Brian Meloche's Blog - Conferences

OO ColdFusion Presentation Today on ColdFusion Meetup!

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 09:16:00 -0400

This is a late post, but I wanted to mention that I'll be presenting my Common Sense Approach to Object Oriented ColdFusion, 2010 Edition presentation in a few hours to the ColdFusion Meetup, 12pm Eastern (UTC/GMT-4) today. This is a slightly refined version to the one I presented in April at the CFObjective conference. Watch Live Here After the presentation, you'll find the recording posted here. I'll update this post after the fact with the direct URL. Also, I'll finally be making the code from the CFObjective/Meetup for public view for the first time following the presentation, as well as post it on RIAForge and Github. One of the sample applications is the most extensive LightFront example posted to date, so this presentation should also show you a little bit on the framework as well. In that sample, there's also an "old school" version, as well as an unfinished Mach-ii/ColdSpring version that I'll continue to work on (but there's enough there to show the stark differences between a typical OO CF application and a simpler OO LightFront one). I'll also be releasing a new version of LightFront (0.4.5) today as well. UPDATE: The recording of the presentation can be found here: http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/p93791252/ Note: It went a bit long... 1:53:02 The code I show and the slide deck in the presentation is available via Subversion here. To download a zip file, which has the code, PDF and PowerPoint of the presentation all in one, just go here: http://svn.lightfront.org/svn/cfobjective2010/CFObjective2010/download/CFObjective2010.zip

Vote for me to speak/open mike podcast at CFUnited!

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:57:00 -0400

I'm hoping to do a CFConversations Open Mike at CFUnited this year... but I need your help to get on the schedule. I'll be at CFUnited regardless (well, hopefully; I'm planning to be there), but I'd like to have a big audience for one of the podcasts. You can vote for the open mike here: http://callforspeakers.cfconf.org/?event=vote&eventId=188 I've sent in a total of four topics, including one on LightFront, that could all use your vote:

CFConversations Open Mike
Improving Website Performance in the Browser
LightFront - The CFML Framework that you don't need to be a rocket scientist to use!
Object Oriented CFML: 2010 Edition

RE: CFConversations - I probably won't get another podcast out until March, as I'm pretty swamped with work right now until the end of the month, but I've got a few episodes coming, including a few guest interviewers, and two that are already recorded. I have to hit it hard in March, as CF Hour() is about to lap CFConversations. :( I'm all about healthy competition. :)

Speaking at CFObjective 2010!!!

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:31:00 -0400

Following my friend, Dan Vega's post about speaking at cf.Objective() 2010, I, too, am announcing that I am speaking at cf.Objective() this year.

You may remember that my topic last year was "What to Do When OO Fails You in ColdFusion", something that was a bit of a controversial topic... or at least a controversial title. This year, you may be surprised that my topic is "The Common Sense Approach to Object Oriented ColdFusion, 2010 Edition".

Have I changed my tune? Nope, not really. I've just taken a look at the subject in a different way, and I'll talk about how many of the issues that were a problem in the past have been addressed or have workarounds in CF9, and try to explain it better than I did last year. Although a lot of people enjoyed my presentation (which I was going to do on a CFMeetup, but it never worked out), there were some negative comments that I wanted to address in a new version, that I also didn't get to do on the Meetup which I was going to call "Object Influenced ColdFusion". Anyway, it should be an interesting talk, and I hope if you are planning to attend, you'll make my presentation.

A lot of my talk will fall in nicely with Dan's talk, as I'll be talking about CF9 a lot in my talk.

I should point out that this is not scheduled to be the only session on what I like to call, "Pragmatic OO in ColdFusion". In fact, there is a similar session scheduled. Since that person hasn't announced his session yet, I'll hold off talking about it here, but we're going to work on making sure we don't repeat ourselves too much. We're looking at it the issues from different perspectives, such as issues vs. technique.

