This year's cf.Objective() is offering SIX pre-conference classes! You can choose from Building Secure CFML Applications, ColdBox: 100 Training, Developing Applications with ColdFusion 9 ORM, Getting Started with Flex / AIR Development, Mach-II / OOP from the Ground Up, Rapid Development with Model-Glue 3! Wow!

Some of these are one-day courses (Wednesday April 21st) and some are two-day courses (Tuesday April 20th and Wednesday April 21st).

We have eight Birds of a Feather slots open at cf.Objective() and we've had six (and a "half") suggestions so far so I want to open it up and get more suggestions and hear which ones you'd like to see.

If you're not familiar with the format, a Birds of a Feather session is intended to be interactive and a chance for like-minded people to discuss particular topics. Each session is lead by a conference attendee and there's often a short, informal presentation at the beginning to frame the discussions and then it opens up for everyone to share ideas and experiences as well as ask questions and learn more about the topic.

So far we've had (in no particular order):

• Bob Silverberg - Pecha Kucha: this is an interesting session format (not exactly a BOF) where each presenter gets about seven minutes to present with a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. The presentations can be about anything (but we'd like them to be of interest to the sort of folks who attend cf.Objective()!). It's an interesting and creative format. Read more about What Is Pecha Kucha? and also Bob's original blog post about a Pecha Kucha at cf.Objective() where several people have shown interest in presenting.
• Matt Woodward - Open BlueDragon: this would cover topics such as writing plugins for OpenBD and any other related topics that folks want.
• Jason Dean - Security: last year's security BOF was well-attended so Jason wants to do another one this year.
• Sean Shroeder - Extending Mura: Mura is becoming increasing popular as a rich, powerful CMS these days and whilst he's doing a session on building websites with Mura (on Saturday afternoon), he wants to talk with folks about extending Mura, writing plugins, using frameworks with Mura and so on. I've built a few sites with Mura and leveraged the rich event model as well as incorporating Model-Glue and Fusebox apps so I think this would be a great chance for folks to learn what's possible and share their experiences!
• Wil Genovese - Home Brewed ColdFusion Monitoring: Wil presented this on the CF Meetup back in December (and it was well-received) so this would be a chance for other folks to share their tips, trick and tools and make a nice, rounded educational session about monitoring your servers.
• Peter Bell / Sean Corfield - Being Agile: there is increasing interest in so-called "agile" methodologies within the CF community (although many of the concepts have been around for a long time) and Peter is giving two talks on Thursday about various agile-related techniques so this BOF would allow for more feedback and questions and hearing from others about the pros and cons in their experience. Read the Twelve Principles of Agile Software and the Manifesto for Agile Software Development to get a sense of how "agile" is intended to be different (and better, according to Peter and Sean!).
• Guitar Hero - or perhaps some equally raucous social competition? The leader of such a BOF would be responsible for organizing the gaming equipment but, given the suggestion, we figured it might be fun to turn one of the BOF slots over to something more fun and less technical... thoughts?

Bob's Pecha Kucha will definitely happen. It's a new, interesting idea for the CF community so that leaves seven slots to fill. Suggest new topics in comment here and vote on any of the topics suggested (either in the post or in comments). I'll post an updated list once we have some feedback.

Register this week to save $100 on this year's cf.Objective()!

Adobe will showcase ColdFusion 9 at cf.Objective() 2010 with six topics. The schedule has been updated with two Adobe topics each day and they are listed on the session page as well. We believe Terry Ryan will be handling most of the Adobe talks but we'll be confirming that as soon as we know for sure!

Now that Adobe's talks are finalized, we'll be picking two more community submissions from our list and adding those. If you submitted a talk and wondered why you haven't received either an acceptance letter or a rejection, now you know. We hope to let everyone know within the next week!

We're also ready to accept BOF suggestions - I'll make a separate blog post about that in the next few days.

Here's a list of confirmed and potential Framework One presentations in date order:

• January 12th - NYCFUG - Javier Julio
• February 4th - CFMeetup - Sean Corfield - to be confirmed
• February 17th - BACFUG - Sean Corfield
• April 22-24 - cf.Objective() - Sean Corfield

The following presentations have been submitted but not yet confirmed:

• May 6-7 - webDU - AJ Mercer
• July 28-31 - CFUnited - Sean Corfield

After speaking to Dee Sadler, I'll also be submitting a different version of the presentation to:

• June 19-20 - D2WC

This is a Designer/Developer Workflow Conference and FW/1 is ideal for folks who want to build maintainable applications without having to learn a whole bunch of framework stuff just to get basic tasks done.

Once I find out more details about Scotch on the Rocks 2010, I'll submit a FW/1 talk there as well.

The following two talks of mine were accepted for cf.Objective() 2010:

FW/1 - The Invisible Framework

ColdFusion has always been about simplicity and "getting stuff done". I created Framework One (FW/1) in that same spirit: with just one file and some simple conventions, you won't even notice you're using it! If the learning curve, code bloat and XML have put you off other frameworks, find out why developers are saying "FW/1 is perfect" and how you can use it to just focus on your code, be productive and stop worrying about "the framework".

ColdFusion and the Open Source landscape

Once upon a time, if you wanted to develop applications in ColdFusion, you had to pay for any third party tools you needed - and you rarely got the source code. Things have changed! These days there are free and open source options right across the board to help you get your job done faster, cheaper and with more confidence. Find out how the burgeoning open source community can help you - and, perhaps, how you can help the open source community in return!

cf.Objective() 2010 is April 22-24 in Minneapolis, MN. Registration is open and the early bird ends January 29th.

There are six pre-conference classes this year!

The Content Advisory Board have finalized all the sessions for cf.Objective() 2010 and the accept / reject emails should start going out today to folks who submitted proposed talks!

We have a draft schedule prepared already so as soon as the accept / reject letters are in the mail, we'll make a formal announcement and start updating the website so everyone can see what great content the conference is offering.

Registration is already open and there is a broad selection of one-day and two-day pre-conference classes available this year!

A few people have asked on Twitter and via email what is happening with submissions that have been sent in to Jim and myself. We're a bit behind. We hoped to have reviewed all the submissions last week and to have been notifying everyone this week about accepted and rejected sessions. Sorry!

We're actually about two weeks behind (which is just as well for a few speakers that are still submitting their sessions!). We've had over a hundred submissions so far and we will only be able to accept about half of them. There are some fascinating topics being submitted - in addition to the great topics suggested by the Content Advisory Board for the first round of invited speakers. We've also had multiple submissions from a number of speakers (up to six submissions from a single person!) which helps us a lot because we have a fixed limit on the number of speakers we can accept (for budgetary reasons).

We should be able to get through the reviews next week and then we'll be notifying speakers the week after (the holiday week). We're hoping to have a list of sessions posted by year end and a rough schedule posted the week after.

Registration should be open next week for those who want to get cf.Objective() into this year's budget without waiting for a published schedule.

Updated with the PDF to download to make the process easier!

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cf.Objective() 2010 is ramping up and is ready for the public call for speakers and topics! We have the same broad tracks as last year:

• Architecture & Design in Software
• RIA: Flex/Ajax/AIR
• Process & Methodology
• Integration & Tools

If you're interested in speaking, download the speaker request form (PDF, 152KB), fill it out and then send it to Jim Louis per the instructions in the form. The PDF has all the delivery dates, speaker consent agreement and so on.

Topics must be submitted by November 30th! You have about two weeks.

Some background on the cf.Objective() selection process...

As I previously blogged, we have a twelve person content advisory board this year who have already come up with suggested topics for about 80% of the schedule and invitations have gone out to an initial list of speakers (usually two or three per topic). Many of those speakers have already replied (they also have until November 30th) and we're starting to sift through their submissions to pick the best one for each topic. The public CFP will help us fill the remaining 20% of the schedule. This process us ensures we have a well-rounded set of topics as well as letting us get at least part of our schedule organized and posted before the end of the year to help folks decide to register with their company's year end budget!

