Sean Corfield is currently CEO of Railo Technologies, Inc. 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. He released his own framework (FW/1) in 2009.
CFUnited sessions: ColdFusion and the Open Source Landscape
FW/1 - The Invisible Framework
1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?
Every year since 2004 so this will be my seventh consecutive year as a speaker.
2. Why should people attend your sessions?
I'm an advocate for several things that I think help developers improve themselves and build better applications. Two of those things are frameworks and open source software - the topics of my talks this year. My framework talk showcases FW/1 (Framework One) which is a very small, lightweight framework that should appeal to people who "don't like frameworks", whether they think frameworks are overkill for small projects or simply too much complicated third party code to learn or rely on in their applications. I call FW/1 the "invisible framework". My other talk is intended to expand developers' awareness of open source software in general, showing how the popularity of certain other technologies has arisen because of their open source communities. I also hope to answer questions such as "Why give away the source to my application?" and "Why should I contribute to someone else's free software project?".
3. Do you have any projects in the works that you will be revealing at CFUnited?
I'm currently planning the next release of FW/1 and expect that to be released around CFUnited. I'm also thinking about creating a ColdFusion Builder Extension for FW/1.
4. Besides your topic, what other sessions are you looking forward to?
When I looked through the list of topics the other day, there were about 30 that I'm interested in attending! Three that really caught my eye are Christian Ready's HTML5 talk and the two talks by Elliott Sprehn - because he always has some fascinating insights!
5. What are some of the hot topics you'd like to see at RoundTable discussions?
Cloud computing is one - since I've worked on systems deployed entirely on the cloud for a couple of years now - and Agile Software Development is the other. A lot of the ideas from the agile community are very interesting and a refreshing approach to many of the common problems we tend to encounter with projects.
6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?
When I'm not in sessions, I'll be at the Railo Consulting sponsor booth during the day. In the evening? Most likely the bar...
7. What's the latest news with you? Has anything changed since last CFUnited?
Apart from 2009 being a horrible year for me personally and 2010 being a great improvement so far, not much has changed. That's quite a contrast to the last few years where I'd had a new employer each year! (Adobe in 2006, self-employed in 2007, Broadchoice in 2008, Railo in 2009 and Railo in 2010)
8. What is unique about CFUnited?
CFUnited is the biggest event of the year for CF developers - it offers the best networking, the broadest selection of topics, and access to more of our peers than any other event. I really enjoy the opportunity to connect with so many CF developers in one place!
9. What do you like to do in your free time?
Last year I would have said dancing but since my wife broke her ankle we haven't done much of that. To be honest, what I mostly do in my free time is work on open source software projects - and I really enjoy that!