About to leave for CFUnited

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:15:00 -0400

I am about to leave for CFUnited... I just wanted to just send out a quick post. It's been a while since I've released a CFConversations episode, just due to me being insanely busy on a bunch of things. There hasn't been any time for a podcast, but I'll be trying to get some out this week, including ones recorded at the conference. I'll be hosting a day 1 open mike round table podcast scheduled for 5:30 on Wednesday, and CFConversations will be situated in the Legolas room throughout the conference, interviewing and podcasting away. Anyone who's at the conference can attend the open mike session, to listen and/or participate, and I'll be looking to schedule interviews throughout the conference. That's all I have time for right now, but for more, see here: http://www.cfconversations.com/index.cfm/2009/8/11/I-know-I-know-On-my-way-to-CFUnited

The new me at cf.Objective()

Sat, 16 May 2009 13:20:00 -0400

A lot of people have asked me to upload a pic, and thanks to O?uz Demirkap?, I've got one: UPDATE: I forgot to say that on my last weigh-in on Wednesday (at the gym located in the hotel), I weighed a super unofficial 279.8 lbs. That makes my current weight loss total at 98.7 lbs! UPDATE 2: I am back from cf.Objective, and weighed in today (5/17) at 278 lbs. That means I have now lost over 100 pounds! 100.5, to be exact. Here's another pic:

At cf.Objective(), and I'm no longer CF_Heavy...

Wed, 13 May 2009 18:51:00 -0400

I arrived in Minneapolis this afternoon, and am waiting for the fun to begin for CFObjective. My presentation is on Friday, What to Do When OO Fails You in ColdFusion. It should be interesting, and I'm looking forward to presenting it. If you are reading this on my Blog, you'll see that I've finally got the last couple of kinks out of the new design, and I've just uploaded it. I found the Notepad theme at Skinpress. I made several mods to it, including the background from the main column is completely different, a few font differences and many of the icons are different as well. Weight loss update: As of last Sunday, I have lost a total of 94 pounds since June, and 51 of that since the surgery on 2/27. I'm probably down even more as I write this, but until I get on the scale, I won't know for sure. With that, I am retiring the CF_Heavy name of this blog. I may STILL be heavy, although a lot less heavy, and you will see that those days will soon be over. It no longer seems appropriate, and I will discard that just like I have the clothes that used to fit me only a few months ago that are now WAY too big. UPDATE: I've finally uploaded a pic, which you can see here.

CFConversations 12 is out! Ray Camden!

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:28:00 -0400

I neglected to mention a few days ago that CFConversations Episode 12 came out on Thursday, with Ray Camden. This interview was recorded at Day 2 of CFUnited. Ray was a great interview! Listen here.

CFConversations 11, Roundtable 5 is out!

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:02:00 -0400

With CFUnited quite a few weeks in the past and 10 episodes under our belt, it was time for another roundtable! We brought it back in style we've gathered 8 stellar participants including:

We had a lively podcast this time, with some great content that covers a wide range of topics. Bob Flynn announced bFusion and bFlex, where you can get two days of free hands-on training in Flex and ColdFusion at Indiana University. We also discussed the educational licensing and whether or not Bob and Richard (from Gallaudet University) thought it would make a difference at their schools. From education, we moved onto the hiring space. As you probably know, Sean's company, Broadchoice has been hiring several top developers recently, including Ray Camden, Joe Reinhart, Nicholas Lierman and Brian Kotek, and Sean shared his technique for hiring top talent that appears to be working. Note: This was recorded before it was announced that Brian Kotek also joined Broadchoice). Next, Sean talked a bit about the CFML Advisory Board. I announced that a new vendor-neutral site to promote the CFML language is in development. I pulled the domain name from the podcast because, well, we're not quite ready to completely open it up to the general public yet (the basics are up). If you are really interested in helping out, use the contact form and I'll tell you more. We asked Mark Mandel how he felt about ColdFusion 9's Hibernate functionality vs. his Transfer ORM. We all chimed in about other ColdFusion 9 functionality, and talked a bit about alternative editors and search tools. We also covered the hot topic of SQL injection, including a free tool from HP called scrawlr and a project called Query Param Scanner. We did a "final thoughts on CFUnited. Some of the things we had covered on previous roundtables, but there were a few new things. We also talked about the Railo 3 beta (now in Release Candidate) and progress on Open BlueDragon releases. Sean and Adam closed out the episode with a fairly big announcement that should have been made by now, so we sneaked it in! You'll have to listen to the podcast to know what it is. Find the episode here. Run time: 1:36:37

