A J Mercer first discovered CFML as a DBA when looking for a way to extract data from Informix and display it with links to drill down to detailed information. That was back in 1997 when that was a big deal. After battling with CGI scripts and embedded ESQL in C and Informix 4GL he discovered Cold Fusion Express. This is exactly what he was looking for, and with the added bonus of being able to email reports via a scheduled task!
After a job or two doing all sorts of consultancy development work in various web and desktop languages, he was approached by a firm and asked if he knew anything about ColdFusion. This was in 2000 when being able to spell CFML was enough to get you hired. It was in this job that he developed his web development skills using ASP and CFML. Luckily for him, the development team was big enough to allow for specialization and was allowed to just work on the CFML projects. During web development team meetings his favorite joke when the .Net guys were stuck on something was "Allaire / Macromedia have got a patch for that—it is called ColdFusion". It was also at this job when he first discovered FuseBox and introduced a development standard into the organization.
AJ has backed his career on CFML and has swapped jobs when the pointy-haired bosses started phasing out ColdFusion. He is deeply passionate about CFML and has been actively promoting the product and sharing his knowledge with local user group CFUGWA (of which he was manager for 5 years) and has presented at webDU and cf.Objective(ANZ).
He is one of many who subscribe to the theory that CFML needs a free version to be able to compete with the likes of .NET, PHP, and Ruby. In his spare time, he was on the look out for other CFML engines. In 2006, he discovered Railo—and once again stopped looking. He worked with many Framework developers, such as Farcry CMS, MangoBlog, ColdBox and Mach-II, and the Railo team to get these frameworks running on Railo. Due to his passion and enthusiasm, he was appointed Railo Community Manager for Australia in 2010.
Akbarsait Noormohamed is a passionate Computer programmer and has been a ColdFusion developer since 2004. Akbarsait specializes in using CFML, SQL (MS SQL Server, MySQL, and Oracle), and web technologies for creating web applications and Content Management Systems.
Akbarsait is currently working as a Consultant for MindTree Ltd in Chennai India. His experience includes building web applications and intranet systems for Travel and Transportation, Healthcare, and ERP domains. He loves troubleshooting and solving problems in CFML engines. He has always had a keen interest in improving web performance.
He also manages the Chennai's ColdFusion User Group in India and he is an Adobe Community Champion for ColdFusion. He currently holds a B.E in Computer Science and Engineering and Diploma in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bharathidasan University. You can follow him on his blog at http://www.akbarsait.com or at @Akbarsait on Twitter.
Jamie Krug developed a love for programming early on, writing a BASIC program on a RadioShack TRS-80 to track "little league" baseball batting averages at an early age. He has since then continued to enjoy programming and the learning experiences along the way. Primarily building web applications in CFML since 2001, Jamie is a passionate learner and also geeks around in Java/Groovy, Flex/ActionScript and Linux, among others. He also greatly appreciates and participates in many open source software projects. You'll find Jamie occasionally blogging at http://jamiekrug.com/blog/.