Apropos of not much, here's how my thoughts on what I intend to go see @ cf.Obejctive() are currently falling together. All, obviously, subject to change.
Weds
Alex and I won't be getting in to MSP until around midnight (ie: at the end of Weds), so I'll be missing all the pre-conf socialising, unfortunately. Because I lack common sense and good judgement when it comes to whether or not it's an appropriate time to have a beer, I might sniff around to see whether anyone is still propping up the hotel bar. Although I will have just got off 10h of flying, and my brain will be saying "it's 6am", so I dunno. We'll see.Thurs
10:10-11:10am
Learn You a What for Great Good? Polyglot Lessons to Improve Your CFML! (Sean)Because I should be learning more languages more quickly (I basically know CFML well, JS adequately, and Java and PHP a bit), and hopefully this will inspire me / guilt-trip me.
This is actually a tricky slot as all the prezzos sound good (well: this is global to the conference, really, not just this slot), and I'd specifically like to see Jonathan's AngularJS presentation, and Peter's "Writing secure CFML" one too. I kinda already know the CFML stuff, but it'd be good to hear a formalised take on it. And I know nothing about AngularJS and think I probably should.
11:20am-12:20pm
The Art Of JavaScript: Level up Your Skills In 60 Minutes (Ryan)Basically because my JS skills could be better than they are, and just sitting around waiting for them to improve by themselves is taking a long time ;-)
I thought about seeing Brian Rinaldi's "Go Node Without Code" presentation, but I think I need to take one step further back and have a look at node.js itself first, before looking at any complementary side topics.
1:25-2:25pm
This is an Adobe general session, and I'll probably give it a miss. The only Adobe product I am interested in is ColdFusion, and I already know about that.So I'll probably be looking for someone to have a beer and a yarn with during this time...
2:35-3:35pm
I have to admit I'm a bit ambivalent about all the sessions in this slot. I'm sure they'd all be great to an interested audience, but I'm not in that demographic. The closest match for me is Jeff's Websockets presentation, so I'll probably go to that.3:45-4:45pm
I'm gonna be overdosing on Sean it seems, as I've picked his other prezzo in this slot: "ORM, noSQL and Vietnam". The idea that ORM is the Vietnam of Computer Science strikes a chord with me, so I'm keen to hear Sean elaborate. And it will probably fuel some heavy debate afterwards.That said, Brian Klass's "Making Your ColdFusion Apps Highly Available" sounds good too. And worthy of a double-period treatment.
4:55-5:55pm
I'll check out Dave's "Fuse All the Greatness - Combining Charts, Websockets, and Scheduled Tasks to Present Realtime Data" (surely there's a way to make this title even longer?). This does make me wonder whether to think again about whether I need to see two presentations covering websockets. So maybe in that 2:35pm I will consider Mark's "Railo's Top 10 Developer Features" presentation. Hmmm. I'm just concerned that one might be more sales-pitch than anything else.And then there will be beer.
Fri
9:00-11:10am
For this one I'm gonna seee Kurt talk about "Building a Single Page App with AngularJS, Bootstrap, and CFML". Again, this is down to me feeling guilty about my lack of formal JS knowledge, and wanting a kick in the arse to do something about it.All the rest of the presentations in these two slots look really good, and I wish I could see the whole lot. Dammit.
11:20am-12:20pm
This is probably one of the more interesting-sounding presentations at the conference: Scott talking about "Grails/Groovy Primer for ColdFusion Developers". It'll probably be quite complementary to Sean's initial presentation, I think.1:25-2:25pm
Another vendor presentation, this time Railo. Whilst I'm more interested in ColdFusion than Railo as far as platforms go, I'm more interested in the direction Railo is taking CFML than what Adobe is doing with it, so I'll go see this. I hope all the Adobe guys do too. I think they can learn a lot from Railo. And I hope they take at least some of it onboard.2:35-4:45pm
I've heard Ray bang on so much about PhoneGap I better go see his "Using PhoneGap to Build Mobile Applications". Mobile development is something I've read some books about, but never got beyond that. It's one of those things I know I should care about, but I just don't find time to do so. So another "kick Cameron in the arse" presentation here.I'm let down I won't be able to see Sean's, Jeff 's and Rob's various presentations due to Ray taking so long with his. It better be interesting, Ray. Oh, and Gerry: no offence (for not mentioning you alongside Sean et al), but I don't think I'd learn anything new from your presentation, so didn't consider it.
Then more beer.
Sat
9:00-10am
Brad Wood's "Grow a Backbone.js and drag your apps out of the past with JavaScript Templating" sounds the most interesting here, so that's for me. Although Luis's AOP one sounds good, as does Rob's CF10 Scheduler one. It's gonna be a shame to miss those.10:15-11:15am
I dunno what I'm going to go see in this slot. They all look like OK presentations, but don't really make me go "oooh... interesting..." like the other sessions I've thusfar picked have done. I'm half inclined to go catch the second half of Rob's presentation from the previous slot.1:45-2:45pm
This, on the other hand, is the trickiest slot for me to decide upon. So far I cannot decide between Adam's REST presentation, or Elliott's Google/Javascript presentation. I'm worried that Elliott's one might make my head explode, so I might err towards Adam's one here. But I dunno.3:00-4:00pm
All the presentations in this slot look interesting, but as I had to actually look up what tent.io even is, I'm gonna see Carol's presentation on that topic.That's it forthe conference-y stuff, but then in the evening I am doing something I never expected to be able to say: I'm going to a baseball game. That's pretty cool. And - ironically - the thing I have been mentioning to people more often than any of the presentations, and indeed the conference itself. I'm really looking forward to it! So far I know that AdamT and Carol are going, as well as Richard Herbert who I "speak to" on Twitter a bit. Hopefully some other people will come along too. I don't know much about baseball other than what one can infer from movies and TV, and I don't know either team from a bar of soap, but who cares? I love live sport (then again the live sport I generally go to is cricket or rugby, which I actually understand... ;-). Whatever: just hangin' out with the others will be cool anyhow. And it's a good American cultural thing to cap off the visit with.
After that there'll be some beer and trying to find Alex again (I do not imagine Alex'll be up for the baseball), as we are flying out first thing Sunday morning. Like 6am. The plan is to basically bat right through the night, as there's no point taking a hotel room for what would be a coupla hours before we need to head to the airport. So there will probably be quite a bit of bar-propping-up going on that evening. Although I must also remember that I do have to be together enough to catch a plane. Hmmm.
Doing some quick analysis there, I'm not having a very CFML-centric conference: it seems to be a mix of CF and JS. I guess this makes sense.
However whilst that's all very interesting, the powers that be have contrived a nice sunny Sunday out there, so it's time I got my shit together and headed out to the forest for the first time in a coupla months.
--
Adam
