Shashank Tiwari is the Chief Technologist at Saven Technologies (http://www.saventech.com), a technology driven business solutions company headquartered in Chicago, IL. As an experienced software developer and architect, he is adept in a multitude of technologies. He is an expert group member on a number of JCP (Java Community Process) specifications, is an Adobe Flex Champion and an active proponent of Dynamic Language Web Frameworks (Rails and Django). Currently, he passionately builds rich high performance applications and advises many on RIA and SOA adoption. Many of his clients are banking, money management, and financial service companies that he has helped build robust, quantitative, data-intensive, highly interactive, and scalable high performance applications. He writes regularly in many technical magazines, presents in seminars and mentors developers and architects. His book on Advanced Flex 3 is due for release In October 2008. He is an ardent supporter of and contributor to open source software. He lives with his wife and two sons in New York. More information about him can be accessed at his website (http://www.shanky.org).