Intergral are well know for their fantastic FusionDebug and FusionReactor products, and for some time now they've been teasing us with the promise of a new addition to the Fusion product family; FusionAnalytics.

FusionAnalytics allows us to interpret and analyze log information, pulling data together into an organised and consolidated time series, giving us a unique perspective into what our applications are doing. No longer will we have to manually trawl through files trying to figure out what's went wrong, why things are slow, or to help us identify hot spots and trends and to plan capacity based on what is reported.

Here's a few snapshots showing the FusionAnalytics in action.

FusionAnalytics has reaped a huge amount of praise already, and that's even before it's been released in Alpha. Ray Camden even blogged that FusionAnalytics was the coolest thing at CFUnited 2008.

Well, here we are in 2009, and at Scotch on the Road: London, we're going to have Intergral's David Stockton not just talk about the product, but also demo the product.

The Fusion products are the essentials tools for all CFML development and monitoring, and Analytics is going to take things forward in such a way that it will blow your mind.

Get your ticket for Scotch now.

At cf.Objective this year, I'll be giving a session titled "Indiana Jones and the Server of Doom"

"When a server goes down, or starts to misbehave there is a lot more at risk that just the availability of the service you are providing. The reputation of your business, and indeed it's survival are also put under the microscope. Whilst it's impossible to guarantee the 100% uptime of a server, there are tools available to us to help help monitor, troubleshoot and pro-actively fix issues at the first sign of trouble.

In this session we're going to examine what affects our server configuration, discuss optimisation techniques and go hands on with the tools available to us to prevent degradation and ultimately crashes of our servers. So bring your server troubles to the session and see how they can be solved. Fedora and whip are optional."

The big question though is: should Indiana Jones give the presentation?

In addition to Scotch on the Road and CFUnited, I'm delighted to also be confirmed for this years cf.Objective() conference in Minneapolis.

I've typically shied away from presenting during the conference season because of how much time and effort is required organising Scotch on the Rocks, but with the new format this year, i.e. taking it on the road, I've actually found myself with a lot more free time and this is allowing me to do the rounds, so to speak.

I'm also speaking at a few other more localised events through the year, and hopefully one or two more conferences.

OK, this is a Vote for Me posting, but if you really want to see me in action giving my "ColdFusion and PDF: Improving Your Workflow" session, which I've blogged about here, then go vote for it at http://cfunited.com/go/survey/166

At ColdFusionCamp in Munich last week I tried something new. Actually, I tried two new things.

• I presented my "ColdFusion and PDF: Improving Your Workflow" talk for the first time
  
• My slides were bullet point free
  

Bullet point free slides aren't a new thing, and to be honest my inspiration came from a book by Garr Reynolds "PresentationZen". It's a great book and really opens your eyes and mind to what is so wrong about the way 99% of presentations are given. 

The book was really the last push I needed to change my style. It's something I've been unhappy with for sometime to be honest. Although I like to think I'm a dynamic, and hopefully entertaining presenter, no matter how much fluff I add, I've effectively just been reading off the screen. And that sucks. For me, and for my audience.

I know just how many times I've attended presentation and fallen asleep after 10 minutes. It's (generally) nothing to do with the speakers knowledge. It's the delivery process. Reading bullet point after bullet point. Actually, another issue that results in your audience falling asleep is if you have the lights off. Always make sure the lights are on. Dim the lights near the projection screen if necessary, but a dark room just makes everyone tired.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are definitely presentations where bullet points are required. There's no way around it, but for the vast majority it's really not required.

So, for ColdFusionCamp my approach, which was of course heavily influenced by what I read in "PresentationZen", was to ditch the bullet points. The new approach was to have every slide represented by an image. An image that told a story.

There's a lot of pros to this approach and a few cons. The primary con is that without the aid of text you REALLY need to know your material. However, the primary con is also the most important pro. By really knowing your material you don't need any text. 

My presentation consisted of 7 slides, each telling their part of our story; how to use ColdFusion and PDF to improve workflow before moving onto a demonstration and then a walk through of the important code (of which there is very little because the CFPDFFORM tag really does it all for us).

