Author Interviews
Colin Moock
Colin Moock is an independent Flash platform expert with a passion for networked creativity and expression. He has been researching, designing, and developing for the Web since 1995. Moock's career started at SoftQuad, Inc. (makers of HoTMetaL PRO), followed by a five-year term at Canadian interactive agency, ICE. Since then, Moock has focused on writing books, speaking at conferences, and researching emerging web technology. Moock's works include ActionScript: The Definitive Guide, ActionScript: The Definitive Guide for Flash MX, Essential ActionScript 2.0, and Essential ActionScript 3.0. He is also the co-creator of Unity, a multiuser client/server development kit. Author of:
- Essential ActionScript 3.0
- Essential ActionScript 2.0
- ActionScript for Flash MX Pocket Reference
- ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide
- ActionScript: The Definitive Guide
Scott L. Bain
Scott Bain is a thirty-year veteran in computer technology, with a background in development, engineering, and design. He has also designed, delivered, and managed training programs for certification and end-user skills, both in traditional classrooms and via distance learning. For the past eight years, Scott has been working for Net Objectives in Puget Sound, teaching courses and consulting on design patterns, refactoring, unit testing, and test-driven development. Along with Net Objectives CEO Alan Shalloway, he has contributed significantly to the integration of design patterns in Agile environments. Scott is a frequent speaker at developer conferences such as JavaOne and SDWest.
Author of Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development.
Wesley J. Chun
Wesley J. Chun currently runs a consulting business specializing in Python software engineering and technical corporate training (www.cyberwebconsulting.com). He has been programming, teaching, and writing since 1980, including more than a decade’s experience with Python. While at Yahoo!, he helped create Yahoo!Mail and Yahoo! People Search using Python. He holds degrees in computer science, mathematics, and music from the University of California.
Author of Core Python Programming, Second Edition and Python Web Development with Django®.
Eric Clayberg
Eric Clayberg is Senior Vice President for Product Development for Instantiations, Inc. Eric is a seasoned software technologist, product developer, entrepreneur, and manager with more than 15 years of commercial software development experience, including seven years of experience with Java and four years with Eclipse. He is the primary author and architect of more than a dozen commercial Java and Smalltalk add-on products, including the popular WindowBuilder Pro, CodePro Studio, and the award-winning VA Assist Enterprise product lines. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from MIT, an MBA from Harvard, and has co-founded two successful software companies.
Co-author of Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins, Second Edition.
Dan Rubel
Dan Rubel is Chief Technology Officer for Instantiations, Inc. He is an entrepreneur and an expert in the design and application of OO technologies with more than 15 years of commercial software development experience, including eight years of experience with Java and four years with Eclipse. He is the primary architect and product manager for several successful commercial products, including JFactor, jKit/GO, and jKit/Grid, and has played key design and leadership roles in other commercial products such as Window-Builder Pro, VA Assist, and CodePro Studio. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from Bucknell and has co-founded a successful company.
Instantiations is an Advanced IBM Business Partner and developer of many commercial add-ons for Eclipse and IBM’s VisualAge and WebSphere product lines. Instantiations is a member of the Eclipse Foundation and a contributor to the Eclipse open source effort with responsibility for the Eclipse Collaboration Tools project known as Koi and joint responsibility for the Eclipse Visual Editor project.
Co-author of Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins, Second Edition.
Mike Cohn
Mike Cohn is the founder Mountain Goat Software, a process and project management consultancy that specializes in helping companies adopt and improve their use of agile processes and techniques. He is the author of Agile Estimating and Planning and User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development. Mike is a founding member of the Agile Alliance and serves on its board of directors. You can reach Mike at mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com.
Author of User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development and Agile Estimating and Planning.
Paul Duvall
Paul Duvall is an independent consultant who helps clients create one-click deployments. He has worked in virtually every role on software projects: developer, project manager, architect and tester. He's been a featured speaker at many leading software conferences. He is the principal author of Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk (Addison-Wesley, 2007; Jolt 2008 Award Winner). He contributed to the UML 2 Toolkit (Wiley, 2003), authors a series for IBM developerWorks called Automation for the people and authored a chapter in the No Fluff Just Stuff Anthology: The 2007 Edition (Pragmatic Programmers, 2007). He is passionate about automating software development and release processes.
