Get together with other Tweeple at the CFUnited Tweetup! Everyone is invited, even non-CFUnited attendees! Taking place at the Stonewalls Tavern Bar in Lansdowne Resort at Thursday 10:30pm right after the Adobe Pool Party. Check out CFUnited attendees on twitter. More info coming soon so stay tuned.

It was brought to my attention that the first set of BOFs we scheduled for 2 hours. I've changed them to 1 hour so that everyone can schedule their second set of BOFs.

Here are the list of BOFs in case you haven't seen them yet!

8:30 PM - 9:30 PM Sean Corfield "The CFML Advisory Committee - Happy First Birthday! BOF"

8:30 PM - 9:30 PM Dee Sadler "Designer and developers working together BOF"

8:30 PM - 9:30 PM Dan Wilson "Model-Glue:Gesture release BOF"

8:30 PM - 9:30 PM Dan Vega "iPhone Application Development BOF"

9:30 PM - 10:30 PM Luis Majano "ColdBox Platform 3.0.0"

9:30 PM - 10:30 PM John Mason "ColdFusion User Group / Community Development BOF"

9:30 PM - 10:30 PM Mike Brunt and John Farrar "Silent Authentication BOF"

9:30 PM - 11:00 PM Raymond Camden "SciFi BOF"

9:30 PM - 11:00 PM Movie (we are taking suggestions for which movie to play!)

Thanks Sean for pointing out the mistake!

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.

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.

Dee Sadler - A typical Adobe geek girl. She runs a User Group (KCWebCore), co-manager of another (KCDesignCore) and helps with KCDevCore. She is an Adobe Community Expert in Dreamweaver and InDesign, and loves everything CSS. She is also an Adobe Certified Instructor in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver and Flash, with a passion for Fireworks and also teaches Acrobat. I am also an Adobe Freelance Professional. Some of you might also know me in the CF community as the person who puts together Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. I want to bring designers and developers closer together and hope to bridge that gap with some new apps this year like Flash Catalyst.

CFUnited sessions: Designer and developers working together BOF, Flash Catalyst round trip wireframe, Hands-on CSS - Part I , Hands-on CSS - Part II

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

This will be my... 3rd CFUnited I believe. I've never spoken at one before, but have helped with a BOF last year. I'd tell them there isn't a better place for a beginner, intermediate or advanced CF developer to learn something new, and more importantly talk to and network with others in the community.

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

My sessions span that range as well. In the all day class, we'll take someone new to CSS and give them the knowledge to grasp the concepts and apply them. In the regular session we'll spend 2 hours learning how to do some dynamic CSS with CF, make clean CSS navigation and how to style data tables and forms.

In the Flash Catalyst session, they'll learn how to do roundtrip with Illustrator, and hopefully by then, Fireworks.

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

For me, anything that involves CF n00b stuff and jQuery and databases. Any new frameworks stuff is great too. Maybe some AIR.. Oh heck, everything. I am a social person, so my favorite part is always the great networking.

4. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

Always visible. Can easily be found wherever the crowd is.

5. What is unique about CFUnited?

CFUnited is the only really comprehensive conference about ColdFusion and Flex. Not just Enterprise, and not just advanced. Anyone can learn at CFUnited.

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

Free time? What's that. There is always sites to design and CSS to be made.

Sean Corfield - Chief Technical Officer for Railo US. He has worked in IT for over twenty five years, starting out writing database systems and compilers then moving into mobile telecoms and finally into web development in 1997. Along the way, he worked on the ISO and ANSI C++ Standards committees for eight years and is a staunch advocate of software standards and best practice. Sean has championed and contributed to a number of CFML frameworks and was lead developer on Fusebox for two years.

CFUnited sessions: Living in the Cloud , CFML Discussion BOF

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

Yes, this is my sixth time as a speaker I believe. CFUnited is the biggest CF-focused event in the world. No matter what your skill level, you'll find something to suit you. The networking opportunities - being able to discuss issues with your peers - is extremely valuable at a big event like this!

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

A lot of people are curious about "cloud computing" but not many people in the CF community have tried to run their production systems on it. At Broadchoice, we developed one application specifically for Amazon's EC2 and S3 services and migrated another application from a traditional data center to Amazon's EC2. I'll be talking about the benefits and pitfalls - as well as looking at design considerations that make it easier to run applications in "the cloud". If you're thinking about "cloud computing" on any level, come and learn from our experiences!

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

Yes, a couple of projects. But they'll be revealed at CFUnited so I can't talk about them yet. Another couple of reasons to attend!

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

August is a long way off so I haven't even thought about which sessions I'm attending yet.

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

Open source development is one of my passions so I'd like to see that topic represented. I'd also like to hear people's experiences, good and bad, with unit testing, test-driven development and behavior- driven development.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

I expect I'll be hanging out in the bar with the rest of the Railo team so folks can find us easily.

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

The big news is that I joined Railo Technologies US as their CTO in April and, along with Peter Bell (and others), we're offering support and professional services for companies - and individuals - using the open source Railo CFML server.

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

Apart from being the biggest CF-focused event in the world, it's the only place where you can meet CFers of all levels, from all industries. Did I mention the networking opportunities are extremely valuable?

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

Ballroom and Latin dancing. My wife & I started lessons at the beginning of 2009 and we're having a great time!

Hello Ladies!

A recent conversation has been sparked by Raymond Camden with someone who recently asked why conferences can't find that many women speakers. I think lots of conferences would like to see more women participate as a speaker.

See blog entry here: http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2009/3/5/Open-Question-Women-speakers-at-conferences

CFUnited has seen increased numbers in women attending over the years and I think it adds a nice balance to the event overall. However, we don't see that many women submitting topics in the call for speakers.

Because of this recent discussion I have decided to open the call for speakers again for women only. I've open up 5 more topic slots starting today. Submit on the call for speakers until March 20th. http://callforspeakers.cfconf.org/ I'll post all the choices in a survey on March 23rd and let the community vote again for two weeks. And to further my support I'm going to submit a topic as well.

I'm glad to announce that Selene Bainum will be added as a speaker soon to a Database Track. And of course Dee Sadler is currently accepted as a speaker.

Thanks Ladies and I'm excited to see ideas for new topics.

Note: I will post on this blog what topics have been submitted from women already so that they get a chance too. And as they come in, I'll try to update this entry as well in the comments section.

We got word last week that Vince Bonfanti will not be presenting at CFUnited this year. In his place for the Open Source Birds of Feather Session at 8:30pm on Wednesday the 18th, Adam Haskell will present.
http://cfunited.com/go/topics/2008#topic-1741

Replacing Adam Haskell as the speaker for the BOF, Improving Quality through Code Reviews and Mentoring is now Mark Drew. http://cfunited.com/go/topics/2008#topic-1745

The topic "IIS 7.0 for CFML Developers" is now canceled. Track Chairs are working on replacing the topic for the schedule. More information soon.

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

I have 4 BOF sessions open from 8:00pm-9:00pm for June 18th. We are looking for interesting topics to fulfill the needs of those jet lagers and die-hard conference goers. If you have an interesting topic, please let Liz know by March 5th. All submissions cannot be accepted. First come, first serve, but if we don't think it fits we might pick the next good topic. Usually we are looking for discussion topics that are fun or interactive.

(Why do they call it Birds of Feather? Such a weird name)

contact liz(at) cfunited.com or comment on this blog. Thanks!

This is for CFUnited USA.