In the wake of CFDevCon being cancelled, Andy Allan and Kev McCabe have stepped in to cheer everyone up with A Wee Dram of Scotch. If you're in the London area, it looks to be a great way to see some excellent speakers (Mike Brunt, Sean Corfield, Mark Drew, Gert Franz, and Kurt Wiersma) dirt cheap. 10 quid with two free drinks and 10% off SoTR 2009 - that's basically free! Heck, I'd pay more than that just to see Andy and Kev give keynotes!
I'm proud to say that I've been invited to speak at MAX North America 2008 as part of the "Develop" track.
I'll be talking about problems that arise when making the move to "Enterprise" ColdFusion development (larger-scale, team-developed, API-exposing applications) and how frameworks like ColdSpring, Transfer, and Model-Glue lend not just code libraries but a solid platform for standardization of best practices within your development team.
Just a few hours now until I board a plane with Doug Hughes to start our journey over to Scotch on the Rocks 2008. I'll be having a quick meeting with a client, getting lunch out out my wife and child, then it's off to the airport. Doug and I will be meeting up with Scott Stroz in New Jersey (known to Scott, a longtime NJ resident, as "the motherland") to cross over to Edinburgh.
I can't sleep on planes, so I'll be spending my time spicing up a presentation on ColdFusion and Hibernate with some Spring+ColdSpring flavor, diving into a book on Groovy, and fixing a few Model-Glue 3.0 bugs in preparation for a beta release.
If you're in the UK and you haven't bought a ticket for the conference, plenty are still available!
It's almost time to fly out for Scotch on the Rocks where I'll be talking about Model-Glue 3 and combining ColdFusion with Hibernate. In celebration, I snapped a few shots of a ColdFusion tumbler that I got as "thank-you" swag from an Adobe event being filled with a beverage (Not actually Scotch. This amount in one glass would probably kill me.). If you like it, links below are to desktop-sized images for 17'' and 15'' MacBook Pros and the full-size image (warning: it's 6MB).
A few years back, Scott Stroz made a name for himself yelling out "Model-Glue's More Gooder" during the first preso / BOF I ever did on Model-Glue.
At cf.Objective() 2008, I'll be doing the first public preso of Model-Glue 3, as well as (hopefully!) announcing a public alpha release. Model-Glue 3 is about taking Model-Glue "back to its roots," making it easier than ever to develop MVC+II applications without losing any architectural advantages.
Besides a rearchitected and more thoroughly tested core, Model-Glue three has seven features that are all aimed at productivity. While some are public, there are a few big ones that won't be shown / disclosed until cf.Objective().
If I have any luck, Scott'll have reason to yell again.
Steven Hauer just sent good news - if you haven't yet registered for cf.Objective() or booked your room, the cutoff for the $120 room rate at the Crowne Plaza St. Paul is now April 8th. After that date the rate is not guaranteed.
Links:
Yesterday the Flex-based scheduler for the 2008 cf.Objective() conference went live. I've had fun building it, and feel it's a good example of what's possible with ColdFusion, Flex, and about ten hours of time.
If you're not attending but what like to give it a whirl, feel free to play with the staging copy / play database, where we don't audit e-mail addresses for corresponding attendees.
I wasn't sure I could blog this, as I didn't know it was being publicly promoted. I'll be speaking tomorrow at Carahsoft's "The Future of Applications The Adobe Platform: ColdFusion 8, Flex 3 and AIR" seminar. It's a "complimentary seminar designed specifically for public sector IT professionals and developers" where Adobe, myself, and others will be showing off ColdFusion and RIA technologies.
If you're in the DC Metro and would like to attend, Carahsoft's site has the details. (Note - The details list me as being affiliated with Booz | Allen | Hamilton. I am not a BAH employee, but will be discussing applications we developed together.)
Earlier today, the folks at Teratech posted the 2008 CFUnited Pre-Conference Class List, and it includes a class on doing ColdFusion-based Flex applications that I'll be co-teaching with Simon Horwith.
Both Simon and I have been ColdFusion developers for a long time, and over the past year, we've both changed to doing more Flex work than ColdFusion. If you're looking to do more Flex work that's based on ColdFusion, join as as we provide a high-level "brain dump" of what we've learned. We'll be talking about what Flex is, creating ColdFusion-backed Flex applications, and some of the real-world nit and grit issues of Flex RIAs that the official courses may skirt.
It's sure to be a pretty packed room - grab your (or your manager's) corporate card and register now.
(Ok, ok, stop chanting "Two instructors enter, one instructor leaves!" We've learned to get along. Nevertheless, this'll likely be an entertaining class, as we're sure to bicker like an old married couple from time to time.)
Jan 16
I'm pleased to announce that this May I'll be at CFManiacs to talk about Model-Glue 3. CFManaics is part of the WebManaics series of conferences from FigLeaf Software.
My schedule's gotten a bit full, so I won't be attending the full conference. I'll likely be flying in the morning I speak then heading straight back to the airport afterwords.