Co-author of Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk.
Andrew Glover
Andrew Glover is the President of Stelligent Incorporated and an author for multiple online publications including IBM's developerWorks and Oreilly's ONJava and ONLamp portals.
Co-author of Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk.
Steve Matyas
Stephen M. Matyas III is vice president of AutomateIT, a service branch of 5AM Solutions. He has a varied background in applied software engineering, with much of his professional, hands-on experience being in the areas of enterprise Java and custom software development and services.
Co-author of Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk.
Marc Wandschneider
Marc Wandschneider has worked extensively with open source platforms, and has written an Outlook Express-style email client for Linux using Qt. He travels the globe, consulting as a lead manager for software projects and teams. A graduate of the McGill University School of Computer Science, he spent five years working for Microsoft, where he developed and managed developers on the Visual Basic, Visual J++, and .NET Windows Forms teams.
Author of Core Web Applications Development with PHP and MySQL.
Deborah J. Fisher
Dr. Deborah J. Fisher, PhD is a Visiting Research Professor at the University of New Mexico. Dedicated to group productivity and human motivation, her career has included tenure and an endowed chair position at her current institution, and Directorship of the Engineering Management Program at the University of Houston. She has automated organizational learning for the construction industry, created employee development models for Sandia National Laboratories, and educated generations of professionals along the way. Co-author of Four Secrets to Liking Your Work: You May Not Need to Quit to Get the Job You Want.
Listen to Four Secrets to Liking Your Work by Ed Muzio, Deborah J. Fisher, & Erv Thomas.
Edward G. Muzio
Edward G. Muzio is President and CEO of Group Harmonics and a leader in the application of analytical models to enhance group effectiveness. He has started large organizations and small companies, led global initiatives in technology development and employee recruitment, and published papers ranging from manufacturing strategy to individual skills and productivity. As primary developer of his company’s educational suite, he serves as advisor and educator to workers at all levels in companies worldwide. Co-author of Four Secrets to Liking Your Work: You May Not Need to Quit to Get the Job You Want.
Listen to Four Secrets to Liking Your Work by Ed Muzio, Deborah J. Fisher, & Erv Thomas.
Erv Thomas
Erv Thomas, PE is a Program Manager at Intel Corporation. For the past several years he has been responsible for recruiting, mentoring, and developing the top engineering talent in the world. He has dedicated over 30,000 hours of his time to helping professionals and young adults live up to their full potential at work and in life. Additionally, he has been a design engineer, an educator, and the founding director of a non-profit organization where he has spent the majority of his “non-working” time mentoring teens at risk. Co-author of Four Secrets to Liking Your Work: You May Not Need to Quit to Get the Job You Want.
Listen to Four Secrets to Liking Your Work by Ed Muzio, Deborah J. Fisher, & Erv Thomas.
Raffael Marty
Raffael Marty: As chief security strategist and senior product manager, Raffy is customer advocate and guardian - expert on all things security and log analysis at Splunk. With customers, he uses his skills in data visualization, log management, intrusion detection, and compliance to solve problems and create solutions. Inside Splunk, he is the conduit for customer issues, new ideas and market requirements to the development team. Fully immersed in industry initiatives, standards efforts and activities, Raffy lives and breathes security and visualization. His passion for visualization is evident in the many presentations he gives at conferences around the world. Author of Applied Security Visualization.
Listen to interviews with Raffael:
Scott Kelby
Scott Kelby has been the top-selling computer technology book author worldwide since 2004. He is President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), the trade organization for Adobe Photoshop users. NAPP has more than 60,000 members in 106 countries worldwide. Additionally, Scott is Editor-in-Chief of both Photoshop User and Layers magazines. Scott serves as training director for the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour and is the technical chair of the largest Photoshop gathering, Photoshop World Conference & Expo. Scott is one of the leading seminar instructors in the country today, training thousands of Photoshop users across the country each year. He is also featured in a series of Photoshop training videos. In addition to The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, Down & Dirty Tricks, and the Killer Tips book series, Scott is the also author of The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers, The iPod Book, The Digital Photography Book, and The iPhone Book.
