What is CF Summit?

CF Summit West is the world's larger ColdFusion conference organized by Adobe. It happens in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the West of the United States. Hence Summit West!

ColdFusion Summit West 2024 in Las Vegas: Innovative Solutions

Key Highlights 

Learn from the best

Immerse yourself in sessions led by some of the most influential minds in web development, covering the latest trends, best practices, and innovative solutions in ColdFusion and beyond. 

Get a Sneak Peek into Innovation

Unveil the next wave of Adobe ColdFusion's enhancements, designed to elevate your development with smarter solutions and more intuitive functionalities, enriching the user experience.

ColdFusion Certification Program

Sharpen your expertise with our comprehensive certification program, including over 50 training videos and a dedicated workshop. Validate your skills in ColdFusion for only $199.

Partnership Opportunities

Expand your network and explore collaborative opportunities with Adobe ColdFusion's partners and sponsors. These connections can help you scale your projects or business.

Vegas Kick-off Party! 

Mingle with fellow developers in a premier venue, where business connections seamlessly transform into unforgettable memories. Get ready to network, celebrate, and code your way to the top – Vegas style!

When is it?

• Mon 30 September – Tue 1 October, 2024 – Conference
• Wed 2 October – Certification training

Where is it

• Resorts World
• 3000 S Las Vegas Blvd,
• Las Vegas, NV, United States, Nevada

Which is the closest airport?

Harry Reid International Airport, LAS is the closest airport. It is about 6 miles away from The Resorts World.

Accommodation

Adobe secured exclusive, low room rates of $105 + taxes/day especially for attendees! Easy and hassle-free booking is just a click away.

Secure your spot now to make the most of your trip with comfortable and affordable accommodations.

Tickets

You can choose two sets of tickets.

Premium Pass

Access to all sessions and workshops on September 30th and October 1st

Access to all keynotes, panels, workshops & speaker Q&A

Access to first-day party

Access to ColdFusion training on October 2nd

Price: $398 

Session Pass

Access to all sessions and workshops on Sep 30th and Oct 1st

Access to all keynotes, panels, workshops & speaker Q&A

Access to first-day party 

Price: $199

How to register

Click the link

Registration deadline?

There is a one-week registration deadline or the event will sell out, whichever comes first.

Are tickets refundable?

Yes, provided the refund request is raised 3 weeks prior to the event date.

Sponsors

Speakers

Aaron Rouse

Brendan Ganning

Brian Sappey

Brian Sappey is the Senior Director of Architecture for Guerrilla RF, responsible for the strategic direction, vision, and growth of the company's software initiatives. As a seasoned professional with more than 15 years of experience, Brian is known for his innovative solutions, integration processes and complex problem solving skills to quickly and effectively address company and client needs. Before his move into the Semiconductor industry, Brian spent over 10 years in developing custom E-commerce platforms. Brian is an avid supporter of service-based environments, automation, DevOps, and all things ColdFusion.

Brian Klaas

Brian Klaas is the Senior Technology Officer at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Teaching and Learning. As the architect for online learning technology at the School, he leads a team that designs and delivers custom online courseware to students and members of the public health workforce around the globe. In addition to designing software and delivering courses, Brian teaches graduate courses on communication design and online learning, and leads faculty training and development. Brian has presented on software development and eLearning at conferences throughout the country, including jQuery US, dev.Objective(), CF Summit, NCDevCon, and Adobe MAX.

Brian Bockhold

Brian is co-founder of Coalesce Holdings and serves as Vice President and CIO. He has developed systems in ColdFusion for over 20 years, both in his current and prior roles leading system development and architecture teams for global organizations. Brian is a certified AWS Solutions Architect – Associate and AWS Developer – Associate.

Charlie Arehart

A veteran server troubleshooter who's worked in enterprise IT for more than three decades, Charlie Arehart (@carehart) is a longtime community contributor who as an independent consultant provides short-term, remote, on-demand troubleshooting/tuning assistance for organizations of all sizes and experience levels.

Charvi Dhoot

Charvi Dhoot has over 12 years of professional experience as a software engineer for Qualcomm, and as a product manager for Speech AI & ML and Social technology products.
She holds an Under Graduate degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering, with a minor in Computer Science from International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. She also holds Post Graduate Degree in Computational Signal Processing with 2 conference papers and 1 journal publication.
Charvi has recently joined the Adobe ColdFusion team as a Senior Product Manager, where she looks forward to bringing her experiences and skills to solve newer challenges & identify opportunities for the continued growth of ColdFusion.

Dakota Clum

Dakota is CTO at xByte Hosting with a specialization in cloud and dedicated infrastructure solutions. He is responsible for delivering secure and innovative solutions that helps organizations reach scale. With a strong focus on customer satisfaction and innovative problem-solving, Dakota possesses a passion for helping organizations adopt enterprise cloud solutions.

Dave Ferguson

Dave has spent the majority of his life living in sunny Southern California. Over the past almost 20 years has worked in information technology after his attempt at being a career restaurant manager failed miserably. He has spent the majority of that time specializing in large enterprise-class systems. While he continues working on those types of systems he now focuses a large amount of his free time in the mobile application space.

David Tattersall

David Tattersall has been in working in IT for over 30 years. Since co-founding Intergral in 1998, he focused on company management, business development and sales & marketing. Intergral has become a leader in server monitoring and application performance monitoring (APM) solutions in the ColdFusion / Java segment. His flagship product – FusionReactor – www.fusion-reactor.com is used on over 25,000 production servers and has been purchased by over 5,000 customers.

Edwin Jonathan

A veteran of the Adobe ColdFusion team with over 7 years of experience. Worked on a wide range of features with a focus on security like SAML, JWT and Serverless amongst others. Also happen to be an Adobe Security Champion responsible for fixing and providing solutions for any security issues that arise in ColdFusion.

Emily Meyer

Emily Meyer has 16 years of software development experience. She has worked on projects ranging from disaster preparedness to music distribution. Most recently she built not only an automated front end test suite, but also a cohesive, fun-loving automation team. Emily’s technical passion was and always will be refactoring.

Emily will talk your ear off about cheerleading and life as a neurodivergent programmer. She sings soprano in her church choir. She lives in the US with her husband and two dogs.

Eric Wong

Eric Wong is Director of Leadership Development at Adobe. In his current role, he is responsible for optimizing performance for Adobe’s people leaders. Prior to joining Adobe, he was Chief Commercial Officer at HR Tech startup Impro.ai, and co-founder at Exember, a boutique firm focused on “leaders who are up to something big”. Over his 15+ year career in people, he has facilitated over 500 workshops and off-sites. Eric has a B.A.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In his spare time, he enjoys skiing, hiking, and spending time with his wife and two daughters.

Giancarlo Gomez

Giancarlo Gomez is a full-stack developer with over 20 years experience with various languages, technologies and a passion to continue to learn. He has been a designer, developer and project lead for several companies stateside and can even say this path took him across the pond years back for a piece of software he wrote that required installation and configuration. The internet was much slower back then and a flight was required . He is the owner/lead developer of Fuse Developments, Inc. established in 2004, his consulting business specializing in web and mobile development and CrossTrackr, Inc., a SaaS for the CrossFit community, targeted towards athletes and gym owners providing real-time insight into athletic progress and health metrics.

He is also the co-manager for the South Florida Adobe ColdFusion Users Group. You can find him on Twitter and GitHub @GiancarloGomez and read his occasional ramblings at www.giancarlogomez.com.

On his spare time, he plays with his kids and occasionally stares at his wall of guitars remembering the good old days of traveling and playing music on stages.

Jacob Beers

Jacob is a Senior Developer at Ortus Solutions, Corp. While he has been working as a programmer for the past 10 years he never intended to make a career out of it. His professional journey thus far has been marked by a diverse set of pursuits including 3d animation, game design, fine art, special education, and operating a survival swim school. He likes to think his unusual combination of experiences provides him with a unique and pragmatic approach to software development.

Joe Fleeman

Joe Fleeman has been the CIO of Practical Health Systems of Nashville, Tennessee for twenty-four years. He has been active in the development of healthcare, retail, accounting, and marketing systems for small businesses, state governments, Acxiom, and Wal-Mart over the last 40 years. He’s married with two children, and enjoys hiking, tennis, and movies!

Justin Scott

Justin is the Chief Information Security Officer at Smart Communications and has been working with ColdFusion for nearly 25 years. His career has spanned application architecture and development, network design and administration, systems administration, database management, as well as risk management and compliance. He resides in Vancouver, WA and when not working on technical matters enjoys reading and occasionally playing competitive dodgeball.

Kevin Wright

Through his consulting company, Kinetic InterActive, Kevin provides businesses insight into the use of technology to solve a variety of business challenges. Providing business workflow analysis, user experience design, website usability and custom software, Kevin helps organizations understand the importance of technology in today’s business environment. Past projects have included work for VirginMobile, NBC Universal, Fox Home Entertainment in addition to many local small businesses and startups

Louis Conley

Louis Conley is a seasoned IT professional specializing in compliance, security, and cloud architecture. Currently, he serves as the Chief Technology Officer at Coldchain Secure, where he leads initiatives to develop robust, compliance-ready infrastructures for various enterprises. With over a decade of experience in the field, Louis has successfully implemented numerous projects involving Terraform and AWS, ensuring stringent adherence to GRC (Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance) standards.

Louis is recognized for his expertise in creating secure virtual private clouds (VPC) and virtual private networks (VPN) tailored to the unique needs of small office/home office (SOHO) environments. He holds several certifications relating to information security and compliance, and his work has been instrumental in helping organizations achieve their security and governance goals.

Luis Majano

Luis Majano is a Computer Engineer born in El Salvador and is the president of Ortus Solutions (www.ortussolutions.com), a consulting firm specializing in web development, architecture and professional open source support and services. His background includes over 19 years of software development experience, architecture and system design.

He is the creator of the ColdBox Platform, ContentBox Modular CMS, TestBox BDD, CommandBox CLI and many more open source projects. He lives in The Woodlands, Texas with his beautiful wife Veronica, baby girl Alexia and baby boy Lucas!

Mark Takata

Mark Takata is the Technical Evangelist for Adobe ColdFusion. He has been an application developer for over 25 years, with professional experience in over a dozen languages & frameworks. He lives in West Sacramento, CA with his wife & two dogs.

Michael Hayes

While working as an Azure solutions architect and head of research and development at Media3 Technologies, Michael Hayes has had the opportunity to work with some of the newest technologies that have emerged on top of Microsoft's rapidly growing IaaS platform Azure. This has formed unique expertise with Applications, and Identity Management built on top of what he says to be one of the most robust APIs a developer can have in today's market.

Monte Chan

Monte Chan is currently a Senior ColdFusion Developer at CF Webtools. He has been programming in ColdFusion since version 4.5 back in 1999. He was a co-manager of the Alamo Area ColdFusion User Group from 2008 to 2010. In his free time, he enjoys learning any web development related technologies or just programming languages he can put his hands on. He also enjoys running marathons; he does not run fast; he just runs🙂. He currently resides in San Antonio, TX with his beautiful wife and three rescue dogs (two chiweenies and one pure-bred chihuahua).

Nolan Erck

Nolan Erck has been developing software for over 20 years. Starting in the video game industry working on titles for Maxis and LucasArts, then advancing to web development in 1999, his list of credits includes Grim Fandango, StarWars Rogue Squadron, SimPark, SimSafari as well as high-traffic websites for a variety of clients.

Nolan manages the SacInteractive User Group, teaches classes on aspects of software development, and regularly gives presentations at conferences and user groups across the US and Europe.
When he's not consulting or talking about himself in the third person, Nolan can usually be found working on one of several music projects.

Obi Baratt

Pete Freitag

Pete Freitag has well over a dozen years of experience building web applications with ColdFusion. In 2006 he started Foundeo Inc (foundeo.com), a ColdFusion consulting and products company. Pete helps clients develop and architect custom ColdFusion applications, as well as review an improve the performance and security of existing applications. He has also built several products and services for ColdFusion including a Web Application Firewall for ColdFusion called FuseGuard (fuseguard.com) and a ColdFusion server security scanning service called HackMyCF (hackmycf.com). Pete holds a BS in Software Engineering from Clarkson University.

Raymond Camden

Raymond Camden is a Senior Developer Evangelist for Adobe. He works on the Document Services APIs to build powerful (and typically cat-related) PDF demos. He is the author of multiple books on web development and has been actively blogging and presenting for almost twenty years. Raymond can be reached at his blog (www.raymondcamden.com ), @raymondcamden on Twitter,
or via email at [email protected].

Rochelle Thielen

Rochelle Thielen is the dynamic CEO of Traject Data, where she champions the vital role of data aggregation in driving transformative advancements in AI, machine learning, and software development. With a distinguished background in private equity and venture-backed SaaS leadership, Rochelle brings a blend of quality-driven precision and agile innovation to the table, setting new benchmarks in the industry. Her extensive expertise spans data solutions across various sectors, including automotive, insurance, logistics, and marketplaces. Based in Los Angeles, CA, Rochelle enjoys hiking and skiing in her downtime, embracing the vibrant outdoor lifestyle of her city.

Rochelle Hannah

Rochelle Hannah is a Lead Software Engineer with four years of experience at Adobe. She holds an Under Graduate degree in Computer Science Engineering. She is the Accessibility champion and Security champion in the ColdFusion Team. She has worked on cloud storage features. Beyond work, she loves singing and travelling.

Ryan Brown

Ryan is the Chief Marketing Officer for xByte Cloud. He has been part of the xByte Family of Brands for the last 15 years helping to find Cloud, onPrem, and Hybrid solutions for customers. A passion for customer service and delivering above expectations is what motivates him every day. While not working or being active on ColdFusion social media sites, Ryan is watching his 3 kids play sports and enjoying a few minutes of wordle.

Shawn Oden

Shawn Oden began his professional journey as a pilot and flight instructor before briefly working as an airline pilot. His career took an unexpected turn when he transitioned into a ColdFusion developer, a role that eventually led him to become a database developer. Embracing new challenges, Shawn decided to delve deeper into the field and took on the role of a DBA (Database Administrator). Today, he continues to explore and evolve within the tech industry, always ready for whatever tomorrow may bring.

Vikas Yadav

I have joined Adobe around 4.5 years back and have total of 9.5 years of experience in the field of Software Development. I have worked on multiple features around Core Server Runtime, Language Enhancements, Performance, VSCode Extension, Language Server and many more.

Vivek Kumar

Vivek Kumar has over 23 years of experience in leading people, setting up teams, creating new products, evolving products over various releases, and taking the business forward. He manages the worldwide business for Adobe ColdFusion, Captivate, and Technical Communication products. He is responsible for product roadmap & development, customer success, partner relationships, and go-to-market strategy.

That is the end of this year's summit info. Below is archive of prior years' summits. To help navigate that here is Table of Contents.

Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2023 (the Epicenter of Coding)

Key Highlights

You can choose two sets of tickets.

Session Pass

Early-Bird Tickets still available!

Session Pass at $199 and Professional Pass at $299.

Free Student Passes!

Calling all young ColdFusion heroes and heroines! 🔥

Your FREE full summit pass awaits, promising to uncover modern CFML coding secrets and forge new alliances in the realm of coding magic.

This is great news for all CFers – bring young coders into our fellowship of coders.

This extraordinary opportunity is reserved for those who possess the spirit of learning and are still on their quest through the halls of higher education.

To unlock the gates of wisdom and claim your FREE pass, you must fulfill these noble requirements:

1. Be at least 18 years old, just like reaching the age of true wisdom in Middleware-earth.
2. Embark upon a journey through the esteemed halls of a higher education institution.
3. Present a current class schedule, revealing a minimum of 12 credits or units, and wield a valid student ID as proof of your identity—a token of your passage to the CF summit of knowledge.

If you meet these requirements, fear not! Seek out our esteemed Kishore Balakrishnan via email [email protected] , the Adobe Elf of student pricing, and he shall guide you on your path.

However, be warned, brave adventurers! Even in the realms of ColdFusion, challenges may arise. Should you fail to provide satisfactory proof of your student identity, Adobe ColdFusion may wield the power of the standard fee(s).

So, dear ColdFusion student enthusiasts, seize this extraordinary opportunity, claim your FREE pass, and let TeraTech be your guiding star as we shape the future of coding together. May the source be with you, and we eagerly await your presence at the Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2023!