The Content Advisory Board (twelve of last year's speakers) have just finished their initial selection of topics and potential speakers for the four tracks at cf.Objective() 2010. Best Meetings, the cf.Objective() conference planner, will be sending out invites shortly, asking a variety of speakers to submit on topics that we've picked. Since this all happens behind the scenes, I thought it would be worth a blog post to explain the process.

The CAB start by approving the tracks (we'll have four in 2010, very similar to the 2009 tracks) and then pick about a dozen topics they think 'fit' in each track. Some of these topics are popular staples, some are deliberately bleeding edge and / or very advanced, in keeping with the conference's reputation.

Next, the CAB pick up to three speakers for each topic so that we get a chance to see multiple submissions on each topic and can pick what we think sounds like the best content for the attendees. Some speakers get multiple topic invites, some get only one. An invite is not a guarantee that you'll be picked but it gives you 'first shot' at slots on the schedule (indeed, about half the submissions are rejected precisely because we invite multiple speakers to submit on each topic!). Our goal is to fill about 80% of the schedule this way.

Once we have the initial responses in, we'll open a public Call For Papers for general submissions to fill most of the remaining 20% (the platinum sponsor gets four slots plus a keynote).

I think the CAB have done a great job this year and we have some great topics lined up. As soon as we can confirm speaker submissions, I'll post a list.

In the meantime, here's the CAB volunteers:

• Architecture & Design in Software
  • Brian Kotek
  • Brian Meloche
  • Matt Woodward
• RIA: Flex / Ajax / AIR
  • Laura Arguello
  • John Mason
  • Dan Wilson
• Process & Methodology (including Frameworks)
  • Mark Drew
  • Adam Haskell
  • Kurt Wiersma
• Tools & Integration
  • Jeff Coughlin
  • Peter Farrell
  • Bill Shelton

Thank you!

As I've been working on my Living in the Cloud talk for CFUnited (since I didn't have to complete it for Scotch on the Rocks), it occurred to me that this is a topic covering stuff I worked on in the middle of 2008 (Broadchoice Workspace, built for Amazon EC2 and S3) and the end of 2008 (migrating Broadchoice Workshop to Amazon EC2).

Conferences usually want topics submitted a long way in advance of the conference, even tho' drafts and the final version of the talk can be delivered just before the conference. CFUnited 2009's deadline for topic submissions was December 1st, 2008, eight months ahead of the conference. MAX 2009 opened its call for speakers on March 3rd 2009 and closed it in late April, six months ahead of the conference.

Conferences set deadlines far in advance so that they can offer a good roster of speakers and talks because that's what attracts attendees. I've been on the advisory for a number of conferences and getting a schedule out early is key in the battle to boost registration.

Our industry moves very fast. Something that's hot in the Fall may not be on anyone's radar today. Something that's hot today may be old, old news by the Fall. Conference committees have to guess what will be attractive, many months in advance - which is extremely hard! And yet, one of the biggest complaints we hear about conferences is when they have the same topics every year - which is a natural consequence of trying to fill the schedule so early: how many brand new topics can you think of off the top of your head?

How do you feel about conference schedules? Do you feel they manage to stay ahead of the curve? Do you think there's too much "safe" content? Do you have suggestions for how conference committees can balance the need to publish a schedule so folks will buy tickets against the desire to feature bleeding edge topics?

Do you think I'm too concerned about this - and that maybe there's no real issue here?

I've almost recovered from this year's cf.Objective() so I wanted to get my thoughts on paper before the memory blurs too much. As usual, it was an excellent conference with top-quality sessions from top-quality speakers. It's the only conference that I would pay to attend - and would pay out of my own pocket if I had to. I learn plenty of new things at cf.Objective() every year and the networking is phenomenal because it's a relatively small, friendly conference (around 200 attendees this year).

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I just posted the slides (as a PDF) and the code example (account.zip) under PRESOS and SOFTWARE on my blog. You'll need to download cfSpec from RIAforge to run the sample code.

Due to a session cancellation and several requests from the community, the Railo team will be hosting a Q & A BOF at cf.Objective() at 3pm (Friday) in the Nicollet C room.

This is all somewhat last minute so we're trying to get the word out. Gert Franz, Peter Bell and myself will be available to answer all your questions about Railo the CFML engine and Railo Technologies the consulting organization. Hope to see you there?

In the absence of a printable schedule - sorry, Joe Rinehart says it's a problem with the Media3 hosting and he's been trying to get them to fix it for months! - here is my schedule for cf.Objective() 2009:

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I've had a few people ask me whether Railo will be doing a session or a BOF at cf.Objective() 2009 - and my colleagues say they've also had similar questions.

The content for cf.Objective() was picked some time ago, before our open source release and before the expansion of Railo into the UK and the US. Similarly, most of the BOFs were selected in early March and the only open slot is in the RIA track.

Despite that, the Railo team will be there in force. Mark, Peter and I are all speaking at cf.Objective() and Gert will be there too. We'll be around every evening for any questions you may have - think of it as a Railo BOF in the bar! I look forward to seeing you there.

All four of us are speaking at Scotch on the Rocks in London - I'm speaking at all three venues and I think some of my colleagues will be attending Manchester and Edinburgh as well. All four of us are speaking at CFUNITED as well. You'll be hearing plenty from us at future conferences!

You've all heard the huge buzz about applications on the iPhone. Maybe you've been curious about how to get started? Andy Matthews, Dan Vega and Joshua Cyr are heading down that path and they want to share what they've learned so far and answer your questions on how to approach this new opportunity! Come and join their BOF at 7pm on Friday night!

If you're already developing iPhone apps, come along and share your experiences. If you want to learn how to get started, what books to buy and so on, come along and ask your questions!

As the conference draws near, we're finalizing speakers for the final few slots in the schedule and the Saturday schedule is now completely fleshed out with Mark Drew's morning session being focused on Model-Glue (in the absence of Joe Rinehart this year, Mark is covering Model-Glue and Brian Kotek is taking over Joe's open source Java in ColdFusion talk) and two exciting new topics in the 3pm slots: Samer Sadek will be explaining how to construct scalable services for Flex using ColdFusion and Pete Freitag will be looking at the CF Administrator and showing how to improve the security of your server.

We still have three speakers marked "TBD" (Working with Transfer, Service Oriented Architecture and Adobe's 'Flex topic') but we expect to announce those in the next few days.

There are still two BOF slots available for RIA topics if anyone wants to lead a session!

Now that Adobe has provided most of their session titles, we had to move Jason Delmore's Object Relational Mapping session to earlier in the schedule (so Terry Ryan's Advanced ORM session could follow).

That means that if you signed up for Jason's talk, you're now signed up for Terry's advanced talk and if you signed up for Adobe's "super secret" Friday talk at 1:45pm, you're now signed up for Jason's basic ORM talk!

Feel free to visit the online scheduler to update your selections if necessary!

Adobe has provided four of their five topic descriptions. You can see them on the cf.Objective() sessions page. They're covering Advanced ColdFusion 9 Server Administration, Advanced ORM in ColdFusion 9, Extending Adobe Bolt with CFML and ColdFusion 9 as a Service.

These topics have been added to the schedule - and the online scheduler (yes, we know the Printable Summary doesn't work - Joe is having an issue with his hosting company and hopes to get this fixed soon).

Another Adobe topic - covering Flex - is on the schedule but we do not yet have the title or description.

cf.Objective() 2009 is offering last year's price of just $629 for three days of all-new material - no repeats this year! - so it represents incredible value. Also, don't forget that there is a one-day ColdBox training course on the Wednesday before the conference!

It's been a couple of weeks since I blogged about cf.Objective() 2009 so I figured it was a good time to remind people again. This year's conference is just five weeks away!

The early bird rate is over but the full price has been held at last year's $629 so it's excellent value!

If you've ever wanted to learn ColdBox, this is also a good opportunity with a full one-day pre-conference training class by Luis Majano himself for just $449.

