The Community Events: CF_Underground III and the Community Suite

 
Oct 22, 2001
by Judith Dinowitz

Devcon this year was supplemented with three major community events. What was wonderful about this was that all three events were sponsored and run by separate groups, independently of Macromedia, and that all three of them were very successful. This is a sign that the ColdFusion community is strong, and that we can be a partner to Macromedia in promoting ColdFusion as a technology. We have done a separate report on the Fusebox Conference in this issue, so we will be focusing here on the other two community events, CF_Underground III and the CF Community Suite.

CF_Underground III: Fun at the Lake

The second community event at Devcon 2001 was sponsored and run by TeraTech, Inc. As with every conference run by TeraTech, CF_Underground III was a novel way of combining fun with CF learning. This CF_Underground was held at the Cabana Bar and Grill, on the property of the Swan and Dolphin Hotel, on Sunday, October 23rd, from 10:00 am to 1:30 pm. The beachside restaurant, with umbrella-topped tables and a beautiful lakeside view, encouraged a feeling of easy comraderie. The only annoyances were that one noisy gull that kept coming back to our tables (but Michael Dinowitz managed to scare him off), and the thunderstorm that broke in the middle of the event. As CF programmers will, we all simply moved to the overhang and clustered together to enjoy our CF_wisdom. We relaxed, sipped our drinks, and listened to an array of noted CF names. (For pictures and information on CF_Underground, go to http://www.cfconf.com/cfunderground3/.)

First, Michael Smith spoke about a methodology called Xtreme Programming that (while not native to the ColdFusion community) has been gaining momentum among ColdFusion programmers. The methodology involves having programmers working in pairs on different parts (or modules) of an application. The audience interest was high, and his description spurred a small discussion on how Xtreme Programming compares to Fusebox, and where such a method would be helpful.

Hal Helms then spoke about "Architecting Applications with Mindmapping Tools." His explanations of the software development process and why one should spend more time planning the project in the beginning than actually writing code spurred a discussion about different types of software development cycles.

On to a lighter game of CF Jeopardy, where the three contestants had to lunge for one coke bottle to answer questions in categories such as "CFX", "SQL" and "Math Functions." At times, it was quite a wrestling match! The winner and both runners up got prize ribbons and t-shirts.

Jeff Peters then headed the "Project Management Round Table," where we found out how many different ways projects can fail (and why they sometimes succeed!) It was therapeutic (and instructive) to laugh over these tales of woe and discuss how they might have been avoided.

The last two speakers, Michael Dinowitz and Ray Camden, spoke on two complementary topics. Michael spoke about CF Gotchas -- things that logically should work but you don't know why they don't. These are errors that occur in almost every CF programmer's lifetime, if not in every project. Then, Ray Camden outlined some neat tricks that would save developers time and ways to increase ColdFusion's power. The ideas in these two topics alone were worth the price of admission (a low $29 entry fee to pay for costs.)

By the time our happy crowd had left CF_Underground for the official CFUG party, we had announced the CF Community Suite, the other big community initiative set up for the conference.

The Community Suite: A Home Amidst the Conference Chaos

Inevitably, when we go to tech conferences, there is so much intellectual stimulation (and we are so busy rushing from session to session) that by the end of the day, our brains are french-fried and our bodies feel like overcooked spaghetti. Other than the crowded halls, there's no quiet place to relax and hang out in between sessions, to get away from the zaniness of the conference.

Enter the Community Suite. It was a place to converse with fellow programmers and to network. It was a haven with easy chairs, snacks and drinks and low-key discussion, video games and books to flip through for those so inclined. Several wonderful companies chipped in and helped sponsor different aspects of the suite: House of Fusion, RUWebby, Online Data Solutions and Productivity Enhancement. Jon Hall, a member of House of Fusion's CF-Community list, donated a playstation, giving us the experience of the Bouncy Bouncy Bouncies (More on that later.) In addition, several members who enjoyed the suite showed their appreciation with donations of their own during Devcon. I want to thank everyone who contributed, monetarily and in so many other ways, to the experience.

One of the key initiatives of the Community Suite was the ColdFusion Reading Library. We had gotten several major publishers, including O'Reilly, Wrox, Sybex, Macromedia Press/Que Publishing, and McGraw Hill, to donate some of their ColdFusion and/or tech books to the library. This library was available for anyone to read and enjoy within the suite throughout the conference. (People were even using these books to study for the ColdFusion certification exam, which they were taking at Devcon.) These publishers also donated extra copies for a daily raffle at the suite. By the end of Devcon, we had raffled off approximately 75 books and raised over $500, which is being divided up between three different charities: Byteback (http://www.byteback.org), the September 11th Children's Fund (http://www.libertyunites.org/s11cf.adp), and the Twin Towers Fund (http://www.nyc.gov/html/em/twintowersfund.html).

The suite opened at 3:30 PM on Sunday, October 23rd, and kicked off with a Meet the Author session with Raymond Camden, CF Guru and Jedi Master, and co-author of Mastering ColdFusion 5 (Sybex). Ray could not tell us much about what was happening with Neo, constrained as he was by NDA. He did say, though, that Neo was going to be a great release and he was very excited about it. He answered lots of questions about ColdFusion 5 and UDFs.

Throughout the conference, we had some very good planned (and impromptu) sessions. On Monday, we had a "Meet the Author" session with Rob Brooks-Bilson, CF Guru and author of the new O'Reilly Programming ColdFusion book. Then, after Rob spoke, Dan Kemp, of Live Information Systems Ltd. (www.liveinfo.co.uk), started to show some cool code, which turned into a two-hour presentation on three different projects he did. In fact, his spontaneous presentation was so successful that he did it again the next day!

At 3:00 on Tuesday, Charlie Arehart spoke about Slicing and Dicing Data in CF and SQL. His talk, which was a repeat of the one he had done at the Sys-Con conference in New York, was so well received that by the time he was done there were about 40 or 50 people in the room and it was standing room only. At the request of his audience, he extended his talk for another hour, ending at 5:00.

At 5:00, Michael Dinowitz did a session on the rules of CFScript, going over the basics and building a series of CFScript statements so that, by the time he was done, his audience could write (and understand) CFScript. This was a prelude to "UDF 101," a session on user-defined functions that he did the next day.

Wednesday was a slower day, with everyone winding down from the conference. Besides Michael's UDF presentation, we had a short talk by Kevin Roche, head of Objective Internet, about Activity Forum, his company's "state of the art application for managing communities on-line".

The funniest part of the suite were the "Bouncy Bouncy Bouncies". One of the martial arts games that Jon Hall had brought with him to the conference was Dead or Alive, and one of the settings in this game was "Bouncing Breasts". The default was on. As the female characters fought, you could see their breasts bouncing. Every time this game was played (and projected for all to see) the room would explode in giggles ... and another woman would walk in.

Community reaction to the suite was, overall, positive. Tobe Goldfinger, President of JDT Technologies in New York, had this to say: "Everyone should thank Dan [Kemp] for the fabulous stuff that he demoed at the Community Suite. I learned plenty of stuff in the formal conference sessions........ but the informal 'show us what you're working on' get-togethers are also extremely valuable ... And the reading library was truly amazing! I had no idea that some of these books even exist. I will definitely be buying some of them.

"My hat is off to Michael and Judith Dinowitz and the other sponsors for pulling this off so smoothly. I think it enhanced the conference nicely."

In all, the CF Community Initiatives this year enhanced Devcon 2001, and made it all the more enjoyable for the developers who attended.


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