Extended Early Bird registration

Great news for everyone planning to attend hashtag#CFSummit2024!
Adobe ColdFusion extended early bird registration deadline to May 31st! Don’t miss this chance to save $100 on your ticket. Register now and secure your spot at the leading event for web developers and tech innovators.
Register now: https://bit.ly/3vN1uqi

Adobe ColdFusion Certification Program

It is a very cool thing that you are a CF developer. How about becoming Adobe Certified Professional?

Adobe ColdFusion is an industry-leading certification program from Adobe, for Adobe ColdFusion developers. It consists of 50+ online videos and is designed for professionals with basic to advanced level proficiency in any computer language and a basic understanding of how web pages work.

Successfully passing an assessment test at the end of the program will reward participants with a badge and certificate from Adobe.

It is a one-day workshop on Oct 4 after which you can take the certification exam at the CF Summit or later whenever you choose.

I talked with Adobe's Elishia Dvorak in the CF Alive Podcast episode, so check it out.

Learn more about the Adobe Coldfusion Certification program in this article.

Speakers

Aaron Rouse

Annette Liskey

Brad Wood

Brad grew up in southern Missouri and after high school majored in Computer Science with a music minor at MidAmerica Nazarene University (Olathe, KS). Today he lives in Kansas City with his wife and three girls. Brad enjoys all sorts of international food and the great outdoors. Brad has been programming ColdFusion since around 2002 and has used every version of CF since 4.5. He is a software engineer at Ortus Solutions, lead developer of CommandBox CLI, and open source contributor.

Brian Bockhold

Brian is co-founder of Coalesce Holdings and serves as Vice President and CIO. He has developed systems in ColdFusion for over 20 years, both in his current and prior roles leading system development and architecture teams for global organizations. Brian is a certified AWS Solutions Architect – Associate and AWS Developer – Associate.

Brian Klaas

Brian Klaas is the Senior Technology Officer at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Teaching and Learning. As the architect for online learning technology at the School, he leads a team that designs and delivers custom online courseware to students and members of the public health workforce around the globe. In addition to designing software and delivering courses, Brian teaches graduate courses on communication design and online learning, and leads faculty training and development. Brian has presented on software development and eLearning at conferences throughout the country, including jQuery US, dev.Objective(), CF Summit, NCDevCon, and Adobe MAX.

Carl Von Stetten

Carl Von Stetten has served as a Geographic Information System (GIS) Analyst with Central San for 23 years. He has developed and maintained multiple internal ColdFusion-based GIS applications for use by staff and is well-versed in Microsoft SQL Server and Esri ArcGIS Enterprise technologies. Carl achieved the Adobe Certified Professional:Adobe ColdFusion certification at the 2022 CF Summit. He can usually be found hanging out in the CFML Slack team.

Charlie Arehart

A veteran server troubleshooter who's worked in enterprise IT for more than three decades, Charlie Arehart (@carehart) is a longtime community contributor who as an independent consultant provides short-term, remote, on-demand troubleshooting/tuning assistance for organizations of all sizes and experience levels.

Dakota Clum

Daniel Garcia

Daniel Garcia lives in Plainfield, IL, has worked with ColdFusion since 1999, is a Senior Developer at Ortus Solutions, helps co-host the Modernize or Die podcast, and is passionate about the ColdFusion language and community. He is a husband, father, cinephile, regaler of useless knowledge, smoker of meats, and has an irreverent sense of humor. His mantra is “work smarter, not harder” and “KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid).”

Dave Ferguson

Dave has spent the majority of his life living in sunny Southern California. Over the past almost 20 years has worked in information technology after his attempt at being a career restaurant manager failed miserably. He has spent the majority of that time specializing in large enterprise-class systems. While he continues working on those types of systems he now focuses a large amount of his free time in the mobile application space.

David Byers

David Byers was previously promotions director for a rock radio station, but chose to change careers in the 1990's when he simultaneously got tired of eating Top Ramen, and fell in love with development. For over 23 years, he has focused his expertise on the ColdFusion platform, developing software for a multitude of businesses ranging from small mom-and-pop shops to enterprises of over 900 employees. A former ColdFusion User Group manager, he has been a proponent of CFML, and regularly provides content to the ColdFusion Community Portal. He is currently CIO of Modloft; a luxury e-commerce brand. Born in Canada, David lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife, three cats, three house bunnies, and two bearded dragons.

David Tattersall

David Tattersall has been in working in IT for over 30 years. Since co-founding Intergral in 1998, he focused on company management, business development and sales & marketing. Intergral has become a leader in server monitoring and application performance monitoring (APM) solutions in the ColdFusion / Java segment. His flagship product – FusionReactor – www.fusion-reactor.com is used on over 25,000 production servers and has been purchased by over 5,000 customers.

Denard Springle

Denard Springle is a polyglot developer that has been engineering software for just over three decades with a focus on ColdFusion and Java development for the past two. As a lifelong learner who has been mentored by some of the best developers in the business, Denard regularly shares his knowledge and experience with others at conferences, user groups and online venues with a strong focus on application engineering using modern best practices.

Gavin Pickin

Gavin is a proud ColdFusion developer, starting with ColdFusion in the late 90s. His first exposure to ColdFusion was while working for the University of Auckland under supervision of big ColdFusion Contractors. He got his feet wet early, with systems ranging from small, to extremely large and complex.
Gavin's strengths lie with ColdFusion and he works in all areas of the application design work flow, from Customer Project Specifications, ColdFusion Integration and Database Design, all the way through to the User Interface design and implementation, Customer Training and Support.

George Murphy

Guust Nieuwenhuis

Guust is a Full Stack Web Wizard with experience in a wide range of technologies. Over the last couple of years, I've been involved in projects for various clients like the European Commission, NSHQ (NATO), Adobe, AS Adventure Group, NS (Dutch railways), CZ Groep, Proximus, Avery Dennison and Mediagenix.
In his free time, he plays the double bass and drums, crosses the forest on his mountain bike and coaches the youth at his local soccer club. He likes spending time with my wife and two kids or meet friends for a chat, game or drink.
When he still has some time left, he mainly spends it behind his computer to fulfil his hunger for the latest trends in IT.

Keen Haynes

Luis Majano

Luis Majano is a Computer Engineer born in El Salvador and is the president of Ortus Solutions (www.ortussolutions.com), a consulting firm specializing in web development, architecture and professional open source support and services. His background includes over 19 years of software development experience, architecture and system design.
He is the creator of the ColdBox Platform, ContentBox Modular CMS, TestBox BDD, CommandBox CLI and many more open source projects. He lives in The Woodlands, Texas with his beautiful wife Veronica, baby girl Alexia and baby boy Lucas!

Mark Takata

Mark Takata is the Technical Evangelist for Adobe ColdFusion. He has been an application developer for over 25 years, with professional experience in over a dozen languages & frameworks. He lives in West Sacramento, CA with his wife & two dogs.

Mary Jo Sminkey

Monte Chan

Monte Chan is currently a Senior ColdFusion Developer at CF Webtools. He has been programming in ColdFusion since version 4.5 back in 1999. He was a co-manager of the Alamo Area ColdFusion User Group from 2008 to 2010. In his free time, he enjoys learning any web development related technologies or just programming languages he can put his hands on. He also enjoys running marathons; he does not run fast; he just runs🙂. He currently resides in San Antonio, TX with his beautiful wife and three rescue dogs (two chiweenies and one pure-bred chihuahua).

Nolan Erck

Nolan Erck has been developing software for over 20 years. Starting in the video game industry working on titles for Maxis and LucasArts, then advancing to web development in 1999, his list of credits includes Grim Fandango, StarWars Rogue Squadron, SimPark, SimSafari as well as high-traffic websites for a variety of clients.
Nolan manages the SacInteractive User Group, teaches classes on aspects of software development, and regularly gives presentations at conferences and user groups across the US and Europe.
When he's not consulting or talking about himself in the third person, Nolan can usually be found working on one of several music projects.

Pete Freitag

Pete Freitag has well over a dozen years of experience building web applications with ColdFusion. In 2006 he started Foundeo Inc (foundeo.com), a ColdFusion consulting and products company. Pete helps clients develop and architect custom ColdFusion applications, as well as review an improve the performance and security of existing applications. He has also built several products and services for ColdFusion including a Web Application Firewall for ColdFusion called FuseGuard (fuseguard.com) and a ColdFusion server security scanning service called HackMyCF (hackmycf.com). Pete holds a BS in Software Engineering from Clarkson University.

Raymond Camden

Raymond Camden is a Senior Developer Evangelist for Adobe. He works on the Document Services APIs to build powerful (and typically cat-related) PDF demos. He is the author of multiple books on web development and has been actively blogging and presenting for almost twenty years. Raymond can be reached at his blog (www.raymondcamden.com ), @raymondcamden on Twitter,
or via email at [email protected].

Speaker application for CF Summit

If you’re someone who lives, breathes, and loves Adobe ColdFusion, then we’d love for you to bring that energy to the ColdFusion Summit!

Here’s your chance to become a speaker and spread your knowledge and excitement for the product with fellow coders from across the world. Feel free to forward this link to any other ColdFusion Developers who you think may have an interesting theory or story to tell!

Simply follow the link and fill out the form to register

All that is left to say is- see you at the CF Summit 2023!

Learn more details about Adobe CF Summit 2023 in the episode of CF Alive Podcast I recorded with Kishore Balakrishnan.

A reminder where to find a tickets find the post Mark Takata wrote here

Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2022 Online (It's FREE)

It is an online stream of all the sessions and seminars that happened at the Summit, and now Adobe has made it available for CFers everywhere.

Another thing, registration is free!

Do not waste this chance to learn from the CFers there are and join the group.

What is it?

Adobe's CF Summit conference is something that marks the year ending for CFers. After all the deliciousness around the ColdFusion conferences during the year, this was the last one.

And yes, it was in-person, again.

CF Summit is a conference organized by Adobe. It happens in Las Vegas, Nevada, at The Mirage Hotel. Over the last two years, we were able to attend it online, as it was happening in the virtual world. Which was awesome, considering the circumstances. But, nothing beats the “real” conference, and this is how it was this year.

I have written in more details in my previous blog post about CF Summit 2022, but here are the main parts.

How to register?

Here's the link to register for this online event

Adobe CF Summit 2022 Conference (In-person, again)

Adobe's CF Summit conference 2022 is something that marks the year ending for CFers. After all the delisioushnes around the ColdFusion conferences this year, this will be the last one (unless there is a CF Summit India, but still to be confirmed).

And finally, it is in-person, again.

Get ready, it's almost here. October 3rd is when I hope to see you there.

What is it?

CF Summit is a conference organized by Adobe. It happens in Las Vegas, Nevada, at The Mirage Hotel. Over the last two years, we were able to attend it online, as it was happening in the virtual world. Which was awesome, considering the circumstances. But, nothing beats the “real” conference, and this is how it will be this year. (so happy…)

Tickets

You can choose two sets of tickets.

1. Event Pass, or
2. Premium Pass.

Event pass gives you access to

1. all sessions,
2. workshops,
3. two stages
4. all keynotes,
5. panels,
6. speakers' Q&A,
7. first day party.

Premium Pass provides access to all of this and access to the Adobe ColdFusion Certification training. I have provided a more detailed description of it below.

Adobe ColdFusion Certification Program

It is a very cool thing that you are a CF developer. How about becoming Adobe Certified Professional?

Adobe ColdFusion is an industry-leading certification program from Adobe, for Adobe ColdFusion developers. It consists of 50+ online videos and is designed for professionals with basic to advanced level proficiency in any computer language and a basic understanding of how web pages work.

Successfully passing an assessment test at the end of the program will reward participants with a badge and certificate from Adobe.

It is a one-day workshop on Oct 5 after which you can take the certification exam at the CF Summit or later whenever you choose.

I talked with Adobe's Elishia Dvorak in the CF Alive Podcast episode, so check it out.

Learn more about the Adobe Coldfusion Certification program in this article.

Speakers

Keynote Speaker Joel Cohen

Joel Cohen was born and raised in Calgary, Canada. A graduate of the University of Alberta (B.Sc.) and York University (M.B.A.), he has been a writer and Co-producer
for the last twenty years on “The Simpsons.”
Joel has written 35 episodes of the Simpsons, has won 3 Emmy awards, 3 Writer’s Guild Awards and also once scratched a lottery ticket and won a free ticket! (He won nothing on that free ticket but did learn a valuable life lesson).
In addition to writing several movies, TV and online projects, Joel is also the author of the best-selling book “How to Lose a Marathon” and the mediocre-selling book “The Incredibly Inaccurate Biography of Andy Richter”. He has also, for the last 20 years, been engaged as a speaker to groups, conferences and corporations around the world. Blending his experiences in the corporate world and his creative career, Joel delivers unique and humorous insights on the creative process, group dynamics and a culture of innovation. While speaking, he usually drinks 4 bottles of water, so please budget for that.

Featured Speakers

Andy Powell is a technical leader within the SaaS space, with over 15 years of experience designing and implementing a host of enterprise systems. He has extensive experience with both consulting and product development firms, working in domains spanning human capital, retail, automotive, healthcare, education, and enterprise software. Andy joined AWS in 2017 as a member of the SaaS Factory team, and spearheaded SaaS Factory’s growth into EMEA from Munich. Prior to joining AWS, Andy was Chief Architect for Deloitte Consulting’s Human Capital Platform. He is a recognized industry expert, speaking at numerous industry events including multiple 360|Conferences events, Adobe MAX and AWS re:Invent. Andy holds a Bachelors of Business Administration from Mercer University’s Stetson School of Business and Economics in Atlanta, GA.

Brad Wood

Brad grew up in southern Missouri and after high school majored in Computer Science with a music minor at MidAmerica Nazarene University (Olathe, KS). Today he lives in Kansas City with his wife and three girls. Brad enjoys all sorts of international food and the great outdoors. Brad has been programming ColdFusion since around 2002 and has used every version of CF since 4.5. He is a software engineer at Ortus Solutions, lead developer of CommandBox CLI, and open source contributor.

Brian Bockhold

Brian is co-founder of Coalesce Holdings and serves as Vice President and CIO. He has developed systems in ColdFusion for over 20 years, both in his current and prior roles leading global organization system development and architecture teams. Brian is a certified AWS Solutions Architect – Associate and AWS Developer – Associate.

Brian Klaas

Brian Klaas is the Senior Technology Officer at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Teaching and Learning. As the architect for online learning technology at the School, he leads a team that designs and delivers custom online courseware to students and members of the public health workforce around the globe. In addition to designing software and delivering courses, Brian teaches graduate courses on communication design and online learning, and leads faculty training and development. Brian has presented on software development and eLearning at conferences throughout the country, including jQuery US, dev.Objective(), CF Summit, NCDevCon, and Adobe MAX.

Brian Reilly

Brian Reilly is a security engineer focused on application security, penetration testing, offense, and vulnerability research. He enjoys working with product teams to build and deploy secure software. His professional experience has included various roles within the financial services, technology, higher education, and state/local government sectors. His exposure to ColdFusion began almost 25 years ago, when helping to secure user-developed applications was a small part of his efforts to protect a large research university network. He holds degrees from Georgetown University and the George Washington University.

Charlie Arehart

A veteran server troubleshooter who's worked in enterprise IT for more than three decades, Charlie Arehart (@carehart) is a longtime community contributor who as an independent consultant provides short-term, remote, on-demand troubleshooting/tuning assistance for organizations of all sizes and experience levels.

Chase Cabrera

Chase Cabrera is Co-Owner and Senior Software Engineer at iDONATEpro. His background includes over 10 years of consulting in system architecture, software development and 7+ years of developing in ColdFusion. Chase received his BS in Computer Science from San Diego State University. He lives in San Diego, California with his fiancé Andrea and their two dogs Bear and Blue.

Christoph Schmitz

Chris has been among the early adopters of ColdFusion since version 1.5 in 1996 (then still named “Cold Fusion”). He has been freelancing for over 20 years and has been working for clients like Siemens, Vodafone, DHL, just to name a few. His focus is on creating maintainable and well performing code and teaching other developers how to do so. He was ColdFusion User Group Manager for CFUG Germany for almost 10 years and during this time brought the German CF Camp conference to life.

 

Daniel Garcia lives in Plainfield, IL, has worked with ColdFusion since 1999, is a Senior Developer at Ortus Solutions, helps co-host the Modernize or Die podcast, and is passionate about the ColdFusion language and community. He is a husband, father, cinephile, regaler of useless knowledge, smoker of meats, and has an irreverent sense of humor. His mantra is “work smarter, not harder” and “KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid).”