This year's schedule features three full days of new sessions - last year, day three was mostly repeats of popular sessions but we had so many great submissions this year that we wanted to showcase as many as possible. We will repeat two of the most popular sessions in the last slot of day three, however, if people fill out the online Session Scheduler (linked from the schedule page) so we know what's popular!

The Adobe sessions covering Centaur / Bolt promise to be smokin' hot - Adobe are keeping them secret right now but we hope to be able to post details next week!

Finally, the hotel rate is guaranteed thru Monday. It may go up after that (we don't know - that's up to the hotel) so hurry up and book your rooms!

As Kai Koenig said when he asked a number of us to pass this along "Maybe anyone wants to combine their once-in-a-lifetime dream holiday in Australia/NZ with a tax expense along the way"

You might have already heard that cf.Objective() is coming to the Pacific region and that were going to hold cf.Objective(ANZ) in Melbourne, AU later this year (12 & 13 November 2009).

At this stage were opening the public call for speakers. If youre interested in coming over to Melbourne and present on a topic that goes along nicely with the "ColdFusion Enterprise Development" scheme cf.Objective() has become successful in the US, wed like to hear from you.

Topics were looking for fit into (but are not limited to) the following major categories:

Architecture and Design:

OOP, Design Patterns, Frameworks, Modeling, Refactoring Legacy Apps, Persistence etc.

RIA:

LC DS and CF, Ajax/Flex with CF, BlazeDS and CF etc.

Process and Methodology:

Agile Development, SOA, Managing large CF architectures, Debugging and Metrics etc.

Integration and Testing:

CF and Java, Build and Deployment processes, Server tuning, Unit Testing etc.

Please let us know by April, 24 2009 if youre interested in coming to Melbourne to present at cf.Objective(ANZ). A short blurb about yourself and one or multiple topics youd be interested in presenting on would be very appreciated. Please send all topic submissions to speakers@cfobjective.com.au .

cf.Objective(ANZ) will provide speaker accommodation for the night of the 12th to the 13th of November 2009 at the conference venue (Renaissance Hotel in Melbourne). At this stage we unfortunately cant provide any further financial assistance with travel cost or other expenses.

We look forward to hearing from you!

cf.Objective(ANZ) Steering Group

I'd love to go but finances don't permit it this year. Speaking at MXDU a couple of times in the past was a fantastic experience so cf.Objective(ANZ) should be awesome too!

Both cf.Objective() 2009 and CFUNITED 2009 have their early bird deadlines coming up on Tuesday March 31st.

Register now to get the best price for those two conferences!

Remember that if your company registers at least one person for cf.Objective() as an early bird, you can register others from your company later at the same early bird price!

Luis Majano is offering a one day ColdBox training course on May 13th in the Hyatt (the cf.Objective() hotel). Cost $449. If you've already registered for cf.Objective() and want to add this training day, contact Cathy at Best Meetings (cathy at bestmeetings dot com).

You can read all about the training course on the ColdBox website and the cf.Objective() pre-conference page. You can now register for the training when you register for cf.Objective(). You can even attend the training without attending the conference (but why would you want to miss such an excellent conference?).

I know some folks were holding off registration until the pre-conference training was announced - now you have no excuse! :)

Remember that the early bird ends on March 31st. If you register at least one person from your company before then, other people from your company will be able to register at the same price even after that date (and if you send five or more people, you'll get an additional discount!). After March 31st, the regular price goes up to $629 - which is the same price as last year.

In response to the terrible state of the economy, cf.Objective() 2009 has extended the early bird pricing by two weeks (to March 31st) and reduced the "late" pricing to last year's $629. Also, if your company registers any attendee before March 31st, all additional attendees from your company will be granted the early bird price!

See this press release for full details of the pricing changes as well as information about all of the sponsors.

The early bird pricing ends on Monday (March 16th) so you can save $130 by registering this week. In a tough economy, saving that money is important!

If you're holding off until the pre-conference classes are announced, we're trying hard to get details and prices finalized this week but we're still going back and forth with the hotel over room availability and costs for pre-conference classes - don't delay registering for the conference: make sure you save that $130! You can always update your registration later and add a pre-conference class and extend your hotel nights if necessary!

BTW, if you're a speaker at cf.Objective() 2009 - like I am - you might be thinking "Oh I don't need to register" but, yes, you do (selecting the appropriate type of registration and payment) and you need to go on and book your hotel. This helps the conference organizers plan the room blocks and saves them from having to chase speakers to get things done!

cf.Objective() 2009 early bird pricing ends on March 16th and the price will go up by $130 after that.

3-day registration is currently $549. 2-day registration is $499.

After March 16th, 3-day registration will be $679 and 2-day registration will be $549.

Expect pre-conference training to be finalized in the next few days and posted to the website early next week!

The online scheduler will be available next week too.

All of the session descriptions have been posted on the cf.Objective() 2009 website. The sessions page describes the four tracks at this year's conference with session titles and speakers. Click on each title to jump to the description on the full track listing page. Don't forget to check out the schedule - it has had a couple of small tweaks as well. Adobe sessions will be listed nearer the time (since much will depend on where Centaur and Bolt development is at the time of the conference!).

Nic Tunney just notified me that my BDD talk has been picked up for cf.Objective() 2009! Check the conference schedule for more details - a couple of new sessions by Mark Drew have also been added.

Here's the abstract for the BDD talk:

The natural way to develop software is to start with requirements - the expected behavior - of the system. We work our way down the line through design to implementation and somewhere in there we do some testing. Unit testing focuses on implementation, even if you write the tests first. Behavior-Driven Development is intended to let you write the expected behavior - the requirements - in a testable format so that you can develop software top-down, in a natural manner. cfSpec is a great new framework that supports BDD for ColdFusion. Find out how it can help you develop testable, high-quality software in a natural way.

After cf.Objective(), I'll be happy to give this talk to CFUGs via Connect (Salt Lake CFUG - this means you!)

I know a lot of people have been asking about this so I wanted to let everyone know that the cf.Objective() 2009 schedule has just been posted!

As "usual", I start the year with a round-up of the highlights of last year, based on things that I blogged. It's been a strange year for me. After (seven) years with Macromedia / Adobe and most of 2007 spent freelancing, I took a full-time job with a startup and hired some amazing CFers to be part of my team. I (finally) learned Flex (and AIR). I learned a new language (Groovy) and did a lot less CFML programming than I've done in years while at the same time joining first the Open BlueDragon Steering Committee and then the CFML Advisory Committee, as well as attending more ColdFusion-related conferences than usual (cf.Objective(), Scotch on the Rocks, CFUNITED, Wee Dram of Scotch, MAX).

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cf.Objective() 2009 has opened registration. The list of topics will be published shortly I expect but if you've been to cf.Objective() before, you'll know what to expect!

I just received my final evaluation forms from MAX 2008. With the exception of one person who "Fell asleep during presentation. It was offensive.", the comments were mostly positive. There was, however, an interesting undercurrent...

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Invites have gone out to an initial round of speakers (with suggested topics). Now is the time to throw the doors open wide and accept suggestions / submissions from everyone to fill the remaining slots! See the cf.Objective() 2009 call for speakers.

Vince Bonfanti hosted a Birds of a Feather session this evening where he officially unveiled the Open BlueDragon project.

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Hosted via Andy Powell: cf.Objective() FlickrStream.

Brian Meloche has posted more details about his presentation as it didn't make it into the conference booklet. He's talking about using ColdFusion for technology integration and, based on the reception my talk about "enterprise integration" got a few years back, this should be a very well-received talk. Brian definitely knows his stuff in this area and has real-world experience to share.

Nic Tunney's massively popular session, An Intelligent Approach to OOP in CF Architecture, will be repeated on Sunday in the SU4A slot. Nic's colleague Samer Sadek will be presenting this repeat as Nic has to leave early. We knew early on that Nic's talk was popular enough to repeat but had not been able to confirm a stand-in speaker to present it on Sunday. Thank you Samer for stepping up!

This repeat replaces the planned repeat of Hal's Introduction to OO Modeling talk.

