Event-Driven Programming! You already knew I was a fan of this approach - that's why I wrote Edmund, after all - now Hal is going to cover this style of programming. From his blog post on event-driven programming:

One of the things we'll be working with in the class next week is event driven programming. ...

I find this approach has benefits and drawbacks. The drawbacks are inherent in the approach: it's decentralized. ...

The benefits, though, are considerable. Adding functionality into a site is much, much simpler. Maintenance is easier. Testing is easier. ...

I meant to mention this days ago: Pat Santora is presenting my Edmund framework at the Sacramento CFUG tonight. Short notice but if you're in the area, go along and hear Pat talk about event-driven programming in ColdFusion. Pat is a contributor to the Edmund project and has created a new presentation focused on CFML examples using Edmund. Thank you Pat!

I'm working on a specification suite with Pat Santora, who recently joined the Edmund Event-Driven Model project as a contributor (more on that shortly), and we're using cfSpec to define the expected behavior of Edmund.

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Adobe is continuing to put all of the MAX 2008 presentations up on Adobe TV (under the MAX channel). The audio was recorded directly from the in-room mic and the "video" is a screen capture of what was being presented and whatever technology they used to do it has produced a very nice way to watch every single MAX session for free (so I can now go back and watch the sessions I missed which I'd really wanted to attend!).

It seems that only two ColdFusion sessions are listed, one of which is my Event-Driven Programming in ColdFusion session. The other is Rob Brooks-Bilson's Advanced ColdFusion Caching Strategies. Searching Adobe TV for ColdFusion turns up nine videos, six of which are part of the Adobe Developer Connection series from Adam Lehman and Ben Forta.

If you haven't checked out Adobe TV as a learning resource, there's definitely some good stuff up there.

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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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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I just made another pass over my MAX schedule to finalize my choices and thought I'd post my planned list of sessions so folks will know where to find me:

• Monday
  • Opening General Session
  • Adobe Roadmap: Enterprise
  • Flex Architecture Face-Off - panel
  • Real-Time Collaboration Apps with Flex and Cocomo - Nigel Pegg
• Tuesday
  • Mixing Open Source and Commercial Software
  • General Session
  • Adobe@Adobe: IT Innovation
  • Developing Rich Applications with jQuery and Adobe AIR - John Resig
  • The REST of SOA
• Wednesday
  • Advanced Patterns for ColdFusion Test Automation - Bill Shelton / Marc Esher (MXUnit)
  • Building Real-Time and Collaborative Applications with Flex and BlazeDS
  • Event-Driven Programming in ColdFusion - an updated version of my session from Scotch on the Rocks and CFUNITED
  • Cocomo Deep Dive: Building Social RIAs with Flex + Adobe Hosted Services - Nigel Pegg
  • Developing Enterprise ColdFusion Applications - Joe Rinehart

As I was updating my schedule, I noticed that several of the ColdFusion and Flex workshops are already sold out - good to see so much interest in those! I was originally going to Dave Watts' "High Performance ColdFusion" but decided to give up my seat when I saw it was sold out (hopefully someone else will get in now!). There's a lot of excellent ColdFusion sessions at MAX this year but my focus right now is on Flex, AIR and real-time collaboration so that has driven most of my session choices.

Also a reminder that BACFUG meets on the Wednesday evening immediately after MAX ends and I am pleased to announce that we are having a double session with some MAX speakers:

• Bill Shelton and Marc Esher will present on Unit Testing in ColdFusion with MXUnit
• Joe Rinehart will present on Model-Glue 3: Gesture

We hope to have a good turn out with MAX attendees taking advantage of this (free) user group meeting in the evening! Since the meeting is inside the Adobe building, you will need to RSVP for security purposes. See you there!

Here's the link to the PDF of my CFUNITED presentation (644Kb) on event-driven programming in ColdFusion. I can't post the code (sorry) but will be working on new examples shortly.

I just got word from Liz at TeraTech that my Event-Driven Programming in ColdFusion talk has proved popular enough that it will be repeated on Saturday (yes, CFUNITED has posted its Saturday schedule!).

So come along and hear me talk at 1:30pm on Thursday (6/19) or 8:30am on Saturday (6/21)!

As is traditional, CFUNITED is publishing brief interviews with all of their speakers. My interview about event-driven programming in ColdFusion has just been published today. I mention Edmund briefly and I'll be blogging more about that in due course. Since the interviewed was "recorded" I have indeed started using Edmund at Broadchoice to manage the workflows in our scheduled tasks.

Scotch on the Rocks has just posted its initial list of sessions and it looks like I'll be giving both of the talks I submitted:

• Getting Dynamic with ColdFusion
• Event-Driven Programming in ColdFusion

The second talk is the same one I'll be giving at CFUNITED a few weeks later (so you can read more about it in the CFUNITED Frameworks track).

The first talk will take a look at all of the amazing things you can do in ColdFusion - because it is dynamic language - that you cannot do in Java. Hopefully, it'll give you some new ideas about how to solve problems faster and more idiomatically in ColdFusion!

TeraTech have just announced the first few topics in the frameworks track and my talk "Event-Driven Programming in ColdFusion" is on the list.

We're starting to see a lot of interest in event-driven programming because Flex demands it, AJAX uses it to some extent and some popular application frameworks use this approach (ColdBox, Mach-II, Model-Glue). This talk looks at expanding this technique to other aspects of ColdFusion programming. If Flex looks alien to you, this talk should let you get your head around the techniques in a familiar environment, helping you get ready for Flex.

I've also submitted this to Scotch on the Rocks 2008.

I submitted a second topic to CFUNITED 2008 (and Scotch on the Rocks) that covers dynamic programming techniques. I don't know whether that will be accepted for either conference but if it isn't and there's enough interest, I may go ahead and write it up for user groups or online presentation.

Since there seems to be some interest in this, I created a mailing list for the project. Quoting from the group's about page:

Event-Driven Model Framework for ColdFusion. The name? EDM = Event-Driven Model, Mund = mouth (German), Mund = ancestral rule over the family / disciplinary power over members of the family / responsibility to protect the family (Old English). Edmund is also one of my cats :)

As folks start adopting more AJAX and Flex for their applications, I see a lot of questions about "how to use <insert favorite HTML framework> to handle AJAX/Flex calls?"

This is based on two things (in my opinion - putting on my flame-retardant suit)...

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