Read the show notes and listen to the podcast here
Michaela Light 0:02
Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Alicia Dvorak. God, am I saying your name wrong? That sounds like you're in the that grade that crazy keyboard that people use. But I know that's not you could have been though.
Elishia Dvorak 0:16
No, but it's the same name. And actually, it's pronounced Dworzhack. But I don't do that because I'm from California, we make up our own names for everything.
Michaela Light 0:25
Oh, how do you pronounce it? Okay, same name different pronunciation. And if you don't know us, she is the Adobe e Technical Marketing Manager and knows all kinds of details about ColdFusion, and E learning products that come out of Adobe. And she actually started as a ColdFusion developer many years ago. So you may have seen her at CF summit on stage talking about the API manager or the the performance tuning monitor that just came out in ColdFusion 2018. So very famous person well in the ColdFusion world. But today, we're going to be talking about something new, which is the ColdFusion Specialist certification that is releasing at CF summit in October this year in Las Vegas. So maybe we better start off by asking what exactly is this certification?
Elishia Dvorak 1:23
Thank you for asking. So the specialist certificate, it's a certificate program that will hopefully be the first of more to come. But this will be basically combined training with about I would say somewhere around 22 to 25 hours of video content, training you on the basics of ColdFusion development practices. So we'll follow best practices will ensure that we're giving you security hints and tips along the way. But you the courses actually designed for you to consume the video content ahead of time. And then come on site with us for a whole day of review and questions and answers and additional training on site. And the instructor will go over all of these different concepts and ensure that you have thorough knowledge of all of them. Before you take about I would say a quiz that's at the end, I would say it would be about an like 45 minute quiz at the end to get your certificate. And that will be a certificate of completion from Adobe, which will have badges associated with it that you can put on linked in for job searching and things like that. And of course, will print up a certificate for you as well. So it's really exciting, because it's the first of its kind actually.
Michaela Light 3:00
Wow, so how much does this cost? Sounds pretty inclusive, really,
Elishia Dvorak 3:06
the whole course, including the video and the onsite full day with us in Las Vegas is 399. And that includes a hot breakfast, luncheon and lunch and snacks for the day as well.
Michaela Light 3:22
Wow. So a whole day of training for 399 is is quite a deal. And not only is it a whole day of training, but you've got nearly three full days of video training, as well. So really, it's four days of training, if you think about it that way.
Elishia Dvorak 3:39
Right. And the great thing about the video training ahead of time is that that's at your own pace. So we do require you to get through the full content of video before you come on site with us. So you have a base knowledge there. But you can do that all at your own pace ahead of time on whichever days and times that you'd like then just sit with us on site for one day.
Michaela Light 4:03
All right. And then when do you receive all those videos and other assets for the training,
Elishia Dvorak 4:10
you should receive the videos for the training at least two to three weeks ahead of time. So you, okay, I'm good amount of time to sit in and put an hour to a day into watching some of the videos and going through the content, setting up your system and even asking the instructors questions along the way. So we will be involved and engaged with you beforehand as well through our learning management system.
Michaela Light 4:40
All right, so this is all produced inside the Adobe learning management system.
Elishia Dvorak 4:45
That's right.
Michaela Light 4:48
While why not best to eat your own dog food, right?
Elishia Dvorak 4:51
Right. Prime isn't a perfect tool to use that.
Michaela Light 4:56
So for someone listening who's maybe a ColdFusion developer or IT manager, what why should they or or their team get certified?
Elishia Dvorak 5:07
Well, number one, I think it encourages people to not only go in and see where they're at with their knowledge. But also there might be some areas where they haven't had the opportunity to spend that much time in. So depending on the applications they work on, let's say for example, you have a legacy application that doesn't make any use of PDF functionality or doesn't give you an opportunity to do object oriented programming or something like that. Maybe you haven't been exposed to as much of that in the past or you haven't had the time to look into it. This gives you a really good breath of knowledge at that base level for you to at least get some some really good, best practice information on those subjects, and then ask questions and try the code out at a time. So not only does it give you that training aspect, but also once you take that quiz at the end of the day, it allows you to get certified and least bring something back to your team and your management to show that you have a certain skill set that Adobe deems worthy of calling a ColdFusion developer.
