OpenCF Summit

Submit Your Questions for Pud!

2012-02-22T07:00:00.001-08:00

As we mentioned before we're thrilled to have Pud joining us remotely for a talk at OpenCF Summit, and rather than do a traditional talk he suggested an interview format, which we think will be a great way to pick his brain.

We of course have a ton of questions to ask the infamous Internet entrepreneur, but we also want to hear from you! Even if you can't be there in person feel free to submit questions by commenting on this post, and we'll ask as many as we can.

If you don't know how Pud relates to CFML, check out his great "Why Must You Laugh At My Back End" blog post.

Giveaways Galore!

2012-02-21T08:11:00.001-08:00

OpenCF Summit starts this Friday so to get attendees and Hackfest participants pumped up, here's a quick list of some of what you might win as an OpenCF Summit participant! We're extremely grateful for all our fantastic sponsors for making these giveaways possible.

Hackfest Prizes

The Hackfest is generously sponsored by MasterCard so the top two prizes for Hackfest participation are MasterCard gift cards in the amounts of $250 and $100.

In addition, to encourage participation in the Hackfest if you commit only one line of code to the Enlist project on GitHub, you'll be eligible to win a Kindle Fire and a $100 MasterCard gift card.

Attendee Giveaways

All attendees are eligible to win various prizes including:

Three Cartweaver 4 licenses
Three certificates for six months of free VPS hosting at Vivio Technologies

... and a ton of other stuff!

We'll see you in Dallas later this week! And if you're STILL not registered, go do it now!

Matt & Jason talk OpenCF Summit on gov2.0radio!

2012-02-20T06:37:00.001-08:00

OpenCF Summit isn't just about pushing the CFML envelope.

It's also about growing our community by attracting people and ideas from other communities.

Listen to Matt and Jason pitch CFML to the Gov 2.0 community, explaining that:

It's Free & Open Source.
You can write it in tags or in an ECMAscript-style syntax.
Still pretty ubiquitous in Gov't - handy if you're trying to befriend Gov't technies.
Hard to beat for Rapid Application Development - handy for quick Civic apps.
Great "gateway" language between the Gov 2.0 and Java communities.
The perfect language for Activists getting into Hacktivism.
Loads of sophisticated and Open Source frameworks and tooling.
Backed by a vibrant and friendly community.
Powerful. Charting, document-generation, video, mail, caching, scalability, cloud hosting - from quick turn-arounds to gluing the enterprise together, Railo and OpenBD have you covered.

Listen to internet radio with Gov20Radio on Blog Talk Radio

OpenCF Summit Speaker Interview - Alex Skinner

2012-02-15T08:09:00.001-08:00

Next up in our OpenCF Summit speaker interviews: Alex Skinner!

Alex Skinner is the Co-founder/Managing Director of Pixl8, a mid-size web development agency with offices in London and Kuala Lumpur. He holds a degree in Business Information Systems from the University of Portsmouth.

OpenCF Summit: Hey Alex! So tell us about yourself.

Alex: I've been working with ColdFusion since version 4.0 (1999) when I was gifted a not-for-resale copy from the fine folks at Allaire to use for my dissertation. I have been working with CF ever since University, first teaching the official Allaire curriculum as well as consulting around ColdFusion, particularly focusing on performance tuning and troubleshooting. I've been running Pixl8 since 2001 and oversee a team of 10 Coldfusion developers who all work with a Non-Adobe CFML platform day-to-day, since 2005. We build an enterprise CMS, Intranet product and a number of SAAS products using CFML goodness.

OpenCF Summit: What does your development environment look like?

Alex: Development environment OSX, Windows 7 and Linux with Eclipse
Servers: Centos Linux with HaProxy, VarnishCache, MySQL
Window 2008 R2 with IIS and OpenBluedragon

OpenCF Summit: What is your experience with Open Source Software? Where do you see OSS going?

Alex: My main experience with open source has been with MySQL and Linux and obviously Open Bluedragon. I also am a fan of mixing open source with commerical offerings, hence the Linux for load balancers and caching, Windows for webservers and Linux MySQL for the backend.

I switched from Coldfusion Studio direct to CFEclipse, as I never liked the tools on offer in between.

