An Interview with Matthew Reinbold, Organizer of RIADevShed

How is RIADevShed different than Flex Camp?

I took a long hard look at just doing a Flex Camp... RIADevShed was based on feedback that I'm getting from my user group members. I'm the manager of the Salt Lake ColdFusion User's Group (SLCFUG). My members are very curious; they know there are all the next generation web technologies out there to build Rich Internet Applications. They want to see a comparison between the technologies and go back to their companies with a clear idea of which way they need to go. There are a number of companies that are deadlocked. They know they need to make a technology bet. RIADevShed will help them make that comparison.

Why run this in Salt Lake City?

It is very geographically motivated. Salt Lake City has some upcoming startups; we have a number of technology companies that can't find people to hire. Unlike elsewhere, the economy is hot, which means that jobs for developers are in demand. While code shops elsewhere are slowing down, we have a great opportunity to use our economic momentum to excel. By taking the opportunity to groom our developers now we'll emerge as a geographic area that is much more competitive later.

I'm creating a conference that serves the needs of local developers.

Can you give me a list of some of these up-and-coming companies in Salt Lake City?

There are quite a few. Everyone's heard of Ebay, of course. Novell is based here, and they do a lot of open-source related technology. Omniture, an online analytics tracking company, handles online analytics for eBay, AOL, Wal-Mart, Gannett, Microsoft, Neiman Marcus, Oracle, General Motors, Sony and Hewlett Packard. Doba, an online third-party fulfillment company, was listed by Inc.com as the #2 top company in software and #5 company intending to go public. LogoWorks, and its parent company, Arteis, were sold in 2007 to Hewlett Packard. Mozy.com recently made the news when it was acquired by EMC Corp for $76 million. BackCountry.com, one of 2006's fastest growing companies, was bought in 2007 by Liberty Media. The Generations Network was bought for $300 million by private investors. And did you know that the University of Utah is second only to MIT for starting technology companies from its research, despite spending a third less on research funding?

Wow. I had no idea there were so many in Salt Lake City. So who came up with the idea for RIADevShed?

I pitched this idea back in November of last year when I saw that local companies knew that this stuff was out there but were hesitant to make the investment in employee training. They didn't want to pay the $400 plane ticket and $1000 conference attendance fees to learn about technology that they might not use.

So I threw it to my user group and asked if they'd be interested in a local event.

Do you think you'll be successful?

Actually, yes. The event is being covered by a combination of a attendee fees and company sponsorships. We ran an early bird of $99 through February and now attendance is $159. Lunch is provided. We're also paying for the speaker's airplane fees and hotel rooms.

For the bigger conferences, you're really speaking for the prestige. That exposure can justify the speaker burden of the flight and hotel. For a local, first time event like this, it's harder to persuade top talent to invest not only their time but travel and expenses. We're trying to find the experts and it's important to reward them for coming out here.

That does increase the amount of out of pocket expenses over a regular Flex camp but I'm hoping it will be worth it.

So how are you doing with this event?

Right now with the sponsorship and the registered people, it's about break even.

Wow! That's great.

You're covering three technologies here: Flex, AIR and Ajax. Can you effectively cover those topics in one day?

That's a good question. But I don't see it as so much of an either/or. These technologies don't exist in silos and they do dovetail into each other. AIR is a really nice umbrella technology. We can cover Flex and talk about Flex inside of AIR. We can talk about AJAX and then talk about that too with AIR.

For example, we have five or six hours of Flex-related material. We have the whole range, from an introductory talk for ColdFusion developers up through a talk by Shelly Browning, a local expert, on Advanced Charting with Flex using ActionScript 3. This is a presentation where those who are more experienced with Flex will see how to turn those bits and bites into a powerful, graphical presentation. Any of that can easily be rolled into an AIR application.

All told, however, there are two tracks: one dedicated to Flex, and one for AIR/AJAX.

What would you advise people who are interested in learning about these RIA technologies?

First, come to RIADevShed. If you can't, and you want to find out more, Adobe recently redid their website and did a dedicated developer area – Adobe.com/devnet/. Go to the Adobe developer connection and start there.

But the best piece of advice is to just do it. It's very easy to feel satiated just consuming information and reading stuff. But that's not enough. You have to jump in and try it. The difference between reading about something and doing your first helloworld application is the difference between day and night. Take a simple application that you can just do in a sitting and try it.

How do you see ColdFusion in the midst of all of this Rich Internet Application buzz?

ColdFusion has become the best integrator - there's a marketing slide that shows ColdFusion in the middle of everything. [Editor's Note: You'll find that image below in Figure 1: ColdFusion as an Integrator.] In the beginning, the ColdFusion community was all about how do we use ColdFusion – very insular. Now it's, "Let's talk about this other technology and how we can integrate it with ColdFusion." There's a complete bleeding of people's interest, and wanting to go above and beyond just ColdFusion.

Well, thanks, Matthew. It was a pleasure talking to you. Good luck with RIADevShed!

Thanks, Judith. I'll let you know how it goes.