Allaire Conference This Year Creates Feeling of Synergy and Togetherness

 
Nov 06, 2000
by S. Malkah Cohen

Wow, what a wonderful experience! Virtually every member of the Fusion Authority writing and editorial staff were able to make it this year to the Second Annual Allaire Developer Conference, held last week in Washington, DC. The synergy generated by nearly 3,000 Allaire customers and partners meeting one on one with the cream of Allaire?s development and management staff left most of us supercharged ? and exhausted by the end of it all!

In this column, I?ll cover the pre-conference festivities and the conference itself. I will address the riches of the Exhibit Floor at another time.

Pre-Conference Events Enrich the Experience

The hardiest among us (such as Michael Smith) got there in time for CF_EarlyBird, an informal gathering of ColdFusion developers on Friday evening, November 3rd, and CF_Scale, held by the Maryland ColdFusion Users Group in nearby Bethesda, MD, on Saturday, November 4th.

Others (such as myself and Michael and Judith Dinowitz) made it a point to get there by Sunday, November 5th, for CF_Underground. This full-day event at Mr. Henry?s was jointly sponsored by TeraTech, Fusion Authority and CFTipsPlus. (Other sponsors included Granularity.com, LogViewer, SecretAgents.com and MarketMatrix.)

There?s more elsewhere here on Fusion Authority and on the TeraTech site about this event, which nicely balanced the fun (CF_Charades and CF_Beer, courtesy of Steve Nelson and SecretAgents.com) and the substance. The speakers list read like a ?Who?s Who in ColdFusion?: Event organizer Michael Smith spoke on "Why CF is so successful"; Michael Dinowitz on "How we can become better CF programmers"; Hal Helms on "How to solve the CF programmer shortage: The Business Case for Fusebox"; Robi Sen on "Enterprise Messaging with XML and CF"; and Leon Chalnick on "Where are we going: User Group Survey". Other featured participants included: Dave Aden, Charlie Arehart, Cameron Childress, Adam and David Churvis, Benjamin Elmore, Steve Nelson, Bill Rogers, and Nathan Stanford. A panel of these CF experts spent considerable time fielding a wide range of CF questions, in addition to excellent interaction from the attentive attendees throughout all the presentations.

I particularly found the CF Brain Trust segment very interesting. Ten questions about ColdFusion development and Allaire?s relationship with its developers were posed to ten different focus groups of 4-6 attendees, who then reported their suggestions and recommendations back to the general assembly. The general consensus will be reported back to Allaire. These questions ranged from "What additional services can Allaire offer its developers to help them and their customers?" and "What should Allaire be doing about security holes in CF?", to broader issues, such as "What can be done to address the shortage of CF programmers?", as well as ?What direction will web development take next and what skills will we need to take us there?". The answers the focus groups came up with were well thought out, given the limited time frame, and generated some very useful debate.

(See the article in this issue on the Brain Trust Questions: A Summary, Compiled by Michael Smith.)

The final event of a very long, stimulating day was a presentation by Judith Dinowitz, who gave a rundown on the many new CF books that have recently or will soon come out, introducing those authors who were present and allowing them a few words about their work. Many of those books had been on display throughout the event and were raffled off. Of special interest were Rob Brooks-Bilson's Programming ColdFusion, due out soon from O'Reilly, and a new offering from Hal Helms called ColdFusion to Go, coming out in February 2001 from Prentice Hall. Also highlighted was Software Architecture: Organizational Principles and Patterns, due out from Prentice Hall.

In fact, the very latest book, hot of the presses, was launched at CF_Underground: Fusebox: Methodology and Techniques, ColdFusion® Edition. This is Fusion Authority?s first print project, and everyone involved in its production was there to enjoy the fun. Principal authors Steve Nelson and Craig Girard, Hal Helms (who wrote the foreword and a wonderful appendix on Fusedocs) and technical editor and contributor Nat Papovich, gladly signed copies of the books when asked. The new Fusebox poster, a bonus for those who purchased the book from Fusion Authority or Secret Agents, was proudly displayed. [Fusebox Poster Link]

We thank Michael Smith, Mark Mathis, the entire TeraTech staff and the members of the Maryland CFUG for a well-run, well-rounded, wonderful event.

The Main Event

This year?s Allaire Developer Conference certainly made its nearly 3,000 attendees welcome and comfortable! Its amenities included a well-populated exhibit floor, the CyberCafe, complete with games and email access (sponsored by Virtualscape), meal-oriented presentations by Intel, Macromedia, Compaq and Cisco, and such fun events as CFUG Bingo and the grand Allaire dinner held at Washington, DC?s famous Union Station. But it was the substance of the conference that made it a success in most attendees? eyes.

All three days were packed with things to learn, information to share and people to meet. Days began early, with breakfast presentations starting as early as 7 am and general session keynote addresses by Jeremy Allaire kicking us into high gear by 8 am. Wonderful, packed-to-the-rafters ?Birds of a Feather? and Special Interest Group sessions stretched long past their official finish times, as people eagerly drank in the words of the speakers and participated in discussions on topics dear to their hearts. And lively panels addressed ColdFusion Scalability Best Practices, Success with Allaire Spectra and gave us a chance to quiz Allaire?s product management team and executives, including the latest arrival, Tim Yeaton, Senior Vice President of Products, formerly vice president and general manager of the UNIX/Linux business unit at Compaq.
[Editor?s Note: Watch for our report on our chat with Mr. Yeaton, coming soon.]

Expanding the Vision: ?<CF_FUTURE_2001>?

The two high-tech-enhanced General Sessions on Monday and Tuesday were both led by Jeremy Allaire as he presented the updated "roadmap" for Allaire?s development over the next twelve to eighteen months. The next major releases of ColdFusion and JRun were detailed and a sneak peek was given us of the "Pharaoh" initiative, the next generation servers now under development.