Dave Ferguson

Dave has spent the majority of his life living in sunny Southern California. Over the past almost 20 years has worked in information technology after his attempt at being a career restaurant manager failed miserably. He has spent the majority of that time specializing in large enterprise-class systems. While he continues working on those types of systems he now focuses a large amount of his free time in the mobile application space.

David Byers

David Byers was previously promotions director for a rock radio station, but chose to change careers in the 1990's when he simultaneously got tired of eating Top Ramen, and fell in love with development. For over 23 years, he has focused his expertise on the ColdFusion platform, developing software for a multitude of businesses ranging from small mom-and-pop shops to enterprises of over 900 employees. A former ColdFusion User Group manager, he has been a proponent of CFML, and regularly provides content to the ColdFusion Community Portal. He is currently CIO of Modloft; a luxury e-commerce brand. Born in Canada, David lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife, three cats, three house bunnies, and two bearded dragons.

David Tattersall

David Tattersall has been in working in IT for over 30 years. Since co-founding Intergral in 1998, he focused on company management, business development and sales & marketing. Intergral has become a leader in server monitoring and application performance monitoring (APM) solutions in the ColdFusion / Java segment. His flagship product – FusionReactor – www.fusion-reactor.com is used on over 25,000 production servers and has been purchased by over 5,000 customers.

Emma Fletcher

Gavin Pickin

Gavin is a proud ColdFusion developer, starting with ColdFusion in the late 90s. His first exposure to ColdFusion was while working for the University of Auckland under supervision of big ColdFusion Contractors. He got his feet wet early, with systems ranging from small, to extremely large and complex.
Gavin's strengths lie with ColdFusion and he works in all areas of the application design work flow, from Customer Project Specifications, ColdFusion Integration and Database Design, all the way through to the User Interface design and implementation, Customer Training and Support.

Guust Nieuwenhuis

Guust is a Full Stack Web Wizard with experience in a wide range of technologies. Over the last couple of years, I've been involved in projects for various clients like the European Commission, NSHQ (NATO), Adobe, AS Adventure Group, NS (Dutch railways), CZ Groep, Proximus, Avery Dennison and Mediagenix.
In his free time, he plays the double bass and drums, crosses the forest on his mountain bike and coaches the youth at his local soccer club. He likes spending time with my wife and two kids or meet friends for a chat, game or drink.
When he still has some time left, he mainly spends it behind his computer to fulfil his hunger for the latest trends in IT.

Kevin Wright

Through his consulting company, Kinetic InterActive, Kevin provides businesses insight into the use of technology to solve a variety of business challenges. Providing business workflow analysis, user experience design, website usability and custom software, Kevin helps organizations understand the importance of technology in today’s business environment. Past projects have included work for VirginMobile, NBC Universal, Fox Home Entertainment in addition to many local small businesses and startups.

Luis Majano

Luis Majano is a Computer Engineer born in El Salvador and is the president of Ortus Solutions (www.ortussolutions.com), a consulting firm specializing in web development, architecture and professional open source support and services. His background includes over 19 years of software development experience, architecture and system design.
He is the creator of the ColdBox Platform, ContentBox Modular CMS, TestBox BDD, CommandBox CLI and many more open source projects. He lives in The Woodlands, Texas with his beautiful wife Veronica, baby girl Alexia and baby boy Lucas!

Mark Takata

Mark Takata is the Technical Evangelist for Adobe ColdFusion. He has been an application developer for over 25 years, with professional experience in over a dozen languages & frameworks. He lives in West Sacramento, CA with his wife & two dogs.

Masha Edelen

Lifelong learner, versatile entrepreneur with a passion for technology, Masha has been leading Momenta, a digital creative agency, since the early days of web development into the modern era of digital experiences. Selecting ColdFusion as the technology of choice since Macromedia version 5.0, she and her team developed numerous web applications including custom CMS and eCommerce platforms for a wide variety of clients. While living in Los Angeles Masha got involved with blockchain technology, helping establish Ownerfy.com, an NFT as a service platform. In her free time she enjoys traveling and investing in stock market.

Matt Gifford

Matt Gifford is a keen proponent of open-source CFML and knowledge sharing. He has spoken at conferences around the world and is the author of Object-Oriented Programming in ColdFusion. Matt lives in Cyprus and is a Systems Architect and Software Engineer for DistroKid.

Michael Hayes

While working as an Azure solutions architect and head of research and development at Media3 Technologies, Michael Hayes has had the opportunity to work with some of the newest technologies that have emerged on top of Microsoft's rapidly growing IaaS platform Azure. This has formed unique expertise with Applications, and Identity Management built on top of what he says to be one of the most robust APIs a developer can have in t oday's market.

Nick Juntilla

Nick has been at the forefront of technology as a software engineer for 20+ years innovating for some of the premier corporations in Los Angeles. He has designed and built eCommerce platforms, social network sites, eBook publishing, art installations, and accounting software for companies like Sony Interactive, Disney Store, Beachbody, Ubiquity, Trailer Park Pub., and Chromeriver Inc.. Since 2012 he's been working with blockchain technology as an early adapter of Bitcoin, transitioning to Ethereum in 2017. He wrote some of the first NFT source code and founded one of the first NFT companies Receiptchain, which later became Ownerfy.com. Since then he has helped people create hundreds of thousands of NFTs all around the world, as well as launched several NFT collections with world famous artists and established brands. He is a subject matter expert for NFT best practices and applications.

Nikhil Dubey

Nikhil Dubey works as Computer Scientist in the Adobe ColdFusion team. His areas of work include Performance Monitoring Toolset, language features – integration of cloud Services like SQS, SNS and Azure ServiceBus, ColdFusion Builder. When free, he likes to spend some time with family, with books, with tech blogs, with sports and travelling.

Pete Freitag

Pete Freitag has well over a dozen years of experience building web applications with ColdFusion. In 2006 he started Foundeo Inc (foundeo.com), a ColdFusion consulting and products company. Pete helps clients develop and architect custom ColdFusion applications, as well as review an improve the performance and security of existing applications. He has also built several products and services for ColdFusion including a Web Application Firewall for ColdFusion called FuseGuard (fuseguard.com) and a ColdFusion server security scanning service called HackMyCF (hackmycf.com). Pete holds a BS in Software Engineering from Clarkson University.

Raymond Camden

Raymond Camden is a Senior Developer Evangelist for Adobe. He works on the Document Services APIs to build powerful (and typically cat-related) PDF demos. He is the author of multiple books on web development and has been actively blogging and presenting for almost twenty years. Raymond can be reached at his blog (www.raymondcamden.com ), @raymondcamden on Twitter,
or via email at [email protected].

Suchika Singh

Suchika Singh works with ColdFusion Engineering Team as Senior Lead Software Engineer . She has worked on ColdFusion Language , Scheduler , File Management & Docker. Her technical skills include Java , JavaScript, SQL & NoSQL databases , Docker and Cloud Services .

Terrence Ryan

Terrence (Terry) Ryan is a Developer Advocate for the Cloud Platform team. He has 15 years of experience working with the web, both front end and back. Before Google, he spent six years at Adobe Systems in job roles that included Developer Evangelist for ColdFusion.
He also wrote Driving Technical Change for Pragmatic Bookshelf, a book that arms technology professionals with the tools to convince reluctant co-workers to adopt new tools and technology.

Uday Ogra

Uday works with the ColdFusion Development Team as Senior Computer Scientist . He has worked on Scheduler, SOLR, Modularization, Security Analyzer, Java integration, Caching, Ajax & Mobile.

Agenda

The event starts on October 3rd, at 9 AM PDT. Adobe ColdFusion keynote is usually the first thing that conference starts with and it is the same this year. Grab a nice breakfast, and head to Grand Ball Room A, @ The Mirage hotel.

Here is the full agenda, and the materials for your convenience

You will find all the information about the times, schedules and speakers so download it and save it for knowing how to get around. The Mirage is awesome, and you'll easily get lost there if you're not paying attention 😉

How to register?

First you will choose your package, Event or Premium pass.

After that it's all downhill, so go and do it now.

Here's the registration page link

All that is left to say is- see you at the CF Summit 2022!

 

Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2021

This was the ninth edition of the Adobe ColdFusion Summit. And it was interesting, to say the least. 

The Adobe CF Summit basics

The ColdFusion Summit conference is a confluence of everything in the realm of web applications. If you develop web applications, this is the place to be. For designers, developers, strategists and thought leaders, the ColdFusion Summit provides the perfect forum to exchange ideas, inspiration and experiences.

Not only that. As well as opportunities to interact with ColdFusion experts, domain leaders and peers get to learn about the latest technologies, techniques, and strategies to rapidly build and successfully deliver web applications to the market. With the web applications world evolving rapidly, explore how ColdFusion is driving change and how you can propel this dynamism.

Let’s talk numbers

Being online helps to increase the number of attendees from all over the world. Last year’s event was supposed to have 5000 registered attendees. It had 6000+!

Here are the stats from this year, directly from Adobe:

• 6000+ Registrations
• 2300+ Accounts
• 30 sessions
• 91.6% Attendees’ rating on summit speakers
• 90.8% Attendees’ rating on summit content
• 87.4% Attendees’ rating on summit experience

Speakers 

1. Dave Ferguson,
2. George Murphy,
3. Brian Klaas,
4. Mark Takata,
5. Elishia Dvorak,
6. Charlie Arehart,
7. Pete Freitag,
8. Brian Sappey,
9. Jessica Leener,
10. Corbin Crutchly,
11. Ray Camden,
12. Mike Brunt,
13. David Tattersal,
14. Matthew Clemente,
15. Coraly Rosario,
16. Mary Dowd,
17. Nolan Erck,
18. Mike Hartington,
19. Adam Benzion,
20. Megha Bhat K,
21. Rochelle Hannah,
22. Brian Bockhold,
23. Aditya Nema.

 

What about the keynote?

Ashley Willis did a keynote session. She is the Director of Developer Relations for Microsoft Azure and a certified Google Dev Expert, dedicated to working with Open Source communities. Ashley talked about the future of DevRel, and, why Developer Relations jobs are now more popular than ever, and how DevRel differs from evangelism.

I am curious to learn more about this topic, but I am also curious to find out why did Microsoft had a keynote talk at the Adobe ColdFusion event. Perhaps we could dive into the speculations but, let's leave that for now.

Why should CFers go to CF Summit conferences and events?

• Learn about a lot of changes in ColdFusion in recent years
• Especially now 
• CF goes to cloud 
• Talk to CF experts and developers
• Also with Adobe CF crew 
• Drop by Adobe booth anytime during the conference
• Contribute to the future of ColdFusion (2022)
• Raffles during the event

 

Agenda

Day 1

DevRel: How we got here and where we're going, by Ashley Willis

As Developer Relations jobs become more popular you may have asked yourself, “What is DevRel?” This talk aims to answer that question and many more. Ashley will talk about the history of DevRel, how it’s different from evangelism, and what the future holds.

Hidden gems in CF2021, a year later, by Charlie Arehart

It's been a year since the release of CF2021, and also since Charlie Arehart offered his “hidden gems” talk at last year's CF Summit. Perhaps you caught his talk then, or not, and maybe you've started using the release–or still have not. Either way, there've been a number of updates as well as some changes in features since the release. In this updated talk, Charlie helps both audiences consider aspects of CF2021 that they may have missed.

Here's Charlies presentation

Gatsby Talk, by Corbin Crutchley

If you've worked with React developers anytime in the past few years, you'll likely have heard the terms “SSR” or “SSG”. Likewise, if you're on Twitter, you've likely heard of Vercel (previously ZIET) or Gatsby.

What are they, why are they useful, and what's the deal with airline food anyway?

In this talk, we have covered:

• What SSR, SSG, and CSR are
• Benefits (and downsides) of SSR and SSG
• How the React ecosystem takes from both new and old
• What's Gatsby and how does it differ from NextJS?
• Livecode a blog with pagination, author pages, strong SEO results, and more!

CFML Design Patterns and Uses, by Nolan Erck

Design Patterns are some of the biggest benefits that come from using CFComponents. They're reusable techniques that can solve problems in a variety of projects – and the same patterns can be reused across other OOP languages as well. Just like a for() loop or an array, learning how to apply Design Patterns to your projects is a skill that will be helpful regardless of the type or size of your projects! You may already be using a Design Pattern or 2 and not even realize it!
That sounds great and all, but how do you actually USE these things!? Enough UML diagrams, we get paid to write code! When the heck should I put the Factory Pattern to use? What's a Template Method Pattern look like in actual code and why do I care? That's what we'll cover in this talk – we'll look at actual code samples from real-world applications, all of which use these patterns, and we'll take a close look at the problem that was solved with each pattern, so you'll walk away with a better idea of when to implement such patterns in your own applications.
Target Audience: CFML developers that are comfortable building CFComponents. Attendees should know how to create a CFC and be familiar with the basic benefits of using components. They should also understand some fundamental concepts of OOP such as constructors, inheritance, and composition. The code examples we'll give in this talk will be done in CFML but conceptually the information will work in a variety of other languages as well.Main takeaways:
What is a Design Pattern?
The Design Pattern you're already using and don't know it.
Some common patterns: Factory, Template Method, Dependency Injection.
Real CFML examples of when to use them.
Are there such things as bad design patterns?

Here's Nolans presentation

The dawn of Machine Learning, AI, and You, by Adam Benzion

Machine Learning and AI are massive buzzwords but are they relevant for you? You might be surprised to know Machine Learning is available on Supercomputers, Smartphones, and tiny Internet of Things devices. No longer the domain of Artificial Intelligence PHDs, AI and ML have been democratized and are ready for your use. In this talk, I discussed the current state of ML, and AI, show you practical examples of both, and then give a demonstration of TinyML, a service to enable machine learning for all developers with an open source device SDK.

Tackling ColdFusion Security, by Pete Freitag

Security can be a thorny and intimidating topic. Where do you start and what should you prioritize? In this talk, we had aim to set you on a path to improving the security of your ColdFusion Applications.

UX Best Practices in Games and AR, by Coraly Rosario

Designing for games and AR comes with its own set of UX challenges. In this talk, attendees came away with a practical list of UX best practices that anyone on a team can use as a guiding light to create seamless experiences.

Relationships are not for everything, by Dave Ferguson

The majority of systems have some data aspect in them. That could be from something basic to something very elaborate. For most, when starting a system, you go with a select few databases. Why? Well, probably that is because that is what you are used to. Just go with the old tried and true because you know it works. It's not wrong, but maybe there is a different way. Maybe a better way?
Most systems don't need an elaborate, and possibly expensive, relational database. Most can get by just fine with something else. This session is aimed at looking at the different database options that exist. Using that knowledge we can see what database type is more appropriate than others for certain data. We will also look at where using a hybrid of databases makes sense and how that would look to a system. We will also demonstrate the ease of use and power of ColdFusion 2021 when using these alternatives.

CFX_Blockchain, by Mike Brunt

Yes, this is in our ColdFusion past; however C++ and Java are increasing in usage in blockchain as is the need for API interaction, this because of the use of oracles (not necessarily the database, although it could be) and cross-chain bridging. After working on blockchain based projects for the past 2-3 years I showed where the “swiss-army” toolset which ColdFusion gives us, as we move ever more quickly into a blockchain-distributed ledger (DLT) world. Of course I am not suggesting we create a CFX_Blockchain custom tag; however I do feel we can go “back-to-the-future” with ColdFusion. I shared my experience and thoughts on ColdFusion and blockchain in this session, as we rely ever more heavily on outside dependencies.

Faster Apps That Won't Get Crushed With Queues And Pub/Sub Mechanisms, by Brian Klaas

We all want our web apps and APIs to respond quickly and scale to dizzying heights of traffic, but have we really built our apps to scale to ten times, or even double, our current traffic? Asynchronous messaging is a powerful architectural pattern that will help us avoid fundamental problems with scaling while keeping our ColdFusion apps fast and responsive. In this session, we'll look at how systems like Amazon's Simple Queue Service (SQS) and Simple Notification Service (SNS) – along with similar systems from other cloud providers – can help you build highly responsive, highly scalable apps and services. We'll also see how easy it is to talk to these messaging services from your ColdFusion apps with the latest cloud integration features in ColdFusion 2021.

Here's Brians presentation

Migration Migraines: Common pitfalls to avoid when migrating your Adobe ColdFusion stack to AWS, by Brian Bockhold

Migrating your Adobe ColdFusion server infrastructure from on-premise to Amazon Web Services can feel like a massive undertaking. In this session we covered lessons learned from challenges that we faced and explain how we overcome them, preventing unnecessary headaches for you.

