RJ Owen - Senior Developer at Effective UI. RJ was the lead developer on projects for Dow Jones, Random House and the Discovery Channel and contributed to ebay Desktop and the Adobe Video Workshop. In late 2007 RJ was featured on the Scoble show discussing RIA development and is passionate about the way that software affects and can improve people's lives. He is certified as an Adobe Community expert in Flex and co-authored the O'Reilly shortcut "Flex 3 Early Evaluator." RJ runs a flex blog called A Better Experience at rjria.blogspot.com, holds a degree in Physics and Computer Science, generally does well on standardized tests, and lives in Colorado.

CFUnited session: Flex 4 Components

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

I have never, even once, spoken at CFUnited. Last year I was sworn to silence. I would tell someone, it's okay - you can get through this.

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

People should attend my session if they want to learn about what's new in Flex 4, or how they can use Flex to build some sweet UI's onto the hearty back-ends they're used to building in CF.

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

< mysterious >If I did, I most certainly wouldn't reveal them on the internet. You'll just have to come and see for yourself.< /mysterious >

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

I'm looking forward to Jun's session and David Tucker's session. They both know a lot about a lot of things, and I like learning things from people who know them.

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

I'd really enjoy listening to two gentlemen (or ladies) diplomatically argue the merits of the multi-party system of government favored in Europe compared to our rather intransigent tradition of only two.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

I will most likely be in the pool, trying to see how long I can hold my breath.

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

Well, Liz, I'm glad you asked. Last week we watched our friends' dog. It's a pretty nice dog, so it went well, generally, but it yipped a lot at night, and I'm a light sleeper, so that was a little rough. You know what, why don't we just catch up at the conference?

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

It's the last great bastion of hope for a dying world in need of a hero. There are a few mediocre bastions around, but you won't find any other great ones. Especially not around WADC.

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

When I'm not working, I like reading, playing video games, and occasionally playing sports in my free time. When I'm working, I prefer to spend my free time playing scrabble over a nice glass of 2% milk.

10. How do you feel about Law and Order?

It is my firm belief that there are too many crime dramas on evening television, but of those crime dramas, Law and Order is pretty good, I guess.

This entry was posted on June 10, 2009 at 3:42 PM and has received 2936 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

Brian Rinaldi - A programmer, Adobe Community Expert, manager of the Boston ColdFusion User Group and organizer of Flex Camps in Boston and Miami. Brian is most well known for his efforts promoting open-source projects in ColdFusion, especially for maintaining the ColdFusion open-source list as well as the weekly updates, both of which you can find via his web site at http://www.remotesynthesis.com.

CFUnited Session: A CF Developer's Guide to the Mate Flex Framework

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

I spoke last year on RIA security, which was a tough topic. I would tell new folks that CFUnited is the biggest and most widely known ColdFusion conference, so it is the best place to network with other ColdFusion developers. The new hotel looks pretty exciting, so I think the opportunities to socialize and network will be even better this year.

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

I am presenting the Mate framework for Flex this year. Whether you are an experienced Flex programmer who is familiar with Cairngorm or a new Flex developer looking to adopt a framework for your development, Mate is something you should definitely look at. I found that using it not only improved my overall application organization and cleaned up my code, but it improved my enjoyment of Flex coding since it offered tools that simplified development. Mate has been gaining a lot of steam lately and whether you choose to use it or not, its definitely something you should consider or at least be aware if you are doing Flex development. This session will introduce the core Mate concepts for anyone unfamiliar with the framework.

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

I won't make any promised but I recently set a goal to have a completely reworked Illudium PU-36 Code Generator ready for CFUnited. Its a big undertaking since much of the underlying code needs to be redone to accomplish what I want to do, but with the upcoming releases of Bolt and Centaur, its something that I think should happen. In particular, as was announced earlier today, Bolt plans to offer the ability to tie in custom code generation using CFML, so being able to tie Bolt to Illudium will be a priority.

4. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

I attend conferences purely for the sessions and learning. There is no way you will find me at the bar every evening drinking beer and chatting with attendees. In fact, I promise I will not be closing down the hotel bar, and, despite what you may have heard, I have never done that at any prior conference.

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

Last year I was working for Universal Mind, but was caught in the layoffs earlier this year. This year I have started with a company called Pongo Resume (www.pongoresume.com) building ColdFusion and Flex applications.

6. What is unique about CFUnited?

CFUnited draws the widest variety of ColdFusion developers from around the country. There are sessions that cater towards relative beginners and others that are very advanced. I think the Flex/AIR track is particularly exciting this year as it has brought in well known people from the Flex community and not simple ColdFusion developers doing some Flex. I am looking forward to getting a lot out of the sessions in that track.

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

I own every game system in existence (Xbox 360, Wii, Playstation 3, PSP, DS) but I rarely get to play them much unless its with my 6 year old son. Essentially, I own the systems to keep up a charade that I am an avid gamer...which I once was. I also am a big fan of sports, particularly college sports. While I am a University of Miami grad and Hurricane fan, I have season tickets to Boston College football which is walking distance from my home. I also attend many of the local college basketball and hockey games with an occassional professional game of the Celtics or Red Sox when I can afford it.