Mark Drew will be presenting an Introduction to ColdSpring on Saturday in the SA5A slot at 2:40pm as Hal Helms is unable to attend the conference. Thank you Mark for volunteering at the last minute - and we're all hoping Hal feels better soon.

There are two networks accessible in the meeting rooms. Please join the guest access network and do not switch back and forth to the meeting room network - the hotel DHCP system doesn't release leases very quickly so it is slowing down because it's accruing so many clients duplicated across both networks.

Hal Helms hasn't been feeling too well and will not be arriving at cf.Objective() until some time on Friday. This means we'll be swapping his session (FR1A) with Dan Wilson's Saturday session (SA5A - Refactoring).

We have swapped these two sessions on the website schedule as well as in the online scheduler.

Please visit the online scheduler to reconfirm your schedule if you were planning to attend either of these sessions.

Mark Mandel just published the release notes for the upcoming 1.0 Release Candidate of Transfer. You can see just how busy he's been lately. The 1.0 RC should be available any day now - in time for cf.Objective() 2008 where Mark will give an introduction to developing applications using Transfer as well as an advanced talk on the caching machinery in Transfer.

If you are attending one of the four two-hour hands-on workshops at cf.Objective() 2008, you will want to read this so that you can have your laptop prepared in advance:

Workshop Prequisites for cf.Objective() 2008

This document will continue to be updated between now and the conference but this should help you get ready for your workshop session.

Fred Anderson is blogging about things to see and do while you're in town for cf.Objective() 2008. Thanx Fred!

Haven't registered for the conference yet? It's only a week away but you can still sign up. It's the best value ColdFusion content anywhere on the planet!

I figured this event deserves a much broader audience. If you haven't attended an Online ColdFusion Meetup event, this would be a good place to start.

Announcing a new meeting for The Online ColdFusion Meetup Group!

What: "Cleveland CFUG Simulcast: cf.Objective() Preview", with 3 Speakers

When: Thursday, Apr 24, 6:00pm US EDT (GMT-5) (What time is that for you? See this link which shows the time as US EDT and you can choose your city from the list offered to see it in your own time.)

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The final two repeat sessions on Sunday have been selected. The next most popular topics are Jason Delmore's "Building Hybrid Applications with ColdFusion and Java" and Michael Collins' "Deploying into Large Scale ColdFusion Environments", both Adobe topics.

In addition, we've had to move a few sessions around on Sunday to accommodate speakers' travel arrangements. Josh Adams' talk on .NET has swapped with Sanjeev Kumar's talk on PDF. In order to ensure the two .NET talks do not conflict, we've swapped the rest of the first two slots. Mostly that means that the session choices in each slot haven't changed so, hopefully, attendees' choices won't need to change either.

Please take a look at the revised schedule and, if necessary, update your selections in the online scheduler.

See you in just over a week!

If you use Mark Mandel's awesome Transfer ORM in a cluster, you've probably wondered what to do about keeping the cache in sync across servers in the cluster. I've had to solve this problem a couple of times now and I figured I should publish an example of how to do this.

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This time it's me in the spotlight, interviewed by Alan Williamson. Previous interview victims have been Mike Brunt, Peter Amiri and Andy Allan. Keep you eye on Alan's blog for interviews with the remaining members of the Open BlueDragon Steering Committee.

Don't forget that cf.Objective() 2008 is the first place to get your hands on Open BlueDragon where Vince will launch the project to the public and a number of the OpenBD Steering Committee members will be present to answer your questions.

That's a question that crops up over and over again. I've blogged about it in the past. My answer - as I'm sure most folks would expect - is "it depends". The question came up on a mailing list again the other day and someone jumped in full of praise for ColdBox and then someone else said "Sean would say it depends" and went on to plug cf.Objective() as the "perfect place" to answer the question, wishing they could be there.

Here's what I said in response:

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Subject to change but since other folks have started to publish their schedules, here is my schedule for cf.Objective() 2008 as a Flash Paper document!

This year's cf.Objective() has a lot of firsts. If you're not attending, you're going to miss out on a lot of world premier events!

We've worked hard to make cf.Objective() 2008 a "must see" event. We have a number of firsts this year that we're very proud of:

• The public release of Open BlueDragon on May 3rd!
• The public unveiling - and Alpha - of Model-Glue 3: Gesture!
• The public unveiling of Mate, the new Flex framework from AsFusion!
• The first conference to feature the latest rising star in the frameworks world: ColdBox - with an introductory session and a two hour, hands-on advanced workshop!
• The first public information about Swiz, the new Flex framework from Chris Scott of ColdSpring fame!
• Speaking of Chris Scott, we're the first conference to feature a two-hour, hands-on workshop for ColdSpring!
• We're also the first conference to feature a two-hour, hands-on workshop on agile development for ColdFusion developers by the leading light in automated process & testing, John Paul Ashenfelter!

How can you pass this up? $629 for three full days of brain-cramming, enterprise-level information in a hotel that's only $120 a night! Register Now! The room rate is only guaranteed for a few more days!

If you're a Mach-II user - or thinking of using Mach-II - you might also be interested in the pre-conference classes.

Following my tradition that conferences are only real once my flights are booked, both Scotch and CFUNITED just became reality for me.

$3,800. Ouch!

That's return flights for me and my wife for SFO/LHR and SFO/DCA. With cfDevCon later in the year, plus several more cat show flights to book, at least we'll both be Premier flyers on United next year!

See you at cf.Objective() in early May? Or Scotch in early June? Or CFUNITED later in June?

By the way, today is the last day for the guaranteed hotel price for cf.Objective() so if you haven't registered and booked your hotel, you might want to get on that tonight!

After some discussion, Ron West's session in the RIA track has reverted to its earlier title and description: Implementing User Interface: Improve Your Chances. Please read the updated session description (at that link) and, if necessary, update your online scheduler choices.

I'll be doing a "session focus" on Ron's topic shortly.

Charlie Arehart - Hidden Gems in the ColdFusion 8 Server Monitor

If you have used the ColdFusion 8 Server Monitor at all, you probably think it's a pretty useful tool. Charlie Arehart has used the Server Monitor a lot and he wants to share his experience and knowledge by showing you hints and tips to get the most out of the monitor. He covers general use of the monitor in development as well as what you can and cannot reasonably do with the monitor on production systems. He also covers automation, alerts, thresholds, snapshots and debugging as well as several advanced features and usage scenarios. Almost all of the presentation is based on active use of the Server Monitor, rather than being just a slide deck, so come along and learn how to make the Server Monitor work for you.

John Mason - Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS)

Whilst a presentation about an e-commerce security standard might sound very dull, the reality is that this is probably one of the most important topics on the cf.Objective() schedule. "Any company processes, stores or transmits credit card numbers is required to be PCI DSS compliant." John Mason explains the scope of PCI DSS, where you fall within its levels and what is required of you - and how expensive non-compliance can be! He covers each of the major areas of PCI DSS such as network security, encryption, vulnerability management, access controls, monitoring / testing and policy issues. Some of the requirements are "duh!" obvious but some were quite surprising to me (and some are surprisingly burdensome). Along the way he provides examples of specific things you need to deal with in your CFML code.

Even if you don't do e-commerce, there are a lot of useful security tips in this presentation - or at least potential security problems that you may not have considered yet.

Joe Rinehart just let me know today that his Model-Glue session will no longer be about Model-Glue 2 (Unity) but will instead be the first full public showing of Model-Glue 3, codenamed "Gesture". The session will cover the history and philosophy of Model-Glue and show how the new release "will make it easier then ever to employ architectural concepts like MVC and Implicit Invocation in your ColdFusion applications".

Andrew Powell - Enterprise Class MVC with ColdFusion and Java - Saturday 11:25am

We hear a lot of talk about using individual Java objects within ColdFusion but the reality of enterprise development is that entire subsystems tend to built entirely in Java. Software teams that serve the enterprise often build large, complex systems using Spring and Hibernate. How do you go about using ColdFusion with such systems? I haven't seen any presentations on this subject so I was pleasantly surprised when I started reviewing Andrew Powell's slide deck to find that he was focusing on how ColdFusion can provide the web front end to enterprise class Java systems.

