CF.Objective(): what I will/might go see

G'day:
Bloody hell... this is proving to be a bit of a mission. There are so many good presentations and presentations I feel I should go to and a lot of overlap & different twists on similar content. What I do know is my brain is going to be busy. Note to self: no hangovers. Do not put yourself in a situation in which you end up with a hangover (there, that's out of the way, I can ignore that idea now).



OK, so I'm going through the CF.Objective() schedule, and trying to work out when to go to what. Here's my first pass. NB to whoever created the schedule page... links to the presentation summaries and speakers' bios would have been really excellent.

Architecture	Front-end	js.Objective()	Security / SysAdmin	Testing / Automation
Tuesday
Drinking (OK, they describe it as "Welcome Reception")
Wednesday
Redesigning the Interface: Making Software Development Make Sense to Everyone Jen Myers I listened to Jen's interview on CFHour ("Show #215: Conferences, Keynotes, Diversity and More"), and she seems to know her stuff, so whatever she's gonna talk about will be worth listening to.
The Top 5 Things You are Doing Today to Hinder Scalability Dan Wilson This sounds like a good topic, but clashes with the Node.js one, so it's "in reserve".	Don't Let Your Stylesheets Give You Lip. Fight Back with SASS! Andy Matthews I am perfectly content not knowing much about CSS stuff, and pleased that knowing so little about it seldom gets me into the situation of being made to do it.	Creative Node.js Ben Farrell I seriously want to get up to speed with Node.js (how long have I been saying this for now?) but just never get around to it. So consuming some content might help inspire me.	Security Headers Pete Freitag This is something I know nothing about, but perhaps I ought to. And Pete knows his stuff regarding security, so I'm sure this is a valuable presentation.	Testing, Testing Everywhere Kev McCabe I don't think Kev will be discussing anything I don't already know. He's a good, empassioned presenter, so if you are not up to speed with testing, this would be a great pick.
Advanced Caching Techniques with Ehcache, BigMemory, Terracotta, and ColdFusion Rob Brooks-Bilson I saw half of this (I missed the first half due to chatting in the hallway too much), and it's an excellent presentation, and Rob is an excellent presenter who really knows his stuff. I'm sorely tempted to go again, to hear the first half (and any updates he's made).	Ready? Bootstrap. Go! Guust Nieuwenhuis Guust, are you still doing this presentation? ;-) I think I have seen this once or twice already. So will give it a miss this time.	Leveling-Up at Javascript: DOM Traversal Brian Rinaldi It'd be fascinating to see different approaches to DOM traversal than the way I always rely on... jQuery.	Using OWASP ZAP to Find Vulnerabilities in Your Web Apps Dave Epler Dave's another one who knows his security stuff. So it's a toss-up between this and Rob's one.	Language Enhancements in ColdFusion Splendor Ram Kulkarni I've seen this presentation already, plus have already looked more closely at this stuff for my blog research than Ram will be able to dedicate time to in a single presentation.
Lunch
Adobe General Session I wonder if this will be a sales pitch again? Hopefully they have learned from last year. I'll be there - front and centre - to find out.
Monitor, Troubleshoot & Protect Your CF/Railo Servers with FusionReactor 5 Charlie Arehart I'm going to Ray's presentation, so did not really look at what the other offerings were.	Introduction to Cordova/PhoneGap Raymond Camden I've been wanting to see this presentation for quite a while now, so definitely going to it. It's one of the ones I am most looking forward to at CF.Objective(). No pressure then, Ray ;-)	Javascript - The Stack Adrian Pomilio Clashes with Ray	Running CF on Linux Pete Freitag ditto	Stressed About NoSQL? Relax with CouchDB Andy Matthews ditto
Panel Discussion: Are Content Management System Really All That? Jason Dean, Luis Majano, Simon Free, Dave Ferguson, Tim Cunningham, Matt Levine Betteridge's law of headlines is in play here, I think.		Node.js: Why Would Anyone Want to Write Their Own Web Server? Sharon DiOrio Argh! This clashes with Ray's presentation. This'd be my second pick here. If Ray doesn't hold my attention, I'll catch this one instead.	Securing APIs: Practical Authorization and Authentication in Sessionless States Matthew Reinbold Clashes with Ray	What's a Pull Request? (Contributing to Open Source) Brad Wood This reminds me... I have a half-written blog article on this very subject. I must get on with it. I really wish Brad's presentation was on at a different time, as I wish I could go so it. Anyone who isn't up to speed with this stuff should be at this sessions.