Whether you are mid-migration or still in the early planning stages, successfully mastering these challenges will put your organization ahead of the curve by enabling an accelerated plan-to-execution with reduced time needed for troubleshooting design or process issues. So if your goal is to do it right the first time with minimal downtime, workarounds, or delays, please join us!

Day 2

CSS Crash Course for CSS Haters or Novices, by Jessica Keener

This class is intended for a complete novice to CSS, or those who know enough to get by but hate everything about it. We will be covering the basics of CSS (including specificity), using preprocessors, as well as several practical best practices to keep you out of CSS hell. Whether you are mid-migration or still in the early planning stages, successfully mastering these challenges will put your organization ahead of the curve by enabling an accelerated plan-to-execution with reduced time needed for troubleshooting design or process issues. So if your goal is to do it right the first time with minimal downtime, workarounds, or delays, please join us!

How To Be A Cyber Superhero by Strengthening Your Organization’s Security Posture, by Mary Dowd

Be a Cyber Superhero by evangelizing and implementing preventive measures to help thwart cyber criminals in order to keep your customers safe and your organization out of the breach headlines. We covered the most impactful ways to bake security into your applications and infrastructure (even if you’re in the cloud) so that you can spend more resources on developing awesome things and less on refactoring, remediation, or even worse, fines.

New Features and Enhancements in PMT, by Megha Bhat K & Rochelle Hannah

Performance Monitoring Toolset is an application monitoring suite that helps to gain insights on how your applications perform at runtime. This session started by explaining the process of onboarding ColdFusion servers to PMT. Then, they walked us through the major PMT enhancements made in support of CF2021 which includes Cloud Services monitoring like AWS S3, Azure Blob, AWS SQS, AWS SNS, Azure Service Bus, AWS DynamoDB, and NoSQL database i.e., MongoDB. They also covered a few other major enhancements like Authentication in ElasticSearch, SSL support on datastore, having refresh interval, non-request data collection frequency, shard and replica count configurable to the user, option to set request threshold and advanced monitoring which allows selective collection of data for optimization.

Can’t see the wood for the trees – just focus on the logs, by David Tattersall

Logs have been around pretty much since computing began. Logging is more prolific now than ever before – logging is easy, storage is cheap, applications are more complex – which warrants more logs to understand what’s going on – logs are here to stay.

This presentation discussed what companies expect from logs and who benefits from what. We also showed you what components can be used to build a modern, scalable open source log processing architecture.

Finally, we demonstrated how FusionReactor’s new log capture and analytics capability can transform your ability to manage, process and gain immense value from the good old logs.

Using ColdFusion with No Code & GraphQL, by Mark Takata

In the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of the citizen developer leveraging no code and low code solutions to build useful, powerful integrations and tooling. In this talk, Mark focuses on utilizing the popular Airtable online visual database building application combined with a plugin that allows you to expose that site as GraphQL endpoints in building web applications with no need for a database developer or database server architecture.

Taking Jamstack All the Way to Eleven – An introduction to Eleventy, by Ray Camden

Eleventy is quickly becoming one of the more popular ways to get into the Jamstack due to its Node.js foundation and its flexible approach to building web sites. In this session, we talked about how Eleventy works, cover its major features, and cover practical tips on how to go into production with an Eleventy-based web site.

The Apex of Agility: ColdFusion 2021 and Automated Pipelines, by Brian Sappey

Feeling overwhelmed with the mountain of tasks building in your application queue? Are project managers and stakeholders continually asking for updates to satisfy their next Scrum Meeting? You are not alone. The endless rotation of updates and tasks should lead you to one solution, do less, with less. Let me explain.
With the economic shifts and labor shortages, we must adopt a different way of thinking. Through automation, you can challenge the old mantra of, do more, with less, by doing less, with less. This holds especially true with application development. ColdFusion 2021’s architecture has key advantages over previous versions with respect to DevOps and automating your development and build processes.
It’s a fact, automation increases your organization’s resilience and agility. By allowing developers to hyper focus on development and feedback loops, their productivity will undoubtedly increase. This presentation looks to break down the underlying process of CI automation and builds. With live demonstrations, simple coding examples and tutorials on how to configure various toolsets, you will gain a firsthand look at how to accomplish the task of automating your builds. From Groovy scripting to webhooks, you can achieve utopia in your development lifecycles, and be on your way to depleting that queue of applications.

Building the Next Generation of Secure Developers, by Rey Bango

As companies migrate to more resilient cloud infrastructures, threat actors continue to turn their attention to the application landscape as the new entry point for compromising systems.

Despite cyberattacks happening at a pace of every 39 seconds, only 3% of U.S. bachelor's degree graduates have cybersecurity-related skills. While several factors play into this, the most glaring is that faculty just don't know about the security field, leading to gaps between academia and industry. Unfortunately, the gap has gotten wider due to constant changes and growing toolchains in software development.

This is compounded by a consistent lack of employee training in secure coding principles and how it applies to the software development life cycle, causing new entrants into software development to be ill-prepared to build secure systems.

This session delved into:

• The growing security challenges developers face today
• The current perceptions of “security” within the developer community
• The need for secure coding education at the university level
• Opportunities for learning secure coding in educational and corporate environments

Liftoff to the AWS Cloud with Adobe ColdFusion 2021, by George Murphy

Have you been thinking and procrastinating about how to launch your stack to the AWS Cloud Platform? If so this is the session for you. George showed how to simply and easily launch Adobe ColdFusion 2021 Enterprise with Ortus Solutions Contentbox 5 or any web application in less than 10 minutes. The tools that we use to accomplish this be Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS, Nginx, Adobe ColdFusion 2021 Enterprise, Commandbox and AWS Cloudformation to build it. The building of the stack will all be through a GUI. We hope you can join us.

Beyond CFPDF: Adobe APIs to Supercharge Your Document Creation and Processing, by Elishia Dvorak

In this session, we learned about new Adobe Document Services to extend your existing applications and easily create template-based invoices, agreements, letters, and more. We also talked about how to dynamically extract content from any PDF file into JSON format for data analysis, content publishing, or other downstream processing. Two new APIs, Adobe Document Generation API and Adobe PDF Extract API, provide everything you need to supercharge any document workflow and can be implemented quickly using our Java SDK.

Cold Brews: Getting Started with Java in Your ColdFusion Apps, by Matthew Clemente

For ColdFusion developers without a background in Java, the language can be intimidating and its use within applications is ignored or misunderstood. Let's dispel this confusion and deepen our understanding of Java, opening ColdFusion applications up the wealth of features and functionality it provides.

Here's Matthews presentation.

How you can do pixel perfect mobile development using your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills, by Mike Hartington

Mobile usage continues to rise globally but building apps natively for all major platforms requires expertise in several very different platforms. Who has time to learn all that? What if there was a way you could use your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills, and even the front-end frameworks you like, and build pixel-perfect cross-platform apps? Sounds like a dream, right? What if we told you you could have all that, plus a thriving ecosystem complete with thousands of ready-to-go plugins for all your development needs? How much would you pay? Oh really? What if we told you it was all there, ready for the taking, and it was free? Interested? In this session, I showed you how you can build mobile apps your users will love while staying true to the skills you already have.

Best practices for attending online events

The virtual event will imitate a traditional in-person event with opportunities to interact with speakers and other attendees in a virtual environment on the web, rather than meeting in a physical location.

1. Register
   1. Sign-up with your official email ID
2. Login
   1. Look for our update emails and use the provided credential on the virtual event day
3. Attend
   1. Get access to the virtual event: Presentations, Panel Discussions, Networking Areas, and a lot more

 

Adobe ColdFusion Summit West 2020 (You Can Still Network With The Best CFers)

CF Summit 2020 Conference

Every year ColdFusion developers, experts, and enthusiasts gather for an awesome event: The CF Summit West. This year’s conference was due to take place in October 2020, at the Mirage hotel in Las Vegas. 

But it turns out there’s a slight change of plans…

Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2020 goes online

Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2020 is going online! 

Covid19 has already turned our lives upside down, and there’s no reason to lose more precious time and knowledge that you would get at the conference. Judging by how Into The Box 2020 went in May, we can expect a lot from CF Summit. 

Related: Into The Box 2020

We also had a little fun! I ran a little competition for the best CF joke. Mark had the most success and he won a T-shirt as a prize.

 

Thank you, Michaela Light and Tera Tech for this super fun t-shirt! I won this in a “Funny CF Custom Tag” contest that Michaela sponsored last year. ❤️👩🏻‍💻#coldfusion #programmer #developer #code #girlswhocode #womenwhocode https://t.co/zhluNfbKmz pic.twitter.com/r9Uq4eeZEJ

— Christie ☕️ (@writehelloworld) March 29, 2021

Speakers

I am sure that you already know most of them. In case you don’t, or want to learn more, I will be talking with them and about their topics for this year’s CF Summit West. 

1. Charlie Arehart

2. Matthew Clemente

3. Mike Collins

4. Elishia Dworak

5. Dave Ferguson

6. Pete Freitag

7. Brian Klaas

8. George Murphy

9. Rakshith Naresh

10. Brian Sappey

11. Eric Peterson

12. Dan Skaggs

13. Mark Takata

14. Dan Wilson

15. Damien Bruyndonckx

16. Melissa Eggleston

17. Ashish Garg

18. Joel Geraci

19. Edwin Samuel Jonathan

20. Mukesh Kumar

21. Patrick Leal

22. Satyam Mishra

23. Diana Rodriguez

24. David Tattersal

25. Ben Vanderberg

26. Minh Vo

27. Brian Bockhold

28. Jennifer Kang

29. Jessica Keener

We will know soon if this list is final.

Registration and prices

The official registration page is already active and running. 

Here’s what Adobe says about the charge for the online event: 

“Adobe is committed to the education and success of our customers and community, so we’re pleased to offer all the Adobe ColdFusion Summit keynote and breakout sessions for free.” 

You can (and should) register here.

FAQ

Here are the FAQs from the official CF Summit page.

How do I stay current with developments?

If you’re not already a member of the Adobe ColdFusion Summit mailing list, sign up. In addition, follow Adobe ColdFusion on Facebook and Twitter for 2020 updates and great content all year long.

Will you have sponsorship opportunities?

Yes, we’ll have some unique sponsorship options for the online event. If you’d like to know more, contact [email protected]. 

What else is Adobe doing in response to COVID-19?

Adobe is committed to partnering with businesses and civic organizations to help those most in need and to provide resources for the creative community. Learn more here.

Who do I contact for more information?

Please contact [email protected] for any additional questions. 

A recap of last year's Summit in Las Vegas:

28 speakers ColdFusion experts from around the globe.

The 2019 year’s esteemed speakers were:

1. Abram Adams
2. Charlie Arehart
3. Kailash Bihani
4. Brian Bockhold
5. Rick Buongiovanni
6. Matthew Clemente
7. Mike Collins
8. Paul Dumas
9. Elishia Dvorak
10. Nolan Erck
11. Dave Ferguson
12. Tony Ferraro
13. Daniel Fredericks
14. Pete Freitag
15. Ashish Garg
16. Uma Ghotikar
17. Matt Gifford
18. Giancarlo Gomez
19. Edwin Samuel Jonathan
20. Brian Klaas
21. Josh Kutz-Flamenbaum
22. Andy Lambert
23. Luis Majano
24. George Murphy
25. Rakshith Naresh
26. Piyush Kumar Nayak
27. Uday Ogra
28. ( George ) Gavin Pickin
29. Brian Sappey
30. Suchika Singh
31. Denard Springle
32. Greg Stanley
33. Mark Takata
34. Andrew Tarvin
35. David Tattersal
36. Minh Vo
37. Carl Von Stetten
38. Dan Wilson
39. Bradley Wood
40. Kevin Wright
41. Bruno Zugay

40 sessions showcasing new features and the roadmap for 2020.

500 attendees representing 11 countries from all four corners of the world.

Related: Adobe ColdFusion Summit West 2019 (Full Report)

Comprehensive list of ColdFusion Conferences

That's pretty much what happened with conferences in 2020, too. CF community however didn't wait too long and we adapted to the situation. Without further ado, here's the full list of the 2020 CF conferences and webinars.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Home conference. This is one of my new prints! Link to buy from my shop is in my bio. This was in the guardian last week, maybe last month, who knows what time is anymore. #lockdown #homeschool #coronavirus #comedy #covid_19 #satire #cartoons #comics #parenting #stephencollins #theguardian

A post shared by Stephen Collins (@stephencollinscomics) on May 14, 2020 at 6:35am PDT

So, that's 2020 in a sense…

Learn more details about upcoming Adobe CF Summit 2020 in the episode of CF Alive Podcast I recorded with Kishore Balakrishnan

Learn more details about Adobe CF Summit 2019 in the episode of CF Alive Podcast I recorded with Kishore Balakrishnan.

Adobe ColdFusion Summit West 2019 (Full Report)

About ColdFusion Summit

The ColdFusion Summit is a confluence of everything in the realm of web applications. If you develop web applications, this is the place to be. For designers, developers, strategists and thought leaders, the ColdFusion Summit provides the perfect forum to exchange ideas, inspiration and experiences.

Not only that. As well as opportunities to interact with ColdFusion experts, domain leaders and peers get to learn about the latest technologies, techniques, and strategies to rapidly build and successfully deliver web applications to the market. With the web applications world evolving rapidly, explore how ColdFusion is driving change and how you can propel this dynamism.

Adobe ColdFusion Specialist Certificate Program

It was awesome! I was lucky to catch almost everything, and sad at the same time, because I didn't catch (everything 🙂 ) but, I will provide you with the full report soon. 

The Adobe ColdFusion Specialist is a full-day certificate classroom program, delivered by top Adobe ColdFusion experts. You will be enrolled in the course as soon as you register and will receive course instructions and prep materials two weeks prior to the on-site program date. Once you have completed the training, you will partake in an online assessment. And only upon successful completion will you be awarded your Adobe ColdFusion Specialist certificate. By the end of this program, participants will have mastered all the major features in the latest release of Adobe ColdFusion – to use CFML to develop, test, debug, and deploy web apps. It also shows how CF acts as a glue between different systems.

Adobe ColdFusion Summit West 2019- Two Days of “Everything CFML”

The main event starts in a few hours and I already feel tinkles. As usual, I will follow closely everything that is going on and provide you with all the details that you might have missed. Of course, it's not possible to transcend to that atmosphere, but I'll do the most I can.

See you soon!

Things are shaping up at The Mirage as the crew works hard to make things ready for #ColdFusion Summit 2019! Here’s a little general info. (What time to wake up!)#Adobe @ColdFusion pic.twitter.com/ObdDaFxPV1

— Vicky 💜 Radical Centrist (@QueenOfCodebass) September 30, 2019

 

CF Summit 2019, and CF Alive podcast with Darren Pywell

CF Summit 2019, and CF Alive podcast with Jason Long from Mura

CF Summit 2019, and CF Alive podcast with Luis Majano- Learn CF in 100 minutes

Adobe CF Summit 2019 Slides and Presentations

Adobe ColdFusion Keynote by Ashish Garg

Ashish is Director of Engineering at Adobe Inc., Bangalore. Ashish leads the engineering teams for Adobe ColdFusion and eLearning products portfolio from Adobe, that includes Adobe Captivate, Adobe Captivate Prime and Adobe Connect. Ashish is associated with Adobe for close to 15 years and in this tenure, has worked on a numerous products and idea projects.

ColdFusion and Vue – building CFML-powered reactive applications by Matt Gifford

In this session Matt introduced Vue.js, the powerful reactive framework, and show the fundamental basics on how to use it.

Matt is Web & application developer, author, magazine contributor and conference speaker.

Practical Functional Programming in ColdFusion by Abram Adams

In this session Abram introduced some of ColdFusion's functional type functions (map, reduce, lambdas, closures, etc…) and when/how to use them. 

Abram Adams is Senior Software Engineer. He has been developing for the web and desktop since the turn of the century and has specialized in ColdFusion application development for most of that time.

Download the full presentation here: https://slides.com/abramadams/practical-fp-in-cfml#/

Shake N'Bake: Top 10 Performance Tuning Tricks to put you in First Place by Elishia Dvorak

If you ain't first, you're last! Performance can make or break your win lose streak.

In this session Elishia has introduced the top 10 performance tuning tricks to diagnose and troubleshoot your most common performance issues with the new Performance Monitoring Toolset from ColdFusion 2018.

Elishia Dvorak is the Technical Marketing Manager at Adobe supporting both eLearning and ColdFusion product lines. In that role she provides sales & marketing support, technical guidance, education & training for those products and integrated technologies.

