Richard S. Wright, Jr., has been using OpenGL for nearly 10 years, since it first became available on the Windows platform, and teaches OpenGL programming in the game design degree program at Full Sail in Orlando, Florida. Currently, Richard is the president of Starstone Software Systems, Inc., where he develops multimedia simulation software for the PC and Macintosh platforms using OpenGL.

Previously with Real 3D/Lockheed Martin, Richard was a regular OpenGL ARB attendee and contributed to the OpenGL 1.2 specification and conformance tests. Since then, Richard has worked in multidimensional database visualization, game development, medical diagnostic visualization, and astronomical space simulation.

Richard first learned to program in the eighth grade in 1978 on a paper terminal. At age 16, his parents let him buy a computer instead of a car, and he sold his first computer program less than a year later (and it was a graphics program!). When he graduated from high school, his first job was teaching programming and computer literacy for a local consumer education company. He studied electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Louisville's Speed Scientific School and made it halfway through his senior year before his career got the best of him and took him to Florida. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, he now lives with his wife and three children between Orlando and Daytona Beach. When not programming or dodging hurricanes, Richard is an avid amateur astronomer and a Sunday School teacher.

Benjamin Lipchak graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a double major in technical writing and computer science. “Why would anyone with a CS degree want to become a writer?” That was the question asked of him one fateful morning when Benj was interviewing for a tech writing job at Digital Equipment Corporation. Benj's interview took longer than scheduled, and he left that day with job offer in hand to work on the software team responsible for DEC's Alpha Workstation OpenGL drivers.

After Compaq bought DEC and laid off most of the graphics group, Benj quit one Friday and came back the following Monday on a more lucrative contracting basis. Despite his new status, Benj continued his leadership role at Compaq, traveling to customer sites and managing projects related to the PowerStorm UNIX and NT OpenGL drivers. Workstation apps were the primary focus, but GLQuake ran on AlphaStations at speeds never before witnessed.

Benj took a two-year hiatus and founded an image search start-up company during the Internet boom. The Internet bust had Benj begging on hands and knees for his first love, OpenGL, to take him back. And she did, in the form of ATI Research in Marlboro, Massachusetts. Recently, he has been most active in the area of fragment shaders, adding support to the Radeon OpenGL drivers. Benj chaired the OpenGL ARB working group that generated the GL_ARB_fragment_program extension spec, and has participated in ATI's OpenGL Shading Language efforts. In his fleeting spare time, Benj tries to get outdoors for some hiking or kayaking. He also operates an independent record label, Wachusett Records, specializing in solo piano music.