Every so often the media, recruiting firms or someone at a conference stands up and says “Coldfusion is dead”, and everyone goes into a tizzy.

It seems to be that Coldfusion is like the development platform whipping boy, that gets throw out of the cupboard for a beating every now and again.

Now I’m not a “gun” Coldfusion developer, I used to work heavily with the product about 4-5 years back. But lately despite the frameworks and the version 8 advancements my interest in Coldfusion has wained. I guess this really started when I was finding it hard (yes hard) to get Coldfusion work several years back. That to me was the first sign to move on. At that point I suspect I made a decision with respect to Coldfusion. Now that’s not to say that I still think it Rocks.

You have to ask why this constant reporting of the demise of Coldfusion is happening at all, particularly in Australia. Have people just lost interest. The various Coldfusion communities will tell you there is no lack of interest. I disagree. We have taken our eye of the ball.

Is it just the natural shift of people to the popular development platforms like .Net. Maybe we can add Python and Rudy on Rails to that list as well.

Maybe it’s a price factor. Coldfusion in Australia isn’t the cheapest product on the block, add to this the fact that the costs for a hosting providers it isn’t competitive. All the pricing leads back to Adobe. Now I can understand why, Australia has always been a very small market, and small markets don’t get price breaks. Not Adobe bashing here, this is just reality. The open source Coldfusion implementations may help on this front.

The Coldfusion community tells me that there is a lack of experienced good developers and that this shortage is causing existing developments in the Coldfusion to be re-evaluated. Fair enough can’t get a developer you can’t proceed. Developer can’t find work, they retrain. That’s a double edged sword on that one.

Now on the flip side when did you last hear about:

• A Coldfusion developer standing up talking about a Coldfusion based development at a major Australia conference, not dedicated to Adobe products (WebDU doesn’t count).
• In fact anyone standing up talking about Coldfusion outside of a ColdFusion User Group. Doing this would at least make people aware of Coldfusion.
• Any promotion of Coldfusion outside of the Coldfusion User Groups.
• Coldfusion servers and educational package being rolled out free to universities so they can teach Coldfusion.
• A graduate who knows what Coldfusion is.
• A new book on Coldfusion in a bookstore online or otherwise.

No good bitching that Coldfusion is dying if you are just promoting it within your closed community. Sitting around the campfire grumbling that no one likes your beans isn’t going to help one bit, get out there look around the other campfires.

Leading off in date order there is a free ColdFusion mini-conference directed by Adobe CFCamp (27 November 2007, 9am – 4pm), want to learn the latest in ColdFusion, register today.

ByteMe and others

Kat Black, because she is a little insane (in a nice way) has organised a Digital Arts Festival – ByteMe (2-9 December 2007). So if you are into anything digital and arty from live cinema, photography, VJing, robots, computer games, digital animation, pervasive gaming and lots more. Giant Dice are running a pervasive game – Ghost Town through out the Festival, so go play.

Well while ByteMe is going on, you also have Graphite 2007 (1-4 December 2007), it’s an International conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

Perth Massive

And if you’re not doing anything on the night of Tuesday 4th December, there is the end of year (Christmas) party/event for Perth’s digital community (designers, architects, web developers, film and television, gamers, academics, photographers, animators, authors, programmers, scientists, researchers, musicians, marketing, advertisers, artists..whatever), Perth Massive, don’t forget to register. This will be one event not to be missed.

BarCampNano

Finally after all that geek fest, there is a mini Barcamp, BarCampNano, Perth Town Hall, Sunday 9th December 1-4pm (part of ByteMe). Usual BarCamp format, with 20 minutes sessions, all interaction presentations to round table discussion. Got an idea, a concept, a cool technique, a topic you want to discuss, come alone, best of all, it’s free! So go register.

And they say nothing happens in sleepy old Perth, Western Australia.

