Brian Rinaldi - A programmer, Adobe Community Expert, manager of the Boston ColdFusion User Group and organizer of Flex Camps in Boston and Miami. Brian is most well known for his efforts promoting open-source projects in ColdFusion, especially for maintaining the ColdFusion open-source list as well as the weekly updates, both of which you can find via his web site at http://www.remotesynthesis.com.

CFUnited Session: A CF Developer's Guide to the Mate Flex Framework

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

I spoke last year on RIA security, which was a tough topic. I would tell new folks that CFUnited is the biggest and most widely known ColdFusion conference, so it is the best place to network with other ColdFusion developers. The new hotel looks pretty exciting, so I think the opportunities to socialize and network will be even better this year.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?

I am presenting the Mate framework for Flex this year. Whether you are an experienced Flex programmer who is familiar with Cairngorm or a new Flex developer looking to adopt a framework for your development, Mate is something you should definitely look at. I found that using it not only improved my overall application organization and cleaned up my code, but it improved my enjoyment of Flex coding since it offered tools that simplified development. Mate has been gaining a lot of steam lately and whether you choose to use it or not, its definitely something you should consider or at least be aware if you are doing Flex development. This session will introduce the core Mate concepts for anyone unfamiliar with the framework.

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

I won't make any promised but I recently set a goal to have a completely reworked Illudium PU-36 Code Generator ready for CFUnited. Its a big undertaking since much of the underlying code needs to be redone to accomplish what I want to do, but with the upcoming releases of Bolt and Centaur, its something that I think should happen. In particular, as was announced earlier today, Bolt plans to offer the ability to tie in custom code generation using CFML, so being able to tie Bolt to Illudium will be a priority.

4. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

I attend conferences purely for the sessions and learning. There is no way you will find me at the bar every evening drinking beer and chatting with attendees. In fact, I promise I will not be closing down the hotel bar, and, despite what you may have heard, I have never done that at any prior conference.

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

Last year I was working for Universal Mind, but was caught in the layoffs earlier this year. This year I have started with a company called Pongo Resume (www.pongoresume.com) building ColdFusion and Flex applications.

6. What is unique about CFUnited?

CFUnited draws the widest variety of ColdFusion developers from around the country. There are sessions that cater towards relative beginners and others that are very advanced. I think the Flex/AIR track is particularly exciting this year as it has brought in well known people from the Flex community and not simple ColdFusion developers doing some Flex. I am looking forward to getting a lot out of the sessions in that track.

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

I own every game system in existence (Xbox 360, Wii, Playstation 3, PSP, DS) but I rarely get to play them much unless its with my 6 year old son. Essentially, I own the systems to keep up a charade that I am an avid gamer...which I once was. I also am a big fan of sports, particularly college sports. While I am a University of Miami grad and Hurricane fan, I have season tickets to Boston College football which is walking distance from my home. I also attend many of the local college basketball and hockey games with an occassional professional game of the Celtics or Red Sox when I can afford it.

This entry was posted on June 9, 2009 at 2:58 PM and has received 4123 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Andrew Schwabe - President of IEXP Software, LLC and is a veteran CFML developer since 1998. Prior to working with IEXP, Andrew worked for 10 years as the President and Chairman of the Board of Internet Expressions, Inc. He has been the forerunner in developing numerous applications ranging from the free - CFX_RawSocket (a Java Custom Tag for ColdFusion) - to FusionDox (enterprise-level document management). Andrew has been deeply involved in developing many of these applications from the ground up, enhancing and using the ColdFusion platform to its fullest potential. In addition to his extensive ColdFusion experience, Andrew has been recognized in the business community, receiving the coveted Dale Carnegie Highest Achievement Award.

CFUnited session: Flex and Google App Engine

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

Yup. I've been speaking at CF United events for the last 4-5 years or so. Lost count. CFUN is cool because you get to hang out with all the movers and shakers in the industry.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?

Why not? I'll be showing an example of using Flex to talk to Google App Engine (GAE), so its just pretty darn cool.

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

I'm hoping to have a brand new product ready to demo called FusionDox Access, which is a way cool easy way to share large files with people, and easily integrates into your web projects. All build in Flex of course :)

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

Flexy goodness, especially looking forward to Flex 4 graphics enhancements.

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

How to beat down the industry's impression that ColdFusion is dying.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited? (At the bar, networking, working, in your room, etc.)

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. Also email me. aschwabe(at)gmail(dot)com.