OpenCF Summit: Where do you think CFML is heading these days? How would you characterize the state of the CFML community?

Alex: I want to see real innovation stuff that makes you go oooohhh nice. Things that are huge time savers comparative to other languages - think CFQUERY.

"CFML community" is a funny description. People are not interested in genuine debate around the state of the language or advancing it as a platform and it descends into battles over my favourite engine. So I'm happy to just contribute to OpenBD and keep my head down as well as dive in when i read something i don't like :).

OpenCF Summit: Why are you excited about OpenCF Summit?

Alex: Sessions that are meaningful and offer the opportunity to learn something. Looking forward to have some genuinely interesting discussions and meeting some bright people.

OpenCF Summit: One last question: could you tell us a little about what you'll be speaking on?

Alex: I'll be doing a joint presentation with Alan Williamson discussing how we both use OpenCFML platforms to run our businesses. Plus any other sessions I get roped into.

Come talk shop with Alex at OpenCF Summit February 24-26, 2012 and watch this space for more speaker interviews!

OpenCF Summit Speaker Interview - Joseph Lamoree

2012-02-15T08:08:00.001-08:00

Next up in our OpenCF Summit speaker interviews: Joseph Lamoree!

Joseph Lamoree is a software developer from Southern California, working primarily with ColdFusion for many years. Blog posts on CFML and technology in general at lamoree.com.

OpenCF Summit: Hey Joseph! So tell us about yourself.

Joseph: I started using CFML in 1996 with Allaire Cold Fusion 2.0 to build intranet web applications. Since then, I've used each new version of the ColdFusion application server, as well as Open BlueDragon and Railo. I created cflucene, cfdns, and a handful of enhancements to existing open source projects.

OpenCF Summit: What does your development environment look like?

Joseph: Over the years, I've used a variety of platforms and tools. I prefer to develop using a Mac OS X machine with TextMate or CFEclipse, and deploy to CentOS running Railo. I wouldn't consider creating a new application these days that isn't based on a framework such as Mach-II or ColdBox. I do a bit of work in Java, and admit that I have a special fondness for clever Perl one-liners and handy shell scripts.

OpenCF Summit: What is your experience with Open Source Software? Where do you see OSS going?

Joseph: I try to contribute to open source projects whenever I can, and (almost) always use OSS over commercial products. There is a tremendous diversity in open source; licenses to fit nearly every situation and projects fitting nearly every need. I would like to be more active in social coding sharing solutions.

OpenCF Summit: Where do you think CFML is heading these days? How would you characterize the state of the CFML community?

Joseph: I don't engage the "your language is dead" trolls or keep up with the surveys of active CFML developer numbers. For me, it's a perfect balance between rapid development and solid engineering practice. Every month there improvements and enhancements to CFML created by the two open engines, and I'm certain Adobe's next release will be a fine product. I don't fear that the code I write today won't be perfectly usable for many years to come.

OpenCF Summit: Why are you excited about OpenCF Summit?

Joseph: I really enjoyed the conference last year, and I'm sure this year's will be even better. The session topics are interesting and useful, with a focus on openness that I appreciate greatly.

OpenCF Summit: One last question: could you tell us a little about what you'll be speaking on?

Joseph: My session will be on taking advantage of current tools to quickly and automatically build, test, and deploy CFML applications. I will demonstrate a complete team workflow from development environment to production server done correctly every time.

Come talk shop with Joseph at OpenCF Summit February 24-26, 2012 and watch this space for more speaker interviews!

Updates and Additions to Schedule

2012-02-14T15:35:00.001-08:00

Some minor updates to our day 1 schedule:

Railo training will be a half-day in the morning as opposed to a full day
Due to their travel schedule the Mura training on day 1 unfortunately had to be canceled
Unconference gets one of the ballrooms ALL DAY so get your presentations ready!

We've also added the lightning talks to the schedule and we'll be joined virtually by Pud on Sunday! (More on that soon.)

Opening Remarks Features Special Greeting from Jeremy Allaire

2012-02-09T09:00:00.001-08:00

We are extremely excited this year to feature a special OpenCF Summit greeting from CF's Co-Creator Jeremy Allaire!

