Lance Smith - Has several years of experience in IT/Web Development. He has been working with computers for over 20 years, programming for about 12, and doing Web development for 8. He is a Certified Adobe Expert (ACE) for ColdFusion 8 and senior application engineer at O'Neil & Associates, where he does Web development with Adobe ColdFusion. He is also a part-time instructor at Sinclair Community College, where he teaches Web development and design.

CFUnited session: Handling Errors with Error Handling

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

I've attended for the past three years and would tell anyone who is in any way a CF developer to get themselves here! This is by far the best CF conference around.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?

Most developers understand the importance of error handling in an application, but many don't utilize it to its full potential. Error management is critical in site development and having the right information at the right time can save you and your customer a lot of headaches.

3. Do you have any projects in the works that you will be revealing at CFUnited?

CFUnited? Unfortunately, all my projects are top secret. Ok--not really, but still can't show them ;-)

4. Besides your topic, what other sessions are you looking forward to?

I'd like to see Ben Nadel's presentation and some of the more advanced topics as well as John Paul Ashenfelter's bleeding edge technology presentation.

5. What are some of the hot topics you'd like to see at RoundTable discussions?

Nerd talk--Star Wars, Transformers, G.I. Joe/80's toys...stuff like that.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

I will be everywhere this year except the room! I hope to get some networking in with the greatest minds in the biz! Oh, and I'll be in that Thinkgeek room for sure...

7. What's the latest news with you? Has anything changed since last CFUnited?

The biggest change since last year is that I'm now the father of twin boys! After Ray Camden, I feel like the busiest man on earth.

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

I personally enjoy CFUnited more than conferences like MAX because it's a little smaller and more intimate, and you can really get to know some people here. The CF community is full of such great people--it's unlike any other dev community in my opinion.

9. What do you like to do in your free time?

I enjoy spending time with my two boys, digital photography, travel, hiking and camping, general computing, and in my spare time rebuilding my collection of 80's G.I. Joe's.

This entry was posted on May 14, 2009 at 1:38 PM and has received 2850 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

You can now make comments about topics on CFUnited.com!

If you see a topic you would like more information about, go to that topic link and write your comment to the speaker. You will get an email and the speaker will get an email. Also check back often to see what others are saying about all the topics.

Here's a demo to see how to do this. There's no sound (couldn't find my microphone) but you can get the idea. :-)

http://tinyurl.com/cfunitedcomments

Happy Q&A everyone!

This entry was posted on May 14, 2009 at 12:16 PM and has received 2691 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We noticed over some time that Scott Stroz and Shlomy Gantz had similar topics. So Scott has agreed to speak on a new topic which also belongs in the Best Practices Track.

"ColdFusion and jQuery: Perfect Together"

jQuery has been defined (by me) as the 'ColdFusion of JavaScript libraries' because you can do some very cool stuff with very little code. In this session we will compare ColdFusion's AJAX functionality and jQuery (including jQueryUI) to show when you might chose one over the other. We will also discuss how you can integrate both to make your applications that much better.

If you would like to comment on his topic, go here: http://cfunited.com/2009/topics/286

This entry was posted on May 14, 2009 at 12:10 PM and has received 2648 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.