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

New version of FusionDox is coming out. See http://www.fusiondox.com/blog/

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

Everything is approachable at CFUN. Talk to whoever, everybody is sincere about wanting to transfer knowledge so that everybody grows.

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

Playing guitar, riding my motorcycle (bmw k100), going to the shooting range with the family, travel, eat, drink, being merry.

This entry was posted on June 8, 2009 at 4:41 PM and has received 3356 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Barney Boisvert - Sr. Application Developer at Mentor Graphics primarily using ColdFusion, Groovy, JavaScript, along with a smattering of Java and Flex. He is the author of the CFGroovy and FB3Lite frameworks, was a core contributor to Fusebox 4, and has provided accepted patches to Fusebox 5, Prototype, Groovy, Hibernate and ColdSpring, in addition to building several micro-frameworks from the ground up. He is also an active member in local and online CF, Flex, and Java communities and occasionally speaks at user groups and conferences.

CFUnited session: CFGroovy - Groovy for the CFML Developer

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

Nope, sure haven't.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?

CFML is a great templating language, but it falls rather short in other areas (verbosity, java integration, collections, etc.). Groovy has the "inverse" feature set (concise, tight with java, rich APIs, but bad at templating). Leveraging Groovy within your CFML applications can provide a significant reduction in complexity and verbosity, and it's ridiculously simple to do.

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

CFGroovy will have a couple releases this summer. Not sure if they will coincide with CFUnited or not.

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

Multiple CFML runtimes, Java library integration

5. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

In the common area(s), chatting with whomever.

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

Ride my bicycle and my motorcycle, cook (and eat), play with new technologies and methodologies.

This entry was posted on June 5, 2009 at 3:12 PM and has received 3431 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Doug Hughes - Doug Hughes is a veteran programmer and the president of Alagad Inc (http://www.alagad.com), a successful small business specializing in web and application development, services and consulting. Doug also publishes a popular blog covering ColdFusion and other technical topics at http://www.doughughes.net.

CFUnited session: Using Ant to Deploy ColdFusion Application

1. Why should people attend your session(s)?

I'm talking about Ant this year and how it can be used to deploy ColdFusion projects. As a part of that, I plan to cover a little project I've been working on currently called CFant. I may also sneak in some discussion about other related technologies such as Maven.

In my opinion, this is an important topic. No application is ever used without being deployed. Furthermore, most non-trivial application tend to require configuration changes, server settings to be set, files to put somewhere, and much, much more. Performing this by hand can be tedious and error prone. Instead, I recommend using Ant to automate as much of this process as possible. Here at Alagad we use Ant for this purpose. A typical build will usually check the latest code out of subversion, update various XML configuration files, put the files where they belong on the server, insure the datasource exists, insure mappings for frameworks exists, clear the template cache, insure trusted cache is enabled, and reload the application. Because our builds are automated we can insure they happen exactly as we need them to.

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

I've been working on creating some Maven archetypes for ColdFusion development. I'm not sure what the status of this will be by CFUnited, but I'm hopeful to have some fun stuff to demonstrate. As a part of this, I also plan to make some important changes to how CFant works and that will be released somewhere around the time of CFUnited.

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

These days I'm really interested in management-focused topics. I plan to see what people have to say about managing teams and projects. Furthermore, I plan to check out anything that relates to new and advanced ways of developing ColdFusion, Flex and Air applications.

4. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

During the day I expect I could be found networking. I want to try to find as many people to talk to as I can. I want to hear what people are up to at their companies and I'd hope to find ways that Alagad can work with them. In fact, as a part of that, Alagad will be holding a raffle to give away a Mac Mini, a Wii, an iPod Touch, and several Amazon.com gift certificates. See this link for more information on this: http://alagad.com/go//find-alagad-at-cf-objective--or-cfunited-and-win-big. During the evenings I'm often found at the bar ensconced in conversation with other members of the community.

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

Over the past year, I've been working very hard to grow Alagad. In fact, we grew more than 300% last year and we've been very strong. Since the beginning of the year we've hired several developers including Brian Kotek, formerly of Broadchoice fame. We now have a terrific team of at five Adobe Aces, several promenent members of the ColdFusion and Flex community, and more. We continue to be focused on helping our clients build enterprise-class ColdFusion, Flex and Air applications. Recently we've also been experimenting with Groovy, Spring and Hibernate for our application models. This has been very interesting and we're looking forward to sharing more about that as the time is right.

