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 3354 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 3430 views. There are currently 0 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 3204 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 3600 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

Lawrence Cramer - Over 25 years of experience in marketing, advertising, and design. For the last decade he has focused on the web, his key interests being dynamic web design, development, and e-commerce. He has written numerous articles on these subjects for regional business publications and for the Adobe Developer Center. He speaks at web development conferences and teaches college courses on several Adobe products, and is a trainer for Lynda.com. Lawrence is an Adobe Community Expert, the CEO of Application Dynamics Inc., and the founder of Cartweaver.com. When he's not in front of a computer screen, you'll find him and his wife of 30-plus years behind the handlebars of a sport touring motorcycle seeing the sights of the Pacific Northwest.

CFUnited session: Real world ecommerce with ColdFusion

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

No. I'm very excited to be speaking this year!

CFUnited is THE ColdFusion conference. It's the "must attend" best-of-breed conference because of the caliber of speakers and the no sales hype but real information focus of the event.

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

Even in this down economy, one business sector is still experiencing growth... eCommerce. More and more developers are getting asked by their clients to develop eCommerce sites and they are finding it to be a more complex, specialized skill set than they expect. They are expected to not only develop sound eCommerce applications but know about many other things such as payment gateways, PCI compliance, security, merchant accounts and so on. My session will cover all these facets of eCommerce development.

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

Yes. Can't say much more than that right now.

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

I'll be like a kid in a candy store! Having difficulty narrowing down my choices so far!

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

Anything Bolt. (the new dedicated ColdFusion Development Application)

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

At my session, and on Twitter... I'll be tweeting a lot and will tweet meet-up plans: http://twitter.com/LawrenceCramer

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

A lot! The economy has presented not only challenges but huge opportunities! Whenever you shake things up, new openings emerge.

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

It's focus! It's an opportunity to learn, not be "sold". It an opportunity to learn about ColdFusion and related technologies and to meet and network with the best in the field.

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

Go sport touring around the west with my wife and friends on my 2008 Kawasaki Concourse 1400, and do a little wine tasting. I'm a bit of a wine buff and Washington has a lot of great wine!

10. Besides the sessions, what makes CFUnited worth the cost of going?

The networking! If you go DON'T be a wallflower! Get out there, meet and greet and make new friends and contacts.

This entry was posted on May 26, 2009 at 3:01 PM and has received 3370 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Sean Woods - Has been developing Oracle applications for over ten years and has been integrating ColdFusion with Oracle since the first day he laid eyes on it in 2002. He has since then developed an obsession with ColdFusion and often lies awake at night wondering why anyone would want to develop their applications with anything else. In his spare time, Sean can be found chasing his two young daughters around the lovely seaside town of Pacifica, California.

CFUnited session: Advanced SQL for ColdFusion

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

No, I've never spoken at or been to CFUnited but I am totally stoked to be attending and speaking this year. I've been to a lot of ColdFusion conferences and met a lot of great people. It?s an privilege to be speaking at this one and I hope that I can add some value to the experience of those attending.

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

You should attend my session because I will give you the tools necessary to turn your knowledge of SQL into entertaining cocktail conversation. You will be the life of the party - people will be lining up to hear you wax on about the virtues of query parametrization, database transactions, indexing strategies and more. I used to entertain people this way all the time but for some reason nobody comes to my house anymore.

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

Any session by Ray Camden, Sean Corfield or Ben Forta.

4. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

You will definitely find me at the bar. And, if you say nice things in public about my session I will buy you a beer.

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

I live in Pacifica, CA with my wife and two girls. Most of my free time is spent chasing my kids around but when I get a few hours to myself I usually spend it on my bike. During the summer weekends you can usually find me at a local bike race or triathlon ? I?ve been competing in both for about 10 years. I hope to one day convince my daughters that jumping in a cold lake at 8am is a good idea.

This entry was posted on May 22, 2009 at 2:43 PM and has received 2723 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

Jake Munson - Jake has been developing ColdFusion based applications since ColdFusion 4. He is well known for building CFQuickDocs (http://cfquickdocs.com). He has given numerous presentations to various user groups, including the popular CF Meetup group. He also presented at CFUnited 2008. Jake is very passionate about the Internet, particularly about web standards and surrounding technologies.

CFUnited session: Spam, Bacon, Sausage and Spam

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

Yes, I spoke at CFUnited Last year. This will be my 5th CFUnited though, and every year I really enjoy it. My biggest advice would be to take advantage of the networking opportunities. There are always a lot of top notch community memebers around, both "celebrity" types as well as lesser known (but equally important) people you can network with.

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

If you ever put user fillable forms on your sites, you should attend my session. Spammers attack all online forms these days (even when it doesn't make sense), so preventing spam is very important for us developers. If you think Spam prevention just means slapping a CAPTCHA on the form, then you have a lot to learn. I hope to see you at my session.

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

Railo Open Source

Geolocation with ColdFusion

Thinking Outside of the CF Box

Better Development Through Open Source

4. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

At my session, of course! :) I am planning on attending as many sessions as possible (I always do), but outside of that I will be at all of the breakfasts/lunches, and hanging out in the common areas between sessions. In the evening I will attend the planned events, but besides that I might be hanging out in my room. I'm thinking about bringing some games with me and inviting some friends to play games one night (board games, card games, etc.)

