I made it back from CFinNC, late Sunday night, extremely jet lagged, but in one piece, and very happy I made the decision to go. First, I want to thank Dan Wilson, and the rest of the folks that helped put this conference together. Not being able to attend MAX this year, I was very happy there was another ColdFusion-related conference, so soon after MAX. The fact that it was over a weekend made it much easier to schedule. As you may have read on CFCDev, Dan and I exchanged several posts about information on the conference website, what was/wasn't up to date, etc. Eventually, Dan and I took the conversation off-list (and off-email, talking more in person at the conference), and what became very clear to me is how genuinely personal he takes his work in the CF community; putting together this conference was no exception, and I think the quality of the CFinNC conference is proof of that. Everything seemed to run very smoothly -- registration was quick and painless, parking was a snap, wifi was up and accessible throughout the venue, the staff were all very courteous and happy to help. Nothing about the conference seemed out of place, or an obvious indicator that this was a newer project -- I was quite happy with how well everything was organized.

Session highlights for me included:

Mike Brunt -- 10 Steps To A High Performing ColdFusion Application, Clustering ColdFusion Great talk on performance testing, and all kinds of related items. Mike came with a real world demo that required not one, not two, but THREE laptops to get everything running (so it looked like it does in the real world) -- talk about putting a serious amount of effort into your lecture! My only regret is meeting Mike just minutes before I had to leave for my flight home; I was unable to say much more than "nice presentation" before I had to go. He was wearing a Beatles / Sgt Pepper shirt; I suspect we would have gotten along quite well. :)

Jason Dean -- Intro to Securing CFML Applications I met Jason at cf.Objective(), and caught his other talk on security. This one is the precursor to said cf.Objective() talk. Both are worth checking out; not too much overlap, you'll learn something new at each one. And you can play the drinking game "take 2 sips every time Jason says 'validation'". :)

Brian Kotek -- Intro to the Swiz Framework Nice first look at Swiz, with some notes on how it compares/contrasts to Caringorm, what Swiz is/isn't, how it can help w/ event handling, auto-wiring and tons more. For anyone new to Swiz, this was a great introduction.

Andy Matthews -- jQuery & AIR: Desktop Development for the Front End Designer While in NC, I was staying with my friend Rob who is typically known as a .NET developer. Half way through this presentation, I was tempted to call Rob and have him come watch -- I'm continually impressed by AIR/JavaScript fun that can be had in projects. Andy did a great job with this; very well put together presentation. Definitely worth checking out.

Joe Rinehart -- CF Inspirational Session I was not sure what to expect from the "Inspirational ColdFusion" session. Joe gave a great talk about what he's been up to for the last year-ish, how he'd moved away from CF, and how he's coming back into the fold. His presentation was hilarious, and it was one of the more comical yet compelling presentations I've ever seen. Joe missed his calling as a sitcom writer. :)

Rick Root -- Using Java in ColdFusion Applications Rick gave a great introduction to using Java classes in CF. This is a topic that I often see on lists/blogs, but it's always done as the answer to some other question, so the context of said blog posts often makes it hard for people to see that "first look" at how you can dip directly into Java from ColdFusion, and utilize both to improve your applications. That's where Rick's presentation came into play; don't go if you're already doing big crazy things like writing your own Hibernate wrapper for CF7, but if you want to see just how the CF data types are tied to Java data types under the hood (and how to utilize the power of both), then Rick's talk is worth checking out.

Bob Silverberg -- CF9 ORM - Part 1 and 2 Admittedly, I've been kind of dismissing the Hibernate integration in CF9 up until now. Partially because none of my clients have upgraded yet (tho 1 is talking about doing so), and partially because between Transfer and/or some homegrown things, I haven't really had a need to learn much more about it. Bob's talk was so good that I have now officially started "drinking the Kool-Aid", and want to start using CF/Hibernate whenever possible. I may very well (ahem) "borrow" content from his preso and give a similar demo for Saccfug later in the year. I would like to have seen a code sample in action, but the code presented in the slides was clear and "real world enough", that maybe that's not necessary.