Jeremy will be speaking to us via a Brightcove video and touches on the birth of CFML, the innovative approach behind the language, what he's up to at Brightcove, and much more, but you'll have to come to Dallas to see it!

We're so thankful to Jeremy for agreeing to speak to us virtually. Hope to see you in Dallas in a couple of weeks!

OpenCF Summit Speaker Interview - Judah Johns

2012-02-08T10:03:00.001-08:00

Next up in our OpenCF Summit speaker interviews: Judah Johns!

Currently, I am the Chief Evangelist at Jelastic. My background is a bit of mash-up: the hosting industry, the tech side of the oil and gas industry and politics, and research science.
Blog: blog.Jelastic.com
Twitter: @judahjohns
Email: judah@jelastic.com

OpenCF Summit: Hey Judah! So tell us about yourself.

Judah: I am quite new to the CFML community. My experience started a few months back when I started with Jelastic and a number of developers told me how easy Jelastic made it to deploy their apps. So I decided I woud start learning a bit myself and I've been enjoying it.

OpenCF Summit: What does your development environment look like?

Judah: Right now, I'm working mainly with Java, using Tomcat 6 and CouchDB. I really like open source software and do my best to promote it when I get the chance.

OpenCF Summit: What is your experience with Open Source Software? Where do you see OSS going?

Judah: I've worked with open source software for operating systems, frameworks and even video editing software. It really is the future. I think Android proved that against the iOS. I think we will continue to see this trend grow, especially as more and more developers get involved.

OpenCF Summit: Where do you think CFML is heading these days? How would you characterize the state of the CFML community?

Judah: The CFML community seems to be quite active. With the progress and development of CFML being pushed by the dev community we can expect the future of it to be quite bright.

OpenCF Summit: Why are you excited about OpenCF Summit?

Judah: This is actually my first CF event. I am excited about meeting folks and getting to know some of the people I have only met virtually in person.

OpenCF Summit: One last question: could you tell us a little about what you'll be speaking on?

Judah: I will presenting Jelastic and showing how easy it makes it to deploy CFML apps to the Cloud.

Come talk shop with Judah at OpenCF Summit February 24-26, 2012 and watch this space for more speaker interviews!

OpenCF Summit Hackfest in partnership with the Code for America Brigade!

2012-02-08T10:02:00.001-08:00

As part of OpenCF Summit's ongoing mission to promote Open Source Software, Gov 2.0 and to attract new members and ideas to the CFML community, we are thrilled to announce a partnership with the Code for America Brigade at this year's Conference Hackfest, where we will be finishing up EnlistApp.org, the Free and Open Source Volunteer Management application we began at last year's OpenCF Summit.

If you've never heard of Code for America, check out this two-minute video and just try not to be totally inspired!:

...While CfA's flagship Fellowship program (think "Peace Corps for geeks") has been a resounding success, they've been unable to accomodate the flood of fellowship applicants. In response, they've started up a kind of DIY version of the Fellowship, the Brigade!

"The Code for America Brigade is an organizing force for a growing community of civic minded developers, designers, data scientists, and community leaders who will contribute their talents towards addressing the problems we see everday. The technology that we’ll develop together and deploy locally will form a new Civic Web."

The Brigade aims this year to mobilize Civic Hacktivists from 50 cities across America to stand up 20 civic applications such as Adopt-a-Hydrant and Open211. With this partnership, OpenCF Summit is putting Dallas and Open Source CFML on the map!

As for the app, Enlist was originally concieved of by Peter Farrell, after a volunteer event with Minneapolis-based Team Ortho, during which he noticed organizers tracking volunteers and their efforts on spreadsheets. The application is built around three primary objectives:

To provide non-profits and civic organizations with a Free & Open Source web application for the management of volunteers and their work at community and civic events.
To promote the ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) by modeling many of its strongest features and its support for best practices in software development; integration with and use of Open Source libraries such as jQuery, Twitter Bootstrap boilerplate UI, the Mach-II and ColdSpring frameworks; the Open BlueDragon CFML engine; extensive front-end optimizations; and of course, a Free Software license (GPL Version 3.)
To not require any investment in server infrastructure, but rather to be easily deployed by even non-technical users with a few mouse-clicks to any of the many new Java Cloud Hosting providers, in many cases, entirely for free. (Several are presenting at the conference.)

