The Future of Web Design comes to Glasgow for the day, and I'll be on AIR.

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Academy Class, sponsors of both Scotch on the Rocks and A Wee Dram of Scotch  are running a free one day seminar on Creative Suite 4 on the 19th November in Glasgow.

For full details, and how to register head over to http://www.academyclass.com/events.asp

Spaces are limited, so sign up quickly at http://www.academyclass.com/events.asp

Hope to see you there!

 

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.

September will see me perform a very small tour of some of the local cities to meet up with fellow ColdFusion developers.

No formal presentations, just a get together that will allow me to hook up with some folks, some old friends and hopefully some new. The idea is simply to talk shop, find out what folks are up to at work, what difficulties they are facing, what they think could be done to solve some of their problems and generally just have a chat.

Here's the current schedule:

• September 7th, Aberdeen
• September 11th, Glasgow
• September 12th, Edinburgh

I'll post more information, including times and venues when they are confirmed.

Hopefully I'll see a lot of folks there.

As a few of you will be aware, the Scottish ColdFusion User Group will once again be running the Scotch on the Rocks conference next year. The two day conference, running May 31st and June 1st, will be the second time Scotch has taken place. The ticket price is £85 (inc VAT) and that covers both days, and includes lunch, coffee, nibbles, free wireless internet, etc, etc, etc It's great to have Adobe on board as platinum sponsors, and it'll be a pleasure to have Tim Buntel back in Scotland again ... after two years, his liver should have fully recovered from last time. As well as Tim, we've also confirmed Mark Drew, Kev McCabe and Niklas Richardson to speak. We're obviously looking for more sponsors (details here), and additional speakers. As this is an Adobe centric conference, ColdFusion, Flex, LiveCycle, Breeze, etc are all potential subjects as well as complimentary topics such as Ajax, CSS, SQL, etc. If you'd like more information then please contact myself at scotch AT scottishcfug DOT com.

Not much else to say other than Scotch on the Rocks 2007 is a go! http://scotch.scottishcfug.com Stephen has more info on the conference here

I was reading a few reviews of yesterdays CFDevCon Conference and it all seemed to go well. Kudos to Russ Michaels for putting the show on, and I'm just sorry I couldn't make it down from Scotland to join in the fun. However, according to Alan Williamson it's just as well I didn't as apparently I'm more famous here in the UK than Ray Camden. Now, I'm not sure whether to be flattered or somewhat concerned. I like to think I'm somewhat active in the ColdFusion community, but damn, I'm nowhere near as active as Ray. Anyway, it was a nice ego boost. ps Oh yeah, Nik, refer to the ScottishCFUG as the "North of England user group" again and I'll chop your arms off. I jest of course ;)

A post by Alan Williamson sparked some banter at the ScottishCFUG on the topic of conferences, and whether they are worth the effort. Stephen Moretti, our new UG Manager, followed up with a blog posting in regards the topic of conference sessions and their formats... ... what do others think? I've left my comments on Stephen's blog.

This time last year - in fact a year ago today - the Scottish ColdFusion User Group (by that I mean me) organised a two day conference, which took place in Edinburgh that covered the then recently released ColdFusion 7. It was an excellent three days worth of drinking, and the talks over the two days were pretty good as well. We had some excellent speakers including one time CF Snr Product Manager Tim Buntel, Adobe's Senior Whisky expert Andi Hindle, Mr Flex himself; Steven Webster, those crazy Romanians from InterAKT; Alexandru and Bogdan, Philipp Cielen from Germany as well as some home grown folks. We gave away around £10k worth of goodies; including software, an iPod, books, t-shirts, etc, etc. We had about 65 people at the event and this provided some excellent networking opportunites for folks. I've kept in touch with a lot of people and although I came out of it with a fair amount of debt (it was only £25 to attend) and a lot less hair, it was definately worth it. So I guess the big question is, why is there no Scotch on the Rocks 2006? After last year I knew there was no way on earth I was going to arrange a conference by myself ever again. It's not good for your health or your finances. So I knew I had to get more people involved. Unfortunately either no one was available to help, or they didn't want to help (people are busy and have their own lives, hey I understand). Sponsors ... no one was interested. Actually that's not true, but we didn't have enough to even get started. Macromedia UK ... I'm not even going there as I'll just get really angry (maybe Adobe in the UK will be better). As an aside, Macromedia in the States were(are) FANTASTIC. Ed Sullivan is a god! And I'm sure it'll just get better with Adobe at the reigns now. Out of interest, I actually went out to Boston last November to meet with Ed and discuss sponsorship for the event (I paid for the trip myself) and I came home a happy chap. We were going to get a lot more support than we had for 2005 but we needed more than just Adobe's sponsorship. And not to hark on about it, it never happened. Additionally, the last 12 months for me have been ... interesting. I've had more things go on in the last year than I have in the 27 before that. The biggest stumbling block has been my new job. Quite simply I don't have time for anything else. Throw in buying a house, relationship ups and downs ... mainly downs and I'm just happy to sleep at night. My ultimate goal was to have Scotch run every year, to keep it fun, and not to let it become some big corporate money making exercise. But alas, it wasn't to be. The interest wasn't there and I couldn't do it all myself. Anyway, here's some links to the 2005 event site (with photos) and I for one look back with a smile on my face. Especially at the drunken antics on the Friday night. http://www.scottishcfug.com/go/scotch2005/ http://www.scottishcfug.com/viewer/scotch/2005/index.html

Attached is my CFUnited Schedule. I've got to admit that I'm not overly impressed with the talks on show. In fact, the majority of the ones I'm attending were most likely given at cf.Objective() and I'm already wondering if that would have been a better conference to attend? To be fair, there are a couple of talks I'd like to attend but they are on at the same time as the ones I've chosen. Ah well. Talks aside, I'm sure the networking and beer will more than make up for this. [EDIT:] Due to a bug in this version of BlogCFC looks like my Schedule isn't attaching, so I'm just going to link to it. Download [EDIT 2:] As my Wednesday morning I've decided to add the following two talks to my schedule. 11.30-12.30 Hal Helms Variables and Conditions 14.00-15.00 Joe Rinehart Ten Things ...