CFUnited Blog

Adobe MAX Day 1 reactions

Hello World.

This is my take on MAX so far. I was extremely pleased with the the over all feeling of MAX today. It was a great experience checking in and finding session rooms. Now granted, I heard some sessions were in another hotel that had some people confused but I didn't experience that problem yet.

Breakfast. It was actually good. I loved the little breakfast sandwiches and fruit. Nice touch. I went to look for a pleace to sit and eat but found out there wasn't any where to sit. I was pleased to find Jason Delmore and Tom Jordahl sitting on the floor in the middle of the room because I was planning to do the same. I realized early on that most developers are used to sitting on the floor for some reason. After about 5 minutes, more Adobe folks came to join us and some community members we recognized. We sat in a big circle and talked about everything we've experienced last night.

Keynote. We all got up and made our way to the keynote. Ok, correction, we litterly rushed to the entrance like a tornado was behind us. It was a race to the front. Nafisa and I sat about 15 rows back from the stage with other community leaders. I even ran up to give Ben Forta a big bear hug. I swooned when I saw Kevin Lynch on stage. (its a harry potter thing) I was well aware that no CF stuff would be talked about yet so I didn't get dissapointed. I did find a few things inspiring but nothing that had me going gaga. I was more occupied with not having Wifi access on my ipod touch. So I resorted to twittering on my cell phone. If you didn't hear about everything at the Keynote go to http://adobe.com/keynote And lastly, I realized as it was ending someone yelled out "Bingo" which was an inside joke I later found out about. (If you guys pull that while I'm on stage I'll clobber you) lol, but it was really funny. I was making my way out and got into a big crowd again so I hopped over the chairs and I got a few hoot and hollers. I'm not dancing on chairs yet guys. At least I was a little graceful (ok, but I didn't fall). My wonderful Mr. Potter was charming as usual and very classy. Although, I'm excited for tomorrow's keynote when I get to see my main squeeze, Mr. Forta. There is so much buzz and wonder about what we will find out next. I'll be twittering constantly under "cfunited" as fast as my fingers can go. (Hopefully the wifi is up then as well @adobemax)

Lunch. Very good. Very organized. I was late in line because I just had to stop by all the booths on the way. But I was pleased to still have plenty to eat. Thanks for the creme brule, it fulfilled my craving.

Sessions. A little weird. You check in with your badge. If you are not on the list, you have to wait... which is understandable. But I was on the list but my badge didn't register on the scanner. It actually said "Sorry, you are not permitted" or something like that. I wanted to tell that machine to fly a kite. I understand how it is though. Not everything works all the time. The few I've attended so far have been pretty ok. I'm actually here to network and do interviews. I've had lots of good luck so far but now my camera is dead again. I've gone through 4 batteries just today. Sorry if I didn't catch you.

Exhibits. I want more free stuff. I feel like Adobe has all the cool stuff this year. Tshirts, stickers, etc. They know what we really want. BTW, the CF tshirt rocks. It has a guy holding a bottle of beer. Awesome.

Other stuff. The game lounge is cool. The snacks rock. The support is excellent. AV is good.

Generally great as expected. Again, I'm looking forward to tomorrow. The night is still young though! See you pals later.

Last note. I had to share this point. Everyone who knows me, the first thing they say is "I love the new venue for CFUnited"! Sweet. Exactly what I was hoping for. Its all for you folks. And if you tell me I'm doing something right I'm encouraged to keep going. Thanks for the support.

Until tomorrow. -Liz

PS- Sorry about putting this under Admin, I forgot my personal password. I'll change it when I get back to the hotel.

CFUnited 2009 Call for Speakers

I'm challenging you!

The greatest feedback from 2008 is that attendees want fresh topics.

We want new and creative topics and in depth descriptions. Suggest a topic yourself or suggest a topic for someone else to speak on.

http://callforspeakers.cfconf.org/

The idea is that on December 1st we will put all the topic suggestions together and let the community vote. Everyone will have to vote by December 19th. The person who suggests the topic that is voted the most popular will win a special extra gift or free ticket.

Here's what attendees want at CFUnited (from survey):
Integrating new technologies
Hands-on sessions
CF and Flash Integration
Full life cycle development using many of the open-source tools out there
More Flex sessions
Latest technologies
Discussion topics
Advanced material
Code Samples
Some beginner to intermediate talks on using IDEs for coldfusion
Keep the technical quality and variety high
Enterprise level topics
More Advanced CF sessions
CF/Flex topics
Integrating CF with BlazeDS/AIR/Flex
Report Builder
Continuous Integration, ANT, Subversion, Flex
Why upgrade to CF8 for government employee
Centaur new features
Real world presentations
New keynote

http://callforspeakers.cfconf.org/

Survey results have us thinking

The survey feedback about the CFUnited 2009 event was extremely helpful. We realize that attendees want something reasonably priced and near city atmosphere. Having a venue that is easy to get to and metro accessible was important to travelers. We also saw that at the top of the list were Wireless Internet, Newer sessions, Good food, and Free Stuff.

Some of the great feedback we heard:

"Better learning opportunities. Maybe longer sessions, or more in-depth sessions."

"Content that can not be had anywhere else but CFUnited, but with so many other events, I am not sure that is possible."

"Having it spaced out a little in time from [other events]...I like the idea of going in July or early August"

"Having the convention at the hotel we are staying at"

"I have enjoyed the conferences but maybe a few more hands on sessions would be beneficial."

"Lower overall cost, the hotels in DC were really expensive and were too far away from the conference center itself which made networking hard"

Thanks Everyone! Either way attendees want a newer venue and newer sessions. Everything else is being considered highly. The decision on venue is going to be very rough, and we will cater to everyone's preferences as much as possible. I hope you like our decision, which will be announced in next week's newsletter.