Michaela Light 6:23
So that might actually help out in getting a future promotion or being hired for a cool ColdFusion job in the in the future.
Elishia Dvorak 6:31
Absolutely.
Michaela Light 6:33
And I remember there was a certification A while back, how is this different from that one?
Elishia Dvorak 6:41
This is actually quite different. I said it was the first of its kind because it is a combined training and certificate program. The ones that we had in the past, were really very disengaged from Adobe. And you basically I remember, you had to go in and study for the train training or the study for the exam when your own and you didn't technically have unless there was one of the workshops that some third party had put on, you didn't really have a way to figure out whether your knowledge was the same as what they wanted to learn or if you were just allowed to you just learning how to answer the questions properly. So the previous certificate or certification from Adobe was simply an exam, if you got a certain amount of questions, right, you would pass it on you if you if you brought, I think a higher number of questions, right, you would get a designation as advanced. But I don't think that really gave you an actual credibility for that designation. This one trains you for that material first, and then allows you to sit with us in person with our experts. And our engineers will also be involved in the room as well, Well, to answer any questions that you have, and really ensure that you have a good understanding of it. So the goal for our team is actually to ensure that you understand all of these concepts thoroughly in the way that best practices and security suggest that you do.
Michaela Light 8:17
Okay, so when you say training, it's not like you're with 100 other people and there's one instructor you've got teaching assistance and Adobe staff will be wandering around the room answering people's questions. Is that how it works? Or am I misunderstanding?
Elishia Dvorak 8:32
Yes, so from the very start of when we released the videos to you through the captivate prime learning management tool, you will have engagement with Adobe. So you'll be able to ask not only the instructors questions, but you'd be able to get in touch with us as well on our team. And then during the class, we have a very limited number of seats that we're going to be feeling for this. And I'll talk a little bit more about that, because that's really, really important here right now. But imagine yourself in a small classroom style, where you will all be going through that material together answering questions, there will be an instructor in the room that's instructing all of the content and going through the format of the day. But in the classroom, there will also be at least two other TA is comprised of an Adobe engineer, and either another community professional expert or possibly even myself. So you will have a lot of help in the room from the Adobe team and the community as experts as well.
Michaela Light 9:40
So that way, if if there was something you didn't understand, you've got two chances to get your question answered. You can either answer them in the two or three weeks prior to CF summits, CF Circo certification, one day training, you know, online, or you can get them answered in person on the day.
Elishia Dvorak 10:01
That's correct.
Michaela Light 10:03
Now, do you need to bring your own laptop to this? Or how does that part work?
Elishia Dvorak 10:08
Yes, so we do expect you to bring your own laptops, a modern laptop, please, I think I've seen some really old laptops that come through, and we do our best. But we can't work miracles either. So bring, you know, generally modern laptop. And you know, we're going to have some instructions on what to have installed prior to this. So that will be released a few weeks ahead of time as well. And I encourage everyone that signed up for this to go through and first do the configuration and the installation. So to ensure you have everything correctly done, and utilize our team for any questions you have on that process, we can walk you through it as well. But that'll save you time on the day of two when you get there to not have to spend so much time in setup.
Michaela Light 11:00
Well, for folks who have haven't installed ColdFusion and got it all running as a development setup, that's a great opportunity to get that all done and helped with apps as well. So. So I'll include links to the site where you give those specs on what you need to have, for your modern laptop, not a Chromebook, you need something a bit more beefy than that. And you definitely want to get it set up ahead of time, because I remember last year, there was some training and some people hadn't installed the software, and then they lost out because they had spent time installing software instead of learning ColdFusion. So that is good. Now, I'm assuming that people will be learning the features in cF 2018. Is that the case? Or is it older versions? Or what? what features are we learning in this,
Elishia Dvorak 11:53
we are not focused on ColdFusion 2018 however, we would like you to have the that version install to ensure that you're up to date on the latest tags, functions, attributes, everything that is in the 2018 version, of course. So the content itself is not geared toward any specific version. It is a current level ColdFusion developer course. So it means that basically, we're going to go over ColdFusion development as a focus instead of what new features that are in 2018 that you need to know. So that's not what this is about. As a matter of fact, many of the features that are in some of the newer products are not included in discussion here. Because certainly don't have enough room to go over API manager for example, or performance monitoring tool. So we won't be doing a whole whole other
Michaela Light 12:53
full day training. I'd have thought. Yeah, right, if you wanted to learn all about, but there will be sessions at the main CF summit talking about both of those? I believe so.