Try This At Home: Building Your Own ColdFusion Swarm by Matthew Clemente

There's no shortage of excitement surrounding Docker. 

In this session, Matthew provided the code, examples, and step-by-step instructions to get them started, as we used CommandBox to take a real application from local development to replicated cloud deployment on a multi-node Swarm. 

Matthew Clemente is a Founding Partner with Season 4, LLC, a team of designers, programmers, and writers working in the legal industry.

Download the full presentation here: 

https://slides.com/mjclemente/coldfusion-docker-swarm-cfsummit-2019/fullscreen#/

ColdFusion for the next decade – All about the buzzworthy ColdFusion 2020 by Rakshith Naresh

One of the reasons for ColdFusion’s success right from its inception is that the platform has been able to pivot at regular intervals to remain relevant for the future.

There are very few technologies that have managed to stay in the game for so long and that is something all of us in the community are proud of.

ColdFusion 2020, slated to be released next year, is going one such pivotal release in the history of ColdFusion.

Rakshith Naresh is the Product Manager for ColdFusion and Captivate Prime Content Catalog. 

Customer Showcase: Learn How Central San uses ColdFusion to Interconnect and Manage Enterprise Infrastructure Assets by Carl Von Stetten

In this session, Carl showed how we can use several interconnected GIS and Asset Management systems in concert with ColdFusion-based applications to manage the entire life-cycle of our infrastructure assets and serve our customers effectively; and how we provide quick and easy access to information sourced from numerous enterprise, departmental, and work group databases.

Carl Von Stetten has served as a Geographic Information System (GIS) Technician and Analyst with Central San for 19 years. He has developed and maintained multiple internal ColdFusion-based GIS applications for use by District staff, and is well-versed in Microsoft SQL Server and Esri ArcGIS technologies. 

You can find the presentation here: https://www.slideshare.net/cfvonner/how-central-san-uses-coldfusion-to-interconnect-and-manage-enterprise-infrastructure-assets

Prepare for “Super Bowl” Traffic by Bruno Zugay

Build a High Availability Cluster: Make your application highly available with automatic failover and disaster recovery.

As your organization is growing and traffic to your site increasing, learn how to keep your infrastructure nimble and ready to scale at moment’s notice.

Bruno is Director of Development. He is enjoying full stack development, DevOps, and making the internet a better place. Focusing on scalability, performance, and security.

WebSockets 101 : An Introduction to WebSockets on ColdFusion by Giancarlo Gomez

Did you know that you can easily leverage the power of WebSockets with your ColdFusion server? Would you like to know what WebSockets are? Why you should use them? And how to use them? Giancarlo Gomez reviewed those topics in this session.

Giancarlo Gomez is the owner/lead developer of Fuse Developments, Inc. established in 2004, his consulting business specializing in web and mobile development and CrossTrackr, Inc., a SaaS for the CrossFit community, targeted towards athletes and gym owners providing real-time insight into athletic progress and health metrics.

You can find the presentation here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cedy1kxslsb5wg7/ColdFusionSummit-2019-WebSockets-201.pdf?dl=0

Approaches to more secure ColdFusion code by Pete Freitag

Security is a topic we as developers love to ignore as much as possible, but as the number of attacks increase year over year we need to grab hold of the security in our apps. He introduced some practical approaches to getting in there and making progress and reviewed some of the top vulnerabilities to watch out for, which also provide a good starting point.

Pete Freitag has over 20 years of experience building web applications with ColdFusion. In 2006 he started Foundeo Inc (foundeo.com), a ColdFusion consulting and products company. He has also built several products and services for ColdFusion including Fixinator (https://fixinator.app/), a CFML code security scanner, a Web Application Firewall for ColdFusion called FuseGuard (https://fuseguard.com) and a ColdFusion server security scanning service called HackMyCF (https://hackmycf.com). Pete holds a BS in Software Engineering from Clarkson University.

Start `Integrated` Testing – The biggest and easiest ( testing ) bang for your buck by ( George ) Gavin Pickin

Sadly, most developers don’t test their code like they should because testing can be hard, and its time consuming and the customer doesn’t want to pay for it. In this session, He showed how easy testing can be, how quick it can be, and better yet, it's FUN!

Gavin is a proud ColdFusion developer, starting with ColdFusion in the late 90s. His first exposure to ColdFusion was while working for the University of Auckland under supervision of big ColdFusion Contractors.

The business case for upgrading ColdFusion in 5 easy steps by Dan Wilson

Ready to upgrade CF? 

Let’s go over the top 5 business cases so you can help management understand why they should upgrade. In this presentation, learn how the most modern ColdFusion version makes your company better, and saves money.

A ColdFusion user for 20 years, Dan Wilson also has extensive experience growing developer focused products and services.

You can find the presentation here:

WebSockets 201 : Beyond the introduction by Giancarlo Gomez

So you know what WebSockets are and how to configure them for your application, but now what?

Learn how to leverage listeners for your channels, handle authentication and how to view all your connections. 

Giancarlo Gomez is the owner/lead developer of Fuse Developments, Inc. established in 2004, his consulting business specializing in web and mobile development and CrossTrackr, Inc., a SaaS for the CrossFit community, targeted towards athletes and gym owners providing real-time insight into athletic progress and health metrics.

You can find the presentation here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cedy1kxslsb5wg7/ColdFusionSummit-2019-WebSockets-201.pdf?dl=0

Automating your tasks using ColdFusion Scheduler by Suchika Singh

ColdFusion Scheduling engine empowered by Quartz has numerous features that can be used to automatically run your tasks. 

Presentation highlights:

• Using CRON syntax to schedule tasks.
• Running scheduler in cluster setups
• Attaching handlers to schedule tasks
• Making task management easy by setting task priorities
• Customizing the scheduled tasks using the quartz properties for standalone and cluster setups.
• Defining dependent tasks i.e. Chaining of tasks

Suchika Singh is Adobe, Lead Software Engineer and CF Team Member.

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

From Legacy to Modern, Techniques to update your Legacy Sites by Daniel Fredericks

We all have worked on a spaghetti coded site that is old and hard to maintain.

This talk focus on some tips to take that legacy CFML site and make it more modern.

A ColdFusion Developer for over 15 years specializing in Government Contracts. Continuing to learn more modern techniques all the time such as OOP and API development.

Making Modules — Utilizing Reusable Code through ColdBox Modules by Eric Peterson

Leverage all the power of ColdBox Modules. 

Learn use cases ranging from simple libraries to automatic interceptors. 

Discover tools to quickly scaffold your own modules, set up testing (with and without a ColdBox app), and share your modules with the world!

Eric Peterson (@_elpete) is a CFML and javascript developer at Ortus Solutions (ColdBox, CommandBox, etc.). He is a prolific module developer and the creator of projects like qb, Quick, and ColdBox Elixir.

You can find the presentation here: 

https://slides.com/elpete/making-modules#/

Spreadsheet Magic with ColdFusion by Kevin Wright

Gone are the days of dumping query results into an HTML table for formatting and layout and then using MIME types to force the browser to display the data using Excel.

Learn how to access and manipulate spreadsheet data programmatically with the CFSPREADSHEET tag in ColdFusion.

Through his consulting company, Kinetic InterActive, Kevin provides businesses insight into the use of technology to solve a variety of business challenges.

Providing business workflow analysis, user experience design, website usability, search engine optimization (SEO), and more. 

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

Reinforcement Learning with ColdFusion – Adding Practical Autonomy To Your Web Applications by Minh Vo

Explore Reinforcement Learning and how can use it in our daily work lives (within the context of a Web Application of course)! 

As many of you know, RL is the basic technology behind drones, self-driving cars, and bots for playing video games–but, did you know you can use it to strategize marketing, optimize UI/Banner/Button placements, and much more?

Minh is a full-stack developer, Oracle whiz, and pixel-perfect graphics artist who's worked on the bleeding edge of Technology.

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

Step-by-Step: Migrating Existing ColdFusion Workloads to the AWS Cloud by Brian Bockhold

Considering migrating your existing CF on-premise workloads and licenses to AWS? Looking to license by subscribing through the AWS Marketplace, or already on AWS and interested in ColdFusion-specific best practices?

Presentation highlights:

• The step-by-step process of migrating to AWS
• ColdFusion-specific best practices for running even the most highly-regulated and secure workloads on AWS
• Amazon EC2 servers, along with a practical list and explanation of the core AWS services you will need to quickly get your CF environment up and running
• Utilizing CloudFormation templates to define your infrastructure as code and to ensure consistency across environments

Brian is co-founder of Coalesce Holdings and serves as Vice President and CIO. He has developed systems in ColdFusion for over 20 years, both in his current and prior roles leading system development and architecture teams for global organizations.

Brian is a certified AWS Solutions Architect – Associate and AWS Developer – Associate.

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

Testing – How Vital and How Easy to use by Uma Ghotikar

“Testing is just extra time we don't have.”

This is the common answer given why not to implement unit testing or similar testing.

Uma tried to dispel this phrase.

She showed the basics of writing unit tests using TestBox, show how can update MXUnit tests to TestBox.

Uma is Web Application Developer. She did Master of Science in Information Systems from George Mason University, USA and Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology from University of Mumbai, India.

She enjoys coding especially the back-end application development and learning new technical skills.

You can find the presentation here: 

https://www.slideshare.net/UmaGhotikar/testing-how-vital-and-how-easy-to-use

Using ColdFusion to produce Dynamic Financial Letters by Mike Collins

In this session, explore several use cases to produce complicated rule-based documents that meet corporate legal regulations.

Many large industries, including financial and insurance, need to produce legal letters with financial or contractual information. 

Mike Collins is Senior ColdFusion Consultant, SupportObjective. As a Senior ColdFusion Consultant he assists customers with development, server deployments, and troubleshooting.

Humor That Works: The Secret to Being More Productive, Less Stressed, and Happier by Andrew Tarvin

This interactive and experiential program teach us what humor at work means, why it is desperately needed, and how to use humor to create a positive work culture, increase team productivity, manage stress, and have more fun.

Learning Objectives:

• Efficiency vs Effectiveness
• The $500 Billion Problem at Work
• 30 Research-backed Benefits of Humor
• Developing a Humor Mindset
• How to Start Using Humor Today

Andrew Tarvin is an international project manager turned award-winning speaking and best-selling author.

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

GET /cfml – A Guide to Writing API Wrappers by Matthew Clemente

Nearly everything has an API; they are the language of the internet. With a simple HTTP call, you can process a payment, send a text, and yes, even return random cat pictures. While many API providers have official libraries, ColdFusion may not be one of the supported languages. In this session,Matthew showed how to craft coherent wrapper for APIs that don't already have ColdFusion support.

Matthew Clemente is a Founding Partner with Season 4, LLC, a team of designers, programmers, and writers working in the legal industry

You can find the presentation here:

https://southofshasta.com/blog/coldfusion-summit-notes-get-cfml-a-guide-to-writing-api-wrappers-matthew-clemente/

Getting Started With CF's Docker Images by Charlie Arehart

Did you know Adobe has provided Docker images since CF2016? Do you how to use them? Might you be new to containerization, even though Docker has been all the rage for some years? Hey, you're busy. It's understandable.

In this talk, veteran CFer Charlie Arehart lead us through a fast-paced introduction to Docker in general, and CF's images in particular, as well as communication among containers, orchestration of multiple containers, and more.

A veteran server troubleshooter with over thirty years experience in enterprise IT, Charlie Arehart (@carehart) is a longtime contributor to the community and Adobe Community Professional.

RuleBox : The natural rule engine for CFML by Luis Majano

Tired of classes filled with if/then/else statements?

Need a nice abstraction that allows rules to be easily specified in a way that decouples them from each other?

Want to write rules the same way that you write the rest of your code [in ColdFusion]?

RuleBox is right for you!

Luis Majano is a Computer Engineer born in El Salvador and is the president of Ortus Solutions (www.ortussolutions.com), a consulting firm specializing in web development, architecture and professional open source support and services.

The What, When and How of Eerie Real-Time Personalization by Brian Sappey

[“ColdFusion”, “Kafka”, “Divolte”, “NiFi”, “Druid”, “Superset”] an array when paired together make an unstoppable force in personalizing your sites.

Learn how to capture your users DNA and gain immediate context of your users, be able to adjust engagement based on their “influence zone” in real time while they are still in session.

Brian Sappey is the Director of Engineering and Architecture.

His most recent focus has been advocating the use of API’s in the Ecommerce infrastructure at Market America/SHOP.com.

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

Beyond “Read All”: Build Fine-Grained Control of Amazon Web Services in Your ColdFusion App by Brian Klaas

Developers across the world look to cloud providers like AWS, Google, and Microsoft to expand the capabilities of their applications.

ColdFusion has a number of built-in hooks to access Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In this session,learn how to use IAM from within your ColdFusion app to set up IAM roles and permissions so that you can start leveraging the real power of AWS, whether it's cloud-based file storage (S3), sending text messages (SNS), or working with a noSQL database (DynamoDB).

Brian Klaas is the Senior Technology Officer at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Teaching and Learning.

Document workflow and management made easy with ColdFusion by Kailash Bihani

ColdFusion is the most powerful language out there when it comes to plus and play with various kinds of documents such as PDF’s, Presentations, Spreadsheets, etc.

See how various document interconversions can happen using ColdFusion such as:

• PPT to PDF
• PPT to HTML
• HTML to PPT
• Word to PDF
• Excel to Query
• Query to Excel
• Excel to HTML
• HTML to PDF

Kailash Bihani is a Software Engineer in the Adobe ColdFusion team. His responsibilities for ColdFusion features include Security, HTMLtoPDF and PDF Manipulation, Websockets, Mobile and API Manager. When free, he is either working on AR technologies, or taking a trek somewhere in India.

You can find the presentation here: COMIN SOON

No more excuses – let FusionReactor instantly show you performance problems and defects in your code by David Tattersal

Ever have a defect in production and simply could not reproduce it in your test environment? You’re not alone.

The presentation demonstrate how FusionReactor highlights performance problems and instantly spots issues as they unfold, pinpointing right down to the line of code that's the problem.

SQL, I learned enough to break everything by Dave Ferguson

In this session, Dave explained why your SQL may not run the way you intended. We looked well beyond just the select statement and look deeper into how SQL runs. We gone over what the DBA's keep to themselves as well as other metrics. 

Dave has spent the majority of his life living in sunny Southern California. Over the past almost 20 years has worked in information technology.

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

Angular for ColdFusion Developers by Josh Kutz-Flamenbaum

Angular is a popular framework for building JavaScript applications.

We discussed the benefits of building your application in the Web Browser and using ColdFusion as a great back-end.

Josh Kutz-Flamenbaum is a Senior Software Architect for Bumble and bumble, a prestige hair care brand owned by the Estee Lauder Corporation.

Meet Solr, ColdFusion's Search BFF by Rick Buongiovanni

Solr is a powerful tool just waiting to be discovered! In this session, Rick talked about searching with Solr. If you are completely new to Solr, you can leave able to create your first Solr search application. If you have used Solr previously, this session provide new ideas for configuring and using Solr.

Rick Buongiovanni is the Director of IT at The Institute of Navigation, an international association headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area.

Shut the door to vulnerabilities in your code with these tools by George Murphy

Do you have legacy code that you would like to run a report on, to look for different risks in your code that could open the door to some bad guy attacking your code?

We take a look at some tools which will help you reduce that risk level and close the door to those vulnerabilities.

George Murphy is a senior cloud software design engineer, manager, and contractor for various Federal agencies.

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

Unleash the Power of the Adobe API Manager by Paul Dumas

Think the Adobe API Manager is just another trend or cool buzzword.

Think again! 

This presentation covered the spectrum from the strategic importance of the platform to the technical leverage it gives you with REST compliance, security, analytics, and CI/CD (automation). 

Learn how to build an API, apply security, monitor its performance, and retrieve its definition via the platform's provided API.

Paul Dumas is a Senior Director of Engineering at Market America. Paul works to oversee API standards and strategies, evangelize Market America Public APIs, and manages strategic efforts and API related products.

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

[Angularjs + Reactjs + Vuejs] + CF – Integrating modern day JS frameworks with ColdFusion by Uday Ogra

Uday introduced each of the top 3 modern-day JS frameworks. Learn how to build applications in them. He compared the pros and cons of each of them and also compare the code which have to write in each of these frameworks to achieve the similar output.

Uday Ogra is a passionate developer who is part of ColdFusion development team for more than 9 years.

