Rambling Through CFUnited

This was my first time at CFUnited and frankly my first time attending a conference of any sort. It was a new experience to me and was definitely fun and informative. Readers of The Sports Guy may be familiar with his “ramblings” and “running diary” columns. Those are my blueprints for this post as there are a lot of small things I wanted to touch on. Some are technology related, some are just observations.

Here for your enjoyment is my Bill Simmons-esque ramblings on CFUnited…

Thursday:

Wow, Baltimore is so quiet & peaceful at 5:30 am.

Haven’t had a McGriddle in years… I think the McGriddle technology is the same as that which created the little toy dinosaurs that expand in water. The breakfast sandwich is about the size of a hockey puck but somehow magically expands into a cinder block when it hits your stomach. My normal confident strut has become a slow waddle…
  

… birds of a feather…

My first seminar of the day on JQuery. Speaker was good and informative. I’ve never been crazy about JavaScript as a language(simple things seem to take a lot of steps/aren’t intuitive) and have asked myself why someone hasn’t find a way to simplify it. I actually ask myself that about a lot of things in my life, frankly. But unlike those other times, someone has and went beyond what I could have imagined with JavaScript and created a really stripped down yet highly functional JavaScript library. God bless them.

Speaking of which, if someone sneezes and you say “god bless you”, are you obligated to repeat it for every sneeze in a series? If you decide to “wait it out” until they’re done, how long is too long to wait? In other words, what is the sneeze statute of limitations? 5 seconds? 10 seconds? These are the things that keep me up at night.

I’ve been developing in ColdFusion for a little over a year now. So I was wondering if the “Coldspring Advanced Tips and Techniques” would be over my head. The first half of the seminar, I was patting myself on the back for picking up on everything being discussed, the 2nd half was considerably more humbling, but all and all an informative session.

Wow, even post-lunch at the end of the day, when you see a really engaging speaker, it can really keep you interested. The next time you’re at a ColdFusion conference, check out Hal Helms . He gave a great talk about client expectations and how best to work with the client.

Oh yes “ColdFusion Celebration” at the Crime and Punishment Museum. Beer, wine and hors d'oeuvres served… that’s what I’m talking about!! The museum was pretty interesting and a nice break from all the ColdFusion talk.

A walk around DC monuments on a beautiful night after a beverage or 2 is a beautiful thing. Its like a patriotism booster shot.

Friday:

Just saw a great presentation on Flex. It was like the perfect storm. I was really interested in the topic & the speaker was really informative and prepared. I also recommend Mike Nimer’s presentations and blog.
 
I was walking to my seat for the “demo derby” (people showing off their ColdFusion sites) when I heard a woman say she was giving away an iTouch. I said “gimmee, gimmee, gimmee”. She said you have to show off your website to the crowd and the best presentation wins it. I was like “sure”. So I decided to get up and show off congruentmedia.com. I really don’t mind public speaking, but I tend to freak out if I’m not prepared and have to ad lib. I had about 5 minutes to plan what I was going to say. I had all these technical specs & jokes planned out- it was going to be brilliant.
I got up there, and totally froze… “uh…. this is our uh… webpage… um…” I got through it but it was painful. At least I could drown my sorrows in the lunch buffet afterwards.
 

(Brian was kind enough to take a picture of me during my off-the-cuff “Demo Derby” presentation.

In short, it was a great time and a great learning experience. Before I went, I wasn’t sure what I was going to come away with. Since every class is about 60 minutes, its obviously not enough exposure to instantly learn a new language or become an expert or anything, but its gets you a good foothold in different types of technologies, philosophies and techniques.

Or as the Sports Guy would say “Good Times!”.