I just read, via Matt Woodward - who is talking at Scotch on the Rocks 2008 by the way - that Adobe are offering Flex Builder 2 at no cost to Students and Faculty at Educational institutions world wide.

Great news in my opinion.

Following on from this, I've often pondered how Adobe could inject ColdFusion into education. Here in the UK, there are a great deal of Universities and Colleges that are using ColdFusion in one way or another; hosting their website, offering hosted services to students, or even in the rare case actually teaching it.

I believe the University of Abertay, Dundee actually teach ColdFusion as part of their syllabus.

All this is great, but what more could be done to help ColdFusion penetrate the educational sector, and more importantly see graduating students come out looking for ColdFusion jobs rather than just whatever is currently being taught (which in my case was Java or Eiffel).

• Provide students on any Computer Science related course with a free copy of ColdFusion Standard?
• Offer each Computer Science (or related) department at every University or College a free copy of ColdFusion Enterprise?

What else could be done?

MAX Europe is now over and I thought I would lay down some initial thoughts on the conference as a whole.

It's been a great first conference in Europe for Adobe, and it will undoubtedly get better, but there are certainly a few things they need to tackle... and I hope all of this comes across as constructive critisicm.

• It appears that a lot of the original speakers have been replaced at the last minute - this includes the talk I ended up giving on ColdFusion Server Monitoring and troubleshooting. Now, this isn't a huge problem if the replacement speaker knows their stuff - I like to think I do - but there were some sessions where the speakers had definately been put to the sword.
• Because of the numbers, lots of hotels were required, and this meant people were spread all over the place ... the furthest "MAX" hotel was a 40 minute walk. Other hotels were right across the road. Not a big deal if you've got some nice scenary or something to keep you occupied, but to dump my bag I had to walk 20 mins to and from the hotel and it was a building construction site the entire way.
• Putting "similar" talks on at the same time. There was around 8 ColdFusion talks, and on Tuesday afternoon at 4pm, four of them were scheduled against each other. This didn't just happen with CF sessions. Poor organisation.
• Introductary talks on the last day... There was an Intro to AIR talk on Wednesday, which is after other talks such as AIR APIs, Air persistant storage, AIR synchronisation. Again, poor organisation.
• The lack of intimacy.... there were 1,200+ folks at MAX Europe, and it's very hard to get time with people. This is not a problem restricted to MAX (though I imagine it was much worse at Chicago than Barcelona), but one of the things we have found with Scotch on the Rocks, is that people like intimacy as they get the chance to talk to the Product Managers, the speakers, other delegates. It's a tough one though, as Adobe have such a huge designer/developer base. Not sure if there is much you can do here.
• Power.... depending in which session room you were in, the power supplies were on the other side of the room - which meant that speakers couldn't plug their laptops in and with how often people were using their laptops their batteries were looow. Power extensions should have been provided.
• Rooms were really hot and stuffy.... or freezing cold. Maybe I'm being pinikity here but during one of the AIR talks, Mark Drew, Sean Corfield, Kev McCabe and myself were in the front row and we did nothing but yawn - absolutely nothing to do with the talk, it was just so damn warm!!!
• Food was ... poor. Having a little taste of the local cusine is a good thing - but every day, and at every evening event??? Come on. It was tapas or nothing.
• Lack of cuttlery. OK, this is fairly minor, but when you're having to use a spoon to eat food that really needs to be skewered ... well, it's a little tricky.
• Room organiser/helpers. Not sure what it was like on the first day, but certainly by end of play Tuesday (when I gave the talk) the person who was supposed to help me with my set up - even if it was just the microphone - had disappeared and was no where to be found. Thankfully I'm not entirely stupid and can take care of myself, but still , it was very unprofessional.
• Evening events were average. The band were OK, and the poker was fun but ... it was seriously nothing special. We bailed out just before 10pm (when the beer ran out) and headed off to find a little pub that did the most amazing food!!!
• Ran out of beer - nuff said.

