Hello hello!

Have you heard of the fabulous contest Ray Camden is running?

If not, check out his blog and read up on it!

First place gets his/her code printed on the official CFUnited t-shirt. Second and third place will both get $200 off the ticket price!

To submit your entry, post a comment on the T-Shirt contest blog post!

Good luck to all.

This entry was posted on June 29, 2010 at 3:08 PM and has received 3480 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Hi everyone,

I'm proud to announce that Seth Tepfer has been chosen as the first social media raffle winner! He gets his choice of CF9 Enterprise, Flex or Creative Suite 5.

Seth was chosen randomly from our list of fans of our CFUnited page on Facebook!

That means our next two drawings will be pulled from Twitter followers (Lansdowne, CFUnited, Stellr), CFUnited Facebook event, CFUnited LinkedIn event, or being a fan of Stellr or the Lansdowne resort on Facebook.

So many opportunities - you better start clicking!

Since I have delayed in announcing the first winner, I will announce the next winner this Friday, July 2, 2010.

This entry was posted on June 29, 2010 at 8:43 AM and has received 3074 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Hey everyone,

The big day (or week) is almost here! We wanted to give you all a sneak preview of Charlie's Day 2 Keynote: CFCommunity: You're never alone:

One of the hallmarks of the ColdFusion community has long been the way it's banded together. People helping people: sharing knowledge, solving problems, giving away code, pointing to resources, making recommendations, and so much more. Yet as powerful as that network of resources is, it's easy to presume, "well everyone knows where to turn for help". In fact, a lot of CF developers do work heads down, in their bunker, on their own, just getting their job done. They miss out on these great resources, this great community, and their work suffers for it. Things take longer to solve, when someone may have the answer. They get frustrated with problems that have been solved.

In this session, veteran CFer Charlie Arehart will highlight many of the most important--and some little known--places to turn for help. An inveterate "resource librarian" himself, Charlie is known for being able to point quickly to where in the CF community a solution may exist. He's benefited from those resources over the years, and he's also paid it forward by creating more of his own. Come find out just how many resources may exist that you've not known about. Whether you're new or experienced in CF,there's a suitable resource for you. You're never alone.

Charlie's Bio:

A veteran ColdFusion developer and troubleshooter since 1997 with over 25 years in IT, Charlie Arehart is a longtime contributor to the community and a recognized Adobe Community Professional. As an independent consultant, he provides short-term troubleshooting/tuning assistance and training/mentoring for organizations of all sizes and CF experience levels (carehart.org/consulting).

Besides running the 2000-member Online ColdFusion Meetup, an online CF user group, he also hosts the UGTV repository of recorded presentations from hundreds of speakers and the CF411 site of over 1000 tools/resources for CFers. A certified Advanced CF Developer and Instructor for each version since CF 4, Charlie's spoken at each of the major CF conferences worldwide and is a contributor to all three volumes of Ben Forta's ColdFusion 8 and 9 WACK books.

Make sure you attend his keynote speech!!

This entry was posted on June 23, 2010 at 7:32 AM and has received 3301 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to give a quick heads-up about MDCFUG's meeting, this Tuesday, June 22nd from 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm.

The meeting will be held at AboutWeb's Training Center: 6177 Executive Blvd., Rockville, MD 20852

ColdFusion Product Manager, Adam Lehman, will provide an update for everything ColdFusion-related. From the release of ColdFusion 9 & ColdFusion Builder to the next release (Sully) to plans for ColdFusion on Amazon EC2. Adam will even demonstrate some of the new features in Sully which include integration with LiveCycle Data Services 3. Finally, Adam will elaborate on the future of ColdFusion and hold an open discussion about what you'd like to see in Link (codename for ColdFusion 10) and Storm (codename for ColdFusion Builder 2). Don't miss this opportunity to interact directly with the ColdFusion product team and provide direction for the next version.