So Dallas-area coders and designers, bring your CFML, jQuery, JavaScript, Git, SQL and other coding chops to the OpenCF Summit Conference Hackfest, February 24-26, 2012! $72 for 72 hours of Civic Hacktivism, Open Source, Gov 2.0, CFML Goodness. Sleep Optional.

Note, you do not have to attend the conference to participate in the hackfest. Follow @EnlistApp for the latest!

OpenCF Summit Speaker Interview - Ean Schuessler

2012-02-07T10:32:00.001-08:00

Next up in our OpenCF Summit speaker interviews: Ean Schuessler!

Ean is the co-founder and lead technical guy for Brainfood.com here in Dallas Texas. Brainfood specializes in building great looking commercial solutions using Free Software.

OpenCF Summit: Hey Ean! So tell us about yourself.

Ean: I've played around with CFML a little bit in the last year or so specifically because of this conference. I have a Java background so I think CFML can be a great alternative to JSPs or Velocity macro pages and I intend to spend more time with it. I'm probably best known for being an early and vocal participant in the Debian community. I was there when, as a community, we came up with the concept of the Social Contract and the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Debian was where I first learned deeply about the Free Software concept and it will always have a special place in my heart. Since then I've spent a lot of time working with Java and solving business problems using Apache's OFBiz project. We spend a lot of time on that system and think it is very important. In the past couple of years I have started spending quite a bit of time working on the open government concept with a great group of people over at Open Source for America. I'm lucky enough to serve as that group's technical committee chair and have been having some amazing experiences and learning a lot about the vast and complicated processes of our government.

OpenCF Summit: What does your development environment look like?

Ean: We run most everything these days on KVM based virtual machines. We use almost nothing but Debian for those machines though we have a few Windows instances for things like accounting software. We use GIT for revision control. Most of our development revolves around the JVM and its various languages but we have drifted into using PHP for quick and dirty Wordpress sites. Of the JVM languages we probably use Groovy the most. For business solutions we focus on Apache's Open for Business project. We use a little bit of Maven but tend to still use Ant for builds. Mostly we do all of this in terminals over SSH using screen but I do run Eclipse on my desktop for some Android development tasks. I also grudgingly bought a Mac laptop recently so that I could do iPhone builds.

OpenCF Summit: What is your experience with Open Source Software? Where do you see OSS going?

Ean: My Open Source experience started back in1993 during the golden years of the Dallas electronics swap meet. This was before eBay and once a month a huge chunk of downtown Dallas would be overrun by vendors with trucks and card tables full of every technical widget you could imagine. I bought everything from a NeXT cube to a Super Mario machine down there and tried to come every month. It was on one of those visits that I came across a copy of "Yggdrasil GNU/Linux" for $6. The insert claimed "A complete UNIX operating system with X windows, games, DOS emulator" and on and on. I was totally skeptical but at $6 the price was right and it turned out to be one the best purchases I've ever made. I spent a little time with Yggdrasil and then Slackware but moved on to Debian when I heard it could "upgrade in place". That was around 1996 and Debian has been my right hand ever since.

After almost twenty years of playing with Free Software I have had plenty of time to think about where we are headed and I think its pretty clear. We have finally reached a point where the mechanisms of collective public thought are transitioning from physical to digital. This has been a work in progress since the days of the Apple II but with the advent of the smart phone we have reached a tipping point where the digital form is becoming the dominant one. I think this is going to be a difficult period where the Free Software community has to learn how to communicate its ideals to this larger audience. We have to help people understand how important it is that the world's thoughts not become trapped in a centralized and all-seeing fulcrum of corporate control.

OpenCF Summit: Where do you think CFML is heading these days? How would you characterize the state of the CFML community?

Ean: Pretty obviously, I think that CFML is becoming part of the JVM ecosystem. I don't think this diminishes CFML at all. I think its making CFML important and relevant. CFML has a great community that, sort of like PHP, has this strong connection to the world of web design. If CFML can leverage that and act as a bridge for web designers into the technical power of the JVM then I think it can become just as important as it once was, maybe more so.

OpenCF Summit: Why are you excited about OpenCF Summit?

