An Architect's View

An alpha version of FW/1 1.1 can be downloaded from RIAForge (version 1.0.118). The wiki has been updated to reflect the new features. You can follow the progress in the Release 1.1 Roadmap document. I hope to have all of the 1.1 features in SVN by cf.Objective() and my talk will cover some of the updates.

Also at cf.Objective(), I will showcase the logos submitted in the "FW/1 Logo Contest" that is running on the mailing list at the moment and the audience will get to pick the winner!

Voting ended March 31st and the most popular eight topics have been selected and added to the schedule for Friday night (22nd):

• 7pm - Test-Driven Development - Marc Esher & Bob Silverberg
• 7pm - Open Source Projects Discussion - Luis Majano, Mark Mandel & Matt Woodward
• 7pm - Extending Mura - Matt Levine & Sean Schroeder
• 7pm - ColdFusion "next" - hosts to be confirmed
• 8pm - Pecha Kucha - Bob Silverberg (host)
• 8pm - Being Agile - Peter Bell & Sean Corfield
• 8pm - Security - Justin Mclean & Jason Dean
• 8pm - Mobile Development - Andy Matthews & Dan Vega (and maybe Josh Adams?)

Thank you for all your suggestions and votes!

Bob Silverberg has been promoting the cf.Objective() 2010 Birds of a Feather survey and I wanted to share a glimpse into the results so far, to encourage attendees to vote if they haven't done so already! Based on the votes in this survey, we'll pick the eight BOF sessions that will be held on Friday evening at this year's conference. So far, the top five BOF ideas are, in no particular order:

• Being Agile
• ColdFusion 10
• Mobile Development
• Open Source Project Discussion
• Test-Driven Development

We've already confirmed Bob's "Pecha Kucha" / "Ignite"-style session (where folks get to present anything but must use a deck of just images and keep to around six minutes - see Bob's blog post explaining the Pecha Kucha for more details and to contact Bob about a slot in that). Make your voice heard!

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!