July was an exceptionally active month in the ColdFusion Community. First, the month began with the conclusion of the CFUnited Conference. Formerly known as "CFUN," CFUnited was a ColdFusion Conference the likes of which I haven't seen since the old DevCon days.
The conference boasted nearly 900 attendees, featured over 60 sessions from some of the biggest names in CF, and was a ton of fun for all. It's worth mentioning that the MiniMAX 2 conference was held the night before CFUnited and was a great success. This year, CFUnited has established itself as the premier event for ColdFusion developers. I enjoyed meeting many of our readers there and can't wait for next year's conference (to be held at the same time in the same location). You can read more about CFUnited in Kelly Brown's conference review in this month's issue. One announcement made by Macromedia at CFUnited that is of significant importance to the CF development community is that Macromedia is now officially going to help support and get involved in the CFEclipse project.
Also this month, TeraTech announced the call for speakers for their annual Fusebox conference. This year, the conference is not only covering Fusebox topics, but topics dealing with various frameworks (it's also been renamed the "Fusebox and Frameworks" conference). Not being a big Fusebox guy myself, I was happy to see the addition of topics surrounding other frameworks. This conference will be held from Sept. 28-30, 2005, in Rockville, MD. More information can be found at www.cfconf.org/fusebox2005.
Speaking of announcements, this month Macromedia officially opened registration for MAX 2005. MAX, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is Macromedia's big annual U.S. conference. This year MAX is a West Coast event; it's being held in Anaheim, CA, from Oct. 16-19. This year, more than any previous year, I've had a lot of ColdFusion developers ask me why they should attend MAX, when ColdFusion topics make up only a percentage of the topics, when they can go to CFUnited where it's 100% ColdFusion. That's a reasonable question and I'd like to take a moment to address this concern.
The MAX conference is not a ColdFusion conference, and shouldn't be thought of as such. MAX is a "Macromedia Technology Conference." ColdFusion is one of Macromedia's products, and an important one at that, and there are many CF topics there. Because MAX covers all of Macromedia's suite of products, there are also many sessions that teach integration between ColdFusion and other Macromedia technologies (like Flash and Flex).
Personally, I find MAX to be the most educational conference of the year, every year. If all you do is plain vanilla CF and all you care about is plain vanilla CF, you might not feel the same. For me, though, the conference is an opportunity to learn about what's new not only with CF but also with Dreamweaver, Flash, and Flex (and any other product I might be interested in). One thing I spoke about frequently at CFUnited was the fact that these days I'm using Flex a lot...and I'm loving it. The MAX conference will be an excellent chance to look at what other people are doing with Flex, including Flex/CF integrations. I personally believe that we've only just begun to see just what Flex can do...its adoption rate and functional potential has yet to be fully realized. I firmly believe that there will come a time in the near future when developers with Flex skills will be in very high demand. The other technology that I believe will be huge in the near future is Flash on devices. Looking at the session topic list, I'd say Macromedia feels the same way. The bottom line, though, is that if you want to stay on the cutting edge of what's happening with ColdFusion and the other Macromedia products, you can't miss MAX. You can find out more about MAX at www.macromedia.com/macromedia/events/max. I hope I see many of you there.
For those of you who will be in Anaheim early, TeraTech will be holding their annual CFUnderground Conference just prior to the MAX event on Oct. 15 at the same venue. You can find out more about CFUnderground VII at www.cfconf.org/cf_underground7. No official announcement has been made about MiniMAX 3, but Adam Bell assures me that he is planning to organize a MiniMAX 3 event in Anaheim just before MAX.
The last bit of community news this month has nothing to do with any conference but rather ColdFusion's 10th birthday. Macromedia held a birthday party in their Newton office (the old Allaire headquarters) and broadcast the event to user groups and developers everywhere via Breeze Live. AboutWeb sent me there to show support along with Michael Perlstein, our VP of business development, who is in the process of developing a community-based network to assist ColdFusion developers in finding jobs.
The birthday party was held on the second floor of the Macromedia office, which, for the event, was adorned with ColdFusion memorabilia spanning the past 10 years. There were a couple dozen T-shirts, mugs, posters, and every other bit of CF-branded memorabilia you can imagine. Food and drinks were provided as the attendees, most of whom were Macromedia employees or former Allaire employees, mingled with one another. Macromedia's key community folks - Ed Sullivan, Amy Brooks, and Christine Lawson - were not only there participating but also organizing and running the event. All of my friends from Macromedia Training and from the ColdFusion Server Development Team were there in full force. Of course, Stephen Elop, Ben Forta, and Tim Buntel were in attendance, as were many former Allaire employees such as Jeremy Allaire, JJ Allaire, and Sim Simeonov.
The overall atmosphere was one of fun, relaxation, and reminiscence. To help with the reminiscing, Tim Buntel took us all on a trip down memory lane by hosting a panel made up of many former Allaire personnel as well as current Macromedia staffers. The panel members talked about the significance of the current release of ColdFusion as well as their thoughts on the future of the product, but most of the panel time was spent telling stories from ColdFusion's illustrious past. The presentation/panel was kicked off with a terrific introduction by Macromedia CEO Stephen Elop. I spent the majority of the time socializing with my closest friends at Macromedia, and I'm no photojournalist but I did manage to take some photos while I was there. The party was a terrific event and it was great visiting the old office again and catching up with old friends. I only hope we can do it again in another 10 years.