Did I mention that the meeting will include a raffle for CF Builder and CF 9 Standard, only eligible to meeting attendees??

AND did I mention the free pizza and beer???

If you're in the area and don't have plans (which I can't imagine why you would on a Tuesday night :p), make sure you attend the Maryland ColdFusion Users Group Meeting!!!

Don't forget, Adam Lehman will be one of CFUnited's keynote speakers, so if you want a chance to meet him and chat, this meeting is the most opportune chance.

This entry was posted on June 21, 2010 at 2:00 PM and has received 3258 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Get trained only 2 days before CFUnited!

Core ColdBox is our 2-day flagship intensive training course that will get you started with ColdBox even if you have no previous OO experience. The course is constructed in such a manner that both gurus and novices can take advantage of this course. For more course and location information visit our page.

All training sessions are conducted by ColdBox core developers and experts in application development using the ColdBox Platform. This course will provide you with all the in-depth knowledge necessary to succeed in designing, building and maintaining ColdBox applications. Get your technology edge and sharpen your ColdFusion skills!

Click here if you would like to register for this course with the special CFUnited discount code (cfunitedRocks).

This entry was posted on June 21, 2010 at 11:19 AM and has received 2849 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Hi everyone,

I know you have all been drooling over these much-anticipated sessions...so I'm going to cut to the chase...

1. Easy RIA with ColdFusion 9 and Flex 4 - Josh Adams - If you're interested in getting started using ColdFusion and Flex together but aren't sure quite how, this is the session for you. In this session, you will learn about: *The various ways in which Flex applications can make calls to ColdFusion applications *Using the features of Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Builder to generate Flex-ColdFusion integrated applications *Calling the ColdFusion 9 Exposed Services Layer from Flex applications

2. ColdFusion Powered Offline Applications using AIR ORM - Jayesh Viradiya - ColdFusion 9 simplifies the creation of offline enabled applications with Adobe AIR. In this session learn how to utilize the client side, ActionScript ORM library available with ColdFusion 9 for client side data management and allow ColdFusion to manage data synchronization and conflict resolution with the back-end database.

3.ColdFusion 9 Deployment Best Practices - Tata Sankaram - How you configure and lay out your ColdFusion servers is critical for optimum application performance. In this session learn best practices for setting up your production environment for load balancing, clustering, and graceful server failover.

4.Task Oriented development with ColdFusion Builder - Kiran Sakhare - Discover how you can streamline your ColdFusion application development with ColdFusion Builder and Mylyn, a task and application lifecycle management plug-in for Eclipse. This session will cover installing the Mylyn plug-in and managing tasks in a ColdFusion project.

5.Getting Started with ColdFusion Builder - Sandeep Paliwal - In this session learn how to get started with your first application in ColdFusion Builder. We will cover the basics of Eclipse-based development as well as ColdFusion Builder specifics including connecting to your ColdFusion server, working with databases and debugging.

6.Extending Java Applications with ColdFusion - Rupesh Kumar - ColdFusion is designed to be used in conjunction with Java, leveraging the powerful capabilities that the Java runtime offers while providing the benefit of rapid application development. In this session learn how you can easily utilize ColdFusion 9 to quickly expand and leverage the functionality of existing Java applications.

7.Exploring LCDS3 and ColdFusion 9 Applications - Kevin Schmidt - This session will provide an overview of LCDS 3 and BlazeDS 4 and how it integrates into ColdFusion 9 applications. We'll talk about what's changed in Flash Remoting since ColdFusion 8 (it's 9x faster) and how to leverage the built-in functionality of BlazeDS. We will also cover server-side data management and how LCDS3 can simplify how Flex applications manage data through ColdFusion.

8.How Catalyst will Transform ColdFusion Development - Terry Ryan - Catalyst makes front end design easy. More importantly it makes pretty front end design easy. If there ever was a compliment for ColdFusion's ease of back end development, it's the ease of front end with Catalyst. See how this tool can be brought into your workflow and super charge your development.

