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.

This entry was posted on March 9, 2009 at 2:15 PM and has received 3604 views. There are currently 3 comments. Print this entry.

Congratulations to Mike Brunt, David Tucker, Andrew Powell, Yakov Fain, Jun Heider, and RJ Owen!!

We are so excited to announced the next round of speakers accepted for CFUnited 2009!

Kurt Wiersma (replacing Matt Woodward) "Head First Mach II"

Mike Brunt "Building an Enterprise Install of ColdFusion from Ground Zero"

David Tucker "Working with Data in AIR"

Andrew Powell "Blowing Your Mind With Merapi"

Yakov Fain "Using Design Patterns in Flex"

Jun Heider "Intro to Flex Debugging and Profiling"

RJ Owen "Flex 4 Components"

This entry was posted on March 4, 2009 at 4:44 PM and has received 3190 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

You can now register for Pre-Conference Classes!!

Location: Lansdowne Resort and Conference Center.

Date: August 11, 2009

Hours: 9:00am - 5:30pm

Food: Breakfast, Lunch, and fully replenished snacks and beverages are provided throughout the day.

Cost: $549

Seats per class: 20

Extras
* Free wireless Internet
* Includes all materials and Certificate of Completion

Click on a class for more details

CU241 - CBOX-100 : Intro To ColdBox - Luis Majano

CU242 - Building Desktop Applications with AIR - Rob Rusher

CU243 - Flex Boot Camp - Dan Blackman

CU244 - Building Better Applications - Simon Free

CU245 - Hitchikers Guide to ColdFusion - Chaz Chumley

CU246 - Setting up Internal Hosting - TBA

CU247 - Project Management Seminar - Shlomy Gantz

Custom Classes

If you're interested in having CFUnited provide a customized class for your company of 5 or more students, please Contact Us.

This entry was posted on February 12, 2009 at 5:22 PM and has received 3573 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We are excited to announce that Sean Corfield is coming to speak at CFUnited 2009!

His topic is "Living in the Cloud"

The dream of cloud computing is cheap, scalable, on-demand power. What is it really like to run your production applications up in the cloud? What are the design issues you will face? How could you migrate from a traditional data center? Broadchoice runs its two main products on Amazon EC2 and uses S3 for persistent storage. Come and find out how we did it and the challenges we faced along the way - and why we like Amazon as a hosting environment!

http://cfunited.com/go/topics/2009#topic-2074

This entry was posted on February 10, 2009 at 5:31 PM and has received 3315 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We understand that it is difficult to take time off for almost an entire week to attend a conference. While the event and learning is very useful, we all still have to maintain a proper work flow.

That's why at CFUnited we have created several work stations which provide a quiet and private area for attendees to work. All provided for FREE.

This is not an internet cafe, instead it is supplied with power strips, tables, seating, coffee, snacks, and excellent wireless Internet. We've upped the expectations this year.

If you have to check in to work and get those billable hours completed on time and under budget, we want to make sure we help you keep your end of the deal.

We are focusing on your needs and your companies needs.

Please register today you have everything to gain.

Areas highlighted in Orange are designated work rooms for multiple work stations.

This entry was posted on February 10, 2009 at 2:31 PM and has received 3558 views. There are currently 6 comments. Print this entry.

Congratulations to Clark and Hal, Brian, Andrew, Jeff, and Sean!

Here are the next round of topics announced for CFUnited 2009. Next month we will announce 5 more.

Clark Valberg and Hal Helms "Dancing with the Devil: Dealing With Difficult Customers"

Ah, customers: business would be great if we could just get rid of them! The humor in this statement is the absurdity of it, yet it's easy to understand the feelings that prompt it. In this session, Hal and Clark (who believe they've had MORE than their share of difficult customers) explain how the term "difficult customer" often is often misapplied; more often the problem is that a bad dynamic has been established between developer and client. Using real-life case studies, we'll share specific techniques we've found to be successful in both (a) avoiding problems in the first place and (b) turning "difficult customers" into enthusiastic fans.

