Elliotte Rusty Harold is originally from New Orleans to which he returns periodically in search of a decent bowl of gumbo. However, he currently resides in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn with his wife Beth, dog Shayna, and cat Marjorie (named after his mother-in-law). He's a frequent speaker at industry conferences including Software Development, Dr. Dobb's Architecure & Design World, SD Best Practices, Extreme Markup Languages, and too many user groups to count. His open source projects include the XOM Library for processing XML with Java and the Amateur media player.

W. Scott Means has been a professional software developer since 1988, when he joined Microsoft Corporation at the age of 17. He was one of the original developers of OS/2 1.1 and Windows NT, and did some of the early work on the Microsoft Network for the Microsoft Advanced Technology and Business Development group. Since then he has written software for everything from multiplayer casino games to railroad geometry measurement equipment. For Scott's latest projects and musings on software development, visit his blog at smeans.com.