Augmented Reality powered by React Native and ColdFusion – A transformation to mobile app development by Edwin Samuel Jonathan

In the session, Edwin talked about how you can go about bringing in Augmented Reality to any of your ColdFusion Applications by combining the power of React Native’s simplicity with ColdFusion’s speed and reach.

Edwin Samuel Jonathan a software developer for Adobe ColdFusion team. He is a full stack developer having worked on features like WebSocket, ColdFusion Administrator, CfFiddle as well as the Performance Monitoring Toolset.

Caching and Performance in ColdFusion by Denard Springle

In this session we explored various ways to use caching to increase the performance of  applications including using page, query and object caching techniques.

We learned not only how to implement caching techniques, but where to use them to get the most value for your applications while avoiding common pitfalls and understanding the trade-offs. 

Denard ‘Denny' Springle has worked extensively with ColdFusion since v4.5 and numerous additional languages including Perl, PHP and Java. 

Harness the Best of the Best: ColdFusion and Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Integration by Andy Lambert

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is the leading platform for web content management (WCM), digital asset management (DAM), digital rights management (DRM), and online marketing.

Presentation highlights:

• Digital asset management and retrieval to/from ColdFusion applications
• RESTful integration via ColdFusion web services and the Apache Sling layer underlying AEM
• Consumption of OSGi services in AEM
• Content migration

Andy Lambert is a Technical Architect with the Adobe Customer Solutions group.

He has been with Adobe for over 6 years, working with both private and public sector customers to fully realize their online vision using Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Marketing Cloud. 

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

Please pass the salt: Serve up passwords with a side of entropy by Brad Wood

Passwords are like opinions, everyone has them and some are easier to figure out than others.

Let’s take a practical look into the world of password storage by starting with the most basic approach and what’s wrong with it. 

Brad has been programming ColdFusion for 12 years and has used every version of CF since 4.5. He first fell in love with ColdFusion as a way to easily connect a database to his website for dynamic pages. 

He enjoys configuring and performance tuning high-availability Windows and Linux ColdFusion environments as well as SQL Server.

Rapidly Prototyping Single-Page Applications with Coldfusion & Javascript by Mark Takata

This session gave us the tools and ideas needed to quickly prop up SPAs (single-page-applications) using Coldfusion and a JavaScript framework.

The framework that Mark used is called Intercooler.JS and allows for a very similar “low-code-required” methodology of throwing together functionality.

A 20+ year veteran of development, Mark's programming journey began with Coldfusion. He's raised up the number of languages & frameworks he knows to 15 (and counting) and currently develops applications for the University of California, Davis and for private clients through his development firms Takata Technology Consulting and Pretty Good AI.

Real-time SMS Texting with ColdFusion & AWS by Greg Stanley

In this session Greg demonstrated how to send SMS text messages using ColdFusion and AWS PinPoint.

Session Outline:

1. Overview of how to use AWS modules in ColdFusion.

2. Using the AWS module PinPoint to validate and send SMS Text messages (US and internationally).

3. Applying the right Javascript plugins for a great UI experience.

4. Using the database to minimize AWS costs.

Greg Stanley leads software development operations for the Technology division of Retensa. He is an intrepid, adept, software engineer. 

Scaling enterprise applications with ColdFusion by Piyush Kumar Nayak

In this session Piyush Kumar Nayak talked about the features in CF that makes it a suitable platform for hosting high volume enterprise applications.

Presentation highlights:

• clustering CF servers – different ways a CF cluster can be configured.
• Using a web server connector for static content.
• centralized distributed caching – how different caching engines can be used towards a centralized cache for a distributed CF application.
• external session store – how Redis can be used to managing sessions in a large application.

Piyush is a QA engineer with the ColdFusion team where he works on performance and scalability amongst other areas. He has Master’s degree in Computer Application.

You can find the presentation here: COMING SOON

CF Alive at CF Summit

I am happy to say that ColdFusion is much more alive now, than a year before. And it's growing still. That's great news for CFers. During the conference, I got to hang around with some cool people. Here's what it was like…

Rakshith Naresh from Adobe talks about ColdFusion 2019 at CF Summit

Learn ColdFusion in a Week with Carl Von Stetten, Daniel Fredericks and Dave Ferguson at CF Summit

Let's just wait and see what other CF gems Adobe will offer this and the coming year(s).

 

Adobe ColdFusion Summit West 2019

With the spring conference season behind us, it's time to start making plans for the autumn conference season in Las Vegas. At the CF Summit East 2019, we've heard much of the new and interesting stuff to come from the ColdFusion world. One of the high points for me, personally, was talking about ColdFusion Vision for the Next 10 Years, with Rakshith Naresh.

About ColdFusion Summit

The ColdFusion Summit is a confluence of everything in the realm of web applications. If you develop web applications, this is the place to be. For designers, developers, strategists and thought leaders, the ColdFusion Summit provides the perfect forum to exchange ideas, inspiration and experiences.

Not only that. As well as opportunities to interact with ColdFusion experts, domain leaders and peers get to learn about the latest technologies, techniques, and strategies to rapidly build and successfully deliver web applications to the market. With the web applications world evolving rapidly, explore how ColdFusion is driving change and how you can propel this dynamism.

Adobe ColdFusion Specialist Certificate Program

The Early Bird offer ended on May 31st, so make sure you don't miss it totally, and

register on time.

The Adobe ColdFusion Specialist is a full-day certificate classroom program, delivered by top Adobe ColdFusion experts. You will be enrolled in the course as soon as you register and will receive course instructions and prep materials two weeks prior to the on-site program date. Once you have completed the training, you will partake in an online assessment. And only upon successful completion will you be awarded your Adobe ColdFusion Specialist certificate. By the end of this program, participants will have mastered all the major features in the latest release of Adobe ColdFusion – to use CFML to develop, test, debug, and deploy web apps. It also shows how CF acts as a glue between different systems.

Register now for the Adobe ColdFusion Summit West 2019

You still have time to register for the main event, which is set to occur on the 1st and 2nd of October, 2019. The early bird special ended on May 31st.

Register here.

Speakers and sessions

Program details for the Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2019 will be out soon!

Learn more details about Adobe CF Summit 2019 in the episode of CF Alive Podcast I recorded with Kishore Balakrishnan.

The Adobe Coldfusion Summit 2018

2018 was a very fruitful year for Adobe and ColdFusion. There were 3 conferences and they had an excellent response from the CFers.

1. Adobe ColdFusion Summit East 2018

2. Adobe ColdFusion Summit West 2018

3. Adobe ColdFusion India 2018

Let's just wait and see what other CF gems Adobe will offer this and the coming year(s).

 

The End of CF Summit 2018 (an Amazing Time for ColdFusion)

Wow! What a rush!

The 2018 Adobe ColdFusion Summit is officially over. This year’s Summit was really one for the books. The sheer number of different speakers was just amazing. Each speaker gave such wonderful insights into the world of ColdFusion and CFML operations. Whoever said ColdFusion is dead definitely needs to reconsider that statement.

(me backstage at the Adobe CF Summit keynote Day 1)

On top of the great info released by everyone, I had an extremely special moment for myself. My new book, CF Alive: Making ColdFusion Modern, Vibrant and Secure, was released. This meant a lot to me for a few different reasons. First off, it feels great to accomplish something so focused towards the platform I love.

Secondly, Adobe invited me to speak as part of the keynote about CF Alive. Many attendees through show of hands informed me that they listen to the CF Alive podcast. That alone speaks volumes. It shows that this community shares the CF Alive vision of a vibrant and alive ColdFusion. I shared about the new CF Alive book and afterwards I had individuals come up and thank me. The general consensus was that this book needed to be written!

(me on stage at CF Summit in front of 450 CF developers and managers)

I would like to extend my thanks to the entire CF community for their excitement with my CF Alive book. Through the shared enthusiasm of the community, CF Alive was able to reach Bestseller Status even before I took the stage on Day 1. That would not have been possible without the dedication of hard-working CF’ers and the community. Once again, thank you!

(CF Alive is best-seller on Amazon)

Thirdly, and perhaps the most important reason why this is moment is so special, is that the book was released as a wakeup call to the ColdFusion community. Our beloved platform has been accused of dying or being completely dead. However, CF Summit proved those accusations to be false. The CF community came out and in force. I am so proud to be a part of this community.

So my next question for you is…

What Would It Take to make CF even more alive this year?  

During my keynote address, I posed this idea to the community. Personally, I will do my part through my continued evangelism of ColdFusion through my podcast, CF Alive. For those of you still unaware of the podcast, take a quick look. There is something in there for everyone. Whether you are curious about security measures you can take for your CFML, what is new in CF 2018 or containerization, I am positive you will find some great info you can use as a CFer.

There are many critics out there of ColdFusion. They say that ColdFusion has changed too much. It has too much history. I don’t know about you but… I’m glad that the wheel as we know it has changed over time. Change isn’t always bad. CF isn’t just changing. It’s evolving. It’s becoming bigger, stronger, and faster.

Earlier in the year, we conducted our annual State of the CF Union survey. We polled CF’ers on a variety of topics ranging from framework use to security measures and office politics. One question we asked was,

What aspects of CF are preventing you or your company from embracing CF?

A whopping 76% of individual responses were that ColdFusion is legacy or dying. To those of us already in the CF Alive revolution, we know better. CF is definitely alive and more exciting than ever.

And the CF Alive book launch proves it.

Related: ColdFusion Summit 2018 Recap, Part 1

Stay tuned for the full list of the speakers and their slides and presentations at the CF Summit 2018.

Thanks for keeping the CF Alive!

CF Summit 2018: Real World Scenarios for Modern CFML

The world of software development is ever-changing. It’s only a matter of time before current code becomes legacy which eventually becomes obsolete. The number one way to counteract this growth is to actually modernize alongside. Modernization not only keeps you current but allows for you to utilize better technologies. Adobe ColdFusion alone has been through many changes over the years, mostly for good. In Nolan Erck’s upcoming session at the 2018 CF Summit in Las Vegas, he will present to intermediate and veteran CF’ers practical applications past CFML theory. Let’s talk about the importance of modernization from a CIO standpoint and some real-world applications for modern CFML.

“CFML has become a completely modern language. I'm proud to use CF because it is a great language. It has its quirks but hey, show me a language that doesn’t.”- Mark Drew, Director at CMD

From CF Alive episode, “035 Getting started fast with Docker, with Mark Drew“

What You Need to Know as CIO

To explain IT modernization, you need to understand what IT modernization is not. Modernization is not a destination. It is not an achievable concrete goal. IT modernization is a never-ending journey. Does that mean you shouldn’t take the first step though? Hell no. Software and IT technologies will not slow down for you or your business. Do not slow down for them.  Modernization is more than just updating your servers and versions– although those are important to do. It involves changes in your technologies, employees, processes, talents, and strategies. There are many reasons why companies don’t modernize. Lack of resources. The time required for new training. Yet, the number one reason CIOs and companies don’t modernize is fear of change. Most people, in general, choose to stay in their comfort zones. Learning something new without knowing the benefits can be off-putting. Conferences, such as the 2018 CF Summit or CF Camp in Munich, are great opportunities to learn more about the modernization journey you intend to take with your CFML.

Why modernize in the first place? It’s simple. Modernization will help your business. Plain and simple. One of the first processes to modernization is to the cloud. Not just one cloud either. Studies have shown that smoother operation and deployments of your IT demands come from a hybrid cloud. This hybrid cloud can be made up of multiple public clouds, a private cloud, and possibly a legacy cloud comprised of a company’s legacy estate. This not only allows for smooth operations but also cuts down the cost of maintaining and operating private servers– both legacy and modern. Aside from cloud computing, Agile methodologies and DevOps are helping modern companies to pick up the pace of their IT change. CIO.com explains DevOps as such:

“DevOps uses cross-functional teams aligned by business services. The teams are responsible for the entire stack that was delivered in shared services. They are persistent teams, staying with the firm throughout its transformation journey, rather than moving on to other projects. DevOps teams are also located in close proximity with the business teams to enhance collaboration and increase speed. Unlike shared services units, which focus on low costs per function, DevOps focuses on business impact at speed. Consequently, as companies take the DevOps journey, they use dramatically fewer resources to deliver services.”

Fewer resources with better faster results? It’s clear to see why these processes are important.

So, where would you even begin to start modernizing? Check out these tips to embark on your journey to modernization.

1. Figure Out Your Current System

   1. You cannot change direction if you don’t know where your company stands in the first place. Learn the ins and outs of your system so you can properly develop a roadmap to modernization.

2. Empower your Employees

   1. Providing managerial pressure may work in some circumstances, but it is not the case here. Instead, empower your employees with a meaningful mission. Your employees need to be along for the ride as well. Help them help you by using these handy tools from Intuitive Leadership Mastery.

3. Keep Your Consultants Close

   1. IT Modernization may require some outside help, especially if your company is extremely outdated. Co-design your modernization roadmap together, and make sure they are at all of your progress meetings.

4. Create a Plan with Achievable Milestones

   1. Having a plan with actual milestone goals can help out tremendously. They can show you exactly where your company’s progress is and the direction it is heading. Achieving goals is also a great morale booster and motivator for you and your team.

5. Establish a PMO

   1. A PMO is a Project Management Office– or Officer. Establish a dedicated group or individual responsible for overseeing your IT Modernization. This will allow some of the stress to roll off you and create free time for you to focus on other much-needed company tasks.

6. The Main Goal is Agility

   1. IT Modernization revolves around one key concept. Agility. Your modernization efforts should focus on the ability for your company and applications to scale quickly. The IT world is rapidly changing. Make sure your business can keep up. For more on the benefits of agility and speed, check out this article on Speed vs Control.

7. Reusable and Premade Modules

   1. During your IT modernization process, you will end up creating helpful modules that you can use again and again (particularly when modernizing your CFML). Make a catalog of these that you can recall as need be. Even better, share with other companies that may be able to use them. A great place to share your CFML modules and packages is on ForgeBox.  Here you can share with others or find modules that you may need for your modernization efforts.

“…nobody is going to come work for procedural programming. I mean nobody. No wonder nobody wants to go do ColdFusion because they don’t want to be working with procedural code. So if corporations don’t do this, ColdFusion will not be alive anymore. So the corporations really need to modernize. That’s the first thing.” – Luis Majano, President of Ortus Solutions

From CF Alive episode, “012 Extreme Testing and Slaying the Dragons of ORM with Luis Majano“

Tech Talk

In this Tech Talk, let’s take a look at three areas of modern CFML.

Closures and Functional Programming Constructs

A functional programming language is a one that focuses on immutable data and functions. Because building blocks in functional programming languages are actually functions –not components as ColdFusion– it is very common to pass functions as arguments. Likewise, return functions pass as results. With the advent of ColdFusion 10, Adobe introduced closures allowing CF to act as a functional programming language in some regards. Closures are inner functions. These inner functions access the variables in outer functions. In turn, you can access the inner function by accessing the outer function.

Adobe provides a great example when discussing closures.

<cfscript>
    function helloTranslator(required String helloWord) {
        return function(required String name) { return "#helloWord#, #name#"; }
    ;
    }
    helloInFrench=helloTranslator("Bonjour")
    writeOutput(helloInFrench("John"))
</cfscript>

In the above example, the outer function returns a closure. Using the helloHindi variable, the outer function is accessed. It sets the helloWord argument. Using this function pointer, the closure is called.

Although not very widespread in the CF Community as of now, we can see these closures take form in functions such as arrayMap() and  arrayFilter(). Other examples of closures include the latest version of FW/1 and TestBox. FW/1 uses closures to provide a “builder” style syntax for developing REST API results. TestBox uses closures rather extensively when performing their BDD tests– be sure to catch up on BDD tests with Uma Ghotikar.

Scope of Closure

This table from Adobe highlights the scope of variously defined closures in ColdFusion.

Smooth Operators–Ternary, Elvis, and Safe Navigation

ColdFusion has seen its fair share of smooth operators, conditional and binary that is. (Or its Development Community, *wink wink*) Let’s take a look at the evolution of operators through ColdFusion.

Ternary Operator

Along with the release of ColdFusion 9 came the ternary operator. The Ternary Operator is a decision-making operator that requires three operands.

1. Condition

2. True Statement

3. False Statement

These three components are combined using a question mark (?) and colon (:).

((condition) ? trueStatement : falseStatement)

This operator was great when it was released. It was often used to conditionally transform or default method arguments. Ben Nadal once claimed that the ternary operator is everything that the IIF() method call wanted to be. The way the operator worked was by evaluating the condition given. If it was false, the false statement would be executed. Vice versa if the condition was true.