Scott Kelby's The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers was honored with Professional Photographer magazine's highly coveted 2008 Hot One Award. The award winners are featured in the February issue of the magazine.
Press Release: Scott Kelby Is Top-Selling U.S. Computer Book Author for 2007, According to Nielsen BookScan Data
Interview with Scott Kelby (audio).
Bill Hunt
Bill Hunt is the CEO and Founder of Global Strategies International (GSI) and one of the pioneers of search engine marketing, getting his start in 1994. Bill is an internationally recognized search marketing expert, conference speaker, and contributor to numerous marketing journals and books. In his first book, Search Engine Marketing, Inc., Bill shares the tips and techniques he's learned working with numerous large search engine marketing (SEM) projects for clients such as AT&T, IBM, Intel, The Hartford, and Zurich Financial.
GSI specializes in helping Fortune 500 companies develop, implement, and manage their global enterprise search marketing programs. With offices in the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, GSI has the experience to help companies execute their search engine marketing programs "from the inside out."
Check out Bill Hunt and Mike Moran:
Mike Moran
Mike Moran has worked on the Web since its earliest days, in both marketing and technical roles, including eight years at ibm.com, IBM’s customer-facing Web site. In 2008, Mike retired from IBM to pursue speaking, writing, and consulting, including serving as Chief Strategist for the digital communications agency Converseon.
Mike is the author of Do It Wrong Quickly and Search Engine Marketing, Inc., Second Edition, and he writes regular columns on search marketing for Revenue magazine, WebProNews, and Search Engine Guide. He’s a member of the Search Engine Marketing Council of the Direct Marketing Association and a charter member of the DMA’s Interactive Marketing Advisory Board. Mike is a frequent keynote speaker on Internet marketing at events around the world, serves as a Visiting Lecturer to the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and holds an Advanced Certificate in Market Management Practice from the Royal UK Charter Institute of Marketing.
Mike also has a broad technical background, with over 20 years experience in search technology working at IBM Research, Lotus, and other IBM software units. He led the product team that developed the first commercial linguistic search engine in 1989 and has been granted four patents in search and retrieval technology. He led the integration of ibm.com’s site search technologies as well as projects in content management, personalization, and web metrics. Mike led the adoption of search marketing at ibm.com back in 2001 and pioneered product search facilities that dramatically raised conversion rates. He was named an IBM Distinguished Engineer in 2005.
Mike can be reached through his Web site (www.mikemoran.com), which is also the home of his Biznology newsletter and blog.
Check out Bill Hunt and Mike Moran:
Mark Zandi
Author of Financial Shock: A 360° Look at the Subprime Mortgage Implosion, and How to Avoid the Next Financial Crisis.
Dr. Mark Zandi is Chief Economist and co-founder of Moody's Economy.com, an independent subsidiary of Moody's that provides economic research and consulting services to businesses, governments and other institutions. His recent research has included: studying determinants of mortgage foreclosure and personal bankruptcy; analyzing economic impacts of tax and government spending policies; and assessing policy responses to bubbles in asset markets. Zandi holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he did research with Gerard Adams and Nobel Laureate Lawrence Klein; and a B.S. from Wharton. He appears regularly on ABC News, Wall Street Week, CNN, and CNBC.
Check out the official site for Financial Shock at www.financialshock.com.
Listen to Mark Zandi discuss the risky loans behind the meltdown at: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2076.