Ean: I'm always excited to be at the center of a smart community where change is occurring. I've been really impressed with the brilliant technology minds in the CFML community and super curious to see what it evolves into.

OpenCF Summit: One last question: could you tell us a little about what you'll be speaking on?

Ean: I'll be doing an updated presentation on the Gov2.0 phenomena. I'm going to get a little more nuts and bolts this year and cover the emerging groups, the apps that are blowing up and the APIs you can use to build your own apps in CFML.

Come talk shop with Ean at OpenCF Summit February 24-26, 2012 and watch this space for more speaker interviews!

OpenCF Summit Speaker Interview - Gert Franz

2012-02-07T10:30:00.001-08:00

Next up in our OpenCF Summit speaker interviews: Gert Franz!

Gert is the CEO of Railo Technologies, the company behind Railo Server. I live with my girlfriend in Switzerland, close to Zurich and I am a father of three.

OpenCF Summit: Hey Gert! So tell us about yourself.

Gert: I started working with CFML in 2000 and at first I thought it was a big step back for me, being used to strongly typed languages like Java and Delphi. But it grew on me and the speed of development had a great influence on my opinion about CFML. In 2003 we started working on the engine that you today know as Railo. It took us 3 years to have a first version up and running and since then I am using Railo for almost all of my programming engagements. I really love the freedom of Open Source Software and I am happy of being a part of something great.

OpenCF Summit: What does your development environment look like?

Gert: Windows 7, CFEclipse, MySQL, SQL-Server, Railo 3.3.x

OpenCF Summit: What is your experience with Open Source Software? Where do you see OSS going?

Gert: In my opinion Open Source is the way to go for software. One should always consider offering free software and all different kind of services for it. In this way everyone who can't afford expensive software can still use it and even contribute to it, if the license and contributor agreements allow it. IMHO professional open source is the right approach since end users, especially in the enterprise need someone responsible who they can call if they run into issues or need help with configuration or tuning.

OpenCF Summit: Where do you think CFML is heading these days? How would you characterize the state of the CFML community?

Gert: Difficult... At the moment the future of commercial CFML is not very clear to me. It depends really a lot about how big the impact of the CF10 release on the market is going to be and on the ability of the open source engines to foster all the users that are looking for alternatives for whatever reasons. The CFML community is VERY passionate and that is what I love about it so much.

OpenCF Summit: Why are you excited about OpenCF Summit?

Gert: It is always very good to see good friends and discuss with them about the developments of the CFML market and to share knowledge as well as learn lots of new stuff. Open Source is definitely the future and so this is a very good opportunity to further promote it.

OpenCF Summit: One last question: could you tell us a little about what you'll be speaking on?

Gert: I will present on what defines performance when developing with Railo.

Come talk shop with Gert at OpenCF Summit February 24-26, 2012 and watch this space for more speaker interviews!

Great Changes to the Day 1 Schedule

2012-02-07T10:29:00.001-08:00

Things are hopping for OpenCF Summit 2012. We have a ton of great new partners this year, and we're continuing to pack more and more goodness into the OpenCF Summit schedule. Since registration is a mere $72 (no, I didn't leave off a 0 at the end there!) this is an unbelievable amount of great content for not many of your dollars.

Here's the updates to the Day 1 schedule.

We have expanded lunch to 90 minutes so you can grab some grub and attend a great "Lunch and Learn" session on deploying CFML apps to the cloud with CloudBees.
The fine folks at Blue River are doing a half-day session on the excellent Mura Content Management System.
Railo training has been expanded to a full day. This is an accelerated version of their Railo Administrator training that includes Railo Administrator Certification. Since this is an expansion of their training offering it is not included in the OpenCF Summit registration cost, but if you register for the Railo training you can attend all three days of OpenCF Summit for no additional charge. (We'll have more details about this such as how to register soon.)

OpenCFSummit Speaker Interview - Daria Norris

2012-02-03T10:10:00.001-08:00

Next up in our OpenCF Summit speaker interviews: Daria Norris!

Daria had been working as a Web Developer for the Free Library of Philadelphia for the last five years. I work on custom CMFL applications including the library's Intranet and Digital Collections application. I also tweet as @cfGothChic and have a radio show called Daria's Cheat Sheet on CodeBass Radio.