CFConversations 10, Interview 6 - Gert Franz of Railo

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:51:00 -0400

In case you missed it, CFConversations Episode 10 was released yesterday. On Day one of the CFUnited conference, several of us sat down with Gert Franz of Railo, correctly pronounced "Rhy-low" (not "Ray-low"). Railo, a Swiss company, sells an alternative CFML engine, also called Railo, which has been getting a lot of attention in the CF developer community in recent months. During Gert's keynote at the Scotch on the Rocks conference in early June, it was announced that version 3.0 would have support for CFVIDEO and Hibernate, which had been getting a lot of attention in the CF blogosphere, especially since the cf.Objective() conference in early May. Furthermore, Gert announced that Railo version 3.1 would be released as open source under the LGPL license, with support from JBoss and hosting from Jboss.org. The Railo open source announcement was enthusiastically welcomed throughout the CFML community, as has been documented on several previous episodes of CFConversations. Even key Adobe personnel such as Ben Forta and Adam Lehman were enthusiastic about the announcement. Also, during Adobe's keynote at CFUnited, it was announced that Gert was one of the members of the CFML Language Advisory Committee. In this episode, we talk about all of these things, some of Railo's history, and a little about Gert himself, who's a warm and very approachable person, with an interesting history that I think you'll enjoy hearing about. This was an interview that a lot of people wanted to be a part of, or just listen to in person. Also in the room were: Peter Bell, Sean Corfield, Mark Drew, Adam Haskell, Jeff Coughlin, Joe Reinhart and Rick Mason, and most of them get involved in the interview at one point or another. This interview was one of my highlights of CFUnited, so I hope you enjoy it. This was the first podcast recorded at CFUnited, and we didn't have access to the Blue Snowball microphone we used for most of the interviews and round tables. This interview was recorded from three Macbook Pro built-in microphones, although one of them produced a recording that was unusable. The interview itself required substantial post production editing to make it listenable, so the quality may not be as good as episodes six through nine. However, I think, it's now in a listenable form. Due to the difficulty in editing this episode and the timeliness of other episodes, this episode got pushed back a couple of times. Ironically, this worked out, as Gert is doing a U.S. user group tour that starts on Monday, July 28th, which coincides with the release of this episode. This is the first episode where my inserts are recorded via the new headset, courtesy of Marc Esher. If you liked the new music track, it's from a band called spineCar, from the Album Up From the Mud, and the track is called "Smoke". I'm thinking it's going to be the podcast's theme song. What do you think? Run time: 56:47

CFConversations 8, Interview 4 - John Wilker of 360 Conferences

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 06:28:00 -0400

CFConversations Episode 8 is out! This is our fourth interview, and this is also the first podcast not produced by me. Dan Wilson did both the interview and the producing this time around. Dan's a big part of the team, and although this is his first appearance on the podcast, he's been involved from the beginning. You may remember Dan from the same ColdFusion Weekly round tables I participated in. In this episode, Dan interviews John Wilker of 360 Conferences, the company that brings you the 360 Flex conferences. John and Dan talk about the 360 Flex conferences, the upcoming conference in San Jose on August 18-20, ColdFusion and Flex. A summary of the conversation can be found here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddsr546t_26fshzw7k2 Note: By popular demand, this episode features our first experimentation with theme music. Let us know what you think. We'll experiment with other tracks and how they are presented in the next upcoming episodes. Also, since Dan was the producer on this episode, let us know what you thought of the audio quality, and how it compares to our most recent interviews. Run time: 43:06

CFConversations 7, Interview 3 - John Farrar, author of ColdFusion 8 Developer Tutorial

