Bruce Tate is a father, kayaker, author and independent consultant in Austin, Tx. He worked for 13 years at IBM, in roles ranging from a database systems programmer to Java consultant. He left IBM to work for several startups in roles ranging from director to CTO. He now is building his own consulting practice, with emphasis on lightweight development in Java and Ruby, and persistence strategies. He is the author of nine books, including Rails Up and Running, From Java to Ruby, Beyond Java, the best selling Bitter series, the Jolt-winning Better, Faster, Lighter Java, and the Spring Developer's Notebook.

David Geary is the president of Clarity Training, Inc. (corewebdevelopment.com), where he teaches developers to implement web applications using JavaServer Faces and the Google Web Toolkit.

A prominent author, speaker, and consultant, David holds a unique qualification as a Java expert: He wrote the best-selling books on both Java component frameworks: Swing and JavaServer Faces (JSF). David's Graphic Java Swing was one of the best-selling Java books of all-time and Core JSF, which David wrote with Cay Horstman, is the best-selling book on JavaServer Faces.

David was one of a handful of experts on the JSF 1.0 Expert Group (EG) that actively defined the standard Java-based web application framework, and he's currently helping to define the next version of JSF on the JSF 2.0 EG.

Besides serving on the JSF and JSTL Expert Groups, David has contributed to open-source projects and co-authored Sun's Web Developer Certification Exam. He invented the Struts Template library which was the precursor to Tiles, a popular framework for composing web pages from JSP fragments, was the 2nd Struts committer and contributed to Shale.

A regular on the NFJS tour, David also speaks at other conferences such as JavaOne and JavaPolis. David has taught at Java University and was twice voted a JavaOne rock star, for presentations in 2005 and 2007.

Mark Fisher is a Senior Software Engineer with SpringSource and lead of the Spring Integration product. As a core developer for the Spring Framework, he has played a central role in developing the annotation-based configuration features of Spring 2.5. He has also provided consulting and training services for clients across numerous industries throughout North America including several fortune 500 companies.

In addition to the "No Fluff, Just Stuff" symposium tour, Mark speaks regularly at conferences such as The Spring Experience and SpringOne. He has also presented at Java User Groups throughout the United States on various Spring-related topics.

Mark Richards is a Director and Sr. Solutions Architect at Collaborative Consulting, LLC, a Boston-based Business and Architecture Consulting Firm, where he is involved in the architecture, design, and implementation of Service Oriented Architectures in J2EE and other technologies. He has been involved in the software industry since 1984, and has significant experience and expertise in J2EE architecture and development, Object-oriented design and development, and systems integration. Mark served as the President of the Boston Java User Group in 1997 and 1998, and the President of the New England Java Users Group from 1999 thru 2003. Mark is currently working on the 2nd edition of the "Java Message Service" book from O'Reilly. He is also the author of "Java Transaction Design Strategies", contributing author of "NFJS Anthology Volume 1", contributing author of "NFJS Anthology Volume 2", and contributing author of the upcoming "97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know" book from O'Reilly. Mark has many architect and developer certification, including ones from IBM. Sun, The Open Group, and BEA. He is a regular conference speaker at the No Fluff Just Stuff Symposium Series and speaks at other conferences and user groups around the country. When he is not working Mark can usually be found hiking with his wife and two daughters in the White Mountains or along the Appalachian Trail.

Mike is a software developer and small business owner (www.cambridgeweb.ie) specializing in Web2.0 websites and custom software development. Mike heads up the OrlandoJUG (www.orlandoJUG.org ), GatorJUG (www.gatorJUG.org), and just co-founded the (drumroll) West African Java User Group (www.senejug.com). He tech edited the new book "RSS and Atom in Action", by Dave Johnson www.manning.com/dmjohnson. He loves to blog (www.mikelevin.net) and also produces a popular podcast called Swampcast ( www.swampcast.com). You can reach him at mike at swampcast dot com.

Neal Ford is an Application Architect for ThoughtWorks. He is an architect, designer, and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, and video/DVD presentations. Neal is also the author of Developing with Delphi: Object-Oriented Techniques (Prentice Hall PTR, 1996), JBuilder 3 Unleashed (SAMS Publishing, 1999), and Art of Java Web Development (Manning, 2003). His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Object Pascal, C++, and C. Neal’s primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 30 developers’ conferences worldwide.

Scott Davis is an internationally recognized author and speaker. He is passionate about open source solutions and agile development. He has worked on a variety of Java platforms, from J2EE to J2SE to J2ME (sometimes all on the same project).

Scott's books include Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java, GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications, The Google Maps API, and JBoss At Work.

Scott is the Editor in Chief of aboutGroovy.com, a news and information website that tracks the latest developments in Groovy and Grails. He also writes a regular column for IBM DeveloperWorks -- Mastering Grails.

Scott is a frequent presenter at national conferences (such as No Fluff, Just Stuff) and local user groups. He was the president of the Denver Java Users Group in 2003 when it was voted one of the top-ten JUGs in North America. After a quick move north, he is currently active in the leadership of the Boulder Java Users Group. Keep up with him at http://www.davisworld.org.

Ted Neward is an independent consultant specializing in high-scale enterprise systems, working with clients ranging in size from Fortune 500 corporations to small 20-person shops. He speaks on the conference circuit, including the No Fluff Just Stuff Symposium tour, discussing Java, .NET and XML service technologies, focusing on Java-.NET interoperability. He has written several widely-recognized books in both the Java and .NET space, including the recently-released "Effective Enterprise Java". He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, two sons, four video-game consoles, thousands of books (on programming and otherwise), and eight PCs.