Raise the Roof For Mr. Forta: Atlanta ColdFusion User Group Event, February 23

ColdFusion Evangelist Ben Forta graced the Atlanta technology community with his presence on Wednesday, February 23rd, at the Atlanta ColdFusion User Group (ACFUG) meeting, for an evening of challenging code and advanced scripting. Members of ColdFusion user groups from all over the Southeast flocked to Emory University to hear programming tips and tricks offered by the man who wrote the book (literally) on Allaire's ColdFusion. Forta's publications include The ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit (2nd Edition) and Advanced ColdFusion 4 Application Development, otherwise known as the "bibles" of ColdFusion.

ACFUG joined forces with the local chapter of the Association of Internet Professionals (AIP) in rounding up nearly 250 people for the event, making it the second largest ColdFusion User Group audience that Forta has addressed. (He attracted nearly 300 people in Seattle.) The Atlanta event lasted three hours, but Forta left the crowd craving more code. Members of the anxious audience even chanted for him to remain at the podium, and one rowdy programmer blurted "Let them kick us out." It was clearly a successful event.

Forta spoke in depth about specific ColdFusion functions such as page output and query cache, custom tagging, scalability, and stored procedures. He excited the audience by prefacing challenging code problems with "oh, here's a good one," as if he himself was seeing the problem for the first time. The recurring theme of the evening was his warning not to overuse common functions like <CFOUTPUT> and his suggestions to more often use essential tools like <CFLOCK>. Forta emphasized the importance of knowing what ColdFusion shouldn't do, namely try to duplicate database functionality. He emphatically stated, "Use the database, make it work harder," while the accompanying slide read "Database access is almost always the culprit in poor performing ColdFusion applications."

As a marketer, I admit much of what he said went right over my head - but was neatly fielded by the high level programmers sitting behind me. I did, however, learn a thing or two about performance gains, and was challenged to decipher the practical applications Forta highlighted. As a marketer, I was more interested in relating the technical back-end to the public front-end - realizing that the combination of the two ultimately affects customer experience and sales. It is far too often that code and marketing are separated disciplines. Forta spoke indirectly to this concern by saying, "ColdFusion has changed the Internet development landscape by bringing sophisticated and scalable development options to developers across the spectrum, even to those with little to no programming experience." While I may never actually program ColdFusion, having a good understanding of its power makes me a better marketer.

Forta wasn't the only highlight of the evening at Emory. Spectra Technology Evangelist Ashley King was also on hand. Before joining Allaire, King was one of the first programmers to use and develop software (web-based mail program Mr. Post) for ColdFusion.

King introduced Spectra, the new content and application management software first released in December. This still developing product allows tech departments to hand over menial and time-consuming maintenance, such as content updates and scheduling, to business users with an easy to use interface and simple application. Because the product is so new, not many of the folks in attendance had experience with Spectra, but many showed interest and at least preliminary understanding of its power. King talked about Spectra's programming framework and tied its functionality neatly to the goal of removing the dependency business users have on tech departments for simple, daily tasks.

King similarly engaged the audience with a smart presentation focusing on the core features of Spectra - namely that Spectra can be used in conjunction with any programming platform and can migrate data to and from any development and production database. He walked through the process of syndicating a commerce application, from the "show form" tool to "confirm data" communication and a final thank you page. With the current trend in affiliate marketing, syndicating a sales application can be a pretty powerful tool.

The rest of the evening was a barrage of questions from the trenches. Participants were so intrigued that not even the ever-annoying cell phone jingle could break concentration. Maxxis Chief Technical Officer, Troy Allen took full advantage of his time with Forta. Obviously satisfied, Troy summed up the evening by saying, "As far as scalability and database, there was a lot of new stuff that isn't even in his books [yet], so it was very productive."

It wasn't all work, though. Cameron Childress, ACFUG president, collected business cards for an intermission drawing. Lucky winners won HomeSite software, a "Skillbuilding with ColdFusion" CD-ROM, or one of the new purple ColdFusion pullovers. But nobody went home a loser. Every member of the audience received a cool CF fishing hat, which most everyone wore throughout the meeting. Those that stuck around until the bitter end were able to talk one-on-one with Forta and King, and those who thought ahead brought CF books for Forta to sign. I even caught someone looting the extra hats while nobody else was looking.

Don't worry if you couldn't make it; arthouse CEO Clint Rauscher videotaped the entire evening for posterity, and a RealVideo version will be posted to the ACFUG website. ACFUG and AIP are both active local groups working hard to bring information and valuable events to the Internet community. Check them out: www.association.org and www.acfug.org. Keep an eye out for Forta's new book of ColdFusion wisdom - yes, he's at it again.

Want to see what you've just been reading about? Visit the ACFUG/AIP February 2000 Picture Page (Photos courtesy of AIP, Copyright Shawn Glisson).

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