Elishia Dvorak 13:04
Yes, absolutely.
Michaela Light 13:09
Now, I'm kind of curious, it's been 10 years since there has been a certification what what led Adobe to want to bring the certification back?
Elishia Dvorak 13:18
Well, I think since I started on this team, there have been numerous people, either community members, developers, or organizations, especially that have come up to me asking for some type of certification for ColdFusion, and we never had one. And the second second item was they're asking for training. So what we wanted to do is actually combine those two and bring together a single course that would allow us to deliver the basic level training and certificate together. And I thought that would allow us to bring get the most bang for our buck, I guess, on the effort level for this and the end the budget level. So like I said, I'm hoping if we are successful, and it seems like right now there are there is a lot of interest in this, then we will probably try to continue this program and give people at least the more advanced folks some training and certificate on other things that are really important, like security, for example, or, like I said, API manager or some other tool that we have.
Michaela Light 14:27
Now, wasn't this some security training at CF Summit East this year? I vaguely remember.
Elishia Dvorak 14:33
Yes. So Pete free tag from fan do is actually been putting on pre conference labs, which are full day workshops for our ColdFusion developers to get more training on security best practices. And we did have that at Summit East. And we will have that this year at summit West as well. So that will be going on at the same time as the CFL developers ticket.
Michaela Light 15:01
But that one is just training. There's not a certification with that right now. Correct. Okay. So if you want to get certified, this is the one to do the the
Elishia Dvorak 15:14
sort of certificate and the specialist certificate for CF will only be the will be the only one we're going to be issuing a certificate for and doing a quiz for.
Michaela Light 15:25
Right. So very exciting. I think we should go into some of the details of the topics that it covers, because I'm sure people want to know what they're going to go into. And I will say last time I took a coffee ticket, which probably was quite a while ago, when it was last available. It was I did learn some new stuff. You know, it was like, I didn't know you could do that. Then I had to learn about it. So you know, even people who are, you know, veteran ColdFusion developers, you're going to learn some stuff in here. You didn't didn't know. But tell us what, what are the the highlights of what you learned in certification.
Elishia Dvorak 16:04
So I have to say this was the hardest part. So far of trying to figure out what to do about this and put it together? I think we spent a couple of months going over really what we need. And I know that you can all imagine that we went off on every tangent possible as what really what does it mean to be a certain certified developers specialized a specialist for ColdFusion. And we came back to the basics of what do you use on a regular basis to build web applications with ColdFusion, modern web applications with ColdFusion, I should say. And so we kept in that focus, when we said, we're going to basically put together a course that outlines the specifics of not only getting started, Have you no introduction with some of the the basics like how to work with form, how to work with statements, using CF loop and some of these other tags that are really popular. But we also wanted to at least get into some of the object oriented pieces as well. So we take you from more of a beginner level series of videos into the fundamentals of includes and working with custom tags and things like that, to more of the starting to be getting into more advanced topics like the object oriented programming. Now, I'm aware that many of these could be their own course, especially object oriented programming, right, or just going over the database as the database, the things that you can do with the database, and, you know, things like store procedures, but what we wanted to do for one course, is keep it to a place where within that eight hour day, you would feel that you had a very good level knowledge of each of these subjects. And we felt that these are the the high level categories that really mean the most when it comes to being a specialist in ColdFusion.
Michaela Light 18:15
So it's basically giving you the the fundamentals that you need to be a good ColdFusion developer today. And helping you make sure you're good at all those fundamental things in database and arrays and lists and structures and scopes. And, you know, the application framework and creating PDFs. And you know, as you mentioned, object orientated code, as well as all the basic statements in in ColdFusion, CFML and CF script.