It was also good seeing the familiar faces that I met at cf.Objective() -- Ben Nadel, Jason Dean, and others I'm forgetting -- as well as catching up with my friend Rob who moved to NC several years ago. North Carolina is a really pretty area -- trees everywhere, decent weather (and this is coming from a spoiled California punk *g*), and EVERYone I met was extremely nice and polite all weekend. Even the grits I had for dinner were pretty good! :)

Nice job, CFinNC, I hope you do it again next year. -nolan

I got home late last night from CF Objective (stayed in town through the weekend to visit with friends and do some touristy things). Overall it was a great experience, and well worth the time/money! This was my first CF Objective, and I must say it was incredibly inspiring! I learned quite a few new things, and am excited about blocking off time to implement them in my current projects.

The keynote was very informative. Nice to know that our "dying language" ColdFusion has done nothing but grow steadily over the last few years -- the keynote mentioned somewhere around 800K estimated CF developers now! We also got a nice sneak peak at some of the things coming in CF9, the new Bolt IDE, and Flex 4 (including a name change, that's already been blogged everywhere, so I won't get into that here).

Thanks to Troy Pullis for coordinating the Star Trek IMAX outing on Thursday. I'm by no means a die-hard Trekkie, but this movie was so well done, that didn't matter! I highly recommend it, even if you are only peripherally familiar with the Star Trek story lines (or just like well produced sci-fi movies).

It was great to meet some of the folks that author blogs I've been reading over the years -- Ben Nadel (who was easily one of the nicest people I've met in ages), Jason Dean (thanks again for carpooling us to/from the Star Trek film, and for dropping me at the Light Rail), Dan Vega, Bob Silverberg and everyone I'm forgetting due to jet lag. :)

I took notes on the various presentations which I hope to post later; they need to be cleaned up before they'll be of any use to other people. Hopefully time for that soon, but with all the new things I learned, it'll be hard to prioritize everything! :)

Now if you'll excuse me, I want to rewrite all my apps with DSLs, Transfer ORM, ColdSpring, Flex, ValidateThis, Model-Glue, and Peter Bell's IBO library. ;)

-Nolan

Yesterday I slipped in just before the "early bird pricing" went away, and registered for cfObjective! Minneapolis (and That Dog references) here I come!

The music geek in me is hoping to find time to look for the old Twin Town Records building. :)

See you there! -nolan

Once again, I am one of those nerds that keeps track of all the books he reads in a given year:

• Nobody Likes You: Inside The Turbulent Life, Times, and Music of Green Day - Marc Spitz
• I Am America (And So Can You) - Stephen Colbert
• Jump The Shark: When Good Things Go Bad - Jon Hein
• Giving: How Each of Us Can Change The World - Bill Clinton
• Clapton: The Autobiography - Eric Clapton
• Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong - James W. Loewen
• Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From The American Indie Underground 1981-1991 - Michael Azerrad
• George's Secret Key To The Universe -- Stephen and Lucy Hawking
• Rock On: An Office Power Ballad - Dan Kennedy
• Sound Advice On Recording & Mixing Guitars - Bill Gibson
• Things The Grandchildren Should Know - Mark Oliver Everett
• Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways To Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done In Less Time - Brian Tracy
• My Boring-Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary Of Kevin Smith - Kevin Smith
• Save Me from Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived to Tell My Story - Brian Welch
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity - David Allen
• The Heroin Diaries -- Nikki Sixx
• Love Is A Mix Tape -- Rob Sheffield
• When You Are Engulfed In Flames - David Sedaris
• High Performance Web Sites - Steve Souders

"Things The Grandchildren Should Know" is totally brilliant. I want to invite Mark Everett to Christmas dinner.

"My Boring-Ass Life" -- the middle 150-ish pages is slow-going, but the parts at the end about Die Hard, jury duty, and Jason Mewes' heroin addiction are worth the wait.

"Nobody Likes You" -- I'm a sucker for anything Green Day, and this book does a great job of explaining how they are anything but a flash in the pan, or trend followers. I've always stood firmly behind my love of Green Day, and this book just adds to my justification for doing so. :)

"Love Is A Mix Tape" -- Great true story. Music nerds everywhere will love it, even if he does spend a awful lot of time talking about indie bands that I don't particularly enjoy.

