Bruce A. Tate is a kayaker, mountain biker, and father of two from Austin, Texas. In 2001, he founded the J2Life, LLC independent consultancynow called RapidRedwhere his primary focus is on training, implementation, and consulting for rapid software development using Ruby on Rails. His customers have included FedEx, Great West Life, AutoGas, TheServerSide, and BEA. His 20 years of experience span a 13-year stint at IBM and several leadership positions at various startup companies. He's an international speaker and widely respected author of nine software development sites, including the provocative Beyond Java (woollybugger.info), the Jolt-winning Better, Faster, Lighter Java (woollybugger.info), the management-focused From Java to Ruby (Pragmatic), and the smash hit Bitter Java (Manning).

Curt Hibbs has always been slightly obsessed with new technologies and tracking technology trends. But he will tell you that this is simply because he is lazy, always looking for new methods and technologies to make his work easier and more productive. This tendency led to his discovery of Ruby in 2001 (when it was still relatively unknown outside of Japan) and to his founding several highly successful Ruby open source projects. For most of his professional career, which started in the early 1970s, Curt has been a consultant to well-known companies such as Hewlett Packard, Intuit, Corel, WordStar, Charles Schwab, Vivendi Universal, and more. He has also been a principal in several startups. Curt now works as a Senior Software Engineer for The Boeing Company in St. Louis.