Scott Davis is the founder of ThirstyHead.com, a training company that specializes in Groovy and Grails training.

Scott published one of the first public websites implemented in Grails in 2006 and has been actively working with the technology ever since. Author of the book Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java and two ongoing IBM developerWorks article series (Mastering Grails and in 2009, Practically Groovy), Scott writes extensively about how Groovy and Grails are the future of Java development.

Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery.

Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.

He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.

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

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. David's Graphic Java Swing was the best-selling Swing book, and is 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 David is currently on the JSF 2 Expert Group, helping to vastly improve JSF in version 2.

Besides serving on the JSF and JSTL Expert Groups, David has contributed to open-source projects and he has written questions for two of Sun's Certification Exams: Web Developer Certification and JavaServer Faces Certification. 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 the Apache Shale project.

David has spoken at more than 100 NFJS symposiums since 2003, and he also speaks at other conferences such as TheServerSide Java Symposium, JavaOne, JavaPolis, and JAOO. David has taught at Java University for the past three years, and is a three-time JavaOne rock star.

Brian Goetz has been a professional software developer for 20 years. He is the author of over 75 articles on software development, and his book, Java Concurrency In Practice, was published in May 2006 by Addison-Wesley. He serves on the JCP Expert Groups for JSRs 166 (concurrency utilities), 107 (caching), and 305 (annotations for safety analysis). He is a frequent presenter at JavaOne, OOPSLA, JavaPolis, SDWest, and the No Fluff Just Stuff Software Symposium Tour. Brian is a Sr. Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems.

Stuart Halloway is the CEO of Relevance, Inc. (www.thinkrelevance.com). With co-founder Justin Gehtland, Stuart helps companies adopt agile, as well as innovative technologies such as Clojure and Ruby on Rails. Stuart is the author of Programming Clojure, Rails for Java Developers, and Component Development for the Java Platform. Prior to founding Relevance, Stuart was the Chief Architect at Near-Time, and the Chief Technical Officer at DevelopMentor.

David teaches and coaches the adoption and improvement of agility as a delivery tool. His work includes helping companies of all sizes all over the world. Sometimes he is pairing with developers and testers, while other times he is helping to invent, evolve and plan the delivery of all types of products and projects. David also spends a great deal of time helping leaders at all levels find ways to pragmatically use agility to foster innovation.

Prior to working as a full time coach, David spent years building software in a variety of domains: digital audio, digital biometrics, medical, financial, retail, and education to name a few. David now leads DevJam, a company composed of agile collaborators. As mentors and practitioners, DevJam focuses on agility as a tool to help people and companies improve their software production skills. DevJam provides seasoned leaders that strive to pragmatically match technology, people, and processes to create better and cooler products in competitive cycles.

Along with teaching and coaching, David participates in conferences around the world. He is the recipient of the Agile Alliance, 2009 Gordon Pask Award. David continuously contributes to books and various publications.

For coaching information, presentations, and more, visit www.devjam.com

Ramnivas Laddad is a SpringSource Principal Enginner. He has over a decade of experience in applying his enterprise Java and aspect-oriented programming (AOP) expertise to middleware, design automation, networking, web application, user interface, and security projects.

Ramnivas Laddad is a well-known expert in enterprise Java, especially in the area of AOP and Spring. He is the author of AspectJ in Action, the best-selling book on AOP and AspectJ that has been lauded by industry experts for its presentation of practical and innovative AOP applications to solve real-world problems. Ramnivas, a Spring framework committer, is also an active presenter at leading industry events such as JavaOne, JavaPolis, No Fluff Just Stuff, SpringOne, Software Development, and has been an active member of both the AspectJ and Spring communities from their beginnings.

Ted Neward is an Architectural Consultant with Neudesic, LLC as well as the Principal with Neward & Associates. He speaks on the conference circuit discussing Java, .NET and XML service technologies, focusing on Java-.NET interoperability, programming languages, and virtual machine technologies. He has written several widely-recognized books in both the Java and .NET space, including the recently- released "Professional F#" and widely-acclaimed "Effective Enterprise Java". He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Dr. Venkat Subramaniam, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with agile practices on their software projects, and speaks frequently at international conferences and user groups. Venkat is also an adjunct faculty and teaches CS courses remotely at the University of Houston. He is author of ".NET Gotchas," coauthor of 2007 Jolt Productivity Award winning "Practices of an Agile Developer," author of "Programming Groovy: Dynamic Productivity for the Java Developer" and "Programming Scala: Tackle Multi-Core Complexity on the Java Virtual Machine" (Pragmatic Bookshelf).

Eitan Suez is an independent software developer based in Austin, Texas. Some of the more visible work Eitan has done includes the open source project 'ashkelon' (sourceforge), a system for Java API documentation management; more recently, the open source framework JMatter (jmatter.org), a framework for constructing rich domain-driven workgroup applications (Java, Swing). Eitan has spoken at various NFJS events in years past, is active with his local JUG, and passionate about the practice of software development.

Bruce Tate is a kayaker, mountain biker, and father of two from Austin, Texas. Currently at RapidRed, his focus is on rapid development and Ruby applications. Bruce was the chief technology officer behind the sites ChangingThePresent.org and ClassWish. His current project is DigtheDirt, a social gardening site. The international speaker has coauthored more than a dozen books including Rails Up and Running, Deploying Rails Applications, Beyond Java, and From Java to Ruby. His firm seeks to improve total application quality through the use of small teams, expressive programming language and agile development practices.

Dave Thomas is recognized internationally as an expert who develops high-quality software--accurate and highly flexible systems. He helped write the now-famous Agile Manifesto, and regularly speak on new ways of producing software. He is the author of six books, including the best selling The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master (Addison-Wesley) and Programming Ruby: A Pragmatic Programmer's Guide (Pragmatic Bookshelf).