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.

This entry was posted on May 13, 2009 at 5:20 PM and has received 4757 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

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!

This entry was posted on May 13, 2009 at 3:49 PM and has received 2938 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Lance Smith & Aaron Wolfe on CFUnited video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg0nOITyE4U

Handling Errors with Error Handling

This entry was posted on April 24, 2009 at 4:00 PM and has received 1674 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Todd Sharp put together this really cool slide show of CFUnited. It also demonstrates what you can do with SlideSix.com.

Our speakers this year will be asked to put their presentation here and we will give a password for attendees to get access. Then at a future time we will make some of them available to the public.

View Slide show here and show it at your next User Group meeting or get together at a cubicle near you. :-)

http://slidesix.com/view/CFUnited-2009

This entry was posted on April 9, 2009 at 4:00 PM and has received 3817 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

"In our third installment of the Speakers of CFUnited series, Dan Wilson interviews Douglas Knudsen, consultant with Universal Mind, who is speaking on Connecting Flex to ColdFusion at CFUnited.

Doug talks about topics from his talk at CFUnited, working in a coworking group environment instead of working from home, his start with ColdFusion, and music to work to, including Chinese Silk music." - Brian Meloche

Visit CFConversations to listen to the podcast.

This entry was posted on February 25, 2009 at 2:43 PM and has received 3855 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

For our second episode in the Speakers of CFUnited series, Adam Haskell and I interview Luis Majano, the creator of the ColdBox framework. This was recorded October 24, 2008, so it predates the MAX conference, the Bolt announcement, and Adobe layoffs, and ColdBox is now up to version 2.6.2. Of course, Luis talks about Coldbox, but he also talks about growing up in El Salvador during its civil war, including Salvadoran cuisine, coming to America, how he started in ColdFusion, pre-Coldbox, what led to Coldbox and why Luis is excited about ColdFusion's future. This interview, which was originally scheduled to be released before MAX, is one of my favorites so far. It was delayed due to some time sensitive episodes, vacation, and the MAX episodes (including ones not yet released, as mentioned earlier) but I'm proud to bring it to you now, and I think you'll really enjoy it!" - Brian Meloche

Luis will be speaking on Coldbox at CFUnited. Visit CFConversations to listen to the podcast.

This entry was posted on February 4, 2009 at 7:22 PM and has received 3401 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We are excited to announce that CFUnited will be working with Brian Meloche & CFConversations to bring a series of podcasts with CFUnited speakers and topics.

Check out the first episode where Dan Wilson interviews Doug Hughes, visit CFConversations to listen in.

Stay tuned for more podcasts in the upcoming months!

This entry was posted on January 21, 2009 at 4:49 PM and has received 3411 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We are here with Marc Esher on Automating the build/ deployment process with ANT

What is ANT?

Marc: ANT is a java-based build tool, but you don't need to know java and its usefulness for CF developers extends beyond just "building" an application. It has

Why is your session important for attendees?

Marc: When I first encountered ANT back in the early 2000s, I was somewhat intimidated. After using it, though, I realized there's nothing to be afraid of. It might look verbose because it's XML, but you learn to read and write ant files quickly. And when you do.... what a time saver!

I hope to demystify ANT, and also show just how powerful it is. My session will be spent largely exploring different build files, moving from the common operations like copying and zipping and building on them toward a full-featured build file for a reasonably complex piece of software with code living in multiple locations. I intend to show some tips and tricks and some gotchas. The great thing though, at least I think so, will be the copious examples. And the presentation, once it's posted, will have even more.... an appendix of ant files for doing neat stuff.

I really believe that single-click application packaging  and potentially even single-click deployments -- is attainable for most CF Shops!

What kind of experience with ANT is required to attend your session?

Marc: None, although the people who have at least a cursory understanding of ANT will robably benefit more immediately than others. Folks who spent just the time to watch this http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/calendar/7549322/ would be better off in my presentation. I'll be doing a short "intro to ant", and it'll start with simple tasks like copying and zipping, but it's going to shift into overdrive after that.

I think that folks brand new to ANT will take away more "You can do that????". And then, when they go back to work, try it out, get some familiarity -- and go download the presentation to get the examples -- they'll be ready for the harder stuff.

What are some of the issues that you will be addressing?

Marc: To start, Copying and zipping files -- your standard ANT stuff for moving code to different servers or packaging it for deployment. Then we'll get into FTP, Subversion, executing operating system commands, talking to databases, and using ScriptDef for creating ColdFusion-like functions right in your ANT files. I'll be showing some neat stuff with "conditions" and "selectors" for powerful file system comparisons. I'll even show how you can use some external ANT libraries for, say, querying the database for a list of deployment servers, looping over that query and deploying an app to each each of those servers.

