Gary Ashley Jr. received his start in IT while serving in the United States Marine Corps. Over the past five years, he has been building web applications working for companies such as Sprint, Honeywell, and various state governments. Gary has become an advocate of Apache style license and open source java frameworks. Among his favorite frameworks are Struts, JBoss, JUnit, Digester and Ant. He makes heavy use of Eclipse and Mysql as well.

In 2001, Gary started 3rd Millennium Visions, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in web application development. 3MV partners with small and mid-size IT departments helping them to substantially cut recurring licensing costs by embracing these new open source technologies. 3MV specializes in mentoring staff to increase their skills in these technologies, while building real world web applications. This type of partnership leaves 3MV's customers with the skills required to maintain their systems, and the infrastructure to build future systems.

Gary attributes his success to a strong passion and work ethic, many fabulous books written by the experts, and the loving support of his children and his wife Cindy. While he is not helping his customers, digging through open source code, or scouring the Internet for information, he is coaching soccer or reading with his kids. His favorite pastime is reading fantasy novels to his three children, ages 10, 9, and 5. It is an almost nightly ritual that began in the summer of 2001 with The Hobbit. It has continued with the complete The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the nearly 12 of 14 novels surrounding his children's favorite character, Drizzt Do'Urden, written by R. A. Salvatore.

Having attended the Colorado Software Summit for the last three years, Gary is looking forward to the honor of sharing his experiences with his peers.