Joe Casad
Joe Casad is an engineer who has written widely on PC networking and system administration. He has written twelve books on computers and networking, including MCSE Windows NT Server and Workstation Study Guide, MCSE Networking Essentials Training Guide, Windows NT Server 4.0 Professional Reference and Windows 98 Professional Reference. He is the former managing editor of the Network Administrator magazine and currently the Senior Editor of UNIX Review and Technical Editor of SysAdmin magazine. Joe also has a gift of being able to present difficult topics in an understandable manner. Author of Sams Teach Yourself TCP/IP in 24 Hours, 4th Edition.
Can you learn TCP/IP in 24 hours? Hear from Joe Casad on Network World: http://www.networkworld.com/podcasts/cisconews/2008/100608cisconews.html
Jim Stickley
Jim Stickley is CTO and Vice President of TraceSecurity Inc. He was one of the original founders of TraceSecurity and is a renowned security expert. He has been involved in thousands of security services for financial institutions, Fortune 100 corporations, healthcare facilities, legal firms, insurance companies and Government agencies. He has been a security consultant for 20/20, Network Associates, numerous magazines and newspapers and has been featured in Time Magazine, Business Week, Fortune Magazine, New York Times and many other industry specific publications such as PC Magazine and Security Focus. He also has been showcased on NBC's Nightly News, CNN's NewsNight, several CNBC programs including The Big Idea and numerous times on NBC's Today Show. He has physically breeched the security of more than 1,000 facilities nationwide and had access to billions of stolen identities. When not on assignment, he continues to serve as a speaker and has delivered hundreds of speeches at security-related tradeshows, conventions, seminars and forums throughout the U.S. and other countries, covering topics ranging from identity theft to national cyber terrorism.
Author of The Truth About Identity Theft .
Learn how to protect yourself from identity theft.
Hal Abelson
Hal Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and an IEEE Fellow. He has helped drive innovative educational technology initiatives such MIT OpenCourseWare, cofounded Creative Commons and Public Knowledge, and was founding director of the Free Software Foundation. Co-author of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion.
Read the article: BlackBerrys Be Damned: Can You Do Business Without Them?
Ken Ledeen
Ken Ledeen, Chairman/CEO of Nevo Technologies, has served on the boards of numerous technology companies.Co-author of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion.
Read the article: BlackBerrys Be Damned: Can You Do Business Without Them?
Harry Lewis
Harry Lewis, former Dean of Harvard College, is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard. He is author of Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future? He teaches Quantitative Reasoning 48, an innovative Harvard course on information for non-technical, non-mathematically oriented students.
Co-author of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion.
Read the article: BlackBerrys Be Damned: Can You Do Business Without Them?
Meri Williams
Meri Williams is the author of The Principles of Project Management. She spends her days managing projects at a large multimations, and her evenings writing and developing web sites. She writes at Geek Manager, as well as on her personal blog Meri Williams, and recently started Make Me A Speaker!
David Rice
Russ Olsen
Russ Olsen is the author of Design Patterns in Ruby, which applies the concepts from the seminal Gang of Four book on design patterns to the popular Ruby programming language. Design Patterns in Ruby also introduces some new patterns that are specific to Ruby. Russ currently leads a study group on Ruby and writes a popular technology blog, Technology As If People Mattered.
Barry Libert
Barry Libert is the CEO of Shared Insights and the co-author of We are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business. Libert has worked at Arthur Anderson, John Hancock, and McKinsey & Company, and holds an MBA from Colombia University. A prolific author and speaker on the value of information and relationships in business, Libert partnered with fellow McKinsey alum and President and CEO of The Conference Board, Jon Spector, to write this ground-breaking new kind of book about business.
Adam Nathan
Adam Nathan is a senior software development engineer in Microsoft's Developer Division, and the author of many books and articles on .NET topics. His latest book is Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed, one of the first titles to cover Microsoft's exciting new Silverlight technology, which has just been released in the Rough Cuts program.
Andy Oram & Greg Wilson
Andy Oram is an editor at O'Reilly Media specializing in free software and open source technologies. His work for O'Reilly includes the first books ever published commercially in the United States on Linux, and the 2001 title Peer-to-Peer. Andy is also a member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and writes often for the O'Reilly Network and other publications on policy issues related to the Internet and trends affecting technical innovation and its effects on society.
