An Interview with Mark Drew, Speaker at CFUNITED Europe Mar 09, 2008

by Paul Vernon

With CFUNITED Europe coming up, Paul Vernon, Fusion Authority reporter, has interviewed Mark Drew about his upcoming presentations and his work on the open source CFEclipse project.

Paul Vernon:
So, I guess the first question is, how did it all start for you? How did you get involved with ColdFusion, and what makes you stick with it?

Mark Drew:
My first involvement was back in 1997. I was working for a company called Nettec, and we were asked to develop an insurance quoting system. Up until then, I had been using Perl on an e-Commerce product called Intershop, and I didn't think Perl was up to the job, especially when you considered the time we had to do it, so I had a look around and stumbled upon ColdFusion. In about an afternoon I had most of the system written, apart from the pretty interface. After that, I recommended it to other developers for any custom work we had to do. We all loved it since we all came from a HTML background. It was a nice fit, and seemed to make a lot of sense.

Read more of this interview at http://www.fusionauthority.com/community/4735-an-interview-with-mark-drew-speaker-at-cfunited-europe.htm

This entry was posted on March 18, 2008 at 5:21 PM and has received 2038 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

The main hotel at the conference is about 3/4 full. We may add rooms if available. The Grand Hyatt is where the speakers will be staying as well as CFUnited Staff and other activities. There will be an "attendee" meeting room in the lower level. This room is available for attendees as a meeting space for special activities 24/7.

The hotel is approximately 2-3 blocks from the Convention Center entrance.

Book your room today! https://resweb.passkey.com/go/CFUnited08

This entry was posted on March 18, 2008 at 1:42 PM and has received 2463 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Thank you Ouz Demirkap1 for taking photos of the conference. The experience was very different and very fun to organize. We had over 130 attendees from all over the world. Our sponsors exhibited for both days in the Chablis suite where we also enjoyed a delicious lunch. The session presentations were well done and prepared for and will be posted soon for attendees to view. Thank you everyone for attending and making day and night a special visit for CFUnited staff. :-)

Please see more photos at http://flickr.com/photos/oguz/sets/72157604098407196/

This entry was posted on March 18, 2008 at 11:14 AM and has received 3638 views. There are currently 2 comments. Print this entry.

The last early bird rate change is March 31st!! That means the price will increase by $100 at midnight 3/31/08

Why should you register now? You can create your personal schedule and plan your days. Next month we will see the most popular sign ups and decide Saturday's schedule of repeats. Also, if you register early enough, you will receive your free t-shirt in the mail sooner.

Did you know that we have discounts? email info (at) cfunited.com

Many have asked why do we even have early bird rates. The reason is that CFUnited has to plan and commit to spend a chunk of the costs for these events ahead of time. So when you see an early bird rate change you know when we have bills due. CFUnited is funded solely by its sponsors and ticket sales. Thank you for registering each year and keeping CFUnited going for almost a decade! This year you won't be disappointed. Expect your money's worth and more. This year bring a friend and take a tour in downtown Washington DC.

This entry was posted on March 17, 2008 at 12:59 PM and has received 2389 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We want to thank House of Fusion for being a media sponsor for CFUnited Europe!

"You're using ColdFusion and you need to know the answer to a question. You need to talk to someone who knows more ColdFusion than you. You need it now. Where do you go? Since 1996 (and earlier) the answer has been to the House of Fusion. Whether it's the high volume ColdFusion Technical Talk list (CF-Talk), another one of our popular technical (or non-technical) mailing lists, or articles, House of Fusion has always been there to enhance the ColdFusion developer community.

In addition, there is the Fusion Authority, the ColdFusion technical journal whose print edition brings you up-to-date with all the latest ColdFusion information and techniques. The clear, well-written articles bring even the highest level concepts down to earth.

The bottom line is that House of Fusion and Fusion Authority have the information you need to be a ColdFusion professional. "

This entry was posted on March 7, 2008 at 10:48 AM and has received 3532 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

With CFUnited Europe only days away, we are looking forward to having a great conference in London.

There is an excellent line up of speakers, topics, sponsors, and prizes to give away!

If you have yet to register, just visit http://europe.cfunited.com/. There will be on site registration but registering online ensures a quick entrance to the conference.

Looking forward to seeing everyone =)

This entry was posted on March 6, 2008 at 5:25 PM and has received 3982 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

For those of you who have already registered for CFUnited, you can now customize your conference schedule using the CFUnited Scheduler.

Pick out your favorite now before they fill up.

You must be registered and logged in to access the scheduler.

Note the Saturday schedule has not been posted yet, we expect to have it up within the next two weeks.

This entry was posted on March 6, 2008 at 4:46 PM and has received 2476 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Wondering what you'll be doing June 18th at 8:30pm? Hopefully you are attending one of these interesting subjects.

We still have a couple slots to fill, but so far here is what we've accepted. We think these will be of great interest to attendees of all sorts.

8:30PM - 9:30PM John Farrar "COOP on ICE, Cooler CF" - DC Convention Center

8:30PM - 9:30PM (or later) Raymond Camden "SciFi discussion" - Grand Hyatt

8:30PM - 9:30PM Nat Papovich "The Secret Club of Remote workers and Telecommuters, a.k.a. SCRAT - DC Convention Center

This entry was posted on March 4, 2008 at 6:13 PM and has received 3471 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

CF Meetup: XML and ColdFusion, with Nic Tunney

Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 6:00 PM

Meeting URL: http://experts.acrobat.com/cfmeetup/

Description: XML and ColdFusion is an intermediate level presentation delving into not only what XML is and what it means to developers as both a communication tool and persistence layer, but also how to traverse the XML Dom using ColdFusion. If time permits, an XPath demonstration will be given as well. This presentation assumes a basic knowledge of ColdFusion arrays and structures.

To learn more visit: http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/calendar/7388675/

This entry was posted on March 4, 2008 at 4:10 PM and has received 3897 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We would like to welcome a new speaker to CFUnited.

Marc Esher

A Longtime ColdFusion and Java programmer, Marc is currently working in the brokerage industry building custom print-on-demand and workflow software. He is a co-owner of the MXUnit Unit Testing Framework for ColdFusion. His primary professional interests, aside from programming, are process automation and improvement and automated testing.

Topic:"Automating the build/deployment process with ANT" Read more about this topic at http://cfunited.com/go/topics/2008#topic-1730

This entry was posted on March 4, 2008 at 8:33 AM and has received 4620 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.