Elishia Dvorak 18:52
Yes, and I think it's important to note that I keep coming back to saying with back best practices in mind, so ensuring that not only you know how to use CF clarity, but you also knew know how to mitigate against security issues that vulnerabilities that might, you might open yourself up to in the app. So we thought those were basic items that you should know, as you're getting into, let's say database operations. So we went over each of these areas. And we want to make sure that at the same time, even if you do know how to do some of these things, because let's face it, it's not hard to learn ColdFusion, typically and use a tag, but that you're doing it in the proper best practices way with standards, and keeping in mind modern practices for security as well. So we have a team of people that we're working with, to ensure that we're delivering the content appropriately and ensuring that we also have best practices and security in mind to
Michaela Light 19:58
that is great. So as well as all the coding, what about the ID. And you know, this coefficient admin is not covered at all, or is that
Elishia Dvorak 20:13
now, as far as the administrator, we're not going to get into more the heavier details about how to set everything up. This course is designed to be specifically for ColdFusion development. So we wanted to kind of narrow it down there and leave off the administrative features. However, we did include some information about builder because ColdFusion builder is the the current development tool that Adobe has. And we want to ensure that we're utilizing that and people have a base knowledge of some of the features and capabilities within builder and they they know how to use it. If they if they were a developer coming in from let's say, another leg glitch. So we do have some information on builder.
Michaela Light 21:03
So that might tell you some of the more advanced features you didn't know in ColdFusion builder and debugging and things like that, I'm guessing.
Elishia Dvorak 21:13
Yes and no. So we'll get into some of that. Yes. But I think that RCF builder portion is going to be less than, let's say, the time that we spend on the fundamentals of development and the fundamentals of PDF operations and database operations. So we have a lot to talk about. So we'll minimize some of the other items for CF builder, but we will touch on some of that, yes.
Michaela Light 21:42
Okay. And then I thought there was some basic ColdFusion admin stuff in the in the course. But maybe I misunderstood that I thought you learn how to create data sources,
Elishia Dvorak 21:52
there will be there will be a reference to the Getting Started videos that we have already created, which do go over administrative capabilities, like setting up a database, or some of the items that a developer might do. Absolutely.
Michaela Light 22:09
Okay. Okay. But if you want it, you're not going to go into super advanced admin stuff. And in this thing, it's is just what a developer might need to know. Right? And then you mentioned object orientated ColdFusion. And I know a lot of people do, you know, do objects and CF sees in their coding is how, how much you go into objects?
Unknown Speaker 22:37
Well, I know that we're going to, we're not going to go into detail. Like I said, I think that the this object oriented piece is actually a good example of something that we not only can make a separate course for, but we likely will in the future, because I think that's an area where I keep hearing that a lot of people have a basic knowledge of object oriented programming that but they might not get into some of the more advanced capabilities. So think about this as an introduction to the OP stuff in CF, and it will give you a base level knowledge on that.
Michaela Light 23:25
Okay, so Okay, if you haven't done objects, or maybe you've done them a bit, but you, you haven't used all the different things, it's going to help you get the fundamentals of object orientation and ColdFusion like inheritance constructors, all the different things you can do. So cool. Sounds like a lot of material to get through in in 24 hours, video instruction and a day of training. So
Unknown Speaker 23:53
like I said, that was one of the harder things that we've done so far. And now we're just battling the timeline, I think.
Michaela Light 24:00
Yeah. Well, you've got a couple of months before this all has to be together, right?
Elishia Dvorak 24:06
Yeah, we'll keep it on track.
Michaela Light 24:08
Yeah, I'm sure you will. Adobe's pretty strict to keeping to deadlines. So and you've got a hard deadline of october of is it wet? What date date is this? Is it September 30.
Elishia Dvorak 24:21
In person training for this will be September 30. We have about I believe, 120 seats. That's a hard limit for those. And we are at I believe around 89 at this point. So like I said, we do have a lot of interest in that. So if you're planning on potentially taking it, then definitely Sign up now. Because I just don't have any more room to open up another class. And I have already three classrooms that we're going going to be running at the same time, with about 40 people in each room. So the main thing I don't want to do is overburden the teachers and instructors with too many people in the room, because I don't think that's going to give anyone a good experience, especially the people that are training. So sign up early. Sign up now, because I imagine is going to be sold out in in the next probably four or five weeks.