He introduces Spring (the Java version) with a demo and then introduces Hibernate (the industry standard ORM for Java), again with a demo. After that, he will walk you through solutions to the problem of connecting ColdFusion on the front end to Spring on the backend and, using Mach-II as an example, he then shows how to create an MVC web application that allows you to leverage the entire Spring-powered, Hibernate-persisted Java backend.

If you work along a Java team - or you are considering using more Java for your backend systems - this talk will provide you with a lot of good information about how well ColdFusion plays in this space.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be blogging about upcoming sessions at cf.Objective() 2008 that will go beyond what's in the session abstract on the website so that you can make more informed decisions about which sessions to attend - or maybe even make the decision to register for the conference!

[More]

I was chatting with a few folks today and it seems the Flex frameworks space is heating up these days. Cairngorm is, of course, the incumbent, but there are a number of other frameworks out there and more on the way. cf.Objective() already has three sessions on Flex frameworks:

• Mate - Laura Arguello
• Cairngorm for ColdFusion Developers - Brian Rinaldi
• Flex: No Frameworks Required - Maxim Porges

Two other Flex framework authors are also speaking at cf.Objective(): Joe Rinehart (Model-Glue: Flex) and Chris Scott (Swiz - soon to be released).

Would folks be interested in a Flex frameworks shootout BOF?

The next two most popular sessions to be repeated on Sunday are:

• CFEclipse Reloaded - Mark Drew
• An Intelligent Approach to OOP in CF Architecture - Nic Tunney

Update your online schedule!

No fair! No fair! Brian Rinaldi leaks the upcoming Transfer 1.0 release along with the ColdBox-powered documentation wiki.

Transfer continues to evolve at a rapid pace. The SVN repository is light years ahead of the last "official" release (0.6.3) and 1.0 is "coming soon". Mark Mandel deserves huge kudos for his work on this project - and his intent to turn this into "Professional Open Source". In other words, making Transfer something we can rely on like we rely on JBoss or MySQL today.

Come to cf.Objective() 2008 to hear Mark talk in person about Transfer in two great sessions!

Dan Wilson conducted a great interview with Vince Bonfanti about BlueDragon going open source, published on dzone.

The release date for BlueDragon Open Source is May 3rd at cf.Objective(). Register for cf.Objective() and be one of the first to see the project "in the flesh"! Come along to the BOF and ask Vince all about the whys and wherefores of the project and New Atlanta's decision to go open source (assuming Dan's interview doesn't answer your questions).

Alan Williamson has also posted about the steering committee and the process for getting involved.

Adobe's five sessions are (finally) on the website and on the schedule. Adobe is providing five deep dive sessions by five speakers (as well as their opening keynote):

• Deploying into Large Scale ColdFusion Environments - Michael Collins
• Integrating ColdFusion with .NET - Josh Adams
• Building Hybrid Applications with ColdFusion and Java - Jason Delmore
• Adding Live Chat with ColdFusion and BlazeDS - Adam Lehman
• Document Driven Applications with PDF - Sanjeev Kumar

Read the session descriptions for more details (all linked above - updated descriptions will be available for Jason's and Sanjeev's talks within the next day or two).

I'm particularly excited to have Michael's talk on the schedule since this covers a number of very important topics for enterprise ColdFusion shops - including a lot of new material, not seen anywhere before!

Josh's talk is an excellent complement to John Bland's session on .NET integration. John will cover the mechanics of the architecture and how to build .NET assemblies you can call from ColdFusion. Josh will cover specific uses of the feature to leverage Microsoft's Sharepoint and Office technology.

Likewise, Jason's talk is an excellent complement to Andrew Powell's session on ColdFusion and Java. Jason will cover ColdFusion and Java integration with pros and cons and Andrew will dive into building your entire business model in Java and using that with ColdFusion for presentation.

Adam's talk brings coverage of Adobe's newly released open source remoting system, BlazeDS, showing how it can be used to create interactive applications with ColdFusion and Sanjeev's talk goes deep into the Adobe PDF integration that ColdFusion 8 brought to the table, including architecture level information.

Brian Meloche's session has changed. It is no longer specific to ERP and will now cover more generally applicable enterprise-level integration techniques. The new title and abstract is:

ColdFusion as a Different Type of "Glue"

Is ColdFusion really "the glue" that Adobe says it is? We always hear about functions like PDF generation, image manipulation, Outlook integration and all of the new functionality, but is that all that ColdFusion is good for? Is ColdFusion for intranet use only? Can ColdFusion be a different type of glue? This topic will cover using ColdFusion as the front end to an enterprise-level, customer facing application, integrating it with a business object back-end from enterprise-level systems. This will cover what types of things you would need to integrate, levels of integration, ways to integrate, including MQ Series and WebMethods, WSDL vs. REST, direct vs. indirect integration, integrating with external applications, and data replication.

I think this shift in focus will make the session more appealing to a broader audience at the conference so "Thanx!" to Brian for that.

If you haven't already registered, bear in mind that the guaranteed hotel room block price expires on April 1st and may go up after that.

Congratulations to Phill Nacelli and Dan Wilson whose sessions are proving so popular we are repeating them on Sunday morning:

• Leveraging Basic Design Pattern in ColdFusion - Phill Nacelli
• Refactoring in ColdFusion: from Procedural to OO - Dan Wilson

As cf.Objective() attendees continue to sign up for the scheduler and select which sessions they want to attend, we'll be picking more sessions to repeat on Sunday until the Sunday schedule is full.

Adobe should be providing session titles and abstracts soon (I hope) so that we can populate their five sessions on the schedule.

I'll be blogging about schedule additions / updates as they happen - stay tuned!

Unfortunately, Jeff Tapper is unable to make it to cf.Objective() this year and has handed his session, Flex 3 for ColdFusion Developers over to his colleague at Digital Primates, Mike Nimer. Fortunately (for us), Mike has agreed to run this workshop as a hands on session so all of our two hour workshops are now going to be hands on!

• Flex 3 for ColdFusion Developers - Mike Nimer
• Agile Bootcamp: What ColdFusion Developers Need To Know - John Paul Ashenfelter
• ColdSpring l337 - Chris Scott
• Advanced Techniques With The ColdBox Framework - Luis Majano

Attendees will need to have their own laptop for these sessions, with certain software preloaded before the sessions. We'll make a list of pre-requisites available shortly as well as either hosting downloads or instructions on where to obtain the necessary software.

Updated - new BOF suggestions added!

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Not all of these have been scheduled yet - we wanted to get your feedback on what you think would be most popular:

• ColdFusion 9 feature brainstorm - Jason Delmore / Adam Lehman
• Source Code Control - volunteer?
• Best practices for UI design - Ken Sykora
• Frameworks - using them / not using them / roadmaps - run by the frameworks authors
• Using Ant as part of your ColdFusion development environment - Peter Farrell
• Testing tools, techniques and frameworks - John Paul Ashenfelter and Peter Farrell
• Open Source development and publishing - Andrew Powell
• Blogging and Writing - Judith & Michael Dinowitz

We'll be talking to Adobe about possible BOF topics too.

The interactive scheduler is now online for cf.Objective() 2008. Visit the conference schedule page to build your schedule! Thanx to Joe Rinehart / Firemoss for this Flex application.

As we see which sessions are going to be the most popular, we'll finalize the Sunday sessions.

Vince Bonfanti will be presenting a Birds of a Feather session at cf.Objective() 2008 on the Open Source BlueDragon project.

New Atlanta are working hard to make an initial source code drop available, especially for cf.Objective(), so that Vince can show how to download, install, build and configure the project - and field questions about New Atlanta's thinking behind open sourcing the J2EE edition of BlueDragon, as well as discussing with the community how the project can move forward, how the license works, how the steering committee operates and so on.

