books on SQL, JavaServer Pages, Windows development, Regular Expressions, WAP, and more. Over ½ million Ben Forta books have been printed in more than a dozen languages worldwide. Ben co-authored the official Macromedia ColdFusion training material, as well as the certification tests and Macromedia Press study guides for those tests. He writes regular columns on ColdFusion and Internet development, and now spends a considerable amount of time lecturing and speaking on application development worldwide. Ben welcomes your e-mail at [e-mail] and invites you to visit his web site at http://forta.com/ and his blog at http://forta.com/blog.

Dain Anderson has worked in web development for over 8 years, focusing primarily in ColdFusion. Currently working in Chapel Hill at Terra Dotta, LLC., Dain specializes in building LMS and LCMS (Learning Content Management System) software for colleges across the globe. When he's not at his computer, Dain can usually be found at (or near) a pool hall, striving to perfect his game of Pocket Billiards.

Brian Baxter is founder of Umbratia, a technology services firm. He is an integrations, development technologies, and network applications expert. Before Umbratia, he consulted on many enterprise-scale Web projects, leading data integration and international, collaborative development teams. Brian came to the Web world in the early 90s through the Entertainment industry, developing artificial intelligence modules for action games, designing multimedia Web sites for independent film companies, and creating Web-based animated shorts. In his free time, he can be found writing and hiking.

Jeffrey Bouley is the founder of Strikefish, Inc. in Orlando, Florida. He is a certified ColdFusion developer and a former Macromedia Consultant. He has worked with organizations such as NASA, Accenture, HUD, NY MTA, Travelers and Williams-Sonoma providing software architecture and development solutions in ColdFusion, Java, .NET, COM, XML, SQL Server, and Oracle Integration.

Adam Churvis is a database and scalability specialist with over twenty years of software industry experience in many languages and database platforms. He is the founder and President of Productivity Enhancement, a full-service consulting, training, load testing, and commercial software development firm which is entering its nineteenth year in business. Productivity Enhancement is also the parent company of ColdFusionTraining.com. Adam is the principal author of the book "The ColdFusion MX Bible" from Wiley, and has served both as President and as a board member of the Atlanta ColdFusion User Group, and he enjoys speaking at other CFUGs as well. Adam is a member of Team Macromedia. Adam has a wife whom he worships, three children, three cats, and lots and lots of computers. He can be reached at [e-mail].

David Churvis is a software development specialist who got his start in object oriented programming at the age of 8. He has worked in HyperCard, SuperCard, FutureBasic, CFML, VTML/WIZML, Transact/SQL, PL/SQL, Delphi, C++, C#, JavaScript, VBScript, and DHTML. David is Vice President of Development for Productivity Enhancement, and is the chief programmer behind the CommerceBlocks line of modular ColdFusion development tools; LoRCAT, the Load Reduction and Concentration Analysis Tool for ColdFusion; and Plum, the Practical Lightweight Universal Methodology. David is also a co-author of The ColdFusion MX Bible. David can be reached at [e-mail].

Kenneth Fricklas is a long time internet entrepreneur, activist and writer. He has been training newbie developers in ColdFusion technologies for over 5 years, and has been using ColdFusion since its first commercially available version. Ken's past careers include DJ, musician, and chef, and he's currently in an improvisational comedy troupe.

Paul Hastings, who after nearly 20 years of IT work is now a perfectly fossilized geologist, is CTO at Sustainable GIS, a consulting firm specializing in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, ColdFusion Internet and Intranet applications for the environment and natural resource markets, and of course ColdFusion globalization. Paul is based in Bangkok, Thailand, but says that's not nearly as exciting as it sounds. He can be reached at [e-mail]

Samuel Neff is a Senior Software Engineer with B-Line Express in Columbia, Maryland where he works on consulting contracts for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Education Association, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, Macromedia and others. Sam also works on B-Line's commercial products including the Clinical Skills System, B-Line Charting Components, and BLDoc source-code documenter. Besides his professional work Sam is also an active member of the ColdFusion and Flash communities as a Team Macromedia Volunteer for ColdFusion, participating in the Macromedia online forums, writing for print and online magazines, speaking at local user groups as well as regional and national conferences, and operating a web log at http://www.rewindlife.com. Sam can be reached at [e-mail].

Sarge Sargent is a Senior Product Support Engineer for Breeze, Contribute Publishing Services, ColdFusion, and JRun with Macromedia's Server Product Support. His key areas of focus are security, Application and Session-management, LDAP integration, and scalability. Sarge first started developing secured ColdFusion applications as the technical lead for the Department of Defense's GCSS-Web/Portal projecta secured intranet integrating ColdFusion and Java technologies to deliver real-time information to soldiers in the theatre. As the former ColdFusion Practice Manager for Macromedia Consulting Services, he has helped several sites implement optimized applications including customized security and session-management configurations. A Certified ColdFusion developer and MCSE, Sarge has also served as Contributor and Technical Editor or Reviewer for several other ColdFusion books. He has also written for Sys-Con's ColdFusion Developers' Journal and is ColdFusion Technical Editor for Sys-Con's MX Developers' Journal. Sarge continues to share his opinion on his blog at www.sargeway.com/blog.

Robi Sen is currently the vice president of Department13 LLC an IT services company focusing on Fortune 1000 corporations and government organizations. Robi spends most of his time focusing on developing large enterprise scale applications and has spoken extensively on the topics of Enterprise Application Integration and Service Oriented Architectures. Robi has also been a long-time contributor to the ColdFusion community and organized the first-ever ColdFusion User Conference back in 1998. Since then he has continued to speak and write about ColdFusion, Java, XML, and Web Services.

After studying engineering at Newcastle University, Australia Lucas Sherwood quickly realized that it was not for him and the 'new wave' of the internet was really the way to go. He freelanced for a few months before settling down with a systems integration company, Balanced IT Services in Sydney . It was not long before the extravert surfaced in Lucas and he was presenting a user groups and conferences of one sort of another. It was while he was presenting at one of these events that he was spotted by Allaire and asked to join their Australian team through their distributor (at the time they were so small they didn't even have an office in Australia). After moving to London, Lucas is now constantly traveling across Europe and Africa helping out Macromedia's customers by keeping them on the right track. In his spare time, he is an avid photographer and builds ColdFusion based websites while sitting on planes.

Jeff Tapper is the Chief Technologist for Tapper.net Consulting. He has been developing internet based applications since 1995, for a myriad of clients including Toys R Us, IBM, Allaire, Dow Jones, American Express, M&T Bank, Verizon, and Allied Office Supplies, among others. As a Macromedia Instructor, he is currently certified to teach all of Macromedia's courses on Flex, ColdFusion and Flash development. Jeff has worked as author and technical editor for several books on technologies including Flash and ColdFusion, including "Object Oriented Programming with ActionScript 2.0", and "Dynamic Publishing with ColdFusion MX". He is also a frequent speaker at Macromedia Development Conferences and user groups. Jeff formed Tapper.net Consulting to focus on developing Rich Internet Applications and empowering clients through mentoring. Jeff is pleased to be collaborating with Ben Forta for the third time.