Charlie Griefer

Mike Chambers has officially announced FlashCamp San Francisco for the evening of April 16th, 2010 at the Adobe offices on Townsend Street.

What is it?

FlashCamp San Francisco is a free one night event hosted by Adobe covering everything you need to know about about the latest Flash Platform tools and technologies, including Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Flash CS5, Adobe Flash Builder 4 and mobile design and development.

Not only do you get to spend an evening with some of the top Flash talent in the area, but food and drink will be provided as well. How much would you expect to pay for all of this? Put your wallets away. The entire evening is yours for free.

If my math serves, this will be the 3rd FlashCamp at the location (the first was actually called FlexCamp), and these events have traditionally filled up very quickly. There's a very limited number of seats available, so do not hesitate. Register today!

Finishing up some last-minute packing before heading off for Adobe MAX tomorrow morning.

Saving a few dollars (I think... the price of gas might actually prove otherwise) by driving instead of flying. I like the convenience of having a car at the conference. Provides a little bit of freedom for getting out and about.

I'll be picking up Sean Corfield at 9am. It'll be nice to share the ride as it's a pretty monotonous drive down I-5. Saturday night I'll be hitting a Dodgers game with Scott Stroz and Ray Camden, which should be a good time. I don't follow baseball, but I do enjoy getting out to a live game. I haven't done that since I went to a Diamondback game back in AZ.

Sunday morning, Scott and I are heading over to ESPN Zone to watch the Giants vs. Chiefs. Scott and I both grew up in NJ, and are both Giants fans. Getting to watch the game together is going to be a blast. If you're at the conference and want to meet up, we'll be there for the early game (10:00am). Depending on who's playing and who shows up, we may stay for the late games as well.

Sunday night is the Community Summit. This is my first year as a User Group Manager, and I'm really looking forward to meeting other managers and Community Experts.

Monday the conference starts in earnest. I expect that most of the time I'll be in the ColdFusion Unconference area. Ezra Parker and I are going to be doing what we can to help Ray make sure everything runs smoothly.

With the exception of the Max Bash on Tuesday night, evenings are open. I'm sure both open evenings will fill up. Scott and I talked about the possibility of a trip to Fogo de Chao in Beverly Hills. Maybe Monday night? Any takers?

If you're going to be in town, come by the Unconference area and say hi. I look forward to seeing you there.

What's ColdFusion DevCamp? Organized by Sid Maestre (manager of BACFUG), Rachel Luxemburg (Group Manager, Developer Relations at Adobe), and Luke Kilpatrick (who recently organized the highly successful pre DevCamp San Francisco), the event aims to introduce ColdFusion to non-ColdFusion people. Whether it be designers or developers using other languages, this is a day-long hands-on introduction to the wonderful world of ColdFusion.

The event takes place on Saturday November 7th, 2009 at the Adobe office in San Francisco.

The current agenda:

• 9:30-10:30 - Welcome, Laptop Setup assistance, coffee and donuts.
• 10:30-11:00 - Keynote (State of ColdFusion).
• 11:00-6:00 - ColdFusion - What's possible (demos of ColdFusion tags).
• 11:00-6:00 - Break into small teams and begin projects.
• 6:00-7:00 - Share projects.
• 7:00-7:30 - Raffle and close.

Lunch will be provided and served around 12:00 noon.

If you know of anyone in the Bay Area that's been curious to learn about ColdFusion, let them know about this event. If you're in the Bay Area and already know ColdFusion, register as a mentor. The more mentors that sign up, the better the experience will be for the students.

The cost for this all day hands-on event? Absolutely free. All that you need to bring is a laptop and a desire to learn.

Read more about it at http://www.cfdevcamp.org/. Hope to see you there!

Adobe MAX 2009 is coming up fast (October 4-7), and thousands of developers, designers, and decision-makers will soon be descending upon Los Angeles, CA. Certainly, MAX is one of the more extravagant conferences... and while it's worth the price of admission, I wanted to let people know about a few upcoming events that might be a bit more "budget-friendly".

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!

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.