"The Herioin Diaries" -- Nikki Sixx's diary from 1988, at the height of his heroin addiction, published for the world to read and learn from.

Wow, I read a lot of books this year about heroin addiction. Hmmm... :)

Not as many as I wanted to complete, but I did start forming 2 new bands, recorded several others at my studio, started a new "web development/design" business, and well, lots of other stuff that took up a bunch of time. :)

I've got a few more that are still "in progress", so I'll save those for the "2009" list.

-nolan

Overall, I'm been very happy with my experience at Max 2008. I ran into several familiar faces, met the fine folks from The Morphic Group, heard lots of talks on interesting topics, and got some pretty sweet swag to bring home. :)

When I get time later in the week, I will start posting my reviews of the various presentations (and maybe other bits as well if they haven't already been Twittered to death). For now, I'd like to share a few overall pros and cons of the conference as a whole:

Pros --

1. Everything was extremely well organized.

From (quite literally) the second I walked in, I had people informing me of where to go, how to register, etc. We were given handy pocket guides with the conference schedule, and a nice book with several blank pages for taking notes. Kiosks were available for attendees to print up-to-the-minute schedules, and so on. I heard a few reports of people not being able to enter different talks because the bar-code scanners weren't working, but I only heard that a couple times on the 1st day (so I'll assume that was the exception, and that it was remedied by the the time Tuesday's presentations started).

2. Plenty of space.

Whether I was at the expo floor, or eating lunch, or in a presentation, I didn't feel cramped anywhere. It was always (for me) pretty easy to find a semi-quiet spot to set up my laptop, or just make a few phone calls without worrying about being shoved out of a hallway by masses of folks trying to walk by (as can easily be the case at big shows like this).

3. The party!

Wow...that party Tuesday night was great! Adobe bussed everyone to the Academy of Sciences and we basically had free run of the place for the night. Tons of food, great exhibits, and lots of things to keep us geeky people entertained all night. I'm not much of a drinker, and have been to many parties that consist solely of drinking alcohol (boring folks like me pretty quickly). This was not the case here! I stuffed my face on dim sum, enjoyed the planetarium, the aquarium, and generally ran around silly until I was too tired to continue. :) I'm definitely making a return trip to Academy of Sciences when time permits!

Cons --

All that being said, I do have a few pieces of "constructive criticism" as well...

1. (This one is half for the "powers that be" behind deciding which presentations get booked, and half for the presenters themselves.)

Do. not. use. your. presentation. as. a. sales. pitch.

I sat thru WAY too many presentations where 10, 15, or even 20+ minutes were spent talking about what the presenter's company does for a living (often, it had nothing to do with the topic at hand). Please, save that for the expo floor! I paid money and used my time to schedule attending this session so I could learn something. If I want to learn about your product, I'll ask the folks at the booth.

A quick slide and a minute of "I'm from company X, we make thingie XYZ for the Photography industry" (or what have you) is fine, but please let's realize there is a time and place for more extensive self-promotion. During a technical lecture is not the place, despite what your VP of Marketing may tell you. :)

2. If the bulk of your presentation pertains to features in not-yet-released software, please SAY SO in the TITLE.

As a general rule, I don't build products in pre-release software. For me, that's defined as anything still labeled as "beta", "alpha", "preview" or any other variant of "it's not for sale just yet, and we don't guarantee it works". (If a client asked for something, i will of course break this rule on a case by case basis, but generally I stick with what is "released" as my technology stack.)

I lost track of how many presentations I sat thru that ended up being "Flex 4 only", but weren't listed as such in the schedule. Was this a mandate from Adobe? Were folks "forced" to include some percentage of content about the not-yet-released Gumbo (that Gumbo Preview DVD doesn't count as "released"...it can't even be installed in a non-default folder without Bad Things Happening).

I spent present-day money and used present-day time to learn present-day improvements to my skillset. When Flex 4 (or whatever the product is in question) is out, then maybe i'll be interested. Until then (or at least until it's very late in the beta testing phase), not so much.