Sean Corfield mentioned on his blog recently "it looks like CFUNITED 2009 will be significantly improved over CFUNITED 2008 and very focused on "the preferences and the needs of the attendees". I shared one of the potential venues with him. It is a possibility that I just can't pass up this deal because of all the free stuff and amenities they are offering and at that price! Even though not all the preferences are being accomplished. I hope everyone feels the same way and likes the new venue!!!

Get your very own Adobe ColdFusion 8 tag poster

We are happy to announce that the Adobe ColdFusion 8 tag posters are being shipped out to a CFUG near you.

You will want to get your hands on one soon.... as you can see the CF8 tag posters are a great addition to office decor ;)

The User Groups have been sent a limited number of tag posters, so we are offering to send you your very own for free!

Just fill out the following survey and you get your tag poster in the mail.

http://cfunited.com/go/survey/cf8-tag-poster

Due to cost of shipping we are only mailing free tag poster to US residents only. If you reside outside of the US and would like a tag poster just send us a request to nafisa(at)teratech.com and we can figure something out.

The posters were created with the joint efforts of TeraTech and Adobe.

BFusion & BFlex 08

The team behind CFUnited is proud to sponsor BFusion & BFlex '08.

http://bflex.info/

This is a two day FREE event with a CF on one day and Flex on the other. ColdFusion - Saturday, September 6th, 2008 Flex - Sunday, September 7th, 2008

HIGHLIGHTS
3 Reasons to attend

1. We are donating 200 Tag Posters for attendees of this event. We will also bring tag posters for every CFUnited Event and Sponsored Events, Including CFUnderground!

2. Attendees of BFusion will receive awesome discounts to several of our events.

3. One of our very own team members is an amazing speaker, Elliott Sprehn.

Elliott is a software engineer at TeraTech, Inc. and the lead developer for the Conferences department. He has worked on a variety of projects that include network services, realtime messaging systems, survey processors and most commonly web applications. As a strong advocate of web standards and accessibility he volunteers his free time to help new developers learn standards and best practices. He is also proponent of design patterns and draws his vision about application design from experience with many languages that include ColdFusion, Java, ruby and php.

Count down begins - Questions for CFUnited Attendees

Less than two weeks away! Everyone's getting excited. You've probably booked your flight, pulled out the luggage from the closet, dusted off the old CFUnited bookbag from 2006, wrote down what your away message will read, read up on where to eat in DC, and printed up your scheduler printout for the 10th time.

Answer any number of these questions for us on your own blog. We love to hear what people are thinking. We've been working for you and can't wait to see everything come together.

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

What are you looking forward to most?

Which speaker will most likely end up on your camera?

What do you plan to do outside conference time? (Clubbing/Bar Hopping, DC Tour, DC dinner cruise, Museum, Fine dining, Live Band shows, etc.)

Fill in the blank: I will mainly be around the ______ booth.

Do you have a new project you are working on and will reveal it at CFUnited?

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

Thanks. See you in a couple weeks!

***Don't forget to add yourself to the CFUnited Twitter. Spread the message.

***Find out more to do while you visit and see http://wiki.cfunited.com

CFUnited Movie Poll for AboutWeb Community Pit

Vote for your favorite Sci-Fi movies and we'll show the top 5 movies in each category during CFUnited! Visit the AboutWeb Movie Tent in the Community Area to see the winners!

http://www.aboutweb.com/dsp.poll.cfm

Share your blogs with us

How is everyone doing? What are you up to? CFUnited headquarters is getting ready for June and we want to know how the CF community is doing. We have our favorite blogs and we know there are more out there. Can you help me out? I'll share my favorites too. Probably put them on the CFUnited Wiki.

Thanks!

I have a treat in store for attendees. I'll be telling my advisers soon. Clue: it is so cool every CF developer will want one. ;-)

Good luck with your flight and travel arrangements, share your tips with each other on the CFUnited Wiki or you own blogs.

Feel free to start a discussion thread on ColdFusionCommunity.org and I will certainly answer some of your questions.

CFunited Blog bling updated with new dates and location!

Due to the recent changes in the conference dates and location we have updated our blog bling. Please visit the spread the word page to update your blogs and websites with the new banners.

New CFUnited Newsletter - Gets a makeover

I'm sure everyone's received at least one of TeraTech's newsletters at some point. Ok, maybe a few more than one...

The biggest suggestions to improve were:

- Make the e newsletter HTML, better to look at than just text

- Add more useful content

- Less is more

We've taken these suggestions and modified our newsletters starting in 2008. You probably just received our newest version via email (Thursday 1/03/08), "Why Should You Attend CFUnited?"

If you didn't receive the email (because it some how got caught in your spam filter), feel free to view it at http://cfunited.com/cfunitednewsletter/cfunitednewsletter.html

We will continue to send CFUnited Newsletters only ONCE a week, usually on Wednesdays. Nafisa is the new manager of the newsletter and is taking charge of the content. She's calling out to writers, bloggers, interviewers, and anyone else willing to allow us to repost their message to the public. Not only do we want to bring useful content, but we want to keep everyone up-to-date of conference dates, changes, and big news.

So if you removed yourself from our newsletter in the past, Nafisa promises you'll be pleased from now on.

If you would like to add yourself to receive the newsletter, please go to http://cfunited.com/go/newslettersignup

If you are interested in writing for the newsletter or would like to have selected blog entries reposted, send an email to nafisa (at)teratech.com

Here are some resources we pull our content from:
Christian Ready's Podcast
Charlie Arehart's CFMeetup
House of Fusion
TeraTech's Blog
Community MX
Speaker Blogs
Attendee Reviews
CFUnited Blog
Sponsor news
CFUnited Speaker Interviews

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