Mark Grand is an Atlanta-based consultant specializing in Distributed Systems Object Oriented Design and Java. He was the architect of the first commercial B2B e-commerce product for the Internet. Prior to his involvement with Java, Mark spent over 11 years as a designer and implementer of 4GLs. His most recent role in that vein was as the architect and project manager for an electronic data interchange product. Mark has worked with a number of MIS organizations in capacities such as Software Architect, Database Architect and Network Designer.
Mark has been involved with object-oriented programming and design since 1982 and is now most widely known for his best-selling patterns books. Mark has taught for U.C. Berkeley, Sun and other organizations. You can find more information about Mark Grand at http://www.markgrand.com/.

Brad Merrill currently works as a software engineer on the ASP.NET team at Microsoft. He’s previously worked as a .NET technology evangelist at Microsoft, and as a software engineer at Sybase and Digital Equipment Corporation. His areas of expertise are in distributed systems, transaction processing, operating systems, and compiler technology. Brad lives in Redmond, Washington, and is an avid tournament chess player and bridge player. He can be reached at zbrad@cybercom.net or http://www.cybercom.net/~zbrad.