This sounds like a lot, and it is. I hope to whet people's appetites for what can be done with ANT in a few lines of XML. But it won't cover each of these topics exhaustively -- there just isn't enough time in a single session to do that. However...the nice thing is that since I'm in the last time slot, anyone who wants to talk more about ANT -- from the beginner to the advanced -- can just stay later!

This entry was posted on May 27, 2008 at 6:20 PM and has received 2206 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We asked a few questions to find out what our speakers are up to prior to their trip to CFUnited.

*********************

Brian Meloche

What are you looking forward to?

Brian: CFUNITED is one of the few times I ever see some of my good ColdFusion developer friends. It's been four years since I attended a CFUNITED (back then, it was called CFUN), so I am interested to see how much it has changed since then.

A recent hot topic your interested in?

Brian: Well, there are several for me. I was at cf.Objective() and a lot of us asked Adobe for many new things in CF 9. I am hoping we'll get a sneak peek of what they have coming and hopefully some of what we've asked for and maybe a few cool things we haven't! I am also looking forward to seeing how Open BlueDragon is going, maybe even see if it's out in full release by then.

Has your presentation changed?

Brian: A little. I originally called my presentation Promoting ColdFusion Outside of the ColdFusion Community, but with Open BlueDragon, I have renamed it Promoting CFML outside of the CFML Community to separate ColdFusion the product with the language. Otherwise, it's about the same.

Beer of choice if someone wants to buy you a drink.

Brian: Well, I usually don't drink all that much when I'm home, believe it or not... so I'm just happy to take whatever you'll give me!!! I'm not fussy!!! :-)

*********************

John Farrar

What are you looking forward to?

John: I am looking forward to: + meeting new CFers + learning from others (and not just the speakers) + sharing some community work we have been involved in

A recent hot topic your interested in?

John: + D2O IDE for COOP

Has your presentation changed?

John: The CF & jQuery presentation has had the jQuery UI added to examples.

The Traffic Optimization has shifted from just being a presentation to being a project at seo.riaforge.org for the whole community to share the benefits.

Beer of choice if someone wants to buy you a drink.

John: I like Root Beer and my views on other beers are known to be antisocial. :)

*********************

Luis Majano

What are you looking forward to?

Luis: My first CF United experience. I feel like a kid in a candy store.

A recent hot topic your interested in?

Luis: CodexWiki is in private beta and will be revealed to the world by CF United as the first ColdFusion Enterprise Wiki built on ColdBox and Transfer

Has your presentation changed?

Luis: Yes, it now includes all the features of ColdBox 2.6.0

Beer of choice if someone wants to buy you a drink. Heineken, of Course.

*********************

Matt Woodward

What are you looking forward to?

Matt: I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again! I'm actually missing my high school reunion for CFUnited but when I mentioned this fact to Liz, she made the very good point that this basically is a reunion.

A recent hot topic

Matt: Open BlueDragon. There's tons of activity and buzz around Open BlueDragon since the unveiling earlier this month.

Has your presentation changed?

Matt: It's always changing a bit! No major changes though.

Beer of choice if someone wants to buy you a drink.

Matt: Guinness all the way.

This entry was posted on May 27, 2008 at 5:57 PM and has received 2065 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We are here with John Farrar, author of "ColdFusion 8 Developer Tutorial"

John, you just completed your new book "ColdFusion 8 Developer Tutorial". What inspired you to write it?

John: We wanted a book that covered the topic for both beginners and those who are moving up to the new language. We didn't want to cover all the topics because that would take multiple books. Rather we choose to focus on building a good foundation for new CFML developers and then showing how to code with several of the key new features of ColdFusion 8 by Adobe. This is more of a bootcamp book is a great way to summarize it's contents and our goals.

What can readers expect to find in this book?

John: This book will teach about basic variables, understanding scope and persistence, CFCs, custom tags, the great new AJAX features, search tools, PDF including forms and the new presentation abilities. We also approach not just how the built in features can be used but how real world programmers are connecting to sites like Flickr and other social technologies. Today the strength of a platform is how easy it networks with other sites and solutions. ColdFusion is a deluxe choice when it comes to integration. This book looks at integration techniques over and over.

What does this mean for the ColdFusion community?

John: This is a more compact intense coverage of the topic. Expect it to give a developer what he needs to know to be useful as a new CFML coder. It will also help learn many of the key features of CF8. Lastly expect to be able to start reaching outside CFML using custom tags and CFCs to make coding day by day simpler and better using these packaging concepts to reuse rather than rewriting the same code over and over.

Do you plan to write more books in the future?

John: Yes, we have already talked about digging deeper into some advance topics with the publisher. We were not even done with the book and the publisher was so excited they were asking us about what direction to go next and offering some suggestions that are needed for our community.

Can attendees look forward to purchasing this book at CFUnited?

John: We are all pulling to get the book out for the conference. We don't have an official yes at this time but it is looking very good!

This entry was posted on May 20, 2008 at 2:52 PM and has received 2400 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.