This entry was posted on June 9, 2009 at 2:58 PM and has received 3934 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Andrew Schwabe - President of IEXP Software, LLC and is a veteran CFML developer since 1998. Prior to working with IEXP, Andrew worked for 10 years as the President and Chairman of the Board of Internet Expressions, Inc. He has been the forerunner in developing numerous applications ranging from the free - CFX_RawSocket (a Java Custom Tag for ColdFusion) - to FusionDox (enterprise-level document management). Andrew has been deeply involved in developing many of these applications from the ground up, enhancing and using the ColdFusion platform to its fullest potential. In addition to his extensive ColdFusion experience, Andrew has been recognized in the business community, receiving the coveted Dale Carnegie Highest Achievement Award.

CFUnited session: Flex and Google App Engine

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

Yup. I've been speaking at CF United events for the last 4-5 years or so. Lost count. CFUN is cool because you get to hang out with all the movers and shakers in the industry.

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

Why not? I'll be showing an example of using Flex to talk to Google App Engine (GAE), so its just pretty darn cool.

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

I'm hoping to have a brand new product ready to demo called FusionDox Access, which is a way cool easy way to share large files with people, and easily integrates into your web projects. All build in Flex of course :)

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

Flexy goodness, especially looking forward to Flex 4 graphics enhancements.

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

How to beat down the industry's impression that ColdFusion is dying.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited? (At the bar, networking, working, in your room, etc.)

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. Also email me. aschwabe(at)gmail(dot)com.

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

New version of FusionDox is coming out. See http://www.fusiondox.com/blog/

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

Everything is approachable at CFUN. Talk to whoever, everybody is sincere about wanting to transfer knowledge so that everybody grows.

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

Playing guitar, riding my motorcycle (bmw k100), going to the shooting range with the family, travel, eat, drink, being merry.

This entry was posted on June 8, 2009 at 4:41 PM and has received 3260 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Barney Boisvert - Sr. Application Developer at Mentor Graphics primarily using ColdFusion, Groovy, JavaScript, along with a smattering of Java and Flex. He is the author of the CFGroovy and FB3Lite frameworks, was a core contributor to Fusebox 4, and has provided accepted patches to Fusebox 5, Prototype, Groovy, Hibernate and ColdSpring, in addition to building several micro-frameworks from the ground up. He is also an active member in local and online CF, Flex, and Java communities and occasionally speaks at user groups and conferences.

CFUnited session: CFGroovy - Groovy for the CFML Developer

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

Nope, sure haven't.

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

CFML is a great templating language, but it falls rather short in other areas (verbosity, java integration, collections, etc.). Groovy has the "inverse" feature set (concise, tight with java, rich APIs, but bad at templating). Leveraging Groovy within your CFML applications can provide a significant reduction in complexity and verbosity, and it's ridiculously simple to do.

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

CFGroovy will have a couple releases this summer. Not sure if they will coincide with CFUnited or not.

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

Multiple CFML runtimes, Java library integration

5. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

In the common area(s), chatting with whomever.

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

Ride my bicycle and my motorcycle, cook (and eat), play with new technologies and methodologies.

This entry was posted on June 5, 2009 at 3:12 PM and has received 3357 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

The final CFUnited early bird rates will expire on June 30th 2009, only 4 weeks away! After June 30th the 3 day and 4 day packages will go up by $100 and the Saturday only package will go up by $50

For more pricing details visit http://cfunited.com/2009/prices

To register visit http://register.cfunited.com/

Once you are registered you can log in to the scheduler app and sign up for sessions.

The Lansdowne Resort & Conference Center is 70% full, visit http://cfunited.com/2009/travel to book your rooms and learn more about the venue.

This entry was posted on June 5, 2009 at 2:34 PM and has received 4954 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Hello Talented CFUnited Attendees!

CFUnited is about great topics and learning as always. But its also about networking. When we network we find things that we have in common, whether its about our favorite hardware or our favorite SciFi shows. We build connections with people we have common interests with.

http://cfunited.com/go/survey/171

We came up with an idea that is unique for us and will prove to be an interesting experiment.

Museum and Open Mic Night for our talented community.

Let us know if you'd like to participate. You can bring 1-3 pieces of artwork (or photographs). If you would like to start a jam session on stage with a few others, we'd like to see that too. Magic tricks, poems, sculptures, etc are all welcome.

Scott Stroz will be our Open Mic Night host and one of the performers
http://www.boyzoid.com/blog/index.cfm/2009/6/18/I-Will-BeerPerformingat-CFUnited

Please fill out this form by July 31st to be added to performances and to enter your artwork.

http://cfunited.com/go/survey/171

This entry was posted on June 3, 2009 at 5:08 PM and has received 5511 views. There are currently 3 comments. Print this entry.

Doug Hughes - Doug Hughes is a veteran programmer and the president of Alagad Inc (http://www.alagad.com), a successful small business specializing in web and application development, services and consulting. Doug also publishes a popular blog covering ColdFusion and other technical topics at http://www.doughughes.net.