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

I am a computer geek at heart, so in my free time I spend a lot of time on computers. I read a LOT of news/blogs. I also play some online games. When not on the computer, I like to spend time with my wife, and I like watching the Cubs as well as the Discovery Channel. I am also very religious and spend a lot of time doing church related stuff.

This entry was posted on May 21, 2009 at 3:25 PM and has received 2740 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Gert Franz - One of the founders of Railo Technologies GmbH and accompanied the development from when it started back in 2001. Next to the development of Railo he worked as a system engineer and database administrator, where one of his favorite web projects was and is for instance www.zinodavidoff.com. He's addicted to problem solving, performance and database tuning (especially SQL Server). Gert is a father of three and boyfriend of one. As far as he can remember, he has studied astrophysics in Munich some (many :-) years ago.

CFUnited session: Railo Open Source

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

No I haven't. I have attended but haven't spoken yet. It is definitely theCFML conference with the most attendees and you get a chance to meet and greet the who's who in the CFML world. So just go and attend!

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

Because they are learning about a CFML engine free of costs that might be the alternative in the times of the credit crunch. It's highly compatible to the current standard and allows you to take your code and execute it with almost no changes. High performance and innovative security features as well as settings that help you code more effective allow you to get the most out of your apps.

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

Yes, we are constantly working on our engine and always introduce new extensions and features.

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

I look forward to the Intergral and Blueriver sessions. Of course some ofthe sessions the Railo guys give are interesting as well.

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

Open Source, what does the community want from the vendors, CFML Advisory Committee questions etc.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

Look for an orange or violet TShirt with the GotRailo Logo on it :-) I will be everywhere mentioned in this order: working - networking - at the bar - in my room

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

Yes, we're open source with Railo 3.1. And we have some of the best minds in our company.

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

The name :-) No... I guess the ability to meet so many different people and since all of the top speakers will attend, I am looking forward to meeting many of them!

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

Walking my dog, going to the movies, spend time with friends, travel, and of course my family!

10. What the best thing about your job?

Well it's my hobby!

This entry was posted on May 20, 2009 at 1:46 PM and has received 2294 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Jun Heider - Sr. Developer and Technical Trainer with RealEyes Media, an Adobe partner company based in Denver, Colorado with a focus in Rich Internet Applications. Jun graduated from Regis University with a BS in Computer Networking and has a number of technical certifications. Jun has worked with ColdFusion since 4.5, Flex since Flex 2 beta, and AIR since it was first available in pre-release. In addition, Jun loves to speak at conferences such as Adobe MAX, 360|Flex, and Flexmaniacs. Jun also loves to write, he is an active blogger on O'Reilly Inside RIA and has written articles for Fusion Authority and Flex Authority. Jun is also co-authoring the upcoming Professional Flex 3 by Wrox. In his free time, Jun loves to play music, his Xbox 360, snowboard, and hang out with his son Kobi, daughter Mia, and wife Michelle in Colorful Colorado.

CFUnited session: Intro to Flex Debugging and Profiling

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

I've never spoken at CFUnited before, but the reason I decided to was because I had heard so many good things about it in the past through the ColdFusion community. I usually spend my time at Flex/AIR centric conferences, but it was good to find out that although ColdFusion is still a majority of what CFUnited is about, it definitely isn't the only thing.

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

If you're getting started with Flex and pull out your hair while trying to resolve issues in your code on a frequent basis, this will be a very good session for you to attend. During the session I will be covering many aspects of debugging and profiling your Flex applications. By the end of the session you should walk away with a good idea of the tools available to you and how to get started with using them.

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

Not personally, but hopefully Flex Builder 4 beta will be out by the conference. If it is, the fancy new debugging and profiling features will definitely be covered.

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

Just to name a few:

- AIR Messaging: Integrating AIR, BlazeDS, and ColdFusion

- Design Diagrams for CFC's and Databases

- Subversion for Smarties - Do More With Subversion

- Practical Refactoring: Making Bad Code Good

- Advanced SQL for ColdFusion

- Flex and Google App Engine

- Using Design Patterns in Flex

- How not to code flex applications

- Blowing Your Mind With Merapi

- Busy Programers Guide to Java part 1

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

Hmm... maybe a good talk about Battlestar or one on the latest Star Trek movie and predictions on what the next Star Trek TV series will be about.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

At the bar or in a session, or in a session at the bar.

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

Yes, the change since the last CFUnited is that I actually get to come to CFUnited this time. :)

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

I think the room names at CFUnited are really unique. I mean, a room called Galactica?? That's just rad!

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

When I'm not working and/or taking care of my children I enjoy jamming and making music. I also love my Xbox 360, Fallout 3 and the combat shotgun I get to use in it at point blank during VATS, oh yeah!

10. What's your favorite CFML tag of all time?

That would be < cfdump > baby ...yeah!

This entry was posted on May 18, 2009 at 4:12 PM and has received 2520 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

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 2933 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.