Thomas Gratier is a GIS consultant living in Nantes, France, who mainly specializes in web development. He has an MSc degree in geography and urban planning from The Institute Of Alpine Geography of The University of Grenoble. Career-wise, he decided to steer towards more technical work but kept his geospatial passion in mind. He's gained 8 years of geospatial and programming experience, working for public authorities on water and flood risk prevention and management, various private urban consultancies in urban planning and web mapping solutions, and, multinational company CapGemini's GIS Division. He's continued building a stronger knowledge in IT technologies, open source and open data, and both web and geo standards. He does his development work with JavaScript, Pythons and PHP. His favorite libraries and tools for working are GDAL/OGR, PostGIS, QGIS, and OpenLayers, but he also enjoys using OpenStreetMap-related libraries, such as Mapnik or Osm2pgsql. He is an open source advocate, a Charter Member of The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (http://www.osgeo.org)(OSGeo). He gets involved in writing French translations for open source geospatial projects, such as MapServer and Zoo Project. With like-minded professionals, he contributes to weekly geospatial news updates at Geotribu (http://geotribu.net). He currently works as a freelance GIS consultant, providing development, consulting, and training services. More information can be found on his website at Web Geo Data Vore (http://webgeodatavore.com).
Paul Spencer is a software engineer who has worked in the field of open source geospatial software for more than 15 years. He is a strong advocate of open source development and champions its use whenever possible. Paul has architected several successful open source projects and been actively involved in many more. Paul was involved in the early design and development of OpenLayers and continues to be involved as the project evolves. Paul joined DM Solutions Group (DMSG) in 1998, bringing with him advanced software development skills and a strong understanding of the software-development process. In his time with the company, Paul has taken on a leadership role as the CTO and primary architect for DM Solutions Group's web mapping technologies and commercial solutions. Prior to joining DMSG, Paul worked for the Canadian Military, after achieving his master's degree in software engineering from The Royal Military College of Canada.
Erik Hazzard is the author of OpenLayers 2.10 Beginner's Guide, Packt Publishing. He has worked as the lead developer for a GIS-based company, has done contracting work with the design studio, Stamen, and has co-founded two start-ups. Erik is passionate about mapping, game development, and data visualization. In his free time, he enjoys writing and teaching, and can be found at http://vasir.net.