ColdFusion 5.0 will roll out in the first half of 2001, followed by an expanded version, code named ?Neo.? This newest edition will expand the set of services at the CFML developer?s command and will run on a J2EE-based foundation. JRun 4.0 and the next generation of JRun, code named "Trinity", will include the ability to write custom tags in Java Server Pages (JSP), an integrated Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) gateway and phone simulator, SOAP-based Web services support, J2EE 1.3 compliance, and B2B integration services.

One issue that Allaire stressed in its general sessions and its session on future releases of ColdFusion was that ColdFusion and JRun will still be separate products, and that the CFML and JSP languages will not change radically in syntax. Indeed, today's CFML code will still be usable, even in the "Neo" release of ColdFusion. What will change is the compiling engine underlying the code. One of the most impressive parts of the first general session was a comparison of CFML code run on ColdFusion 4.5 and on a prototype of Neo. It was clear that the same code took four times as long to run on ColdFusion 4.5, and that in certain cases, the Java-based engine of "Neo" actually increased performance dramatically.

What does this mean to the ColdFusion programmer today? Only that Allaire is opening more doors to knowledge for ColdFusion programmers. We have the option of enhancing our knowledge and learning JSP, but we are not being forced into it. We can learn at our own speed. And, in fact, this change should enhance the ColdFusion we all know and love.

Spectra 1.5 is in the works and Allaire is streamlining both the design and focus of the product in this next release. Their strategy this year seems to be concentrated on the two people who are most involved in the creation and maintenance of a Spectra site: the developer and the business user who's going to maintain it. Spectra's new and enhanced feature set focuses on increasing both developer and end-user productivity. It, too, has a next generation after version 1.5, code named ?Dharma?, scheduled to ship in the second half of 2001. This will focus on profiling, personalization, online commerce and customer service.

More about Spectra 1.5

In addition, the Spectra platform will also be the focal point for a new specialized partner program and licensing model for the application service provider market. The Commercial Service Provider Licensing Program is being introduced with pay-as-you-go payment structures and bundled services that appeal to ASPs and hosting companies. In support of the program, Allaire has also expanded the Allaire Alliance to include a new ASP category and has added new partners who offer ASP-enabling products and services for the Allaire Business Platform.

More about Allaire?s Specialized Partner Program and Licensing Model For Application Service Provider Market

Jeremy Allaire also announced several new initiatives. He called on Macromedia President of Products Kevin Lynch to demonstrate ?Harpoon?, a jointly-developed toolkit that will allow CF and JRun developers to integrate the rich user interface and media capabilities of Macromedia Flash Player into their enterprise applications.
More about the Joint Allaire/Macromedia Initiative, Harpoon

Also called to the stage was Nag Rao, founder, creator and chief architect of the critically-acclaimed Kawa Java integrated development environment (IDE), which has just been acquired by Allaire from Tek-Tools, Inc., which will pick up bodily, staff and all, to move to Massachusetts. A powerful tool for developing server-side Java and Enterprise JavaBeans, this acquisition enhances JRun Studio. Allaire will be releasing Version 5.0 of Kawa, now in beta.
More about Allaire?s Acquisition of Kawa Java

Also announced were new initiatives with both Screaming Media and WebTrends.

ScreamingMedia has worked with Allaire on an adapter that enables ScreamingMedia's SiteWare, a technology platform for the aggregation, distribution and integration of digital content, to interface directly with Allaire Spectra, providing Allaire's clients with syndicated content from ScreamingMedia. SiteWare will be included on the Allaire Spectra CD, and clients will receive a 90-day free trial of filtered content from ScreamingMedia's over 2,900 publications. At the end of the 90-day trial period, clients will have the option to sign up for ScreamingMedia's full-service content solutions.
More on ScreamingMedia?s Technology Alliance with Allaire (Company Sleuth)

WebTrends and Allaire announced integration of the CommerceTrends Visitor Relationship Management (VRM)(TM) Platform and Allaire Spectra 1.5, allowing eBusinesses to conduct comprehensive Web visitor analysis on Allaire Spectra-driven sites.

More about the Allaire/WebTrends Integration

WAP was also addressed with a new wireless strategy on the Allaire Business Platform, currently being leveraged by industry leading companies, including Motorola, Agency.com and Phone.com, to compete in this rapidly emerging marketplace.

More on Allaire?s WAP Initiative

{Editor?s Note: Two additional initiatives, code named ?Harvest? and ?Tron? were not covered in detail in the General Sessions. We will cover these in separate articles.]

In the Classrooms

Of course, the heart of this year?s conference was the many hands-on sessions and workshops, ranging from ?Introduction to WAP and WML? and ?Creating and Using ColdFusion Custom Tags? to ?The Process Logic Path (PLP) to Enlightenment: Developing Advanced PLPs? and ?J2EE: Environmental Performance Considerations and Load Testing Strategies?. Most of the developers I spoke with found most of these very useful, but wished the sessions could have been longer so that even more could have been covered.

What made this conference so energizing? Perhaps it was the feeling that ColdFusion developers and Allaire staff came together as one and truly united. There was a spirit of optimism and positive direction, both from Allaire staff and from individual programmers and community leaders. And the idea that Allaire is interested in our feedback, and ready and willing to work alongside us to further this wonderful thing we call the ColdFusion community -- that was clear from this conference.

Next year, the Allaire Conference will be held held on October 21-24, 2001, at the Walt Disney Swan and Dolphin in warm and sunny Lake Buena Vista, Florida. See you there!

Stay tuned for further conference coverage, and our interview with Timothy Yeaton, coming soon!


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