Michaela Light 25:29
Right. I think that's good advice. I remember last year, the training classes got sold out. So and we'll put the link for this. It's basically the ColdFusion summit website. And there's a special page that tells you all about the Specialist certification and lets you sign up there for it. So that is cool. And this is all happening at the Mirage in Las Vegas. Is that right? Or?
Elishia Dvorak 25:58
Yes. So this year's summit will take place in Las Vegas again at the Mirage, and it's a beautiful hotel. They've redesigned a lot of the rooms there. And we have a great space that's very close to the elevators. So you won't have to walk very far at all. It's all contained in one space. And the evening event will also be close by so should be a great event, an evening event for people who take this training. Well, there's an evening event for the summit.
Elishia Dvorak 26:31
Oh, okay. I was gonna say,
Elishia Dvorak 26:33
but typically the people that are taking this, the training will also actually come to the summit. Because there's a bundle package. Of course,
Michaela Light 26:41
yes. what's the what's the deal on the bundle package,
Elishia Dvorak 26:44
the bundle packages for 99 and then includes the 399 training plus the $99.
Conference pass. So what a deal. So you get a fantastic deal, because the cost, you know, having are way more than
Michaela Light 27:00
Yes, Las Vegas is expensive town to put on an event. So sounds like you get three days of video training a full day of in person on site training. And then you get two days of conference sessions and keynotes and ability to mingle with Adobe engineers and other ColdFusion developers all for for 99.
Elishia Dvorak 27:21
That's right. I don't think you'll find a better deal anywhere else? Actually. No?
Michaela Light 27:26
I think not. So I'm kind of curious. Some people asked, Why do you do CF summit in Las Vegas, it must be a good reason for that.
Elishia Dvorak 27:36
Yeah. So Las Vegas happens to be a very easy place for most people they get to from all over the country. And the flights happen to be a lot less expensive, typically then going to say your New York or DC, your other large cities, San Francisco. And so our focus was actually on a low cost options, because we wanted to make sure that it was accessible. And it was, it was economical as well to go to the conference. And so as many of you know, Adobe puts in a lot of our budget to make this happen. It's kind of our gift back to our community, we want to make sure that you all have a place to go to mingle with each other. I think that most of the people that come out of it, come back learning quite a lot of new modern technologies that they didn't know, they could use with CF. And so they're seeing a lot of great use cases. But they're also meeting a lot of people too. So I think that's kind of most of what they come back with is as really good experiences and meeting other developers and seeing how many people are really involved in cohesion. So
Michaela Light 28:49
yeah, I mean, CF summit, if you haven't gone to it is an amazing experience, stop your confusion game, and also meet some of the people you may have met online, or create new relationships with people. Also, if you are having any problem in ColdFusion or tech question, or you just wish there was a feature in ColdFusion, this is the one time where you've got all the Adobe engineers and managers gathered in one place. And you can tell them all about what it is that you need help with or wish was in ColdFusion. So great opportunity to do that. And usually the the keynote announces exciting new features. Now I'm just going to guess that they'll be announcements about ColdFusion 2020 coming out in this summit, not necessarily what the date is, but you know, what we can look forward to seeing because I know she's the VP of engineering has lots of cool things up his sleeves. So
Elishia Dvorak 29:50
absolutely. So I think you'll just have to come and see me. I'm hoping to make several announcements there. Yes.
Michaela Light 29:57
Oh, and you will be making announcements to right.
Elishia Dvorak 30:00
We're gonna announce all kinds of stuff.
Michaela Light 30:03
Wow. Well, I can't wait.
Elishia Dvorak 30:05
You gotta be the place to go to figure out what's happening with CF over the next couple of years.
Michaela Light 30:10
Absolutely. And hundreds of feet, I think with 500 developers that manifest last year, were there I'm thinking and I'm sure there will be that or more there this year. And I remember I was at CF Summit East I saw you speak at that on the main stage about the performance monitor. And I think there were more people were than there ever been in previous years. It's just been growing every year.