OpenCF Summit: Hey Daria! So tell us about yourself.

Daria: I started with CFML version 2 and have been working with it consistently for the last 15 years. I spent 10 of that as an independent consultant building competitive intelligence search engines for a large telecommunications company. I spent many years just using the 5 standard tags, but have moved into OOP with the help of CFCs and ORM integration.

OpenCF Summit: What does your development environment look like?

Daria: At work we are on Windows boxes with CF9 Ent, but for my small business and personal projects I have a Linux Railo VPS from VivioTech. I use CF Builder when I'm in Windows and CFEclipse in Linux. I've been anti-framework for years, but recently have become a FW/1 convert.

OpenCF Summit: What is your experience with Open Source Software? Where do you see OSS going?

Daria: For the industry that I work in, I see Open Source Software as the next generation of library automation software. As budgets grow smaller and as we get more and more librarians with a technical background, I see this trend continuing. Currently we are working on our first big open source project to deploy VuFind, a library catalog search interface written in PHP.

OpenCF Summit: Where do you think CFML is heading these days? How would you characterize the state of the CFML community?

Daria: I think Open Source is the future of CFML. Having OS engines that I can recommend to other librarians as an option to revive out of date code written in older versions is great. We need to get into niche markets and remind them how cool CFML is!

OpenCF Summit: Why are you excited about OpenCF Summit?

Daria: Looking forward to talking with like minded people who think outside of the box! Last year's conference was awesome and I'm looking forward to another great one this year.

OpenCF Summit: One last question: could you tell us a little about what you'll be speaking on?

Daria: I'll be ending the main track of the conference with a talk on 'CFML in a Competitive Open Source Market' where I'll go into depth about the library industry I work in. The library world is quickly moving to open source solutions for functions that were previously the domain of large enterprise propriety software. Where does CFML fit in that picture? How do we as a community support niche markets like this that only see PHP as a solution?

Come talk shop with Daria at OpenCF Summit February 24-26, 2012 and watch this space for more speaker interviews!

Why Attend: Shape the Future of CFML

2012-01-31T12:17:00.001-08:00

Come to OpenCF Summit to talk freely and openly about the important issues facing the CFML community today. Since the open source CFML engine makers will be at OpenCF Summit, you can be assured that your ideas and opinions will be heard and that you’ll have a direct impact.

No one is excluded. All are welcome. No topic is off limits. We are at a critical juncture in the history of CFML, and we need to have open, frank discussions on the issues facing CFML today and learn how to solve them collectively to ensure a healthy future for CFML.

It’s an exciting time to be a CFML developer. Come to OpenCF Summit and help shape the future of CFML.

See you in Dallas, February 24-26, 2012!

Sean Corfield on OpenCF Summit 2012 - Why You Should Attend

2012-01-29T17:04:00.001-08:00

OpenCF Summit 2012 - Why You Should Attend

January 29, 2012

Last year I attended the first OpenCF Summit and I thought it was a great event for a number of reasons. It's back again this year, Feburary 24-26, in the same great location and it's just $72 for three days of collaborative education. What makes this conference so unique in the CFML world is that bridges beyond our community to worlds that would never normally see our favorite language. Last year, Chris Schalk came from Google to talk about their (free) platform services and to showcase CFML running on Google App Engine; Ean Schuessler came to talk about "Government 2.0" and open source software. The conference attracts people who are interested in open source but may not know that CFML has a burgeoning open source community and two thriving open source CFML engines.

Ean Schuessler is back again this year, digging deeper into "Government 2.0" and mining that data thru RESTful APIs. The cloud is represented this year by Judah Johns of Jelastic. The reach of the conference expands to cover online payment processing with Dan Martin from MasterCard International, how investors view technology and open source with Jim Milbery of Chicago Growth Partners, how the City of Austin leveraged open source for a rebuild of its website with Matthew Esquibel from the City of Austin's IT group. These are key topics that speak to the viability of CFML in an evolving world where open source is gaining ground in almost every territory. These are topics you won't find at any other CFML conference! Even amongst the sessions given by members of the CFML community, OpenCF Summit offers unique content such as showing how you can use WebSockets with CFML today, how to manage deployments across hundreds of servers - real large-scale CFML, how CFML fits into an open source market.