Thursday
Software Craftsmanship Kev McCabe Clashes with too many other things that I'd get more out of, in this slot :-(	Developing HTML5 Mobile Applications using ColdFusion Splendor Ram Kulkarni Can you stop calling it "Splendor" now please? It's ColdFusion 11. "Splendor" is embarrassing, and makes the product sound stupid. Or like an artificial sweetener.	Web Components are Awesome (and Polymer too) Elliott Sprehn This is another conference highlight for me. Elliott just knows his stuff, so this will be great.	The JVM Is Your Friend Kai Koenig I can probably catch this at SotR, or I imagine CFCamp too/instead?	Automate all the Front End Development Things! Kitt Hodsden Kit's doing this at SotR 2014 too, so could go see it then, if I skip the CF11 security one and Kai's JVM one. Hmmm. It's really a presentation I want to see.
Groovy, Learn Another Language Dan Vega, Joshua Caito This and Ray's ones are the ones I'm looking forward to the most. Scott Stroz gave me a taste of Groovy @ last year's CFO, and I want to see more.	AngularJS: Getting the UI Sugar without the jQuery Pain Sharon DiOrio It clashes with the Groovy presentation: sorry Sharon :-(	Stop Making Excuses And Start Testing Your JavaScript! Ryan Anklam Comment	Security Best Practices and New Features of ColdFusion 11 Elishia Dvorak Comment
	Taming ColdFusion Stability Issues & How Hostek Provides Less Painful Hosting Jon Cavanaugh, Jake Hand Clashes with the Groovy one, so did not investigate this...	Leveling-Up at Javascript: Understanding the Confusing Bits Jason Dean ... or this.	Setting Up Your Multi-Engine Environment - Apache, Railo and Coldfusion - Play Nice Kids Gavin PickIn Dammit Gavin. Why are you speaking in this slot?!	BDD (Behavior Driven Development) - Change the way you code Luis Majano I'd be going to this if i didn't clash with the Groovy one. I wanna be convinced by BDD as a practice. That said, I imagine this is about the closure-based syntax TestBox has which is labelled "BDD style", rather than the concept of BDD itself, which is a different thing (and not code-centric)
Lunch
Don't Throw That Out! Bringing Legacy Code In To This Century Steve "Cutter" Blades I'd like to see Cutter's presentation, but will be at the Railo one.	Railo 5.0 and Beyond Gert Franz I'm dead keen to see what Railo is bringing to CFML next. They definitely lead in CFML innovation and direction now.	Panel Discussion: Why Client-Side? Ben Farrell, Raymond Camden, Adrian Pomilio, Sharon DiOrio, Dan Wilson, Tim Cunningham Might be interesting, but won't be able to attend.	Building Communities: Lessons Learned From 4 Years Running a Successful Open Source CFML Project Adam Tuttle As with Cutter's one... wish I could attend this oen.	Digging Into The Developer Toolbox 2013 (Work Smarter, Not Harder) Jim Priest Sounds interesting, but is a clash with the Railo one, so did not read up on it.
Beyond CFIndex - Apache Solr Enterprise Search Server and ColdFusion Integration Jim Leether I've never had a need to use Solr, so this is a bit off my radar.	Getting Your Hands on CFClient Simon Free Do you know what? I'm probably gonna go to this one. It got good reviews when Simon did it at CFSummit last year.	New CMS and legacy applications; Don't re-write - integrate! Steve Withington This could be interesting, but clashes with another two I'm more likely to go ti.	Splendor and High Quality PDFs - Adobe Rakshith Naresh, Tim Cunningham I've no interest in PDFs.	Say Goodbye to “It works on my machine” with Chef and Vagrant Curt Gratz I want to know about Vagrant, so if Simon's <cfclient> presentation sux, I'll skip out to this one.
Open Yourself to Closures Adam Tuttle I suspect my skills in this area are on about a par with my namesake here, so it would not be the best use of my time watching this, although it'll definitely be a worthwhile presentation if the notions of "closure", "function expressions", "call backs" etc leave you a bit uncomfortable. It's great stuff.		Developer's Guide to JavaScript and Web Cryptography Kevin Hakanson Fascintating... but I am mostly set for the <cfclient> one.	Updating/Hotfixing ColdFusion 10, 9 and 8: Tips and Traps Charlie Arehart There's not much for me to learn from Charlie here.	Git Source Control: For the Rest of Us Nolan Erck This would be cool, but it's trumped by the <cfclient> one.
Break