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

Brian Rinaldi "A CF Developer's Guide to the Mate Flex Framework"

Learn how to use the Mate framework when building a Flex application that connects to ColdFusion. Mate was developed by Nahuel Foronda of ASFusion and is an easy-to-use and powerful framework for Flex development. It will feel comfortable to many ColdFusion developers who use common MVC frameworks. This session will show you the basics of using Mate in a Flex/AIR application.

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

Andrew Schwabe "Flex and Google App Engine"

This is a presentation on how to build a simple application with flex on top of google app engine (GAE) which uses python and python AMF.

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Jeff Tapper "How not to code flex applications"

Having worked on hundreds of various flex applications, I've had a chance to see all sorts of bad practices in use. In this session, we will look at several mistakes: common ones, amusing ones, ones which got someone fired, and talk through ways of making you a better coder, or at least one who makes a better caliber of mistakes.

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

Sean Moore "Flex Best Practices"

This presentation is based on my experience developing internet based applications. I wrote two articles on Best Practices for the Adobe Flex Developer Center on the Adobe.com website last year. This presentation cover many of the topics and bullet points from my articles. The presentation is meant to help developers write more maintainable, scalable, clean, organized code and develop Flex projects in the same manner.

This entry was posted on February 4, 2009 at 2:48 PM and has received 2510 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We are so excited to announce our newest sponsors.

Platinum Sponsor

Adobe Systems Inc. http://www.adobe.com/

Silver Sponsors

Integral http://www.intergral.com/

Railo http://www.railo-technologies.com/

BlueRiver http://www.blueriver.com/

On3 Solutions http://on3solutions.com/

Savvy Software http://besavvy.com/

This entry was posted on January 21, 2009 at 3:28 PM and has received 3301 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

CANCEL - Todd Sanders "Integrating ColdFusion and Adobe Livecycle ES Technologies"

CANCEL - Raymond Camden "ColdFusion, Model-Glue, HIbernate, Spring, and Groovy"

NEW - Adam Haskell "Red Green Refactor"

NEW - Todd Sharp "Better Development Through Open Source"

This entry was posted on January 12, 2009 at 9:47 AM and has received 3475 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

Experience Day 2 through my eyes and thoughts now...

The day started with a couple cups of coffee... I don't usually drink coffee but for some reason it becomes a necessity at conferences.

I totally planned on recording interviews while I was there. I had no time and no one else really did either. So I'll recap everything instead.

I blogged about Day 1 before attending a CS4 show down. I got lots of ideas for how I could improve designs and create movies in photoshop. Yes... I said Photoshop. I was too excited because I don't like to use Flash if I don't have to. I used to generate simple Fireworks animated GIF images for banner ads but CS3 didn't come with it. Now Photoshop does simple animation and can incorporate video. Its about time!! So keep an eye for Nafisa and I to make some cool stuff to elevate the experience when visiting CFUnited.com.

I made my way up to the third floor to get into the keynote. I got even closer this time (7 rows back from the stage). I thought to myself, this is it. What I've been waiting for. This better be good. OMG, you could sense the CF developers holding their breaths. It was as if Adobe was crossing their fingers that all their hard work for the last 6 months would pay off. It all came down to this.

It wasn't just the content of what they wanted to share with the general session. It was the way they did it. It was fun and entertaining and it was seamless. Started with Design to Video then to Development. The way life was intended. So what stood out? Photoshop new features, Flash made simple, Flex Builder 3, Bolt which is like Eclispe, Centaur's enhancements, and the fact that Adobe really seems to have been listening to the general public. I think everything that has been suggested by the community is being taken seriously. Tim Buntel and Ben Forta looked so snazzy. Reminded me of Men in Black. It was too cute.

I kept wondering why there wasn't as much applause as deserved, but what I think happened is everyone's minds were about to explode and their mouths were hanging open. It was like they shocked us to the point of turning us speechless. Or they were blogging and twittering non-stop.

