Kathy has been interested in learning theory since her days as a game designer (she wrote games for Virgin, MGM, and Amblin’). She developed much of the Head First format while teaching New Media Authoring for UCLA Extension’s Entertainment Studies program. More recently, she’s been a master trainer for Sun Microsystems, teaching Sun’s Java instructors how to teach the latest Java technologies, and a lead developer of several of Sun’s Java programmer and developer certification exams. Together with Bert Bates, she has been actively using the concepts in Head First Java to teach hundreds of trainers, developers and even non-programmers. She is also the founder of one of the largest Java community websites in the world, javaranch.com, and the Creating Passionate Users blog.
Along with this book, Kathy co-authored Head First Servlets, Head First EJB, and Head First Design Patterns.
In her spare time she enjoys her new Icelandic horse, skiing, running, and the speed of light.
Bert is a software developer and architect, but a decade-long stint in artificial intelligence drove his interest in learning theory and technology-based training. He’s been teaching programming to clients ever since. Recently, he’s been a member of the development team for several of Sun’s Java Certification exams.
He spent the first decade of his software career travelling the world to help broadcast clients like Radio New Zealand, the Weather Channel, and the Arts & Entertainment Network (A & E). One of his all-time favorite projects was building a full rail system simulation for Union Pacific Railroad.
Bert is a hopelessly addicted Go player, and has been working on a Go program for way too long. He’s a fair guitar player, now trying his hand at banjo, and likes to spend time skiing, running, and trying to train (or learn from) his Icelandic horse Andi.
Bert co-authored the same books as Kathy, and is hard at work on the next batch of books (check the blog for updates).
You can sometimes catch him on the IGS Go server (under the login jackStraw).
Although Kathy and Bert try to answer as much email as they can, the volume of mail and their travel schedule makes that difficult. The best (quickest) way to get technical help with the book is at the very active Java beginners forum at javaranch.com.
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