Stefano Iacovella is a long-time GIS developer and consultant living in Rome, Italy. He also works as a GIS instructor. He has a PhD in Geology. Being a very curious person, he developed a deep knowledge of IT technologies, mainly focusing on GIS software and related standards. Starting his career as an ESRI employee, he was exposed to and became confident in proprietary GIS software, mainly the ESRI suite of products. In the last 14 years, he has been involved with open source software, integrating it with proprietary software. He loves the open source approach, and really trusts in collaboration and sharing knowledge. He strongly believes in the open source idea and constantly manages to spread it, not only in the GIS sector but also in others. He has been using GeoServer since the release of Version 1.5, configuring, deploying, and hacking it in several projects. Some of the other GFOSS projects he mainly uses and likes are GDAL/OGR, PostGIS, QGIS, and OpenLayers. Prior to this cookbook, Stefano worked on GeoServer Beginner's Guide, which covers the basics of GeoServer. When not playing with maps and geometric shapes, he loves reading about science (mainly physics and math), riding his bike, and having fun with his wife and two daughters, Alice and Luisa. You can contact him at stefano.iacovella@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @iacovellas.