Adobe BOF Rakshith Naresh I'm not sure I'd get much from this that I don't already know	ColdBox BOF Brad Wood Not interested in ColdBox, sorry guys.	nodeschool.io Workshop BOF (Node.js) Ryan Anklam,Adam Tuttle I'd go to this, but I need to go to the Railo one.	Board Game & Gaming BOF Jason Dean,Tim Cunningham Not interested in either of these subjects.	Railo BOF & Beyond Gert Franz I'll be here.
Friday
Creating Services for Modern Web Applications Mike Nimer This could be interesting, and Mike knows his stuff, but I think my interests lie more with the JS end of things.	My Charts Can Beat Up Your Charts Dave Ferguson Not so interested in charting, sorry Dave. Update: As Dave mentions below in a comment, "[his] preso is more about linking http://d3js.org/ (data-driven documents) and web sockets". And that does sound interesting. But still not enough to shake my intention to see the Ember.js prezzo in the other room :-(	Ember.js - A Framework For Building Ambitious Web Applications Ryan Anklam Ryan's a great presenter, so I'm looking forward to this. I've also been wanting an intro to Ember.js, so this'll be excellent.	CF911: Solving Frequent CF Server Problems in New/Better Ways Charlie Arehart Again, I don't know if there's much I could learn from Charlie here. This is no disrespect to Charlie one bit... but if I ever need to do server admin I'll slit my wrists rather than do it (I have a background in server admin, and I can't stand it).	Stressing APIs for Greater Scalability: Methodically Breaking Stuff FTW Matthew Reinbold This sounds interesting, but not as interesting as Ryan's one.
Making Bad Code Good Dan Wilson Sounds fascinating (and I certainly have a lot of code which could benefit from this sort of treatment). I wish it was in a different slot.	Real World Lessons in jQuery Mobile Kai Koenig I'm not the target audience for this, never having done either mobile dev or jQuery Mobile.	Let WebSocket Hit that F5 for You Jose Galdamez I heard Jose talk about this on CFHour ("CF Objective 2014 Interview Show 2: Galdamez, Gratz, Cutter"), and it piqued my interest. So I'm in.	Decouple and Scale with Enterprise Messaging Luis Majano Although this sounds good too.	Managing ETL with SSIS - Why ColdFusion isn't the Best Tool in your Toolbox Jeff Garza This could be good, but I've already got two clashing topics in this slot.
Dependency Injection, Why is it Awesome and Why Should I Care? Nolan Erck I know a fair bit about DI, but suspect there's more to learn.	Level-Up Your Front-End Skills: Going Beyond ColdFusion’s UI Tags Abram Adams I strongly support the intent of this presentation, but I don't know I'd get much from it. I hope Abram manages to throw in "Oi! You bloody wankers! Stop using ColdFusion UI controls"	Leveling-Up at Javascript: Organization, Performance & Testing Raymond Camden Clashes with too many other options.	Caching Strategies with Railo Gert Franz As does this one.	Getting Started with MongoDB for CFML Developers Dan Skaggs I've been looking forward to this presentation. I was chatting with Dan whilst he was learning MongoDB and planning this presentation, and it sounds like it'll be a better fit for me than the other MongoDB prezzos I've seen, as it's a specifically CFML-centric one.
Lunch
Developing Single Page Apps (SPA) with ColdFusion and Angular Mike Collins This is another tough slot, as there's a few things I'd like to see. This is one potential one... Angular.js is yet another thing I am still not up to speed with.	Getting Started with Responsive Web Design Matt Busche Not interested in design, and never do any anyhow, so not relevant for me. I know Matt reads this blog, so I hope to buy him a beer at some stage, if nothing else!	FutureJS: An Introduction to ECMAScript 6 “Harmony” Marcin Szczepanski This sounds interesting, but think I could probably research it more thoroughly on my own.	Practical MultiLingual (i18N) Approaches Oguz Demirkapi We've got a multi-language site, and I am not sure we'r doing it in the ideal fashion. And always want to hear of different approaches to stuff.	Real World Selenium Testing Mary Jo Sminkey This would be cool, but is slightly outside what I need to do on a daily basis (we have a dedicated testing team, who would benefit from seeing this presentation). But I'm holding it in reserve.
Close

Blimey. That took ages to go through. I've not read all the presentation précis yet, but have been able to intuit what I want to go see mostly from the titles, and the person/people giving the presentations.

Over and above the presentations, I am really looking forward to catching up with an awful lot of the presenters and other attendees to have a chat / beer. Often this is the best part of a conference, IMO.

Looking fwd to seeing y'all on Tues / Weds / whenever.

Righto.

--
Adam