Scotch on the Rocks: which sessions am I going to?

G'day:
Meself and a bunch of the bods from work are off up to Edinburgh for Scotch on the Rocks 2013 next Weds. I should be lurking about from about 2pm, I guess.

I've not even looked at the schedule yet, but "what are you going to see?" came up over cheap-steak-lunch-at-'Spoons just now, so I figured I'd better find out.

So in a similar vein to my cf.Objective() article on the subject... here's my thoughts on which sessions I might go it.

Wednesday

Having beer. In the bar. Or some other pub around the place.

Thursday

10:10 - 11:00 - Service Oriented Architecture vs Monolithasaurus (Joe Roberts)

Hmmm. I can't give you a direct link to the presentation summary, as the website doesn't have either:

1. a separate page for each
2. either a named anchor or an ID`ed element near each summary. So you'll just have to look on the general "sessions" page.

Anyway, this presentation appeals as I don't know much about SOA, so I might as well find out.

As for the other sessions: I went to a coupla MongoDB presentations @ cf.Objective(), and am a bit Mongo-ed out. The Phone Gap one looks OK as well though...

11:10 - 12:00 - Mikado Method - Making Code Changes Less of an Impact (Kev McCabe)

I have to admit that this selection is mostly because I've already seen Mark's Railo presentation @ cf.Objective(), and I'm not involved in mobile development, so the "Mobile Frameworks Shootout!" would be lost on me.

I am, however, mildly interested to hear what Kev has to say on this topic. I've not heard of the Mikado Method before.

13:10 - 14:00 - BDD with JS: Architecture, Tools & Patterns (Enrique Amodeo Rubio)

This one is definitely a "by default" one, as I have no interest at all in hearing people talk about business processes, which is what the other two presentations are. I have to concede I'm not convinced by BDD, but any way of formalising JS testing has to be a good thing.

14:10 - 15:00 - Ember.js - The educated javascript MV* choice (Paul Cowan)

This should be cool. And a continuation of my new found interest (and back-log of learning requirements) in JS.

It'll be a shame to miss Ray's IndexDB presentation though :-(

15:10 - 16:00 - Websockets made easy with ColdFusion 10 (Elishia Dvorak)

I have some web socket work to do this week / next week, so this is a timely presentation. I just hope - given Elishia works for Adobe - that this isn't just a marketing presentation, and is actually technical. I shall find out before hand.

Marco's "Zombie Code" presentation might be interesting though, if Elishia is just focusing on marketing.

16:15 - 17:10 - How To Destroy The Web (Bruce Lawson)

There's only one presentation in this slot, so it's easy to pick which to go see. Or I will commence "networking" early.

Friday

10:10 - 11:00 - ColdFusion Anti-Patterns (Darren Walker)

This is a tricky slot. Luis's presentation on MockBox could be good... however we already use it extensively so not sure what else I could learn about it. But Darren's presentation sounds controversial and possibly inflammatory, so that's right up my alley... ;-)

11:10 - 12:00 - An introduction to Sinatra and Ruby - swing when you're winning. (Matt Gifford)

Well I started to look @ Ruby over the weekend just gone, so it's topical for me.

13:10 - 14:00 - Ready? Bootstrap! Go! (Guust Nieuwenhuis)

Again, a continuation of my planned foray into knowing a lot more JavaScript. Plus I need to know about Bootstrap in the next week or so, so this is very timely.

I'm annoyed Rob's presentation clashes with this, as I really wanted to see it.

14:10 - 15:00 - I'm pretty sure that HTML6 is going under the codename Angular JS (John Whish)

Kurt Wiersma did a brilliant presentation on AngularJS at cf.Objective(), and I'm completely taken by it, so keen to see some more. John's got big shoes to fill here!

Mike's testing presentation could be interesting, but all that Jenkins-typ-stuff is all done for me @ work, so it's not so relevant for me. Although I could do with being able to plan things better, so Sally's presentation is compelling too. Hmmm...

15:10 - 16:00 - Cultured Localisation, or 'How not to offend one billion people' (Ryan Stenhouse)

This is something else I'm possibly faced with needing to know about in the coming months, so it'll be good to be prepared. I know there's a lot more to this stuff than is immediately apparent.

Special mention

About 95% of the people I have ever dealt with in the greater CF community ought to be forced to sit in on Peter's '"It doesn't work" doesn't work - how to help others help you.' presentation. I am gobsmacked by how bad people in the community are at asking for help, or articulating what they need help with. Go inhabit the Adobe ColdFusion forums (or Stackoverflow, etc) if you don't believe me.

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That's it. There's a good mix of stuff in there! I'm annoyed that a few things I was looking forward to see clash with other things I really ought to see, but this is always the way. I guess I need to corner a few people in the hallways or at the bar afterwards and pick their brains about their presentations. Ray and Rob, I am particularly thinking about you two fellas. Although we'll probably find different things to talk about, I guess!

I'm looking forward to the whole gig, and am especially looking forward to catching up with a few people for beers etc in the evenings.

Who else is going? Hopefully see ya next week!

--
Adam