Monday 13 October 2014

CFCamp: what I'll be having a look at

G'day:
Blimey. It occurred to me on the train this morning than this time next week I'll be in the keynote of CFCamp 2014. That kinda snuck up on me. I guess I've been a bit distracted with PHP and stuff like that.

OK, so what am I gonna go see?

First up, the schedule is here.

Sunday

I'll be getting into MUC about midday on Sunday, and from memory it takes about an hour to get to Germering. Alex & Dom from Pixl8 are getting in just before me, but apparently will need to fart-arse around waiting for luggage, so we'll probably be ready to head Germering-ward at about the same time. This reminds me... must liaise with Alex.

I've heard some people are going to an ice hockey game (coming from NZ, the unqualified "hockey" == "field hockey" to me), which could be something to do. I have not followed this up yet.

Anyway, no doubt at some point I will front up at Germering to see who's around for eating and drinking.

Monday

Keynote - Gert

I imagine this is an unveiling of Railo 5. Well I hope it is... it's about bloody time it presented itself! I've not even seen so much as a beta so far. Am quite looking forward to this.

If Railo 5 comes out during the conference I'll get it installed and have a look and let you know what's what.

Whatever Gert presents on, it'll be worth seeing as he does a good job of it.

Interesting that I see no sign of Adobe at CFCamp. Either doing presentations or even sponsoring. That's a bit odd. They're no-doubt continuing their retrenchment back into just the States, and don't have resources to represent themselves in Europe. And, yeah, CFSummit is on around the same time. Oh: indeed it's later this week. So that could dilute their available resources.

CommandBox - Luis

I've been looking forward to seeing a presentation on CommandBox too. I've seen odds 'n' sods about it, but never actually downloaded / installed / looked-at it. This will perhaps prompt me to do so. Albeit quickly whilst I'm at CFCamp, as I'll revert to PHPland after that.

Dependency Injection with DI/1 - Chris Schmitz

Sorry Alex (in the opposite slot, doing PresideCMS). CMSes don't interest me too much, although PresideCMS seems really good, so I'm gonna have a look at what Chris has to say about DI/1. I've only ever used ColdSpring, so it should be interesting to see how a modern approach handles DI.

Trust Nothing: a simple guide to debugging ColdFusion code - Gerry Gurevich

Maximilian is selling snake oiltalking about SEO on the other track, and I have well-defined opinions on SEO (see: "Things I don't know much about: SEO and WordPress"), so I shan't be seeing that. Other than perhaps in a "John Wilkes Booth" kind of way. Anyway, that leaves Gerry's presentation on debugging ColdFusion. My debugging of CFML pretty much only goes as far as <cfdump> / <cfabort>, so it'll be interesting - possibly - to see what I've not been doing.

Or as it's just after lunch, I might sit in the bar, have a beer, and write a blog article. Or talk bullshit to anyone who's around.

Monitor, Troubleshoot & Protect Your CF/Railo Servers with FusionReactor 5 - Charlie Arehart

I really could have done with already having seen this one, as we needed more FR experience than we had available a few months back. Charlie always gives a good presentation and really knows his stuff. Am looking forward to this one (note to self: not too much beer if you skip the previous session in favour of the bar).

The next Javascript, ECMAScript 6 for those still using 3.1 and awaiting 4.0 - Matt Bourke

I saw Matt's countryman Marcin do a prezzo on this @ CF.Objective() this year ('FutureJS: An Introduction to ECMAScript 6 "Harmony"'), and it had some great stuff in it. I like where JS is going, so keen to hear what stuff Matt's come up with. Plus I believe it's his first time presenting and he's me mate, so am gonna offer moral support.

Beer

That's the end of Monday's presentations, so from here I will drink beer. I will not be attending the infamous CFCamp party, as it's been a bit too infamous for my liking in the past. I'll just stay in the bar @ Germering (or some bar in Germering, if not the one @ the conference centre).

Tuesday

Turboboost with Caching - Stefan Rubner

Charlie's doing his perennial "Hidden Gems" presentation in the other room, and this'd be good if one was still using ColdFusion, but it's not so relevant to me. Caching is a ubiquitous requirement in the web world, so I'm hoping to pick up some generic strategies from Stefan.

Best Practices are Best, Except When They're Not - Nolan Erck

This could be controversial, and I like some controversy. And I like to have my position on things challenges. Nolan knows his stuff so I expect this to be pretty good!

Event Gateways - Gert Franz

I think event gateways were a feature of ColdFusion (and I suppose Railo supports 'em too, given Gert's presenting on them) which were undersold and under utilised. They seemed like such good technology, but I've hardly seen anyone talk about them. Looking forward to finding out more about them.

Publishing with XML - Matthias Kraus

XML is still a thing, is it? Interesting. TBH, I've already seen Matt's Gulp presentation ("Get Grulping with JavaScript Task Runners"), so this one wins by default. Or... it's the postprandial slot again, so perhaps I'll just stay at the bar.

Bar

I don't want to see either "Automate your love letter creation with JasperReports" (Guust) or "Multiply Like Rabbits" (Markus Schneebeli) I'm afraid. So I'll just loiter, and maybe write something. Or drink something. Or both.

Moving to open source - Hans-Jörg Posch

There's no notes on this presentation on the CFCamp website, so I'm just gonna go to it anyhow, as it's not about a CMS (which Luis's presentation in the other slot is). It's an interesting topic too.

End

That's it.


The sessions I'm most looking forward to are Gert's keynote, Nolan's one about best practices, and Luis's one on CommandBox. But the whole lot look good, even if some are not my particular cup of tea. It's going to be an odd conference experience as I'm really not doing CFML any more (other than the odd blog article), so it feels a bit odd to be going to a CFML conference. That said, I'm mostly going to catch up with mates, have a yarn, and drink German beer.

And keep an eye out for a wolpertinger.

Righto.

--
Adam