9.Building multi-player games on the Flash platform with ColdFusion, Flex and Data services - Greg Wilson - Learn how to build scalable, interactive, multiplayer games using the Flex, AIR, ColdFusion and BlazeDS/LCDS. Employ publish/subscribe messaging, CF remoting and other tricks to build something far cooler than just another multi-user chat application. Synchronize graphics across players, learn how to handle player disconnect, reconnects, tolerate poor networking conditions, latency, etc.

10.Adding real-time data visualization to your application or website - Greg Wilson - Every time your application accesses the server, data is available to do many more things than simple logging. Learn how to take this data and create valuable visualizations to show usage trends in real-time. Then with some simple IP to Geo techniques, the data can be visualized with maps to show visitor locations. Learn to use ColdFusion's event gateway to publish the data and use Flex to consume the data and visualize it with various mapping APIs from Google, ESRI, Mapquest and others to build compelling, animated application dashboards.

Well...there you have it! Make sure you schedule these ASAP!

Also, if you have yet to register, this is the most perfect excuse :)

This entry was posted on June 11, 2010 at 8:49 AM and has received 3015 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Hi everyone!!

We know that the final early bird ends tomorrow, 6/10, but we decided to extend it to June 30, 2010.

So, that means the current prices for a 4-day package are $1,049 and $399 for the Saturday only package. After June 30th, the 4-day package will be $1149 and the Saturday only will be $449.

If you registered today, you will still be included in the Early Bird pricing.

Check out our Prices page for more information.

As always, if you are eligible for a discount, please contact info (at) cfunited (dot) com.

Make sure you register before the last early bird ends!!!

This entry was posted on June 11, 2010 at 8:23 AM and has received 4671 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Dan Vega is Web Developer for the eBusiness department of STERIS Corporation, and has been developing web applications with ColdFusion for six years. Dan has a passion for inspiring and educating others. He regularly blogs at http://www.danvega.org/blog/ about his daily findings and enjoys speaking to those willing to listen. He is also the co-manager of the Cleveland ColdFusion User Group. As co-manager, he regularly provides content to the group, answers members' questions and presents on a wide variety of topics at monthly Cleveland CFUG meetings, and has also presented to other user groups.

CFUnited sessions : Developing Web Applications for Mobile Devices
Validation in ColdFusion

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

Yes. I gave a presentation on Transfer last year.

2. Why should people attend your sessions?

I think they are both going to be fun topics to present on. I really take the time to make sure I am prepared for a session and I think my enthusiasm for the topic really comes through in the presentation.

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

I have 1 that is already out there but I plan on talking about it a little bit more during my Validation topic.

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

I always look forward to the Keynote. We get a chance to reflect on what has happened over the last year and look forward to what is to come. As far as sessions go I am really looking forward to Elliott Sprehn's session because he always has something to talk about that makes me go "wow".

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

We are right in the middle of an exciting time in development and it all centers around the mobile platform. The two big players right now are Android and iPhone OS. I would love to see an Android related BOF because its something I am excited about.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

I am always around so if you see me please don't hesitate to grab me and talk shop, it's my favorite part of the conference. If you can't find me I would check the bar, good place to start!

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

Not really, life is good! Wait, my foot healed and I think I am going to officially withdrawal from any sumo wrestling events this year.

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

It's just the massive amount of ColdFusion developers that are there. I really enjoy networking and hanging out with friends that I only get to see a couple times a year. Also, the Lansdowne Resort is an amazing place to have a conference. I had a blast there last year and expect nothing less this year.

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

Writing code is not just a profession to me, it's almost an obsession. I have a large thirst for knowledge so you can usually find me learning something new in my spare time. With that said I love being outside when the weather is nice. There is nothing more relaxing to me then a nice long run through the streets of Cleveland on warm sunny evening. I also enjoy a good movie, hanging out with friends and you can usually find me at a poker table on the weekends.