Other folks came here via a boss's dime. Said boss may be waiting at the office to ask the age old questions:

"so, what did you learn? can you justify the cost of this expo?".

I assure you, that most of them don't want to hear "yes, i learned things that ONLY work 8+ months from now, IF all the things in the Preview release stay in the final product, and IF you spend even more money to BUY it".

Want to guarantee that small companies won't send anyone to Max 2009? Yeah that'd probably do it. There's no "return on investment" with present-day technology stacks in that situation.

I did attend several "what's coming in the next version" talks, which were appreciated. It's good to see what is coming in the next version, but I wanted to balance that with information I can use right now. "Hiding" Gumbo content in talks that are not properly labeled makes it difficult to find that balance. And the reverse is also true: many people may be "bleeding edge junkies", and they didn't attend the talks because "with the upcoming version of Flex" wasn't in the title.

That's all for now. I'll post "mini reviews" of the various sessions as time allows in the coming weeks.

--nolan

Last night was the User Group Mgr meetup. Traffic was terrible and my taxi never showed, so by the time I got there, it was starting to wind down. Luckily I ran into Rob Huddleston (from Sierra MMUG) and caught a showing of the new James Bond film before calling it a night.

I'm currently in the Max Opening General Session, listening to the Salesforce guy. So far the demos have been pretty slick. I'm especially intersted in that "music mixer" one that was demo'd earlier (Hobnox? something like that.)

I'll be in Flex classes for most of the day -- will try to post my thoughts on them as time permits.

PS. CF folks looking for the blue ColdFusion ringer tees...they have a few at the Max Store here, tho the clerk said quantities are very limited!

-nolan

I finally had some time to come up for air and finalize my Adobe MAX schedule today!

Here's where you can find me:

Sunday --

User Group Manager Meet-Up

Monday --

Looking Ahead to the Next Version of Flex
Developing an Enterprise Application with Adobe Flex
Advanced Tips and Tricks for Flex Builder 3
Birds-of-a-Feather Meeting

Tuesday --

Developer Best Practices with Flex
Hack-Proofing Your ColdFusion Powered Sites
Architecting ColdFusion for Scalability and High Availability
Designing Effective CSS and HTML Websites in Fireworks CS4

Wednesday --

Advanced Patterns for ColdFusion Test Automation
Debugging and Profiling with Flex Builder
Event-Driven Programming in ColdFusion
ColdFusion Powered Flex

Hopefully I'll have time to blog my thoughts on the presentations at the end of each day, though some of that depends on how many work issues will need to be addressed while down in the Bay Area.

See you there!
-nolan

As part of a publicity stunt, the fine folks at Codeweavers are giving away registration codes for their software. The catch -- it's only available tomorrow (Tuesday). However it would seem that their servers are on Eastern time (Europe?), as I just tried the link and it worked great. I'm now the proud owner of a Codeweavers reg code.

Additional info, and a link to the goodies is available here.

-nolan

Another quick note about the Sacramento CF User Group that warrants a post...

We've recently gained a new Saccfug sponsor. The fine folks at Unfuddle.com were gracious enough to get us a Subversion account for the group. I've been using Unfuddle to host other projects for the last year, and I'm very happy with their service. The few times I've had a question, the response is always very prompt, and very friendly.

Even if they weren't sponsoring Saccfug, I'd recommend Unfuddle for inexpensive SVN hosting. The fact that they're sponsoring Saccfug just makes them all that much cooler. :)

-nolan

I'm taking a small break from working on projects (and by "projects" I mean, "watching the 'Transformers' movie like 6 times, and learning to make salsa"), to do a little DJ spinnin'...

Monday night (Aug 25) I will be a guest DJ on KDVS, playing an hour of local Sacramento music. If you're in the Davis/Sacramento area, KDVS is 90.3 FM. Far away friends can listen in via http://www.kdvs.org/listen/ -- ain't technology grand?

Shows, songs, and other kung fu is in the works...more goodies will be ready to share soon!

More than meets the eye,
nolan

Aug 25, 7pm - 8pm
KDVS -- 90.3 FM
or http://www.kdvs.org/listen/