As always, we're looking for more great clients with interesting or particularily chalenging projects we could help out. If you're moving into OO with ColdFusion or Flex contact us to see how we can help you out.

This entry was posted on June 3, 2009 at 2:45 PM and has received 3206 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

ColdBox Platform 3.0.0 BOF
Presented By Luis Majano
Come and talk about the future of ColdBox and help it steer it into the future.

ColdFusion User Group / Community Development BOF
Presented By John Mason
The success of any technology is tightly coupled with the growth and diversity of the community that grows around it. Local user groups are a great resource for developers to exchange ideas and work on their presentation skills. In this session, we'll discuss the various ways to start and develop a local user group in your area. How to find speakers, sponsors and topics? How to run the meetings, and how to market your group and find new members? We'll also talk about some of the common pitfalls in running a user group and how to manage them.
See John Mason's blog post about this BOF session
http://www.codfusion.com/blog/post.cfm/user-group-community-development-session-at-cfunited

Silent Authentication BOF
Mike Brunt and John Farrar
Are your applications burdened with login prompts? Do you know of ways to eliminate this issue? Can these methods be used with legacy systems and Enterprise Content Management systems (ECMs)? This BOF is for those with the same questions, and it doesn't matter whether they come from yourself, your development team, or your management. It's important to know what options are available and what's successful so you can be prepared or retrofit your applications with "seamless" or "silent" authentication.

See schedule for Birds of Feather times on Wednesday August 12th.

This entry was posted on June 1, 2009 at 5:51 PM and has received 3080 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Raymond Camden - A long time ColdFusion user, Raymond has worked on numerous ColdFusion books including the ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit and has contributed to the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update and the ColdFusion Developers Journal. He also presents at conferences and contributes to online webzines. He founded many community web sites including CFLib.org, ColdFusionPortal.org, ColdFusionCookbook.org and is the author of open source applications, including the popular BlogCFC blogging application.

CFUnited sessions: Ajax/ColdFusion 911, Charting and ColdFusion, Introduction to jQuery with ColdFusion, SciFi BOF

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

Yes, many times.

I'd tell people that CFUnited is a great conference for people of all skill levels. From beginners to advanced developers.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?

I think I have some great sessions this year, and all of them are brand new!

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

Nope. Sorry to disappoint. :)

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

I'm curious to see what Adobe shows off in regards to ColdFusion 9.

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

I'd like to hear some discussion about frameworks. I'm kinda focused on Model-Glue, so I wouldn't mind hearing wha'ts up with the other frameworks.

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

Most likely all over the place. :)

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

I'm now an independent contractor, which is new, and not so great, but, change happens. :)

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

Video games and reading. Oh, and writing code for fun. :)

9. Which was the best Star Wars film?

Empire Strikes Back.

This entry was posted on June 1, 2009 at 3:40 PM and has received 3601 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

Come to CFUnited if you want to know the best way to Teach ColdFusion to others. Teachers, Training Managers, and Intern Managers... this is session you can't miss.

http://cfunited.com/2009/topics#topic-349

This entry was posted on May 27, 2009 at 4:46 PM and has received 3852 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Lawrence Cramer - Over 25 years of experience in marketing, advertising, and design. For the last decade he has focused on the web, his key interests being dynamic web design, development, and e-commerce. He has written numerous articles on these subjects for regional business publications and for the Adobe Developer Center. He speaks at web development conferences and teaches college courses on several Adobe products, and is a trainer for Lynda.com. Lawrence is an Adobe Community Expert, the CEO of Application Dynamics Inc., and the founder of Cartweaver.com. When he's not in front of a computer screen, you'll find him and his wife of 30-plus years behind the handlebars of a sport touring motorcycle seeing the sights of the Pacific Northwest.

CFUnited session: Real world ecommerce with ColdFusion

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

No. I'm very excited to be speaking this year!

CFUnited is THE ColdFusion conference. It's the "must attend" best-of-breed conference because of the caliber of speakers and the no sales hype but real information focus of the event.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?

Even in this down economy, one business sector is still experiencing growth... eCommerce. More and more developers are getting asked by their clients to develop eCommerce sites and they are finding it to be a more complex, specialized skill set than they expect. They are expected to not only develop sound eCommerce applications but know about many other things such as payment gateways, PCI compliance, security, merchant accounts and so on. My session will cover all these facets of eCommerce development.