The feedback I've received so far from my talk has been overwhelmingly positive. 

• The speaker really knew his material
  
• The slides were visually appealing 
  
• The speaker, his slides and his material were entertaining, funny and informatiive
  
• I love the fact your cat is called Frodo Baggins (you had to be there!)
  

As well as the new presentation delivery, I also took the approach of giving away goodies as part of the presentation. Ultimately if someone from the audience asked a question, or answered one of mine, they got a prize.

There's nothing worse than giving a presentation to an audience who are static, or maybe just too shy to get involved. For me, I like my audience to participate and because as a speaker I can't guarantee they will be, I cheat by offering to give them something if they do.

The Munich audience were VERY interactive with lots of questions, and discussions and ultimately I ran out of things to give away. I even met up with two people from the crowd the next day to continue discussing the topic of ColdFusion and PDF.

Overall I'm extremely pleased with how things went in Munich, even if my laptop did try to ruin everything. ALWAYS have a backup of the material you need. If I didn't have that, my talk would never have happened. I don't know if I'll bring this presentation to the US in 2009, but I'm definitely planning on speaking at cf.Objective() and hopefully CFUnited... and of course Scotch on the Road.

Well, the first ever ColdFusionCamp in Munich has been and gone. And it was a fantastic success, though it was not without it's hiccups.

To be fair the hiccups mainly affected me, and because of them, I ended up missing all but one of the talks. 

About 5 minutes into Mark Drew's opening talk my MacBookPro decided to freeze. After a power off/on it decided to show me a flashing folder instead of the Apple icon. This usually happens due to the Mac not being able to find the system software it needs to start up. I managed to get the OS started by holding down ALT when pressing the power button, but after finally managing to log in, the system would freeze randomly, and for a good 15 minutes at a time.

No way on earth I could use my laptop for this presentation (even though I did try!)

After swapping sessions with Gert Franz, I borrowed Mark Drew's laptop and got myself set up....

Oh, did I forget to mention that I had a backup of my presentation, code and database all on a USB drive. Seriously folks, if you're giving a presentation or training ALWAYS make sure you've got a backup.

Anyway, after all that hassle I finally gave my presentation on "ColdFusion and PDF: Improving Your Workflow" and it seemed to go down very well. Lots of interest and lots of questions. Not bad for my first time presenting this session.

Anyway, my fun aside, ColdFusionCamp really did rock and it'll undoubtedly be back again. As will I.

As Big Kev announced last night, preparation is now under way for Scotch on the Rocks Road 2009.

Due to the financial implications of going to a conference in the current financial climate (conference ticket, travel, hotel, etc) we're bringing the conference to a city near you instead.

The dates are:

• London June 1st
  
• Edinburgh June 3rd
  
• Dublin June 5th 
  

We'll have some common speakers across all dates, but we'll also be tapping into the local area so it definitely won't be the same sessions in every location.

Oh, and whilst we don't expect folks to attend every date, if you do, you'll get a little something extra on the final day.

More details coming soon!

ColdFusion Product Manager Jason Delmore has just announced he'll be giving a session at MAX Europe in Milan on "ORM in CF9". And he'll be using Bolt to show you how much fun ORM can be!!!

Unfortunately I can't make it to MAX, so go heckle Jason for me!!!

Well, ColdFusionCamp is only a couple of days away, and I leave for Munich on Wednesday morning arriving just after lunch time.

The event is now sold out - which is fantastic news - and I'm really looking forward to giving my session on "ColdFusion and PDF: Improving Your Workflow". I'm trying out something new with my presentation to hopefully it goes down well.

I'll see you in Munich!

Registration for A Wee Dram of Scotch is now open, and places are limited.

The final speaker lineups consists of Adam Lehman, Claude Englebert, Sean Corfield, Peter Bell, Mark Drew, Gert Franz and Kurt Wiersma. AND Mike Brunt

Head over to the website for full details.