OK ... so that's a fair sized list. However, I hope's all taken constructively. As the organiser of Scotch on the Rocks, believe me, I know how difficult conferences are too run and my own opinion is that you need to know the bad, otherwise how can you fix it.

I'll finish by saying, well done to the MAX Europe organising team for putting on a good show. Negative items aside, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I'll follow up by posting on the good!

Here's what I'm up to at MAX Europe.

Monday:

• Project San Dimas
• General Session
• Working with Persistent Data in AIR
• Using AIR APIs
• Local Database Access with AIR
• CF BoF

Tuesday:

• General Session
• Leveraging CF with AIR
• Building AIR apps using Ajax and Aptana
• AIR Security
• ColdFusion Server Monitoring & Troubleshooting (ME!!!)
• Sneaks

Wednesday:

• Adobe Platform Roadmap
• Inspire Session: Buzzword
• CFEclipse

I'll be leaving just after lunch time on Wednesday as I have a 6pm flight back to Edinburgh.

By a twist of fate, I will now be at MAX in Barcelona.

Not only will I be attending, but I am now giving the ColdFusion 8 Server Monitoring talk at 4pm on Tuesday.

I hope to see some folks there, as it turns out that Sean Corfield, Ben Forta, Dirk Eismann and Ted Patrick are all speaking at the same time.

I'm not sure how many sessions I will attend but I'll definately be getting involved with the ColdFusion BoF that is due to run on Monday.

I've got lots of things I want to discuss with Ben Forta, and the others who attend. I may even give away a couple of Fuzzy Orange tshirts.

Also, it will be nice to meet up with some folks again, including Ben, Sean, Mark Drew, etc in addition to finally meeting up with Sumi Lim and Kristen Schofield from Adobe.

Now, if only I can find my passport ...

Free Scotch on the Rocks 2008 Ticket that is.

If your coming to Adobe Max Europe next week then you'll have the chance to win a free Ticket to Scotch on the Rocks 2008 in Edinburgh, Scotland & A T-Shirt (L & 3XL Only).

All you have to do is come and find Kev Mc on Monday 15th October 2007 and be the first to say "May the Scotch Be With You" after 7pm. (This should give everyone a fair chance.)

If you don't know he he'll be wearing a Scotch On The Rocks Promo T-Shirt and have short hair.

There is a picture of him :

And if it helps his Simpson's Avatar is here:

We will of course throughout the run up to Scotch on the Rocks 2008 be giving away tickets at the mini tours and other occasions so there's still a chance for those of you not able to attend Max this year.

Tickets and Prices will be released in November so watch this space.

May the Scotch Be With You

I'm delighted to announce that Fuzzy Orange are now offering two ColdFusion Administration courses.

The two courses; ColdFusion Installation and Configuration, and ColdFusion Advanced Administration and Configuration, are both 3 days long and can be configured for both ColdFusion 7 and 8.

For more details, check out the Training page.

I'll be heading through to Edinburgh this Tuesday (9th) to attend the Adobe Creative License Tour

I'll be hovering about the venue in the morning, before attending the RIA presentation in the afternoon.

Feel free to say hello - look for the big fuzzy orange :)

Well, it's finally confirmed. I won't be at MAX Europe.

Instead of being in Barcelona I will be in London giving ColdFusion training.

A real shame, but these things happen.

Going against my better judgement - for purely selfish reasons - I just wanted to blog that all of next week, you can win a ticket to MAX Europe.

Every day someone will win a ticket, in addition to some software. Even better though, on the friday you can also win flights and accommodation in addition to your ticket.

This is a great offer from Adobe, and it's about my only chance of going to Barcelona - hence why I didn't want to tell anyone :)

Full details can be found on Andrew Shorten's blog

Adobe UK are on the road this month, through to December with their Creative License Tour.

I'm particularly interested in the Web Development track, which will cover ColdFusion, Flex and Air.

You can find out more information here, and if you're attending the show in Edinburgh on the 9th October, let me know.