In addition to the sessions, there's training, unconferences and the application hackfest returns, which was a lot of fun last year, allowing people to collaborate in a team-based environment, using bug-tracking, version control, frameworks and cloud deployment - a unique experience for many participants - producing a valuable web application for a non-profit organization: very much the spirit of great open source software!

If you attended last year, you know how much fun it was and what a great atomosphere the event created - and based on the folks I spoke to, a lot was learned about CFML in an open source world. If you missed last year's event, this is your opportunity to experience something different and very worthwhile, to learn and to contribute, to get a sense of the larger picture in which CFML exists today. What are you waiting for? Register for OpenCF Summit 2012 today!

via corfield.org

Why Attend: Networking Opportunities

2012-01-29T12:10:00.001-08:00

At OpenCF Summit you’ll be interacting with the people behind Open BlueDragon, Railo, Mura, CFEclipse, Mach-II, ColdBox, CFWheels, and many other major open source CFML projects. Chances are you use their code, so come meet the people behind the code, thank them in person, and share your ideas with them!

If you’ve attended other conferences you know that where participants often get the most benefit is from hallway conversations, or from finding someone who can help you solve a problem, cracking open the laptops, and working on the solution together.

OpenCF Summit is designed to be a rather intimate event, and we’ve built in as many opportunities as we can to foster the open discussions and hacking that make tech conferences great.

You’ll leave OpenCF Summit with a lot of new knowledge to be sure, but more importantly you’ll leave with a tremendous amount of inspiration, and you’ll be ready to take on your toughest development challenges.

Come to OpenCF Summit and fall in love with CFML all over again.

See you in Dallas, February 24-26, 2012!

Why Attend: Learn More About Open Source Development Practices and the Power of Open Source

2012-01-28T12:09:00.001-08:00

Open source is still a relatively new concept in the CFML world, so come learn more about what’s behind it, how it works, and how you can participate. You’ll also learn about open source licensing in terms we mere developers can understand.

One of the greatest powers of FOSS is its development methodologies, which are so well regarded that even companies that don’t release open source software use open source development processes within their company. Come learn how you can leverage the power of open source, regardless of whether or not you release any open source code.

See you in Dallas, February 24-26, 2012!

Why Attend: The Unconference: Make OpenCF Summit Yours

2012-01-27T12:11:00.001-08:00

A big component of OpenCF Summit is an unconference, and in true unconference fashion it will evolve on the spot on site into whatever OpenCF Summit participants want and need it to be.

We already know many folks involved with the major CFML frameworks will be there, so you can expect talks on Mach-II, ColdBox, and others.

The great thing about an unconference is that everyone can be a speaker! So please share cool stuff you’ve been working on with CFML and in the web development world in general.

Perhaps more importantly, even if you don’t have expertise on a topic but want to learn more about it, chances are someone else at OpenCF Summit can help. Don’t be shy! Suggest topics for the unconference and get a discussion going right then and there.

We have a great schedule in the main track but if there’s a topic you don’t see there, just say the word and it’ll happen at the unconference.

Why Attend: Improve Your Process, From Development to Production

2012-01-26T12:11:00.001-08:00

At OpenCF Summit you’ll learn how to improve your development process and how to get more out of your production environments through sessions covering:

How to create a powerful development stack using completely free softwaret
How to more powerfully and easily debug your CFML applications, making you much more productive and leading to more bug-free code
How to deploy your CFML applications to the cloud
The ins and outs of running CFML at scale from the people who run some of the biggest CFML apps in the world

See you in Dallas, February 24-26, 2012!

Why Attend: Get Solid Tips and Tricks Directly From the Source

2012-01-25T12:06:00.001-08:00

OpenCF Summit is the only CFML conference where you’ll interact directly with the smart, generous folks who build Open BlueDragon, Railo, Mura, CFEclipse, and many of the CFML frameworks, all in the same place at the same time.