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

Yes. Can't say much more than that right now.

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

I'll be like a kid in a candy store! Having difficulty narrowing down my choices so far!

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

Anything Bolt. (the new dedicated ColdFusion Development Application)

6. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

At my session, and on Twitter... I'll be tweeting a lot and will tweet meet-up plans: http://twitter.com/LawrenceCramer

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

A lot! The economy has presented not only challenges but huge opportunities! Whenever you shake things up, new openings emerge.

8. What is unique about CFUnited?

It's focus! It's an opportunity to learn, not be "sold". It an opportunity to learn about ColdFusion and related technologies and to meet and network with the best in the field.

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

Go sport touring around the west with my wife and friends on my 2008 Kawasaki Concourse 1400, and do a little wine tasting. I'm a bit of a wine buff and Washington has a lot of great wine!

10. Besides the sessions, what makes CFUnited worth the cost of going?

The networking! If you go DON'T be a wallflower! Get out there, meet and greet and make new friends and contacts.

This entry was posted on May 26, 2009 at 3:01 PM and has received 3373 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Sean Woods - Has been developing Oracle applications for over ten years and has been integrating ColdFusion with Oracle since the first day he laid eyes on it in 2002. He has since then developed an obsession with ColdFusion and often lies awake at night wondering why anyone would want to develop their applications with anything else. In his spare time, Sean can be found chasing his two young daughters around the lovely seaside town of Pacifica, California.

CFUnited session: Advanced SQL for ColdFusion

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

No, I've never spoken at or been to CFUnited but I am totally stoked to be attending and speaking this year. I've been to a lot of ColdFusion conferences and met a lot of great people. It?s an privilege to be speaking at this one and I hope that I can add some value to the experience of those attending.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?

You should attend my session because I will give you the tools necessary to turn your knowledge of SQL into entertaining cocktail conversation. You will be the life of the party - people will be lining up to hear you wax on about the virtues of query parametrization, database transactions, indexing strategies and more. I used to entertain people this way all the time but for some reason nobody comes to my house anymore.

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

Any session by Ray Camden, Sean Corfield or Ben Forta.

4. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

You will definitely find me at the bar. And, if you say nice things in public about my session I will buy you a beer.

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

I live in Pacifica, CA with my wife and two girls. Most of my free time is spent chasing my kids around but when I get a few hours to myself I usually spend it on my bike. During the summer weekends you can usually find me at a local bike race or triathlon ? I?ve been competing in both for about 10 years. I hope to one day convince my daughters that jumping in a cold lake at 8am is a good idea.

This entry was posted on May 22, 2009 at 2:43 PM and has received 2725 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

Jake Munson - Jake has been developing ColdFusion based applications since ColdFusion 4. He is well known for building CFQuickDocs (http://cfquickdocs.com). He has given numerous presentations to various user groups, including the popular CF Meetup group. He also presented at CFUnited 2008. Jake is very passionate about the Internet, particularly about web standards and surrounding technologies.

CFUnited session: Spam, Bacon, Sausage and Spam

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past?

Yes, I spoke at CFUnited Last year. This will be my 5th CFUnited though, and every year I really enjoy it. My biggest advice would be to take advantage of the networking opportunities. There are always a lot of top notch community memebers around, both "celebrity" types as well as lesser known (but equally important) people you can network with.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?

If you ever put user fillable forms on your sites, you should attend my session. Spammers attack all online forms these days (even when it doesn't make sense), so preventing spam is very important for us developers. If you think Spam prevention just means slapping a CAPTCHA on the form, then you have a lot to learn. I hope to see you at my session.

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

Railo Open Source

Geolocation with ColdFusion

Thinking Outside of the CF Box

Better Development Through Open Source

4. Where can people find you at CFUnited?

At my session, of course! :) I am planning on attending as many sessions as possible (I always do), but outside of that I will be at all of the breakfasts/lunches, and hanging out in the common areas between sessions. In the evening I will attend the planned events, but besides that I might be hanging out in my room. I'm thinking about bringing some games with me and inviting some friends to play games one night (board games, card games, etc.)

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

I am a computer geek at heart, so in my free time I spend a lot of time on computers. I read a LOT of news/blogs. I also play some online games. When not on the computer, I like to spend time with my wife, and I like watching the Cubs as well as the Discovery Channel. I am also very religious and spend a lot of time doing church related stuff.

This entry was posted on May 21, 2009 at 3:25 PM and has received 2742 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.