The evening prior I told Ben Forta that I couldn't wait for Day 2 keynote. He kept giving me a "you'll see" kind of look. At lunch he walked over to me and we hugged then gave a big high five. I told him I was so proud and I couldn't be happier for the CF community.

I was so inspired by the time lunch came around that I kicked into full networking mode. I was like a machine. I should have just had a big billboard around my neck that said "CFUnited.com and Stellr.com"

The Afternoon was reserved for CF and Air topics for me. I know I'm a designer, but I have to stay in the know. Plus I'm someone who has to remind people that CF is doing so well and that no matter what level you are developing, you should learn CF and you can save yourself time and money. I believe in CF and I want to see it evolve just as much as you do.

Kristen Schofield did an excellent presentation "Be your own Ben Forta". I didn't know what that meant really but to me it was more like "Why CF?" She explained everything in the Evangelism Kit. If you've never read it before, go to: http://www.adobe.com/go/cfevangelismkit

You have to check out page 5 which tells us the future of CF. Centaur in 2009, Sully in 2010, and Link in 2011. I don't think Adobe has ever released their plans for anything other than the next release so this was a big treat. It kind of sets the tone for how I should prepare for each year.

In the new Evangelism kit she handed out at MAX it shows the cost savings from developing your applications in Java vs ASP.Net vs PHP vs CF. You can see that it saves companies almost HALF the cost if you develop in CF rather than Java (even though Java is free). Why? Kristen explained that it is easier to train in CF and the amount of time developing is also less. Not to mention the amount of mistake that can be made. She can correct me if I'm wrong but I think she said that for every 1,000 lines of code Java developers make 100-150 more mistakes than CF developers. I think the point is though that the less amount of code you have the less mistakes.

After that we had lots of questions. Some said they have trouble selling CF to their employers and this Kit is a great solution. Maybe we need more? I'm going to think about this and see how CFUnited can support the effort as well. Something with testimonials, more statistics, and case studies.

Another question was how to find developers to hire. My mouth dropped because I know if I send an SOS to the CFUnited community we can find just about anybody to pass along the information in a heart beat. And that's the other point I think Kristen was missing in her presentation. The CF community is very strong and there are many URLs and Blogs that can get you information and assistance quickly. We should be publishing this to the world, not just other CF people. I'm going to work on that idea too. That's why I'm doing this Executive Summit during CFUnited, which I'll share more soon with you folks.

My next session was Rakshith's "AIR with ColdFusion" It was good. I couldn't follow everything but I was paying more attention to attendee's reactions. Seeing what were their concerns and were they convinced. I'd say from the reactions now, yes. It looks like they have a few things to iron out but Adobe is on the right track. Their employee AIR app used CF. A great example and simple.

I shifted focus and wandered around the Unconference sessions. Looks like those were really popular. Some of the sessions were like the ones you'd see at CFUnited. Its was good to see something informal and work so well at MAX. I put out some CFUnited discount cards (Don't forget to use them by December 5th!) and CF Tag Posters of course.

I made my way down to the Community Pavilion to hang with the Community lounge folks. Including Rachel Luxemberg and Eddie Sullivan. You could see that we were all ready for a massage or something. The humor and laughter was contagious. I got a chance to talk with Rachel about the community. She really enjoys the UG managers and says she's enjoying it so far. I'm sure you all will keep her busy. Eddie is in a good place right now although he'll always be a legend amongst user groups. I also met Sumi Lim. The International community has always had me a little hestitant and we tried CFUnited Europe once. So I guess in a year or so I'll work with Sumi and figure things out a little better.

Nafisa and I skipped the Sneak Peek and Awards. We needed to go back to the hotel and take a break. It was just too much for one day and yet we still had to make our way to back for the evening event. We carried all the free tshirts, stickers, and CDs in our book bags that we could manage. By the time we got to the room we could have literally fallen asleep. At 7pm we found the buses to take us to the museum event. It was pretty orderly. I fell asleep in the bus because it was a 30 minute ride. But good thing because it was going to be a long night.