Technorati Tags: barcamp, barcampnano, byte-me, byteme, perthmassive, perth, graphite2007, digital+arts+festival, coldfusion, cfcamp, awia

Finally ColdFusion 8 (code named Scorpio) has come out of Beta and onto the shelves of the world, bringing with it joys to ColdFusion developers everywhere. I have discussed elements of ColdFusion 8 previously in passing (in relation to WebDU07). As expected Adobe is now going to start ramping up on the ColdFusion sales pitch, which is fair enough, they are a software company out to make money.

Now I like ColdFusion its simple but very powerful, it’s like the Apple MAC of the web software world, it doesn’t get in the way when you are coding, it just works.

With ColdFusion 8 we get a number of very timely features: Server Monitoring, Dynamic PDF Generation and Forms integration, Ajax based addins, .NET integration, MS-Exchange Server integration, Interactive debugger (finally), Image manipulation and a heap more.

Well to prove to you all that ColdFusion is not dead (as some would have it) ColdFusion User groups around the world are putting on various special events, and the ColdFusion User Group of Western Australia is no different.

So if you have used ColdFusion previously and gone over to the dark side (just joking) or have site using ColdFusion but have no idea what all this geeky stuff is, then why not join us.

Come along, it’s going to be like a mini ColdFusion trade show. There will be lots of food and drink, and there is even a copy of ColdFusion 8 that you could win (thanks Adobe) along with the usual social networking. There is even a special presentation prepared by Adobe’s Ben Forta.

When: Wednesday 8 August 2007, 6pm Correction 4PM
Where: REIWA House, Hay Street, Subiaco
Cost: FREE
RSVP: Required

So book the evening. So that’s Webjam, the WAWAs and this all in the same month. This looks to be an interesting evening as ColdFusion User Groups from Australia and New Zealand follow the moon, handing over from one to another.

Also let’s see if we have really get the word out on this one. I see Kay has already started the ball rolling.

Technorati Tags: Scorpio, ColdFusion8, cfugwa, ColdFusion

Day Two

• The keynote, Ted Patrick showed off the next generation of Flex and its CS3 integration, seeing this I think I’m finally getting it as to where I can use Flex. Tim Buntel ran through some more Scorpio (Coldfusion 8.0) goodness.
• Now I had a three-way conflict. Go see Cameron Adams and Russ Weakley show people the correct way code (nothing new there). Listen to Caleb Adam Haye pull Yahoo APIs into Flash. Or see Charlie Arehart empart this rapid overview of ColdFusion Caching (it’s C-A-ching Charlie not Ca-S-hing). I opted for Charlie. The range of caching options for Coldfusion that he presented blew me away.
• Urgent work pulled me away from WebDU, so I missed Jesse Warden Flash Lite talk. Which is a shame. Hoping for the podcast goodness later to fill the void on this one.
• Okay got to see the workflow from CS3. Thankyou Greg Rewis. Yes, it’s going to be good, yes Fireworks is the optimisation Engine, Yes Dreamweaver and Photoshop can be tightly coupled. Finally I got to find out what has been bugging me for a while with Spry. Greg revealed later the Spry (Ajax) Javascript in Dreamweaver isn’t that accessibility friendly or unobtrusive. So again we all still have a job fixing the output from Dreamweaver.
• More Scorpio, interface and tags for rapid developments from Tim Buntel, working with Breeze like presentations, PDFs and images. Interesting, but by this stage I was getting a little tired of the Adobe demos.
• Speaker Roundtable, the usual let’s see the Adobe dudes avoid the hard questions. I would have preferred the non-Adobe people on the stage for a general panel. But we got more Adobe.

The Wrap

On a side note, was there a lot of twittering, well no! I was asked countless times, what was Twitter. Maybe Twitter was just not in the mindset of these web geeks. Sure some Adobe dudes are TWI. Some people get it. Some do not.