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:49:00 -0400

Our third CFConversations interview episode is out, with John Farrar of SoSensible. On July 2nd, Packt Publishing released John Farrar's ColdFusion 8 Developer Tutorial, their first ColdFusion title, and the first non-CFWACK title since Rob Brooks Bilson's Programming ColdFusion back in the MX 6.1 days. John's a fellow user group manager, and a friend of mine. On Day 2 of CFUnited, I interview John, along with Adam Haskell (who's listening). We talk about the new book, John's CO-OP and SOS frameworks, JQuery, CF9, open source, and the Adobe education licensing of ColdFusion announcement. We also talk about his family. John's got a big family, and I try to get down to how he can get anything done working from home with twelve kids. This was recording via Jeff Coughlin's Blue Snowball microphone, which was also used for the CFUnited Round tables. The sound had to be boosted in post production, but it seems to be good under the circumstances. There is some echo in the room. Some people have noticed a quality improvement in the last few episodes. I hope this episode's quality doesn't suffer too much from the last two. It was recorded a different way, so it may sound different. As previously mentioned in other podcasts, we're still learning how to produce these, and although we're learning more as we go, we don't have all the equipment we need to do episodes of the quality Matt and Peter of Dan Wilson and Rick Mason who purchased the first few items off of the wish list to help make the podcast a better one. Links to the book:
Packt Publishing
Amazon.com Run time: 50:19 The episode can be found here.

CFConversations 6, Interview 2 - Michael Smith of Teratech - 07/05/08

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:45:00 -0400

Our second interview episode is with Michael Smith of Teratech. We discuss putting on CFUnited, Fusebox, Teratech, the recent Adobe announcements made at CFUnited and open source CFML. I have mentioned previously that I have help with these episodes. The interviewer this time is another Brian, Brian Swartzfager, who you may recognize from the ColdFusion Weekly roundtable episodes, as well as CFConversations Episode 3. This was recorded using a handheld recorder. The quality is quite good, but it might sound a tad more "AM radio" like than some of our other episodes. Enjoy! Run time: 16:54 http://www.cfconversations.com/index.cfm/2008/7/5/006_Michael_Smith

CFConversations 5 is out! Liz Frederick & Nafisa Sabu of Teratech interview

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:52:00 -0400

The first four episodes of CFConversations have all been in a roundtable format, but that's not the only format CFConversations will be using. With episode 5, we begin releasing episodes in a new format: Interviews. In this episode, I sit down with Liz Frederick and Nafisa Sabu of Teratech. We discuss putting on conferences as big as CFUnited, their thoughts on the CF developer community, their backgrounds, and open source CFML. This was recorded using a Flip Video camera behind the booth on day 2 at CFUnited. The audio quality is surprisingly good, but you will hear some background noise from both the conference and the street. Enjoy! Run time: 19:59 Here's the link!

Episode 4 of CFConversations is out!

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:31:00 -0400

Recorded at the end of Day 3 of CFUnited. On this podcast:

Brian Meloche
Rick Mason
John Farrar
Dana Tierney
Ken Auenson
Chris Hough
Seth Bienek
Timothy Farrar
Adam Tuttle
Adam Haskell

Most of this episode focuses around the ideas that came out of the Promoting CFML Outside of the CFML Community session Friday evening, mentioned in the previous post. We think some of these ideas are a call to action for the CF developer community. We hope you'll find this long podcast worthwhile! Time: 1:37:27

Promoting CFML Outside of the CFML Community - Results

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:25:00 -0400

It was incredible what came out of my Promoting CFML Outside of the CFML Community session Friday evening. We think some of these ideas are a call to action for the CF developer community. Group 1 - Promoting CFML to New Developers Team Consisted of:

John Farrar
Rick Mason
Dana Tierney
Ezra Parker
Jeff Coughlin
Brian Swartzfager

You can ready the summary at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcdhg6m6_27dnzqx5gs Group 2 - Promoting CFML to PHP Developers Team Consisted of:

Adam Tuttle
Timothy Farrar
Seth Bienek
Dee Sadler
Ken Auenson
Chris Hough
Adam Howitt - adamhowitt@gmail.com

You can read the summary at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcdhg6m6_26frtdsbv8 There is also all of the raw ideas that came out of the session. Expect blog entries from the teams which show those in more detail.