The ternary operator came with a downside though. Although its shorthand notation was much easier to write, it was also much harder to read.

Elvis Operator

In ColdFusion 11 or Splendor, the Elvis Operator debuted.  The Elvis operator is a binary operator and was introduced in a ?: format. It strove to shorten your conditional code and make it more elegant. The main purpose of the Elvis operator in ColdFusion is to assign the right default for a variable or an expression. In an expression, if the resultant value is not defined, then the object will be assigned to the leftmost part of the expression otherwise a default value (define at the rightmost part) will be assigned.

Example from Adobe:

myDisplayName = userName ?: “Anonymous”;

In the above example, if userName is defined, it will be assigned to the myDisplayName variable. If the userName is not defined, the value “Anonymous” will be assigned to the myDisplayName variable.

See the following example:

employeeName = getEmployeeName(ID) ?: “Joe”;

In the above example, if getEmployeeName(ID) does not return any value, the value “Joe” will be assigned to the employeeName variable.

You can also use this operator for Struct:

securityNumber = securityStruct[‘Joe’] ?: “”;

Safe Navigation Operator

The latest in Adobe’s line of operators is the Safe Navigation Operator. Released in 2016, the Safe Navigation operator is designed to increase the productivity of CFML developers. Before in your CFML apps, developers used safe checks as follows:

if(isDefined(“myvar”) && !isNull(myvar))

Nested structs had even more checks. But with the safe navigation operator, safe navigation is shown as follows.

writeOutput(myvar?.firstlevel?.nextlevel?.udf()?.trim());

The question mark operator along with the dot operator make up the safe navigator operator. It makes sure that your previously used variable is not defined or java null. Instead of posting an error, the function returns undefined for that particular access. The great thing about the safe navigation operator is that it can be used at all levels. Even if a single element in a string does not exist, the access will return as undefined. It can be used for both function calls or function and struct access combined. You can also use it in conjunction with the Elvis operator. The safe navigation operator can really help developers process their code with agility and better performance.

CFquery Tags and QueryExecute

What are CFquery Tags and QueryExecute? Cfquery tags pass queries or SQL statement along to a data source. These tags are primarily used to execute SQL statements. They can be used for any SQL DDL (Data Definition Language) or DML(Data Manipulation Language) statement. Mostly though, you will use them to execute SQL SELECT statements. Cfquery tags also return the following result variables in a structure:

These results can be then cached and execute stored procedures. Remember, when using Cfquery tags, use them in conjunction with Cfqueryparam to help secure your databases from SQL injection.

QueryExecute is a differentiation from the standard Cfquery tag. It simplifies the execution in the CFScript block. QueryExecute allows you to pass unnamed parameters within the query itself. Simply use a question mark as a placeholder for the unnamed parameter. It may be used as an independent function apart from the standard Cfquery tag.

Related: Everything CF Summit 2018: Securing Mature CFML Codebases

These are just a few modern tools that you can take advantage of when using CFML and Adobe ColdFusion. Remember, modernization is not here to give you aches and pains. It is here to help. Update your platform –if need be– and join modern CFML today!

About the Speaker: Nolan Erck has been a software developer for the past 12 years. Starting in the multi-billion dollar video game industry, he was credited with both Maxis and LucasArts. Currently, Nolan manages the SacInteractive Group and South of Shasta Consulting.

Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2018 Pre-Conference Shows- and It Looks Awesome!

Each year Adobe organizes ColdFusion Summit. It is held in Las Vegas, Nevada. This year it will be in Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, October 1 – 3, 2018.

Of course, let's not forget the CF Summit East 2018 which was held a few months ago on the east coast. After all the conferences about ColdFusion this year, this always feels like a nice topping at the end. And, since it's THE event, all the CFers are talking about it already.

Adobe never sleeps. Some of the webinars are already happening and some other interesting stuff. Let's dig in and see what it is and what we can expect.

Adobe ColdFusion Roadshows

and the topics were about the new features in the upcoming release and direction of Adobe ColdFusion along with more detailed plans over the next couple of years.

Adobe ColdFusion Roadshow February 20 – March 3

Adobe started the year very early. This one was held at

• San Diego, CA
• San Jose, CA
• Denver, CO
• Columbus, OH
• Memphis, TN
• Atlanta, GA

Related: Adobe ColdFusion 2018 Roadmap By Rakhsith Naresh

Adobe ColdFusion Roadshow Venues : April 27 – May 3

Adobe held a series of Roadshows on the East Coast starting from April this year. It was so cool to see how many CFers (not only from East Coast) came to see these.

The events were held at

• Boston, MA
• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Cleveland, OH
• Indianapolis, IN

Pre-Conference Labs

This is little something for the die-hard fans of ColdFusion. Well, not really. This is something that i recommend everyone should come and see. And LEARN. As much as the conference itself is fun and interesting and informational, sometimes I do feel this is when I learn most about the new stuff and I do get the time to digest it all. Also, it gives me some time to prepare for the main event.

Pre-conference Session 1: Troubleshooting Common CF Challenges

Charlie Arehart, the CF veteran, will talk about

• High CPU use in ColdFusion
• High memory use
• Long-running or hung requests
• Long-running Jdbc transactions
• ColdFusion crashing
• and much more.

Make sure you bring your laptop and don't worry- trial editions of the software to be used (including ColdFusion) will be provided in advance or at the event (for windows and Linux).

Pre-conference Session 2: Hands-on ColdFusion Security Workshop

Here you will learn how to find and fix security vulnerabilities in your ColdFusion codebases and about

“several classes of web application security vulnerabilities and how they pertain to CFML”. But that's not all you'll learn here. There's more…

For the full info about Pre-Conference Labs and to apply follow this link

Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2018

Organizers promise that this will be the most informative and the best CF Summit so far. I am sure it's not bragging and that it will be. Here's something to get you the first info

Here are some things to expect:

• Something for everyone: With 40 sessions spread out over 4 distinct tracks, there is something to savour for every developer, regardless of proficiency.
• Hands-on experience: We despise a slew of monotonous lectures as much as the next person. This year’s sessions are interactive and eye-opening, ensuring you put into practice what you learn at the summit.
• License to build: Purchasing a pass for the summit entails a free subscription to Adobe ColdFusion Builder (2018 release). We envisioned this with the hope that this year’s insights empower you to create new, cutting-edge applications.
• Network with the best: The cream of the crop in rapid application development are going to be there. Start forming your queries and remarks now – you’ll get ample opportunity to interact with them.
• Friends and frolic: These many sessions can leave a person exhausted. There’s enough great food, drinks and games to satiate the debonair in you after a hard day’s learning. It’s Vegas after all!

Related: Why You Should Attend Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2018?

Adobe CF Summit 2018: A Sneak Peek Into the Hottest Topics

“Conferences are really like parties, and an A-list party is one where A-list people are in attendance.”– Tim O’Reilly, Irish Businessman

The time we have all been waiting for is here! It’s time to start getting ready for this year’s CF Summit. Hosted by Adobe, this year’s event will be in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. The CF Summit is the best place to be for the hottest new updates and information for all CF’ers– beginners and experts alike. Here you can work on your networking skills and reach out to other developers in the CF community. There will be many speakers speaking on a wide range of topics.  

Amazon Alexa Skills with Adobe ColdFusion w/ Mike Callahan

Amazon Alexa is just one of the latest components of the new voice-activated wave of technology. Named after the ancient library of Alexandria, Alexa is a voice control system employed by Amazon for use in its compatible speakers. What really sets Alexa apart is its ability for voice recognition and activation. There is no need to press any button. Just state, “Alexa…” followed by the command. So how does this apply to ColdFusion? Adobe ColdFusion can be actually utilized to create and build “Skills” for the Amazon Alexa system.

The Takeaway: After this session, CF Summit attendees will have a clearer understanding of consuming utterances, intents, and slots about Alexa. Learn how to create custom voice responses that you can use to interact with Alexa. Following the session, you will have gained everything you will need to start including a custom CF framework and template.

About the Speaker: Mike Callahan’s ColdFusion experience dates back to the Allaire days. A veteran in the field, he now works in biotech using ColdFusion to create RFID solutions. He is currently working with Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Intro to Unit Testing, BDD, and Mocking using TestBox & MockBox w/ Uma Ghotikar

This session at CF Summit 2018 will introduce newer users to unit testing, BDD, and Mocking using TestBox and MockBox. This session is great for new users or for veterans looking for a nice refresher course. Unit testing is a software testing method by which source code, computer program modules, usage procedures, and operating procedures are tested to determine whether they are fit to use. This is particularly important for those about to make their apps live. It also discusses BDD (Behavioral Driven Development) styles. BDD is popular and easily used for unit testing. Mocking allows you to unit test in a controlled way before making your application go live.

The Takeaway: You will discover how to do unit testing and what is the importance of. It also presents guidelines to write the unit tests. xUnit and BDD styles of testing is covered for TestBox, Given-When-Then syntax, and structure for writing unit tests. There will be a Mocking demonstration using MockBox. This is a must-attend for those looking for more information on testing.

About the Speaker: Uma Ghotikar has seven years of real-time experience working in technical fields. She is an expert in web app development, database design, and database development.

Related: 077 Fundamentals of Unit Testing, BDD and Mocking (using TestBox and MockBox) with Uma Ghotikar

Securing Mature CFML Databases w/ Pete Freitag

The 3rd CF Summit session on our list is all about security with the ColdFusion security guru himself, Pete Freitag. As we all know, no system is 100% secure. That doesn’t mean that we should neglect our security concerns. We as developers should strive to reach maximum security concerns for all of our databases. This is particularly tricky when it comes to large, complex mature databases.

The Takeaway: This session will provide you with some techniques and insight for finding vulnerabilities hidden within your code and app. This should allow you to improve your CFML security over time.

About the Speaker: Pete Freitag is ColdFusion’s resident security guru. He has nearly 20 years of ColdFusion development experience. Co-founder of Foundeo.com, he has developed two top-notch CF security products in FuseGuard and Hackmycf.com.

Related: 020 Secrets of High-Security ColdFusion Code, With Pete Freitag

The Many Hidden Benefits of the Adobe API Manager to Unlock the Power of APIs w/ Brian Sappey

APIs are undoubtedly the core of both programming and ColdFusion. This is why it is so wonderful to have the Adobe API Manager. This awesome tool can definitely help you manage your APIs and move away from the previous close coupling of ColdFusion.

The Takeaway: This session will teach you on how to utilize all the hidden features of Adobe’s API Manager. You will also learn about the raw power of native APIs and how the API manager can help you handle them. As a bonus, you will also receive a custom Word Press plugin that helps integrate internal and external APIs with Adobe’s native APIs.

About the Speaker: Brian Sappey is a ColdFusion supporter and API expert. He is currently advocating the use of APIs in the E-commerce infrastructure of Market America and SHOP.com.

Related: 063 Adobe API Manager (the business case) + CF Summit sneak peak with Elishia Dvorak

Take your CF Apps from Local Dev to Production with CommandBox and CFConfig and Docker w/ Brad Wood

This session is a crash course in CommandBox, CFConfig, and Docker. CommandBox and CFConfig are powerful automation tools you can use for local devs. These tools were developed to help with:

• Developer Productivity

• Tool Interaction

• Package Management

• Embedded CFML Servers

• Application Scaffolding

Docker, on the other hand, is paving the way with containerization. Containerization makes apps much more portable by allowing these apps to run on any machine without requiring their own VM. Along with portability, containerization is much less resource intensive.

The Takeaway: At this CF Summit session you’ll get a comprehensive look at standardizing your server infrastructure. This can help you to simplify the number of servers you need and create a standard for your web apps. There will also be a brief intro into Docker and what containerization can do for you. Attendance is highly recommended for all.

About the Speaker: Brad has been programming ColdFusion since 2001 and has used every version of CF since 4.5. He first fell in love with ColdFusion as a way to easily connect a database to his website for dynamic pages. He enjoys configuring and performance tuning high-availability Windows and Linux ColdFusion environments as well as SQL Server. Brad is the ColdBox Platform developer advocate at Ortus Solutions (https://www.ortussolutions.com/) and lead developer of the CommandBox CLI.

Related: 070 CommandBox 4 Deep Dive (new version revealed) with Brad Wood

Deploying ColdFusion to the Amazon Cloud w/ Keen Haynes

A major decision that every CF developer faces is how to deploy their newly minted web apps. There are many different options. One of the most popular options is cloud hosting. Cloud hosting is like having a dedicated virtual house – one that you can instantly clone for more space when a horde of out of town guests arrive. Amazon offers cloud hosting through its Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS offers pay-as-you-go pricing and includes a 12-month free tier to help you acclimate to the platform.

The Takeaway: CF Summit 2018 attendee will learn the ins and outs of deploying your CF web apps to the Amazon Cloud. The primary focus will be on using Jenkins and the AWS Console. There will also be a discussion on how CF interfaces with Amazon services Lambda and S3.

About the Speaker: Keen Haynes is a retired US Marine who worked with ColdFusion since 1998. He was previously part of the Allaire/Macromedia Consulting Service Team. He currently works for Thermo Fisher Scientific as an AWS certified Senior Developer.

Related:037 Level Up Your ColdFusion Web Apps With Amazon Web Services, with Brian Klaas

Real World Scenarios for Modern CFML w/ Nolan Erck

With the release of the latest versions of CF (particularly CF 2018), there were many new language features added. Some of these features include:

• Closures
• Functional Programming Constructs
• QueryExecute
• Safe Navigation Operator
• Elvis Operator

For CF’ers new to functional or object-oriented programming, recognizing the benefits of these features can prove to be a real challenge.

The Takeaway: This CF Summit session focuses on the new language enhancements in CFML. The focus here will be less on theory but more so on real-world application. All code demos performed during this session is about actual scenarios you may encounter during your stint with ColdFusion. You will learn more about closures and when to use them. You will learn more about the differences between the Elvis operator, ternary operator, and safe navigation operator and when to use them. There will be a topic on when it is appropriate to use CFQuery tags and QueryExecute. This session is for intermediate to veteran level CF’ers. Those attending should have a base knowledge of CFML and concepts such as arrays, queries, variable scoping, and anonymous functions.

About the Speaker: Nolan Erck has been a software developer for the past 12 years. Starting in the multi-billion dollar video game industry, he was credited with both Maxis and LucasArts. Currently, Nolan manages the SacInteractive Group and South of Shasta Consulting.

Related: 047 Best Practices Are Best, Except When They’re Not with Nolan Erck

These are just a few of many great sessions to learn from at the 2018 CF Summit.

Be sure to get your ticket on time and receive a free copy of Adobe’s 2018 ColdFusion Builder!

CF Summit 2018: Adobe ColdFusion 2018 and Amazon Alexa Skills

In today’s ever-changing technological landscape, new visions are emerging every day. One of the latest developments is “voice command tech”. Amazon leads the way with its flagship platform, Alexa. One of the best things about Alexa is the ability for custom skills to be made. Adobe ColdFusion and its JVM core can help you do just that. Let’s take a look at what Alexa is, the basics that surround it, and some CF frameworks that can help you develop your very own Alexa skills.

What is Amazon Alexa?

So what is Amazon Alexa? It is Amazon’s cloud-based voice service used with many compatible devices. Using just your voice, you can use Alexa to access and perform an ever-growing array of functions and tasks.

Fun Fact!—Alexa’s roots actually came from Star Trek! The computer voice and navigational command system from the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek: TOS and Star Trek: The Next Generation serves as inspiration.

The name “Alexa”  was due to the hard consonant “X” sound. This makes it easier for it to recognize for voice activation. It came out in November 2014 alongside the Echo, the first Amazon Alexa compatible speaker. Since its release, Alexa can now register with not only the Echo series but with third-party speakers such as:

• Belkin
• D-Link
• iHome
• Samsung
• Huawei
• And much much more!

Alexa and ColdFusion

Alexa operates and performs functions called skills. There are many different types of skills that Alexa can perform. The great thing about developing Alexa skills is the correlation between Alexa and Java. Any Java-based language is so easy to use when building new Alexa skills. CFML is no exception. At the 2017 CFCamp in Munich, Evagoras Charalambous gave a presentation on the foundation of using ColdFusion to build Alexa skills. He focused first on defining your app on the Amazon Development Portal. Next, he discussed how to make the skill talk to your ColdFusion code. He provided a sample CF project for the user to take away and use to develop their own app.