CFUnited session: Using Ant to Deploy ColdFusion Application

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

I'm talking about Ant this year and how it can be used to deploy ColdFusion projects. As a part of that, I plan to cover a little project I've been working on currently called CFant. I may also sneak in some discussion about other related technologies such as Maven.

In my opinion, this is an important topic. No application is ever used without being deployed. Furthermore, most non-trivial application tend to require configuration changes, server settings to be set, files to put somewhere, and much, much more. Performing this by hand can be tedious and error prone. Instead, I recommend using Ant to automate as much of this process as possible. Here at Alagad we use Ant for this purpose. A typical build will usually check the latest code out of subversion, update various XML configuration files, put the files where they belong on the server, insure the datasource exists, insure mappings for frameworks exists, clear the template cache, insure trusted cache is enabled, and reload the application. Because our builds are automated we can insure they happen exactly as we need them to.

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

I've been working on creating some Maven archetypes for ColdFusion development. I'm not sure what the status of this will be by CFUnited, but I'm hopeful to have some fun stuff to demonstrate. As a part of this, I also plan to make some important changes to how CFant works and that will be released somewhere around the time of CFUnited.

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

These days I'm really interested in management-focused topics. I plan to see what people have to say about managing teams and projects. Furthermore, I plan to check out anything that relates to new and advanced ways of developing ColdFusion, Flex and Air applications.

4. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

During the day I expect I could be found networking. I want to try to find as many people to talk to as I can. I want to hear what people are up to at their companies and I'd hope to find ways that Alagad can work with them. In fact, as a part of that, Alagad will be holding a raffle to give away a Mac Mini, a Wii, an iPod Touch, and several Amazon.com gift certificates. See this link for more information on this: http://alagad.com/go//find-alagad-at-cf-objective--or-cfunited-and-win-big. During the evenings I'm often found at the bar ensconced in conversation with other members of the community.

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

Over the past year, I've been working very hard to grow Alagad. In fact, we grew more than 300% last year and we've been very strong. Since the beginning of the year we've hired several developers including Brian Kotek, formerly of Broadchoice fame. We now have a terrific team of at five Adobe Aces, several promenent members of the ColdFusion and Flex community, and more. We continue to be focused on helping our clients build enterprise-class ColdFusion, Flex and Air applications. Recently we've also been experimenting with Groovy, Spring and Hibernate for our application models. This has been very interesting and we're looking forward to sharing more about that as the time is right.

As always, we're looking for more great clients with interesting or particularily chalenging projects we could help out. If you're moving into OO with ColdFusion or Flex contact us to see how we can help you out.

This entry was posted on June 3, 2009 at 2:45 PM and has received 3088 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

ColdBox Platform 3.0.0 BOF
Presented By Luis Majano
Come and talk about the future of ColdBox and help it steer it into the future.

ColdFusion User Group / Community Development BOF
Presented By John Mason
The success of any technology is tightly coupled with the growth and diversity of the community that grows around it. Local user groups are a great resource for developers to exchange ideas and work on their presentation skills. In this session, we'll discuss the various ways to start and develop a local user group in your area. How to find speakers, sponsors and topics? How to run the meetings, and how to market your group and find new members? We'll also talk about some of the common pitfalls in running a user group and how to manage them.
See John Mason's blog post about this BOF session
http://www.codfusion.com/blog/post.cfm/user-group-community-development-session-at-cfunited

Silent Authentication BOF
Mike Brunt and John Farrar
Are your applications burdened with login prompts? Do you know of ways to eliminate this issue? Can these methods be used with legacy systems and Enterprise Content Management systems (ECMs)? This BOF is for those with the same questions, and it doesn't matter whether they come from yourself, your development team, or your management. It's important to know what options are available and what's successful so you can be prepared or retrofit your applications with "seamless" or "silent" authentication.

See schedule for Birds of Feather times on Wednesday August 12th.

This entry was posted on June 1, 2009 at 5:51 PM and has received 2968 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Raymond Camden - A long time ColdFusion user, Raymond has worked on numerous ColdFusion books including the ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit and has contributed to the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update and the ColdFusion Developers Journal. He also presents at conferences and contributes to online webzines. He founded many community web sites including CFLib.org, ColdFusionPortal.org, ColdFusionCookbook.org and is the author of open source applications, including the popular BlogCFC blogging application.

CFUnited sessions: Ajax/ColdFusion 911, Charting and ColdFusion, Introduction to jQuery with ColdFusion, SciFi BOF

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

Yes, many times.

I'd tell people that CFUnited is a great conference for people of all skill levels. From beginners to advanced developers.

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

I think I have some great sessions this year, and all of them are brand new!

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

Nope. Sorry to disappoint. :)

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

I'm curious to see what Adobe shows off in regards to ColdFusion 9.

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

I'd like to hear some discussion about frameworks. I'm kinda focused on Model-Glue, so I wouldn't mind hearing wha'ts up with the other frameworks.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

Most likely all over the place. :)

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

I'm now an independent contractor, which is new, and not so great, but, change happens. :)

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

Video games and reading. Oh, and writing code for fun. :)

9. Which was the best Star Wars film?

Empire Strikes Back.

This entry was posted on June 1, 2009 at 3:40 PM and has received 3475 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.