From Brett Porter

I’d like to start by thanking everyone who has been involved in the Maven community over the years, for sticking with it through some of the early development and for holding the development team to a higher standard. Maven is the cumulative work of nearly 40 committers and an even larger number of contributors who’ve taken the time to give feedback, contribute ideas, answer questions, test features, and submit fixes.

Jason van Zyl deserves particular credit and has my constant admiration for having the foresight to start the project and for continuing to stick unwaveringly to his vision throughout its development.

I’d also like to thank Paul Russell and the development team during my time at Fairfax Digital, for trusting my judgment to use Maven on our projects, and without whom I would never have been able to get involved in the project in the first place. Both I and the Maven project owe you all a debt of gratitude.

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to finally write a book about Maven, and to do so with such a number of my talented friends and colleagues. To the authors Jason, Vincent, John and Carlos – congratulations on a job well done. To Natalie Burdick, for her dedication to see this through, despite having all of the least enjoyable tasks of keeping the development on track, doing additional copy editing and organizing its release. To Lisa Malgeri and Elena Renard, for their copy editing, formatting and development of the book’s template, whose work made this book as professional and polished as it is.

I’m very thankful to the team at G2iX for not only sponsoring the development of the book and making it available free of charge, but for the opportunity to work in such a tremendous environment. It is a rare thing to be able to work with such a friendly group of people that are among the brightest in their field, doing what you enjoy and being able to see your our own personal vision realized.

Personally, I’d like to say how much I appreciate all of my family, friends, and those of St Paul’s Anglican church for all of their care, support, help and encouragement in everything that I do.

My most heartfelt thanks and all of my love go to my wife Laura, for loving me as I am despite all my flaws, for her great patience and sacrifice in allowing me to work at all hours from home, and for leaving her native Michigan to live in a bizarre foreign land. I continue to hope that it was for me and not just because of the warmer climate.