If you're excited about New Atlanta's recent announcement - or even just curious about how such a large open source project might work for the CF community - be sure to attend this Birds of a Feather session on Saturday evening at 7:30pm. The schedule shows it running an hour but I expect this will need more than an hour so I currently plan to keep the 8:30pm slot open immediately afterward to allow for an extended Q&A session.

Our schedule allows for up to a dozen birds of a feather sessions on Saturday evening at cf.Objective() this year and we're starting to organize those now.

If you are attending the conference and want to run a BOF, or even just suggest a topic and maybe recommend someone to run it, please contact me about it!

We've made a couple of small tweaks to the cf.Objective() Sunday schedule, adding more sessions in place of a second Adobe keynote. Right now they're shown as repeat sessions but we'll know better what the content will be shortly because we'll have the interactive scheduler up very soon (and I'll blog that as soon as it is available!). It's nice Flex application built by Firemoss (Joe Rinehart).

I'm going to be posting a series of "mini-features" on some of the sessions at the conference (based on the actual slide decks that the track committee has been reviewing) so you will get a better insight into various sessions to help you pick your schedule.

If you have not already registered, the conference is only six weeks away so time is running out! The three-day price is $629 which is great value - and there are group discounts available so it's even better value if you send more of your team. Don't forget that Mach-II pre-conference training is also available!

My blog posts have been few and far between lately. I can only blame one of my clients. Right now I have three clients and one of them is keeping me busier than I could've imagine when I first took them on in November. For all three, I'm designing / building a (Mach-II or Model-Glue) + ColdSpring + Transfer system. One client, here in the Bay Area, is pushing very hard to a full relaunch of their platform in just a few weeks so the pressure is really on to get a solid, high-performance system in place. I'm actually very excited about what they're doing - they've already proved their product with a number of clients with multiple codebases but we're creating a unified platform so that they can scale out to an arbitrary number of clients, all on the same codebase. I'll be blogging about them when they launch because I think their product will have broad appeal.

Of my other two clients, both are ongoing rearchitecture projects along similar lines but with slightly less impending deadlines. It doesn't look like I'll be anything less than insanely busy for several months tho'. January was a record month for me in terms of hours worked and I expect that will continue for the next few months.

The downside of that is I'm less available on IM than usual (sorry) and never on IRC (so folks have to ping me if the cfmx7bot goes offline). I'm also behind on getting articles and columns and presentations written - but I am almost completely caught up on reviewing cf.Objective() presentation outlines!

Judith Dinowitz just posted a great interview with Steven and Jared about cf.Objective() 2008. They talk about the focus of the conference on intermediate and advanced ColdFusion developers and the deliberately more intimate nature of the event.

They also talk about how the event has changed, becoming more organized and more streamlined, with an active committee that started working behind the scenes soon after the 2007 event ended.

It's also worth noting that the early bird rate of $499 for the three day package has been extended to January 20th - an extra five days.

If you're a speaker, a sponsor or an attendee, we now have specific badges for your blog or web site, available on the cf.Objective() promotional page. There is also a general badge for you to promote the conference and a general banner.

Note: the general badge and banner are JPEGs, the specific badges are GIFs.

...but want more information?

There is now an announcement-only information mailing list where you can sign up for notices about deadlines and events and any changes.

Also another reminder that the early bird price of $499 for the 3-day pass ends on January 15th. If you are an alumni of 2006 or 2007 cf.Objective() conferences, you should have received your alumni discount code (back in October). If you did not, contact me and I'll get you sorted out.

We'll be posting speaker bios and pictures over the next week or two and sending out logistics information to the speakers.

The conference schedule for cf.Objective() 2008 has just been posted! Time to start making those hard decisions!

Don't forget: the early bird ends on January 15th so register in the next three weeks to take advantage of that special price!

Now that the official speaker/topic selections have been posted, I thought it would be fun to pull together some of the early blog buzz about the conference, mostly from some of our speakers, in no particular order:

• Jeff Coughlin thinks we have an "amazing" list of topics and will be speaking about FarCry
• Maxim Porges says you should make sure you register because our topics "tend to be more on the advanced/esoteric side" - Maxim will be explaining why Flex is a good enough framework that you don't need to add others on top of it
• Luis Majano talks about the debut of two ColdBox sessions, one of which will be a two hour, hands advanced workshop
• Terrence Ryan is "thrilled, excited, and a little intimidated" and says we have "the most advanced content of any of the various ColdFusion world events" - he will be talking about how to convince skeptics to use frameworks, source control and automation which I think a lot of people will be very interested in!
• Peter Bell says this is one of his "favorite CF conferences" and will be speaking about Software Product Lines
• Matt Woodward says "WOW what a fantastic conference" - he will be speaking about enterprise level Mach-II
• Todd Sharp is "thrilled" and "honored" to be speaking about ColdFusion 8's AJAX capabilities and says we have "amazing topics"
• Brian Kotek will be covering a number of code generation techniques to make coding more fun
• Mark Mandel is "very excited about coming over again" (from Australia) and thinks the "speaker lineup this year looks absolutely amazing" - Mark will be providing an introduction to Transfer ORM as well as an advanced session on caching within Transfer ORM

Remember to register before January 15th to take advantage of the early bird discount!

Speaking at cf.Objective() 2008? Want to help us promote the conference? Why not put one of these promotional badges on your website?

When I posted the session details yesterday, I forgot to post the four extended sessions. The website has been updated. Our four two hour tracks are:

• Flex 3 For ColdFusion Developers - Jeff Tapper
• Advanced Techniques With The ColdBox Framework - Luis Majano - hands on
• ColdSpring 1337 - Chris Scott - hands on
• Agile Bootcamp: What ColdFusion Developers Need To Know - John Paul Ashenfelter - hands on

We're very excited about these longer sessions as we often hear attendees complain that a really interesting talk just wasn't able to go into enough detail in a one hour session.

We will be the first conference to provide extensive coverage of the increasingly popular ColdBox framework, offering both an introductory one hour session and the above two hour hands on advanced session!

The confirmed speakers list has just been posted to the cf.Objective() website, along with a complete list of all the sessions (except for four or five Adobe sessions which will be added in the new year). You can see the details of each session by clicking on the track name on the main sessions page.

All speakers listed should have received confirmation of their acceptance today - and to those of you who submitted topics but didn't get picked, thank you (and you should also have received an email today).

The early bird price of $499 runs until mid-January!

We'll be posting the schedule soon and we plan to repeat popular sessions on Sunday.

Since we set a goal of notifying speakers in "mid-December" whether they'd been accepted or not and it's now the 17th, I figured I'd better give folks an update!

We are very close to finalizing the selections. Our problem is that we have so many really good submissions and it's very hard to reject enough sessions to fit into the slots available! In order to accommodate the greatest number of sessions, we're looking at room availability on Friday night to see whether we can run regular sessions into the evening.

We are planning four workshops - two hour sessions that are at least partly hands on - in addition to around 45 unique sessions with the most popular sessions being repeated on Sunday so that you will have a chance to see as many of your favorites as possible.

Registration for cf.Objective() 2008 is already open and the early bird rate of $499 runs until mid-January!

As noted previously, we have requested formal submissions from our preliminary list of speakers, based on the topic guidelines we created earlier.

At this point, we would also like to invite submissions from the community to supplement our initial topic choices and speakers. If you have a topic you'd like to present at cf.Objective() 2008, please send me an email containing:

• Your name
• Your email address
• Your session title
• An abstract describing your session in one or two paragraphs

If we think your session would fit with cf.Objective(), we'll send you a formal "Speaker Request Form" to complete that will ask for some additional details and provide the timeline for submission of materials.

The final date for submission of the completed Speaker Request Form is November 30th so you probably want to get those emails in to me as soon as possible.

We will then review all submissions and by mid-December we will notify all submitters to let them know whether they have been accepted, rejected or placed on the reserve list.

If you have any questions about the process that are not answered by this earlier blog post, feel free to ask me by email!

The formal "invitation to submit topics" went out to our preliminary list of speakers today.

If you refer back to my blog post about the speaker invitation process, you'll see that we're about halfway through the process. All the speakers we've contacted so far about speaking (and those who volunteered to fill the slots we did not have speakers for), will have received formal invitations.