Elishia Dvorak 30:38
So Summit East has been another one of our events that we really have seen so much growth in I think, what was it three years ago, we started it was started with only 60 people, I think the first year, and that's grown to over 250. Now over it just a couple of years later. So we have enormous growth there as well. And I think people actually come to me wondering if we were going to kind of combine them or movie events. But it seems to be working out really well to have it in DC. So we'll see how it goes.
Michaela Light 31:14
DC is pretty convenient for the whole East coast.
Elishia Dvorak 31:19
We want to make it convenient, we want to see as many people there as possible and meet people face to face and talk to them about how they're using ColdFusion. I'm astonished, you know, every week where I meet new people and talk about what their applications are and how important they are to them. And it's I didn't even know sometimes what was going on or what what type of applications they have, because they're not posting blogs about it online. But I am very proud of that.
Michaela Light 31:51
Maybe they should be publishing blogs or tweeting or whatever and saying, Well, yeah,
Elishia Dvorak 31:55
well, some of these lot of these companies are not able to do that. Right? Because they have legal resources that are not going to allow them to talk about their their internal applications.
Michaela Light 32:07
Yeah. Make sense. They have to be on the Qt while they're doing. So. And I believe that's going to be a CF summit in India this year as well. Is that still okay? Yeah,
Elishia Dvorak 32:18
absolutely. So Kishore runs that every year and that one has actually grown quite a bit too. I want to say they had upwards of a couple hundred people there, too. So very big. And now that's growing in India, too. So it's good to see all of these events grow and see these developers come together. And I think you guys are going to be really impressed by the content this year and the developers that have come up with some really good examples and content to share with you at the summit too. So those sessions, I'm hoping that you're interested in those topics. But hopefully, you'll be really impressed with the caliber speakers and content that we have this year too.
Michaela Light 33:04
And any thoughts of CF summits happening anywhere else is the
Elishia Dvorak 33:11
perhaps we'll have to see every year we look at everything and we have to reevaluate miquela
Michaela Light 33:17
Yeah. So if if people wish they were summit somewhere else, maybe they should contact you and suggest ideas. you'll add it into the
Elishia Dvorak 33:26
I'm happy to have a summit elsewhere. I even outside of the states, I bet you know, you have to look at all the business factors involved as well.
Michaela Light 33:34
Absolutely. They're very expensive to put on. I know. So it depends what you have. And of course, there are other call fusion conferences happening around the world, too. So that's CFK happening in Germany. And we just had the Intel box conference happening in Texas, which I guess is part of the United States, right? So
Elishia Dvorak 33:54
yes, but, you know, I hear that there's going to be more conferences happening outside of the states and inside of the so I think that Adobe will continue to sponsor and participate and support these other ColdFusion conferences as well. And hopefully, you know, if we we can't make our own conference will certainly support the conference that is there and see what we can do to market it as well.
Michaela Light 34:19
Great. So one thing I forgot to ask about certification is this like an intermediate level or beginner level, or advanced, what what level is CF certification?
Elishia Dvorak 34:31
I would say this, this course is designed to be beginner intermediate level. So what we did was we wanted to start not from ground zero. So it's not, it's not that beginner level, which is why we also have a lot of video content plus, we're going to have the Getting Started videos to ensure that everybody, even on a beginner level, you can come into the course and consider yourself probably around an intermediate level when you get certified and you finish the training. So we we understand that many of our current developers, especially the ones that come to ColdFusion Summit, in Vegas, have a number of years between two and five years, at least behind them, and from CFL development. So we didn't want to miss the opportunity to provide something that they would be interested in as well. But like I said, I think depending on your situation, and how long you've been with the platform, and what opportunities you had, as a developer, you might have missed some of these concepts in a way that would provide you an intermediate level knowledge of them.
Michaela Light 35:45
Great. And I'm kind of curious, how does this compare to some of the other ColdFusion training resources out there like learn CF in a week.
