Acknowledgments

First and foremost, my enduring thanks to my current and former students, who continue to inspire, impress, and teach me more than I thought possible. It’s deeply rewarding to see so many former students return to campus as executive speakers and to host visiting students at their own start-ups. Serving as your professor has been my greatest professional privilege, and I am grateful for such an extraordinary opportunity. Keep at it and continue to make us all proud!

Thanks also to the many alumni, parents, and friends of Boston College who have so generously invited me to bring my students to visit with and learn from them. The experiences that you’ve provided to us have been nothing short of astonishing. We were present at the launch of the iPhone. We’ve not only made pilgrimages to Sand Hill Road, but many of our former students were funded and mentored by the VCs we’ve visited with. Name a tech firm making waves and we’ve almost certainly got an alumnus there, and when asked, they’ve uniformly opened their offices to share insight with our students. The East and West Coast leadership of the Boston College Technology Council have played a particularly important role in making this happen. From Bangalore to Boston, Guangzhou to Ghana, Seoul to Silicon Valley, you’ve provided my students with world-class opportunities, enabling us to meet with scores of CEOs, senior executives, partners, and entrepreneurs. You’ve positively impacted lives, shaped careers, and helped make our university stronger. My students and I remain deeply grateful for your commitment and support.

A tremendous thanks to my student research team at Boston College. In particular, the work of Rootul Patel, Kelly Pedersen, Michael Lapointe, Abhinav Arora, Mujtaba Syed, Phil Gill, Xin (Steven) Liu, and Kathie Chang sped things along and helped me fill this project with rich, interesting examples. You have all been so kind to tolerate my constant and unreasonable requests.

I am also deeply grateful to my colleagues at Boston College. My former department chair, Jim Gips, is not only the consummate mentor and educator, as creator of the EagleEyes and CameraMouse project (cameramouse.org) he has given voice to countless people with disabilities worldwide and is the single most impactful researcher that I know. Tremendous thanks, as well, to my current department chair, Rob Fichman, for his unwavering support of this project; to my BC IS Department colleagues Jerry Kane for helping shape the social media section, and Sam Ransbotham for guiding me through the minefield of information security (Jerry and Sam both hold NSF CAREER grants and are MIT Sloan Management Review’s editors for Social Media and Big Data, respectively); to BC’s Mary Cronin, Burcu Bulgurcu, Peter Olivieri, and Jack Spang for suggestions and encouragement; and to the many administrators who have been so supportive of this effort. Allen Li and Marios Kokkodis, welcome to the team! A special thanks to BC Prof. George Wyner, who has provided extraordinary guidance, encouragement, ideas, and friendship, which have kept me motivated on such a high-demand project. I’m so lucky to work with such brilliant and caring faculty. Do know how very much I appreciate you all.

Sincerest thanks, also, to the cofounders of Flat World Knowledge, Jeff Shelstad and Eric Frank, for their leadership and passion in restructuring the textbook industry and for approaching me to be involved with their efforts. Thanks also to Flat World CEO Chris Etesse and the firm’s dynamite team of editorial, marketing, and sales professionals—in particular to Vicki Brentnall, Melissa Yu, Shawn Cook and Micah Chi.

I would also like to thank the following colleagues who so kindly offered their time and comments while reviewing this work:

I’m also grateful to the kindness and insight provided by early adopters of this text. Your comments, encouragement, suggestions, and student feedback were extremely helpful in keeping me focused and motivated on advancing the current edition:

Boston College students Courtney Scrib and Nate Dyer also pointed me to examples I’ve used in this edition, as did ACU student Aaron Andrew. Thanks for thinking of me and for sharing your very useful ideas!

I’ll continue to share what I hope are useful insights via my blog, The Week In Geek (http://www.gallaugher.com), Twitter (@gallaugher), and Google+ (https://plus.google.com/+JohnGallaugher). Do feel free to offer comments, encouragement, ideas, and examples for future versions. I am hugely appreciative of all who continue to share the word about this project with others. Your continued advocacy helps make this model work!

And finally, a thanks to my family, to whom I’ve dedicated this book.  That really doesn’t do a shred of justice to my great fortune in being Kim’s husband and father to Ian, Maya, and Lily. You’ve been epically tolerant of the time commitment associated with this project.  You are my world.