At OpenCF Summit you will:

Receive installation and configuration assistance with the open source CFML engines as well as other open source software commonly used by CFML developers
Participate in hands-on sessions covering Open BlueDragon, Railo, and Mura
Learn about CFML frameworks at the unconference from the developers who build them

OpenCF Summit’s low attendee-to-speaker ratio means you’ll absolutely have the opportunity to get whatever help you need.

Why Attend: It’s the Best CFML Conference Value Around

2012-01-24T12:13:00.001-08:00

Three days and free training, $72. Doesn’t get better than that.

If you get one solid productivity-enhancing or money-saving tip out of OpenCF Summit (and trust us, you’ll get more than your brain can hold), even when factoring in travel and hotel expenses, the conference easily pays for itself. You can’t afford not to come!

And at only $72, particularly if you’re located around the Dallas area, register and come to the sessions you can! Maybe you want to learn more about OpenBD or Railo, $72 is still an incredible value. The networking opportunities alone are well worth the cost of admission. And hotel is only $99/night and it's a suite!

From the beginning we wanted OpenCF Summit to be low on price, high on quality. Thanks to our great speakers and sponsors we’ve achieved that. Our speakers are the leaders of the open source CFML movement, and we also have Dan Martin from MasterCard International coming to talk about online payment processing, and Gov 2.0 guru Ean Schuessler will be teaching participants how to leverage open source to hack the civic stack.

See you in Dallas, February 24-26, 2012!

Why Attend: Learn More About FOSS and the Gov 2.0 Movement

2012-01-23T19:17:00.001-08:00

One of the hottest areas in web development today is around the burgeoning open government and Gov 2.0 movements. The opportunities in this space are huge, and as you might imagine developers who are leveraging the power of FOSS are at the forefront of Gov 2.0.

If you’re a CFML developer in government, you’re probably starting to hear rumblings about moving to more FOSS in your agency. Some of United States CIO Vivek Kundra’s initial remarks upon taking office were that FOSS is key to making government work better, at lower cost, and with greater transparency, and agencies across government at all levels are taking this to heart.

If you’re interested in working on side projects related to Gov 2.0 in your spare time, or taking advantage of the limitless business opportunities around Gov 2.0, you’ll learn about all the angles of Gov 2.0 at OpenCF Summit.

See you in Dallas, February 24-26, 2012!

Why Attend: Learn About the Benefits of Using Free and Open Source Software)

2012-01-23T19:06:00.001-08:00

Open source isn’t only about saving money, though that’s certainly one big reason to consider FOSS. Companies who use open source software also cite better support, quicker bug fixes, faster implementation of new features, improved security, and a host of other benefits.

Given that over 90% of businesses today use FOSS the question is not if your business should use FOSS, it’s why you’re not already taking advantage of all FOSS has to offer.

FOSS is also ideally suited to the cloud, so if your business is looking to move your applications to environments like Amazon Web Services or Google App Engine, you’ll learn how at OpenCF Summit.

Come to OpenCF Summit to learn how to save your company money and improve your development and deployment flexibility by using free and open source software.

See you in Dallas February 24-26, 2012!

Learn More About OpenCF Summit on the Deductive Developers Podcast

2012-01-23T18:30:00.001-08:00

If you want to learn more about the fabulous OpenCF Summit in podcast form, be sure and check out the premiere episode of Deductive Developers with Peter Farrell and Matt Woodward.

We have more great stuff to announce in the next few days and will probably cover more on next week's podcast, so subscribe via RSS or iTunes for all the latest episodes!

The Schedule Is Up!

2012-01-18T22:27:00.001-08:00

The amazing schedule for OpenCF Summit 2012 is now available! As with last year we had to make some difficult decisions and we still have a couple of surprises up our sleeves we can't announce just yet, but it's a fantastic lineup including:

Training on Day 1 from OpenBD, Railo, and Mach-II
Fantastic sessions on CFML topics (of course!) in the main conference track from CFML experts and the creators of both the open source engines
An unconference track organized on site and starring YOU!
Deploying CFML apps to the cloud using Jelastic
The fabulous OpenCF Summit Hackfest where you can hack for a good cause
The famous (infamous?) "Future of CFML" BOF
And much, much more

All that amazing training and content for a mere $72. How is that possible? It's because of our fantastic partners (and we have more of those to announce soon), but instead of pondering life's great mysteries why not go register right now!