We (Nafisa and I) started out with the environment exhibit and things that show how the world is evolving to improve our planet. Got some itty bitty burger and chips and beer (Stella beer was my drink for the night... get it? Stella, Stellr... lol) Anyways, then we hit the African exhibit with music and mexican food, a funny combination I thought. Met up with Joe, Ray, Scott, etc. Then the insect exhibit had some beef and potatoes. I got another Stella. There was a pendulum next which we watched for 15 minutes just to see when it would knock over the next pin (because the world rotates on an axis). Grabbed some sushi. Met up with Todd Sanders. Walked up to the guy with tickets for the planetarium scheduled for later that night. Made our way downstairs to the awesome aquarium with a symphony band. Finished that then saw the albino alligator. Got another Stella near the swing band and contortionists. Decided to go to the other museum across the park. Walked past the oragami lessons after grabbing another Stella because we couldn't go outside with our other beers (what a waist, but its their rules and their waste of money). Then we tookd the elevator up to the 9th floor and saw a 360 view of San Francisco. Very cool. Met up with Rob Rusher and his partner Dan. Looked at the time, and ran back across to the other museum to the planitarium. And there was the HIGHLIGHT of my trip. about 200 attendees had tickets to view the most spectacular 3D show I've ever experienced, all without wear those 3D glasses. I'm definitely bringing the family back to see this someday. By the time the evening was over it was 11pm. Nafisa and I grabbed a drink back at the Marriott, then got a midnight strawberry shortcake a la mode. We reflected on the networking we did and the things we learned. Stellr is going to do very well. We have big ideas and a fresh style. Can't wait for 2009.

A big shout out to the 5 Taggers. ;-) (I bet you are wondering what and who this is)

Thanks Adobe for everything. Looking forward to working with you on future events. Thanks for the beer, the loud music, the endless tshirts, the food, the snacks, the video games... and, oh yeah, a confidence in my future with this industry!

Peace out.

PS- Left Wednesday morning, sorry to everyone I didn't get a chance to say goodbye. We'll post all the pictures and videos soon.

This entry was posted on November 20, 2008 at 4:02 PM and has received 3487 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Thanks Scott Stroz, a new member of our advisory board, who told me to submit an entry about the travel for CFUnited 2009 TODAY.

Lansdwone Resort is not along the metro. We know this is one of the items attendees wanted, however we've made arrangements to make it as painless as possible.

Some of the reasons we decided to go with the new venue was because the cost of rooms in DC or even near the metro were very expensive and there aren't that many options for a venue that can hold a conference with over 500 attendees comfortably. Attendees have been hoping for lower guest room rates, better services, and perks. So we've arranged for some extremely great benefits for attendees which made the deal hard to pass up.

As far as transportation, here are the benefits: FREE Parking FREE Shuttle to/from the Dulles Airport FREE Shuttle to/from the Vienna Metro Station

The metro station is approximately 20-30 minutes away. And if you are looking at traffic which is undeniable on any given day and time, you are probably wondering how we plan to organize the event around this issue.

Commuters will have their own "Commuters Lounge" filled with breakfast, comfortable chairs, and a place to rest. If you try to beat the traffic and arrive early, we can see to providing early coffee and breakfast. Any favorite magazine requests?

Lets say you are running really late. First of all, I'll have the asprin waiting at the door if you give me a heads up. Also, I've decided to schedule the less popular topics in the AM and start the days later and end later. I think its gives everyone a fair chance. As a commuter myself in the DC metro area (I commute from Baltimore) I understand what its like.

I can honestly say that commuters will have one of the few pains as a result of 2009's event. But I plan to make up for it in many many ways and offer everyone benefits and luxuries.

If you have concerns or you think there is something else I can do to easy your pain, don't hesitate to ask. :-)

Be Safe.

This entry was posted on November 18, 2008 at 11:51 AM and has received 2182 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.