Elishia Dvorak 35:55
I'm glad you mentioned learn CF in a week, so that program is running. That's a website, it's learn CF in a week .com. And that is a self paced program to allow you to get the basics of ColdFusion development as well with best practices and security in mind. But it's a self paced tutorial, basically. And I know that that's being updated right now as we speak to so it's being updated with content, ensuring that that content as well is current.
Michaela Light 36:29
Great. And of course, that that doesn't include a certification test or an on site training. So but you know, probably does prepare, you know, there's probably quite a lot of overlap in the content. So if you've done that, that that would help you in getting faster speed up on the certification, I'm guessing.
Elishia Dvorak 36:49
Yes.
Michaela Light 36:51
So any, anything else you want to share about the certification?
Elishia Dvorak 36:58
I think that said i did i do definitely want to push you to sign up early, so that you can grab your spot I like I said, I think we've only got, I would say maybe another 50 spots left in that.
Michaela Light 37:10
Swipe? Goodness, you already released it a few weeks ago, didn't you?
Elishia Dvorak 37:14
Yes, it's filling up. That's why I keep mentioning it. So every week I look at we look at the numbers and it looks like it's filling up quite a bit. So definitely Sign up now if you really want to be involved, because like I said, I've got three instructors, three classes, and I have a really hard limit of 40 people that can attend, just ensure that you have a good experience coming in. So
Michaela Light 37:40
can you transfer your ticket to someone else in your organization? If for any reason you couldn't come on the day? Or?
Elishia Dvorak 37:46
Yes. So we'll allow a transfer ability there too. If somebody okay.
Michaela Light 37:51
So there's really no reason not to sign up today?
Elishia Dvorak 37:54
No, there's no reason sign up. Now sign up.
Michaela Light 38:00
Well, I will talk further about CF summit another time because there's like how many speakers this year it's like 40 years it or
Elishia Dvorak 38:08
I believe we have 40 sessions plus two keynote. So day one and day two keynotes, we have four tracks that are going to be running at the same time. So it will be Yeah, 40 hours of content coming to you. Each of those sessions is an hour, and I believe have around 36 speakers, I want to say potentially, there's a couple of speakers that have two sessions. So 3637 speakers.
Michaela Light 38:39
Fabulous. So we'll do a separate podcast episode on that, because it deserves to have a lot more time than just five minutes to talk about exciting things in it. So let's just turn you know, we're now in 2019. A lot of things have changed in ColdFusion, this is not your father's or mother's ColdFusion anymore. And I talked to a lot of ColdFusion developers and CIOs, I'm writing a new book on ColdFusion. I've been interviewing CIOs and some of them, you know, using ColdFusion 2018. But some of them, you know, using older versions, I don't want to embarrass them by saying how old but let's say in the single digits, you know, what, why are you proud to use ColdFusion 2018. You know, what's, why? what's so cool about ColdFusion and what's changed in the last 10 years with ColdFusion?
Elishia Dvorak 39:35
Well, as you know, 2018 is way different than your eights and sevens. And earlier, I think that the main feedback that I've received on 2018 is that it is a solid release, and it was a solid release out the door. And I think a lot of that has to do with the number of hours, the engineering team spent an effort to ensure that we increase performance. So between cold fusion 11 and 2018, you will get a 40% performance gain on that runtime. In your application, wait, wait a minute, you say 40, or for 40%,
Michaela Light 40:19
zero
Elishia Dvorak 40:20
40% gain from CF 11, on average. So and this is this is not just a marketing statement, and I'm coming up with other people that have met with that and put 2018 in place, tell me that there is a noticeable difference in performance. And as you all know, performance is key right now, I think that our our team has really listened to the customers in this version, and focus so much on performance. And they're getting the results from that not only in a stable release, but a really fast performing release. And to top that off, we created as you know, the brand new perform monitoring tool set that is available in 2018, both in standard edition and Enterprise Edition. And that's a great tool that is no additional cost for monitoring your entire topology of architecture with cold fusion server instances. So remember, the things that I would say, in addition to that, of course, there's a lot of language updates, there are a lot of issues that were fixed. And I think the number one thing for those system administrators out there is that we're giving you a whole day of work back to automatically provide the lockdown steps for you in the 2018 version. So there is a new automated lockdown tool that allows the system administrators, the ones that are setting up the servers to do that hardening on that server for within like two to three minutes as opposed to the original nine hours they were spending.