We'll also be posting the general call for papers later this weekend. You'll have about four weeks.

Then we will review all submissions - giving preference to submissions from speakers on our initial list since we want to ensure we fill our original topics - and make our final selections by early December, at which point we'll notify everyone who submitted a topic to let them know whether we've accepted or rejected their submission - or whether we'd like to keep them on the reserve list in case any accepted speakers have to drop out.

I've had a few questions about this so I thought it best to explain how it works. First off, I'm content chair for the conference so, for the most part, I'm driving the process of speaker and topic selection along with a small committee of volunteers and the core conference team.

We all got together early in the summer and came up with the tracks:

• Architecture and Design in Software
• RIA - Flex / AJAX / AIR
• Frameworks A-Z
• Process and Tools
• Platform: Database Tuning & (Application / System) Security

[More]

We've already published a high-level list of session topics for cf.Objective() 2008 and a tentative list of speakers. We're still working on the topics and speakers and I'd like to offer an informal call for speakers (or speaker suggestions) for a few of the topic areas we have already selected. Contact me privately if you would like to submit a proposal to speak on these topic areas:

• Introduction to Design Patterns
• Advanced Design Patterns
• Integrating ColdFusion with .NET and other Microsoft technologies
• Publishing and consuming Web Services
• Interface-driven design (interface = API)
• Introduction to AIR
• Data synchronization techniques with AIR
• Designing for multiple user interface technologies
• Designing for code reuse between AIR and Flex
• Real-time data management with LiveCycle Data Services

We have potential speakers for over thirty other topics but we'd like to get a few more names in the slots above.

Soon we'll be posting a general call for speakers. Watch this space!

Remember that registration is already open for cf.Objective() 2008!

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See this blog post for more details on the speaker selection process.

I somehow missed blogging this earlier but registration is now open for cf.Objective() 2008! Yes, cf.Objective() is running on schedule this year so that we avoid some of the last minute scrambling that occurred with the 2007 conference.

I'll be posting a tentative list of speakers on the cf.Objective() site later today, as well as a tentative list of topics. We'll be confirming speakers and topics over the next few weeks as well as opening up a general call for papers shortly to help us populate the rest of the schedule. Yes, we've followed the lead of several other conferences this year in planning out tracks and topics and inviting an initial round of speakers first so that we can structure the tracks and sessions more formally this year. We hope you'll like what we're doing!

cf.Objective() 2008 will happen in early May (most likely May 1st-4th) in the Minneapolis area. Hotels and conference facilities are being evaluated and the location and date will be finalized and official "soon".

Next year, the conference will have official tracks. The tentative track titles are:

• Architecture & Design in Software
• RIA (Flex, AJAX, AIR)
• Frameworks A to Z
• Process & Tools
• Platform (database, tuning, security)

There will likely be a handful of workshops (two hours, hands-on) as well as regular sessions. We're also considering a "business workshop for engineers".

We'll be fleshing out the tracks and inviting a first round of speakers during July, adding more topics and speakers through August. Once we've got main infrastructure in place, we'll issue a call for topics and speakers to fill in the rest of the schedule.

I went to Rob Gonda's talk on Cairngorm at cf.Objective() and, whilst it was an excellent talk, it just added more weight to my feelings about Cairngorm: it's a lot of work.

Joe Rinehart showed off a new project at cf.Objective(), which aims to brings the ease of use of Model-Glue to Flex. He showed me an example that he'd converted from Cairngorm to his nascent "MG:F" and it was definitely an improvement. I was still bothered by all the repetitive code, left over from Cairngorm, for handling the model - endless delegate object creation, asynchronous token management, responders and result / fault handlers. Boring, tedious, monotonous boilerplate code. There had to be a better way.

I asked Joe if he thought he could come up with some sort of automagic proxy mechanism to make all that code just go away. Being Joe, of course he could!

Read about the big changes to MG:F that introduce autoproxy functionality around the service layer so that you do a lot less typing! Very nice!

I think this is going to be a great project that will really help a lot of ColdFusion developers get into Flex (me included!).

Brian went to Hal Helm's talk at cf.Objective() about Object-Oriented Modeling and it sounds like it generated sound good discussion. In particular, Brian has written up a walkthrough of Hal's "employee" example which shows that the 'obvious' use of inheritance is both simple and wrong. He then takes us through how to solve the problem (with a design pattern - Strategy) and how to use composition and inheritance correctly. It's a good article. If you're struggling with certain aspects of OO design, it should help you.

I'm in Denver airport with time to spare and thinking about cf.Objective() (and IM'ing with several of the folks I saw at the conference!).

The location made a big difference this year - it gave the conference a much lighter feeling, much more space, so it was much more relaxed and friendly (last year was friendly but in a cramped sort of way).

The food was also out of this world. I heard nothing but praise for the catering (although some grumbled at the price of beer) and that also led to a very upbeat atmosphere.

That seemed to lead to a lot more laptop-based sessions in the hallways and in the bar. A lot of collaboration on projects and a lot of idea sharing. Definitely a good thing.

ColdSpring and Transfer were the darling frameworks of the conference - I think eight or nine sessions covered those in some form or another.

I was impressed with the new stuff coming in Mach II 1.5 - Matt and Peter (and Kurt) have been hard at work with a lot of good ideas.

It was great to see so many people I only know from online discussions. We often seem to be such a close "family" in the CF community and it's hard to remember that we sometimes only see each other face to face a few times each year!

Definitely a "must attend" event. Start preparing for cf.Objective() 2008. Details will be made available much earlier next year.

You can now download the slides for my cf.Objective() 2007 "Real World SOA" presentation - in the 'software' pod of my blog.

Sorry, but the "AJAX Integration with Scorpio" talk will not be posted. It's all about prerelease features and those are subject to change per the usual disclaimer that Ben, Jason and Adam all put in their slide decks. I expect I'll be revising it for CFUNITED anyway and, once Scorpio is released, I'll make sure it is fully up-to-date and post it then, with code.

Paul Kenney - Test Driven Development. Talked about the downsides of traditional testing (code first, test later). Noted that "refactoring" is supposed to mean changing the "how" of code, not the "what". Went through a list of "code smells" that should cause you to want to refactor. Then he showed a start-to-finish process for test driven development by writing a test and then writing code to satisfy it, then refining the test and extending the code to pass again.

My SOA repeat session came next, in the ballroom this time and I was somewhat surprised to see such a good turnout (thanks!).

Ben Forta - "Top Secret" Scorpio Keynote. See my BACFUG summary for details of the themes of Scorpio (and several features). Ben focused on just three features, across two themes (developer productivity and integration), that were all Eclipse related. First up he showed the AJAX Application Generation wizard - he showed this at BACFUG. Next was the step-through debugger - lots of cheers and applause! This really is very slick, leveraging the debug perspective in Eclipse, the RDS connection to the server, and providing breakpoints and watch expressions and so on. For the third feature, he explained the whole Flex Data Services integration in CFMX 7.0.2 then showed how Scorpio provides even tighter, higher performance integration with FDS (now known as LiveCycle Data Services).

After lunch I went to Rob Gonda's talk on Cairngorm. I'd had to pick up a Cairgorm app at Adobe and found it very confusing so I really wanted to know more. Rob explained that it is based on six design patterns and a fairly rigid "micro-architecture". He showed how code is typically organized and how requests are handled. Some of it is very clean but a lot of it seems very repetitive and tedious - it certainly creates a lot of little AS3 class files! At the end of the talk, I definitely understood it more but was a long way from being a fan of the approach.

Simon Horwith - XML for the rest of us. I was very disappointed in this talk. Simon pretty much just listed all of the tags and functions CF provides for dealing with XML and really didn't give any good examples. I didn't expect such a basic, unstructured talk at cf.Objective() (and I wish I'd gone to Maxim's talk about Java integration instead).