In order to run any Alexa Skill, it uses a custom web server or AWS Lambda. Non-lambda functions must be accessible with HTTPS. Enter ColdFusion. Coldfusion and CFML may be used to create the custom web server. Things to note are the conversion factors needed. There are differences in code format and syntax between platforms. Switching must be made between Amazon’s raw JSON format to ColdFusion’s format construct. Once done, CF can be used to handle launch and intent requests, sample utterances, and session end requests. ColdFusion can be the primary input, but it must be output as usable JSON for Alexa. The tricky part is debugging. If a CF error occurs, the error message only indicates as an error and not as a CF error. Free third-party apps such as Postman can help you out with this issue.

Related: Framework for CF developed Alexa Skills

Developing Skills

There are two major parts of skill when developing. These are the “skill service” and the “skill interface.” The skill service is the part that implements the logic associated with speech request can generate a response to the POST. The second part is the skill interface, which handles several different functions:

• Speech Recognition
• Parsing your Request into an HTTP POST
• Receive Responses from Skill Implementation
• Synthesize Response Speech

When developing skills, activation utterances will be defined directly on the skill interface. This is what is used to address Alexa and known as the invocation name. All activation utterances may be developed using ColdFusion as long as the primary output is converted into usable JSON. If building a greeting skill, for example, enter greeter as the invocation name. You may then call upon Alexa to call upon “greeter”.

“Alexa, tell greeter to say hello.”

Along with activation utterances, the skill interface defines intent utterances. Once again, these intents can be developed using CFML.

These are the responses that are generated by Alexa.

“Alexa, tell greeter to say hello.” (ACTIVATION)

“Hello.”

The route from start to finish for skill activation is as follows:

Alexa sends received audio to the skill interface. Skill Interface resolves words to spoken intent which then gets sent to the skill service. The skill service then triggers the intended response.

Framework Creation for Amazon Alexa Skills

There are three basic steps to creating a framework for Amazon Skills according to  Leor Brenmen on appcelerator.com:

1. Define your Skill Interface on the Amazon Developer portal
2. **Add a custom API to your API Builder Project that will
   • Handle the request (a POST from the Skill Interface)
   • Construct a JSON object response of a certain structure
3. Configure your Skill Interface to point to the URL of your custom API

**These custom APIs are easily developed using CFML in coordination with a tool such as Adobe ColdFusion API Manager**

Ok. So, what can Alexa do?

• Ordering
• Home Automation
• Music
• Sports
• Messaging and Call Services
• Business Purposes

Remember to test your skills prior to deployment to eliminate any bugs that may interfere with proper operations. Also, keep in mind, that outsiders with malicious intent may try to exploit your Skill. Using a modern CF web server can help to maximize stability and security.

Related: 020 Secrets of High-Security ColdFusion Code, With Pete Freitag

Where can you Obtain Third Party Apps?

We can obtain Alexa skills through a companion app. This app is available on the Apple store, Google Play Store, and Amazon Appstore. Once downloaded, this app allows you to pick up a multitude of Alexa skills. Also, Amazon makes it easy for developers to create their own custom skills using the Alexa Skills Kit.    

Now, another opportunity has arisen in regards to learning about ColdFusion’s interaction with Alexa. At the 2018 CF Summit, Mike Callahan will speak on developing Alexa skills. His session will cover everything from consuming utterances, intents, and slots. Attendees will also walk away with a custom framework and all the information needed to start constructing Alexa skills. Don’t miss out on this exciting chance to learn more about the future of CF and voice tech.

Reserve your ticket for the CF Summit 2018 today!

ColdFusion Summit 2017 Full Review & List of Presentations

Intense two days of presentations, meetings, and networking at Las Vegas and all that under the Adobe hat. And an awesome pre-conference training. And a great breakfast!

From November 15-17 2017 Adobe organized its yearly conference with the main topic ColdFusion. We took enough time to track down and put together a nice list of 13+ useful resources and slides from the speakers. Let's dive into it right away.

1. 3 ways to test your ColdFusion API by Gavin Pickin

Here's what Gavin talked about:

• How to use Testbox to test your CFCs 2 different ways
• Different types and ways to test JavaScript
• Overview of client/server side testing tools
• Building testing into your workflow
• You are one of many that are not testing your APIs thoroughly

The slides are available here

2. CFConfig – A New Way to Manage Your ColdFusion Engine Config by Brad Wood

Brad covered the generic JSON format that's used and talked about how you can distribute your code with a full generic set of configuration including CF mappings, datasources, custom tags, or request timeouts without needing to worry about what version of CF the end user is going to have. This tool is a must for anyone using Vagrant, Docker, local development environments, or just managing more than one server.

The slides are available here

3. What's new in CF 10, 11, and 2016 that you may have missed? by Charlie Arehart

ColdFusion veteran as everyone knows Charlie talked about moving up to CF2016, or 11-> In doing so, are you skipping over 11, or perhaps even 10, in that move?

The slides from his presentation are available here

4. Adventures With WebSockets by Giancarlo Gomez

We already talked about this in our very own CF Alive Podcast episode 1 with Giancarlo. The full presentation and slides are available here

5. Practical Digital Accessibility: Problems and Solutions, by Bouton Jones

It addresses the compelling reasons — including legal — for applying Accessibility to digital documentation: Word, PDF, PowerPoint, and Web. Examples of poor Accessibility are presented with illustrations of the resulting effects for users with disabilities. And, it's covering strategies and solutions.

Slides are available here

6. Solving problems in ways never before possible, with FusionReactor 7 and FR CLOUD, by David Tattersall

See how FusionReactor goes beyond just “monitoring” to deliver more depth & insight to your production applications and servers – both on premise and (now) in the cloud.

Slides are available here

7. Level Up Your Web Apps with Amazon Web Services, by Brian Klaas

• Get super fast, infinitely scalable file storage with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
• Invoke on-demand microservices through AWS Lambda
• Create entire asynchronous, serverless workflows with AWS Step Functions
• Utilize a high-throughput NoSQL datastore with DynamoDB
• Plan for common problems when dealing with cloud service providers

Slides are available here

8. Power of Simplicity in FW/1 Framework, by Masha Edelen

Targeting intermediate level of developers this presentation shows ideas for the use of the framework as well as demonstrate commonly used functions.

Slides are available here

9. HMVC Modular Architecture, by Luis Majano

• Don't get stuck back in 2005!
• What is a package/module in CFML
• How to create distributed MVC
• The power of drop-in module conventions
• How to manage your app's dependencies
• Sharing your modular code with the community to stop reinventing the wheel

Slides are available here

10. Keep Control of your PDF Files, By Shirak Avakian

Learn how easy is to securely share confidential information within and outside your organization with controlled access and permissions.

Slides are available here

11. send.Better() – Giving Email a REST, by M. Clemente

The session covered:

• The benefits provided by using a transactional email service
• A pragmatic, use-driven comparison of the major players in the space
• Pitfalls, considerations, and tips when configuring your DNS records and integrating a transactional email service with your application
• Interacting with the actual APIs, and showing how easy they are to use with ColdFusion

Slides are available here

12. From Legacy to Modern, Techniques to update your Legacy Sites, by Dan Fredericks

Tips to take that legacy CFML site and make it more modern. Dan went over some thoughts on what to look for in a legacy site which can help you determine if you should refactor or not.

Slides are available here

13. Building Better SQL Server Databases, by Eric Cobb

Direct explanations that can be incorporated immediately into your daily development, without all of the overly technical DBA mumbo-jumbo. Regardless of your skill level or programming language of choice, if you use SQL Server this session is for you.

Slides are available here

14. Writing Secure CFML, by Pete Freitag

Pete did another full day training on Writing Secure CFML for the pre-conference. It was sold out at 50 seats and was a lot of fun to present. The demo code for that session can be found here: github.com/foundeo/cfml-security-training.

Stay tuned as we will be updating the list in the next few days.

Some of the material and info about the speakers and their presentations were picked directly from Adobe CFSummit website and we thank them for that.

Interesting articles:

CF Summit 2017 – Part 1

Nolan Erck conference recap

ColdFusion Summit official Adobe website

Comprehensive list of ColdFusion Conferences 2017, and What Can We expect in 2018

The year 2017 was very “generous” with conferences about ColdFusion. If we take a look how many of them were, plus webinars and other online resources, we can say it’s the best so far. And to think that a year or two back, people were asking “is ColdFusion dead?”

Muracon 2017

Muracon 2017 conference was held February 9 and 10 in downtown Sacramento, at the Sheraton Grand Hotel.

“MuraCon 2017 was focused on experiences – those of the Mura user and developer, and of the digital community at large – with a power-packed roster of presentations from industry-leading experts and prominent Mura CMS community members.”

The attendance was the highest ever, which made the organizers happy. It makes me happy as well! ColdFusion is Alive! 🙂

The Muracon 2018 is already announced and will be held on April 5-6 2018. See you there for the first time this year!

Official website

Adobe ColdFusion Government Summit

This conference took place in Washington DC, on Wednesday, April 19, 2017. The main topic was to learn how government agencies across the U.S. are leveraging Adobe ColdFusion to rapidly build and deploy web and mobile applications. This is a big thing for ColdFusion since there were a lot of debates about the security and cybersecurity of CFML. But hey, if the government is using it, shouldn’t that be ‘enough said’?

Anyway, we got to:

• Learn how Adobe is committed to ColdFusion, both now and in the future
• Gain insight into ColdFusion improvements and its surrounding ecosystems
• Explore product improvements Adobe has in store for future versions of ColdFusion

I believe this was the first time Rakshith Naresh talked about the CF Roadmap 2018.

Official website

IntoTheBox 2017 ColdFusion Conference

This was the 4th year in a row that the ITB was held. It offered a lots of useful information and fantastic barbecue (I myself am not that big meat lover, but the people really enjoyed, and so did I hanging out with them). Organizers are the guys from OrtusSolutions, Brad, Gavin, Jorge and Luis.

It was in Houston, on Wed, Thurs, Friday April 26-28, 2017. And, it wasn’t just about Box CFML products – sessions on ColdFusion and development best practices and a place for CF developers that want to take their developer skills to another level and earn more. There were two simultaneous tracks per day plus some keynotes.

You can call this conference the Face of Modern ColdFusion Development

It’s about empowering CF developers to modernize themselves

My favourite part was about how to inspire CF developers.

• Letting go of CF Language-shaming

• ColdFusion developers need to be proud of their line of work, because you are doing modern stuff

• Bust the CF myths that drag us down

Featured Technologies

• ColdBox

• CommandBox

• ContentBox

• DataBoss

• TestBox

• MockBox

• LogBox

• CF Couchbase

• ProfileBox

• CacheBox

• WireBox

• FuseGuard

• ColdFusion

• Lucee

• Java

• CouchBase

• NGINX

• NodeJS

• Angular JS

• Ionic

• Preside Platform

• Rabbit MQ

• Vagrant

• Fusion Reactor

• Heroku

• Docker

• Dokku

And the famous Mexican hats at the end! 🙂

The next ITB Conference is set for April 25-27, 2018 in Houston TX.

Official website

cf.Objective 2017

This is an annual programming conference originally hosted in Minneapolis, MN, with content geared toward mid-to-advanced-level developers. The conference is focused primarily on ColdFusion/CFML, but has grown with its audience over the years and now features talks on JavaScript – with a dedicated conference track affectionately known as js.Objective(), Java, Git, Groovy, the JVM, SQL, NoSQL and other related technologies as well.

This is noticeable right away since the name of the conference used to be Dev.Objective. cf.Objective definitely states that it is again more ColdFusion centered.

The conference session list typically includes topics by speakers from companies such as Google, Adobe, Mozilla, Netflix, and IBM.

I wasn’t able to attend it this year, but I interviewed most of the speakers for the CF Alive Podcast and followed it closely online.

cf.Objective 2017 interviews, summary and slides (14+ links of ColdFusion goodness)

Official website

NCDevCon

NCDevCon was well organized, great speakers, useful knowledge. The NCDevCon Conference is held annually on the Centennial Campus of NC State University in Raleigh, North Carolina and covers a wide variety of web development and design topics including Web / HTML5 / CSS, Mobile, Javascript / jQuery and ColdFusion.

We are also still waiting for this years NCDevCon and I know it will be a blast!

NCDevCon 2017 talks, summary and slides (14+ links of ColdFusion sessions)

Official website

CFCamp 2017

CFCamp in Munich was awesome. 150 people came, which is a record for the organizers, gallons of coffee drank, and an ice cream machine!

This was a 2-day full-on conference with 5 official coffee brakes, and with a great quiz at the end of day 1 with Mark Drew and Rob Dudley from Localhost Podcast. We have had a pleasure of listening 25 presentations with 20+ speakers. Very impressive.

A general impression from everyone I’ve talked with is that it was an excellent organized show, with very interesting topics, covering ColdFusion, and also covering some interesting topics that are not completely CF-related. An example is a talk about IoT, by Dorian Schneltzer, and Cyber-Security seen by an IT-Manager.

Big thanks to Michael Hnat, the organizer of CFCamp! We hear that this venue might be too small for the next year, because it has reached its maximum capacity!

Big thanks to all the speakers and see you next year! Michi (Michael Hnat) is still keeping us in the dark about this year’s conference, but I have a feeling it will be awesome.

Wonderful experience at CFCamp in Munich (15+ useful resources and slides)

Official website

Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2017

Intense two days of presentations, meetings, and networking at Las Vegas and all that under the Adobe hat. And an awesome pre-conference training.

This is basically a place to be if your a CFer. Or you’re connected to ColdFusion in any way. So many powerful developers, and smart people in one place. Just plain awesome. And a very powerful message again, that CF is very much alive!

ColdFusion Summit 2017 by Adobe Full Review and List of Presentations

Official website

ColdFusion webinars

Ortus Developer Week 2017

Very interesting thing to follow this year was Ortus Developer Week 2017– FREE, Live Webinars For a Whole Week! Technically it is not a conference but a webinar, it still was very interesting to see and watch.

Sessions are covering software development and usage of any of our open source and commercial products. It is hosted by the Ortus Team and other developers from around the world.

Here are the speakers at the ODW2017:

1. Brad Wood

2. Luis Majano

3. Gavin Pickin

4. Eric Peterson

5. Erik Brandsberg

6. Esme Acevedo

7. George Murphy

8. John Farrar

9. Jon Clausen

10. Nolan Erck

11. Sander Bruinsma

All of the sessions were recorded and available for download, but it is always good to attend these webinars and ask a few questions and follow the general chat.

5 days, 15 Live Sessions. What a threat… I hope we will have some interesting stuff this year as well! Waiting for the guys from Ortus to see what they’re cooking.

ColdFusion Docker Containers Roadshow Webinar

The second webinar that was also organized by OrtusSolutions was ColdFusion Docker Containers Roadshow Webinar with Mark Drew.

These series were held throughout the September, every Friday at 11 AM CST. Topics covered anything you would need to build sustainable containerized ColdFusion applications using CommandBox, ColdBox, and ContentBox CMS technologies.

The guys at Ortus have pretty interesting topics to discuss. Here’s what Brad Wood said:

Docker has been the “next big thing” for a few years now and this has led to a lot of questions from ColdFusion developers and sys admins.  

• What the heck is Docker?

• How is it different from just running VMs?

• How do I deploy it?

• Is it secure?

• What are the tradeoffs?

One very good thing is that you will also have access to recordings of each webinar, in case you missed it and/or want to watch it more than once. I know I did see it twice already!

That’s all for this year folks. 2018 here we come, two are already announced, and it’s a matter of days when the next one/s will be.

ColdFusion Conferences 2018

2018 was awesome!

That's the only thing I can say. I am blown away by the amount of energy and enthusiasm I have seen both from Adobe people and from CFers.

In the last days of 2018, I am happily saying that ColdFusion is now more alive than ever. I will summarize sooo many great things from 2018 in just a few words, and go and prepare for 2019. I hear we're going to have even more exciting conferences and announcements than in 2018 (!). So, as I am finishing this one, I am rushing to find out everything about 2019. Talk soon!

ColdFusion 2018 Conferences full report

CF rocks!

Join the CF Alive revolution

• Get early access to the CF Alive book and videos
• Be part of a new movement for improving CF's perception in the world.
• Contribute to the CF Alive revolution
• Connect with other CF developers and managers
• There is no cost to membership.

Michaela Light is the host of the CF Alive Podcast and has interviewed more than 100 ColdFusion experts. In each interview, she asks "What Would It Take to make CF more alive this year?" The answers still inspire her to continue to write and interview new speakers.

Michaela has been programming in ColdFusion for more than 20 years. She founded TeraTech in 1989. The company specializes in ColdFusion application development, security and optimization. She has also founded the CFUnited Conference and runs the annual State of the CF Union Survey.