Greg Wilson holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh, and has worked on high-performance scientific computing, data visualization, and computer security. He is the author of Data Crunching (Pragmatic Press, 2005) and Practical Parallel Programming (MIT Press, 1995), and is a contributing editor at Doctor Dobb's Journal, and an assistant professor in Computer Science at the University of Toronto.
Ben Long
Ben Long is a freelance writer who has extensive experience with digital media. Ben has written numerous articles and reviews for publications like MacWEEK, Macworld, and CreativePro.com, where he is a senior editor. Ben has also authored many books on digital photography and digital video, and is widely considered an expert in these fields.
Geertjan Wielenga
Geertjan Wielenga has worked for NetBeans in Prague over the past three years and is one of the authors of Prentice Hall's recently released Rich Client Programming: Plugging into the NetBeans Platform, which released first as a Rough Cut in Safari. Geertjan has extensive experience helping developers learn how to use NetBeans, both as a trainer and a documentation writer for NetBeans. We discussed the value of providing readers with the ability to monitor a work in progress, along with the state of NetBeans in this interview.
Robert Martin
Robert Martin is one of the primary founders of the methodology of Agile programming, and the author of the seminal book on the topic, Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices. Robert instigated the famous meetings at Snowbird in 2001 where Agile programming was defined and the Agile Manifesto was born. Robert teamed up with his son Micah for their latest Agile book, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#, which bring these important development principles to the world of .NET programmers. We spoke recently to Robert and Micah about their experiences writing this book and Agile programming in general.
Micah Martin
Micah Martin works with Object Mentor as a developer, consultant, and mentor on topics ranging from object-oriented principles and patterns to agile software development practices. Micah is the co-creator and lead developer of the open source FitNesse project. He speaks regularly at technical conferences. Micah teamed up with his father Robert for their latest Agile book, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#, which brings these important development principles to the world of .NET programmers. We spoke recently with Micah and Robert about their experiences writing this book and about Agile programming in general.
Preston Gralla
Preston Gralla is the author of Windows Vista in a Nutshell, which was released in December 2006 by O'Reilly Media. Preston is a prolific writer on Windows topics. He's authored over 30 books and countless articles for publications ranging from PC Magazine to the Los Angeles Times. He's a frequent guest on TV and radio shows covering technology, and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. Preston is also the editor of the Windows DevCenter web site. Preston discusses the major improvements, as well as some of the potential pitfalls, of Microsoft's Windows Vista.
Bruce Tate
Bruce Tate co-authored Ruby on Rails: Up and Running, with Curt Hibbs, which was released in August of 2006 by O'Reilly Media. Bruce founded the RapidRed independent consultancy (previously J2Life LLC) where his primary focus is on training, implementation, and consulting for rapid software development using Ruby on Rails.
Curt Hibbs
Curt Hibbs has spent most of his professional career consulting and now works as a Senior Software Engineer for The Boeing Company in St. Louis. Curt has founded several highly successful Ruby open source projects, including Instant Rails. Bruce and Curt explain why Ruby on Rails has taken the web development field by storm.
Benjamin Mako Hill
Benjamin Mako Hill is one of the lead authors of The Official Ubuntu Book, released in August 2006 by Prentice Hall. Mako is a longtime free software developer and advocate. He was part of the founding Ubuntu team and one of the first employees of Canonical, is a member of the Ubuntu Community Council governance board, and is now a graduate student researcher at MIT working on the One Laptop per Child Project. Learn why Ubuntu has rapidly become one of the most popular Linux distributions today, from one of the people who is making it happen.
Jono Bacon
Jono Bacon is an Open Source consultant, speaker, and writer who has been a part of the Linux community since 1998. He is now the Ubuntu Community Manager at Canonical, and one of the lead authors of The Official Ubuntu Book, released in August 2006 by Prentice Hall. Learn why Ubuntu has rapidly become one of the most popular Linux distributions today, from one of the people making it happen.