Michaela Light 41:55
Wow, so amazing a number of new things in cold fusion, you know, new language features faster, more security features, the whole API manager that we didn't even delve into, but you and I did a podcast interview on that I'll link in. So if you haven't looked at cold fusion since CF nine, you're going to be blown away by what's in there and absolute to two good ways to learn about that are to do the certification and pick up some of the cool stuff and then go to the CF summit. Learn what's new in cold fusion. Now, sometimes, when I'm interviewing CIOs and CTOs, they're under the impression that cold fusion didn't even exist anymore. And you know, died some while back. But really, there's a lot of people using it. And in the last two years, since we launched the CF alive movement, I think more and more people are recognizing the cold fusion is more alive. But my question to you is, now we're in 2019, what would it take to make cold fusion even more alive this year?
Elishia Dvorak 43:08
This year, I think that we certainly could, again, use a lot of assistance from the community. And actually, I encourage the community to engage with, like the CFO, Live podcast, engage with our blog, write a blog about the things that, you know, it's always encouraging to see participation in those forums. And, obviously, we would love on the marketing side to be able to tell your story, if you do have a confusion application that you're willing to tell a story about, and we can publish, then we would love to hear that story, and be able to talk about it a little bit more. And so I think that if we can just get a lot more interaction with our community members, we might find out out more stories that are out there that we can talk about, and tell everybody who's using it. Because, like I said, I'm actually surprised quite frequently about the extent of use of full vision applications. And certainly the customers that I generally tend to meet with our you know, our larger accounts. But when I go on site, I'm blown away by the use case there. And it's not just legacy applications that were built 20 years ago, that that are just kind of stale and and not being used as much. I'm talking about maybe a legacy application that was built 10 years ago, that has been updated, actually. So I wouldn't call that a legacy of application anymore. It's a current modern application that had been updated over time, and improved. And they're using the new features. And they're taking all of that functionality that we're providing and pushing cold fusion to its limits. So we're seeing a lot of growth in the software as a service solutions that are being sold as a service to other large companies too. And that that growth is is huge, too. So I'm surprised and I'm proud to be a part of this community and a part of Adobe in this business unit because of that, because we are making things work. We're creating business solutions with this product. And let's face it, it works and it's fast.
Michaela Light 45:30
Excellent. And if someone wanted to share a story, should they email you or can sure or someone else Adobe you?
Elishia Dvorak 45:36
Yes, they can email me or they can email Kishore, either one of us will take that opportunity up, and we'll have a chat with them.
Michaela Light 45:45
All right, and what is your email?
Elishia Dvorak 45:48
It is my first name at adobe. com. So ELISHIA at adobe. com.
Michaela Light 45:57
Great. And we'll put that in the show notes together with all your other amazing sights.
So
so anything else you're looking to this year CF summit that you didn't talk about earlier? Well, you'll just have to see. Oh, okay. might be some secrets being revealed. Okay.
Elishia Dvorak 46:18
Well, I bet I have some ideas that we want to do. I know that we might do things a little bit differently. But I think I just want you guys to come and see for yourself and then give me some feedback after the conference.
Michaela Light 46:32
Right? Well, I'm I'm mystified now, I mean, more curious to go. So if we, we mentioned your email address on Twitter, is that a good place to find you or
Elishia Dvorak 46:46
you can get me on Twitter, my Twitter alias is ELISH, the Oreck at Adobe that are welcome. I'm sorry. It's at least divorce. Me is he?
Michaela Light 47:01
Alright, um, any any other links you want to give out that would be useful for folks?
Elishia Dvorak 47:08
Well, I know that you're going to provide the CF summit.com.
Michaela Light 47:13
Yeah. So let's see if summit dot Adobe events.com Yep. And we'll put that in the show notes on the Terra tech site as well. Well, it's been fabulous talking with you today about the Adobe cold fusion specialist. certifications coming out and little sneak peeks about CF summit. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast today.
Elishia Dvorak 47:36
Thanks for having me. It was really fun talking to you