WebDU is slated as “A rock concert for geeks”. Well it had is share of Adobe “Web Rock Gods”, and the lower profile “Web Rock Gods” where the real stars as far as I’m concerned. The Adobe crew were interesting, but frankly they where all glossed in a little “sales” gleam. When it was people like Brandy Fortune (power to you Brandy), Kai König, Jesse Warden, Charlie Arehart, Caleb Adam Haye and Dmitry Baranovskiy, these are the people using the technology they are the real stars, the real people with real stories, no sales, no pitch, no NDAs. WebDU needs to enlist more of these types of speakers. Sure have a few of Adobe crew, but it would be nice to have less of sales pitch and more of the real “Web Rock Gods”.

Was it “A rock concert for geeks”, well frankly, no!

Let me explain. I’m sitting here in the hotel, flying out tomorrow, and I have this distinct feeling that I have been cheated. It’s like I have only just seen the support act, and missed the headlining band. I felt the hype, I felt the start of the adrenalin boost, being energised, feeling like I can take on the world. But as the last item on the agenda wound down, the session of community and all the hype just evaporated, leaving me with a feeling of regret, like I was just missing something.

Technorati Tags: ColdFusion, WebDU, WebDU2007, Flex, Scorpio, adobe, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, CS3, SEO, Flash, Spry, Javascript, KathandKim, Twitter, FlashLite

The Day

• All credit to the guys at Nectarine for the Flash based adverts, they where totally awesome.
• The day started with the usual keynote, with the two Mikes, Mike Downey and Mike Chambers dishing up some Apollo goodness. With the alpha of this product slated for release any day now this was a little of a sales pitch and a show and tell. That’s not to say it wasn’t interesting.
• Brandy Fortune led us into the world of usability. The one thing that I found refreshing about Brandy was her frank and honest approach as she discussed the methods, equipment and overview of a generalised “How to” on usability testing from an Information Architects view point.
• FarCry 4 was next on the agenda, Jeff Coughlin demonstrated the extreme power of the FarCry Formtools. It was interesting, would love to get the chance to inplement a FryCry site or at least be involved with the roll out of one. The power and easy of use of FryCry 4 is a few leagues higher than the previous versions.
• Kai König mainly bitched about web services and demonstrated the hype verse reality. It was good to see someone telling it like it is for a change. In summary soon as you step outside of the Coldfusion / Flex / Flash camp for web services and for example put .Net into the mix, you are basically asking for trouble.
• Had to go support Dmitry Baranovskiy with his presentation of Microformats, as you do. It was interesting watching people around the room realise the power of Microformats as Dmitry demonstrated there potential.
• There was a closed door, demo of the Adobe CS3 suite. This required the signing of an NDA, I hate NDAs, and especially to the level of detail in this one. Hence I opted for the SEO discussion from Jon Henshaw. Jon didn’t present anything really new, but he did make the a number of clarifications on techniques, that some people in the SEO segment of the Web Industry would not discuss in detail.

The Wii

Okay I played the Wii, yes it is addictive, and yes it is fun, especially on the large screen. It did prove I’m hopeless at tennis in real world and on the Wii. Now bowling, that’s a problem, having been a reasonability good league ten-pin bowler for years (in a previous life), I found it hard to make the transition to the Wii.

The Jam

Lachlan “Mr LachStock” Hardy led an in-conference webjam, this was my first on hand experience of the webjam format, it’s fast it’s furious, and it’s pure geeky fun. Did this go off, oh yeah this went off, big time. I suspect the webjam may infact outshine the banquet when all is said and done. Hats off to Lachlan. Minor gripes out of Lachlan’s control the “pillar” in the middle of the room and the very flaky Internet connection. I also got to finally meet Lisa Herrod for the first time, fate had really stop us meeting up before.

Tonight is the Banquet and a “private” Microsoft party afterward. I know this is going to be messy.

