What, you may ask, is an Unconference?

As per Adobe's MAX site:

Visit the Adobe ColdFusion® unconference area to participate in advanced tutorials and code show-and-tells. Share your latest cool code creations and explain how you built them.

Like last year, this year's ColdFusion Unconference will be organized and run by Ray Camden, with an assist by Scott Stroz.

Unlike last year, this year I will be helping out, as Ray's "Grunt Brute" (his term, not mine). I don't know exactly what the job description is, but with a title like that, could I really have said no? (Side Note: It wouldn't be the first time I've had a lapse in good judgment. I could tell stories, but my mom reads my blog and she's disappointed enough in me as it is. Every family get-together it's, "Oy, why ColdFusion? It's a dead language!" She tells her friends I'm a Ruby developer. But I digress...)

I'm looking forward to doing my part in helping to make all 3 days of the Unconference as memorable as possible. Ray recently posted a Call for Speakers/Comments, so if you'd like to set up a session, or have comments as to something you'd like to see, please drop either Ray or myself a line.

Hope to see you in October!

Registration... check. Hotel room reserved... check. Flight booked... check. Sunday February 22nd I start the cross-country journey from San Jose to Sarasota for a week of training with Hal Helms.

The course is Real-World OO Programming, and I've been looking forward to this since I first read about it on Ben Nadel's blog a few months back. I've been struggling with the transition from procedural guy to OO guy, and I think a classroom environment might do well to help me over some of the hurdles. I've gone through a few books, and I think I understand the foundations at a conceptual level. Sitting down with someone like Hal will help put those concepts into practice, I think.

I've been a big fan of Hal's since he and Jeff Peters did the aptly-named Helms and Peters - Out Loud podcast. Topics ranged from writing code to planning to running one's own business. Very diverse topics but always relevant. I always found that both Hal and Jeff just had a way of conveying their meaning very effectively. The material never sounded dry or forced. I'm really looking forward to 5 consecutive days in a classroom environment led by Hal.

Big thanks to my company, Amcom Technology. Amcom's a relatively small shop, and this particular course is a bit more than what they're used to paying for conferences. I appreciate that they recognize the difference here (5 full days, 8 hours per day, small classroom environment) versus a traditional conference and that they agreed to foot the bill.

I also need to send out a thanks to Hal and company, for deciding to include the cost of the hotel in the price of the training (and not increasing the price of the training). It's probably fairly safe to say that I don't think I'd have been able to make it if it were a case of paying for the class, and paying for airfare, and then paying for a six night hotel stay.

Anybody else going? If so, my understanding is that the free hotel stay is only valid 'til the end of January. Also, I've seen a few discount codes posted... but not quite sure if I'm supposed to be re-posting them. If you're aware of a code, and you're aware that it's OK to post, feel free to leave it in the comments for others.

UPDATE:
Register with code "charlie" and receive a $250 discount! Are you still here? GO GO GO!

Oh, and if anyone else is arriving in Sarasota at 10:45pm Sunday evening and wants to split a cab from the airport, let me know

yeah, that was a stretch. serves me right for trying to come up with a witty title before i've had my full morning dose of caffeine.

this made the rounds a while back, but since then things have been relatively quiet and i'm afraid it may have fallen off of most folks' radars. joshua cyr is organizing a "non-conference" cruise. what's that mean? it means the best part of the average conference... you know, after the sessions, alcohol in hand, hanging out at the bar with your fellow developers sharing war stories and talking shop... without the pesky sessions getting in the way.

and the best part? it's on a boat. a big boat that sails from miami to the bahamas (and back). food? check. drink? check (um... gotta pay for those tho). white sandy beaches and inviting blue waters? check. people you talk to online but have yet to meet in person (or don't meet often enough)? yup.

i think it's a great idea and i applaud josh's efforts for putting it together and coordinating the effort. i'd love to attend, but living on the left coast means paying for cross-country airfare for a family of 5... and that alone would run me about 4x the cost of the cruise itself. but i'd like to see this succeed. i'd like to think that it'll be so successful that it'll be an annual event, and that maybe i can make it in 2010.

what about you? what are you doing feb 9-13th of 2009? check out http://www.riadventure.com/ for all the details.

i arrive @ MSP 2:03pm tomorrow. anybody else hitting town about that time wanna split a cab/shuttle from the airport? if so, ping me.

cf.Objective() 2008 is just around the corner. registration is still open, and the deadline for the convention rate at the hotel has been extended until april 15th. if you've been putting off registration, the clock's ticking.

if you've already registered, be sure and use the online scheduler to sign up for sessions. which sessions get repeated on sunday are driven entirely by the number of people signing up for those sessions. kudos to the cf.Objective() team for getting the repeat sessions scheduled early. it really helps to know which ones will be repeated when you've got a scheduling conflict.

my current/tenative schedule:

the sessions have long since been announced and made available on the cf.Objective() web site (http://www.cfobjective.com/schedule.cfm), but now thanks to joe rinehart and firemoss, you can select the sessions of your choice via a nifty flex interface.

as sean corfield explains, the popularity of a given session will help to determine which sessions are repeated on sunday. help the folks behind cf.Objective() by indicating which sessions you want to attend so that they can go ahead and set the schedule for sunday.

sean is also taking suggestions for "birds-of-a-feather" (BoF) sessions to be held during the conference. if you're attending (and if you're not, why aren't you?), be sure to leave your comments (there, not here) letting him know what you want to see in the way of BoF sessions.

this is going to be my first time at cf.Objective(), and i'm really looking forward to it. it's awesome that the people behind the conference take the time to solicit input from attendees in order to tailor the conference to meet their needs as much as possible. make sure you head over to sean's blog and make your voice heard.

it was all very last minute... but i managed to get myself on the attendee list for flex camp this friday (27 july) up in san fran.

driving up from redlands with the family and plan to make a weekend out of it. flex camp on friday... saturday and sunday looking at potential house rentals in anticipation of the move in september. we have one appointment set up for a house in san ramon (which is where the new job is), possibly one in castro valley (if still available), and one in hayward that looks somewhat intriguing.

i'm not really big on repeating blog entries that others have already posted (which is what everybody says right before repeating a blog entry that someone else has already posted), but i felt that this one was worth (re-)mentioning.

how cool would it be to write an open source coldfusion application that benefits the community? very cool you say?

how about if you wrote an open source coldfusion application that benefitted the community and got free admission to cfunited (the premiere coldfusion conference)? very cool but c'mon charlie. stop pulling my leg, you say?

how about if you wrote an open source coldfusion application that benefitted the community and got free admission to cfunited (the premiere coldfusion conference), and got a free nintendo wii? very cool but c'mon charlie. you been sniffing the dry erase markers again you say?

first... don't judge me. i like the way sniffing the markers makes me feel all tingly in my extremities. second... it's all true.

between now (whenever you happen to be reading this) and june 5, submit an open source coldfusion application that duplicates the functionality of a current commercial application and you could win not only free entry to cfunited 2007, but also your very own brand spankin' new nintendo wii!

full contest details and entry form can be found over at ben nadel's blog.

are you still here? go! go read about it on ben's blog! time's a wasting! where the %##$ is my green marker?