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

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

Registration for Adobe MAX Europe is now open.

I'm still swaying whether to attend or not. One of the factors was how heavy the ColdFusion content would be, and from the sessions posted there are only 5 (in addition to two hands on sessions).

There is the "as expected" sessions featuring integration with AIR and one with LCDS. There is also a CF/AJAX session, in addition to a Crash Course. The fifth session is one on Search Engine Optimisation.

The two hands on sessions are: Building ColdFusion Powerred AJAX Applications, and Building ColdFusion Powered Flex Applications.

I'm not exactly enthrawlled by the ColdFusion sessions. Only one of them really features new CF8 functionality.

Of course, it's not just the sessions that make a conference. For lots of folks it the opportunity to network, and from a ColdFusion perspective it's from this angle that I see the most benefit.

That being said, I wonder if companies will still see this as justification to spend the money on a conference ticket, hotel, flights and beer money. I'm having to seriously consider whether attending would be beneficial to Fuzzy Orange... I attended CFUnited in 2006 and that was worth every penny purely from the networking angle.

I'd be interested in other people thoughts, especially those from the European ColdFusion community.

And yes, I do realise that the lack of CF content at MAX Europe just opens the doors even more for Scotch on the Rocks