Technorati Tags: ColdFusion, WebDU, WebDU2007, Flex, Scorpio, Adobe, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, CS3, SEO, Flash, Webjam, Farcry, Wii, WebJamming, Microformats, Usability

First up after a stroll up towards the Bridge end of Sydney, there was a solid day of having Flex downloaded into my head, you know the drill, unscrew top of your head, pour in Flex, mix, re-screw on top of your head, thankyou James Talbot (from Adobe) for the massive headlong push into the world of Flex. I’ll be looking into Flex some more.

After the Flex Workshop, it was time to have the National Adobe User Group. Time to hear lots of empty promises from Adobe. Well I was I little surprised in the question and answer session it has basically all ex macromedia people and frankly for a change they where telling it like it is, no crap, no lies no fluff. Which for once was refreshing.

At the National Adobe User Group, Tim Buntel had a micro presentation on Scorpio (Coldfusion 8), nothing I suspect that we didn’t already know about. We’ll get more on this later at WebDU. The interesting highlights where:

• The ability to create PDFs on demand
• Image manipulation (about time too)
• The ability to create Breeze like presentation on demand
• A Rich Text Editor leverage from the use on one tag.
• Acceptance of output from PDF forms into Coldfusion
• Minor improvements to cfscript

The Rich Text Editor is of interest to me, as it’s leveraging the same RTE that I would use anyway, (usual javascript based RTE). It will have the various features turn off or on for the editor’s toolbar etc, and will allow support for the control of the HTML output, usual SDK for this editor, but bundled into the expected Coldfusion style tag. The real shocker was the demo. Well Tim shows the RTE and its output text that is now wrapped in a paragraph and font tag. Yeap we are rocking like it’s 1999. With a bunch of base HTML code output that just isn’t cutting the standards compliance. WTF! Adobe please get with the party. Use standards, we are trying to build a better web. This little black duck is going to be having words on this one, I can tell you.

Well I have the registration pack. Average bag (like I really need another one!), but the one major oversight is the program booklet, there is no list of the program agenda, no easy reference to what is next on the day and where. Okay if you couldn’t get it into the booklet (printer deadlines and all that), at least have a card printed for the lanyard.

Technorati Tags: ColdFusion, WebDU, WebDU2007, Flex, Scorpio, adobe, usergroup, Richtext, CSS, FontTag, TimBuntel, JamesTalbot

There is the usual panels, presentations etc, Adobe thinly veiled selling sessions – hope I’m wrong on this one. Geoff Bowers and Julie Steadman have certainly done a great job at filling the conference program out with four streams. That many sessions that I think I’ll have to be cloned to take in all the ones I want to do to. One minor criticism, where are the women. Sigh! Is Kay Smoljak right in saying (various times in various places) there are not a lot of women as developers / coders and the server side end of the web is dominated by males.

One of the programmed highlights for me will be the webjamming. The usual 3 minutes to strut your stuff. Now given the standards that have come out off Sydney locally over the last two webjams the quality at this event is going to have a high degree of intimidation factor with it. As I write this I note that there are only 8 of the possible 16 slots filled. Is Geoff holding some back, or are we falling short.

Frankly given the output of the last webjam, and the degree of work that went into the applications etc from Earle Castledine, Cameron Adams, Andrew Krespanis and Tim Lucas. I’m not surprised that people haven’t been fronting up. I know Lachlan Hardy has been trying to get people to front up.

Question is are we upping the anti too much at the webjams (videos available too). Or is there a sustainable degree of the talent out there in the web community, and a webjam is the perfect place for would be “Web Rock Godlings” to strut their stuff.

Have I had the time to put together something… well not likely? Rotating my neck the wrong way last week, put a stop to that! Mind you I do have a few ideas, just no time to implement them, as usual. And I could do a filler slot, but jamming wise it’ll be … well, I’ll leave that till later, if it happens.

Still I’m ramped up for WebDU. Reality is the program is really secondary to the people and the non-programmed events. Bring it on!

Technorati Tags: ColdFusion, Flex, WebDU, WebDu07, Conference, webjam, webjamming