Chris Scott - Leveraging ColdSpring for Flex. Chris gave a great explanation of how the remote factory bean works. He also gave an overview of the Cairngorm architecture, including what he doesn't like about it. The ability to add logging advice so easily around all the proxied remote methods is certainly very powerful! A useful ColdSpring nugget that came up: getBean("&beanName") returns the factory for the bean, rather than the bean itself!

Dinner with Jared and Steven and a handful of others who were staying until tomorrow (including the British and Australian Marks).

Fantastic conference! Looking forward to next year!

Matt Woodward - OO Architecture Back to Front - Good walkthrough of "backend" architecture with beans, DAOs, gateways, service layers etc. Also covered how requests (from the front end) are processed by all of the OO stuff on the backend.

Adam Lehman - Scorpio Monitoring and Alerts - Showed the new server monitor, drilling into requests, scopes, variables, queries, both in terms of execution times and memory usage. The monitor is very sophisticated when you dig into it! Also showed how you can configure a number of alerts, based on the condition of your server, and either email the admin or proactively "self-heal" by killing errant threads or running CFCs to perform other actions.

After lunch I was waylaid by Chris Scott, Charlie Arehart and Jared Rypka-Hauer on a variety of issues so I only caught the last ten minutes of Simeon Bateman's Fusebox session. He had covered the whole evolution of an application from page-based spaghetti to basic Fusebox to MVC to OO to ColdSpring-managed CFCs. Emphasizing how Fusebox supports you without getting in your way and forcing you to do things a particularly way.

Then I took a break and chatted to a number of folks, including showing Simeon some of what's coming in Fusebox 6 (and promptly running into a bug - which I fixed during the next session!).

The final session of the day was Peter Farrell on Mach II 1.5. Lots of interesting stuff coming: XML includes, sub-applications (modules), calling events (subroutines), enhanced configuration properties, URL management. The new module stuff is very heavily inheritance-based in concept, in keeping with Mach II's OO focus. Definitely some nice, powerful features.

BOFs start in about an hour but I'm in need of a nap I think. And food. And maybe beer.

Keynote - Jason - History of CF, themes for Scorpio, a little bit of each theme. New disclosures: RSS support (<cffeed>), <cfthread>. More to come in sessions over the weekend.

Skipped the next session - spent time with Mark Drew going over Project: Unity, helping him configure support for Transfer ORM.

David Keith - adobe.com - history of the site, infrastructure, architecture. Good explanation of what has worked well (service-based approach) and what needs to be re-architected (monolithic application deployment).

Me - Scorpio/AJAX - the talk seemed to be well-received. Lots of people seemed very excited by just how gosh darn simple Scorpio will make AJAX. I can't post the slides (sorry) so you'll have to watch other people's blogs for reports of what I covered.

Mark Mandel - Advanced Transfer ORM - Covered caching and soft references, observers and the event model, decorators. Transfer really is an impressive piece of software!

Mark Drew - CFEclipse - Started with a lot of introductory material but ramped up. Interesting how so many things are based around the concept of snippets. Introduced Project: Unity - a new plugin that analyses, displays and lets you edit the XML configuration files for any framework. Yes, any framework! How? Mark has built a completely generic, XML-driven parsing engine with several standard "actions". You can now configure CFEcllipse (via this plugin) to discover and render any XML file and provide a context-sensitive editor for it. Extremely impressive! An "alpha" build should be available shortly...

Had dinner with Sami Hoda and his colleagues, along with various Mach II folks. Lots of good discussions about architecture and software design over a fabulous meal (although I had to send the steak back - overcooked!). La Fougasse is amazing (the French / Spanish restaurant at the Sofitel).

Now I'm working on my Real World SOA presentation (again) and struggling with the increasingly serious head cold I seem to have developed in the last couple of days.

In case anyone needs to contact me at cf.Objective() (and doesn't want to IM, email or Skype me :)

And can I just say what a fabulous hotel this is?

In line with "Conference 2.0" behavior, there is a Twitter backchannel for cf.Objective(). Add it as a friend and keep up with the tweets!

I'll be reachable on my SkypeIn number - (904) 302-SEAN - which will be routed to a borrowed cell phone (my wife's - I haven't got around to getting my own cell phone since losing my Adobe number and I don't want to give out my wife's number). It'll be an interesting experiment to see how Skype's call forwarding actually works in practice.

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Ahem... Well, it would be if I'd actually remembered to borrow the darn phone! So, SkypeIn and Skype voice mail it is. I'll be checking for messages as often as connectivity allows.

As I tend to do for conferences, here's the schedule of sessions I'm likely to attend at cf.Objective() 2007:

• Thursday May 3
• 9pm - Reception!
• Friday May 4
• 9am - Jason Delmore - Scorpio Keynote
• 10:15am - Mark Mandel - Developing Applications with Transfer ORM ... or ... Chris Scott - Introduction to Aspect Oriented Programming with ColdSpring
• 11:25am - David Keith - adobe.com ... or ... Hal Helms - Object Oriented Modeling
• 1:30pm - me - AJAX Integration with Scorpio (up against Ray Camden - Model-Glue, Spry and You as well as Joe Rinehart - Model Glue 2: Built to Last... yikes!)
• 2:40pm - Mark Mandel - Advanced Transfer ORM Techniques
• 4:10pm - Charlie Arehart - Understanding, Improving and Resolving Issues with Database Procedure Caches ... or ... Mark Drew - The CFEclipse Project (where I think he'll unveil his super secret "Project: U")
• 7pm - BOFs!
• Saturday May 5
• 9am - Hal Helms - Large Scale Application Architecture ... or ... Matt Woodward - OO Architecture Back to Front?
• 10:15am - Jason Delmore - Scorpio: Diagnostic Server Monitoring and Realtime Performance Alerts
• 11:25am - me - Real World SOA: Building Services with ColdSpring and Transfer (repeated on Sunday)
• 1:30pm - Simon Bateman - Fusebox - The original CF Framework
• 3pm - Scott Stroz - Filtering and Sorting Data in Flex 2 (although I don't know what Howard Sholz will be talking about in this slot)
• 4:10pm - Peter Farrell - Mach-II 1.5
• 7pm - BOFs!
• Sunday May 6
• 9am - Paul Kenney - Test-Driven Development with ColdFusion (although he's up against Jason Delmore - Scorpio: l337 which is a cruel choice!)
• 10:15am - me - Real World SOA: Building Services with ColdSpring and Transfer (repeat)
• 11:25am - Ben Forta - Scorpio Keynote
• 1:30pm - Rob Gonda - Introduction Cairngorm ... or ... Hal Helms - Object Oriented Modeling ... or ... Dave Ross - Intro to Dependency Injection and ColdSpring?
• 2:40pm - Maxim Porges - Maximizing your CF/Flex Applications with Java ... or ... Simon Horwith - XML for the Rest of Us?
• 4:10pm - Chris Scott - Leveraging ColdSpring to Build a Robust and Maintainable Architecture for Flex
• 5:10pm - Jared et al - Closing Comments

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Updated: all session titles are up on the cf.Objective() site (even tho' a few of them are not yet reflected on the schedule) - except for Howard Sholz's session. Simon Horwith and Nic Tunney have swapped sessions (Nic's Intro to OO is first thing Friday after the opening keynote; Simon's XML is now mid-afternoon Sunday). Sunday's keynote has moved to just before lunch. These changes will be reflected on the site shortly.

It's official: Transfer 0.6.3 Goes Final says Mark Mandel. Not much has changed since the Release Candidate but now it is an official build. Mark will be at cf.Objective() 2007, telling folks all about Transfer and how to build applications with it - in two different sessions!

Despite the notice on the venue's online booking tool, reservations for the cf.Objective() hotel are still open - until the 19th of April, I believe. The conference committee are aware of the issue with the online booking and will be taking it up with the hotel tomorrow to get it fixed. In the meantime, you'll be able to call the hotel directly at (952) 835-1900 and make reservations (although, apparently, only on weekdays).

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The form is back up but is currently returning "no rooms match". You can still call the hotel directly at (952) 835-1900 and make reservations. The reservation block is open until April 19th.