Seriously worth every minute and every penny.

Jared. Steven and the rest of the gang involved in orchestrating this event should be proud of producing an event that is still of amazingly high quality. No lie: absolutely the BEST ColdFusion conference I have ever attended. one that is aimed squarely at the developers trying to solve the big hairy problems of enterprise-level software development.

I had a conversation with Steven Hauer this morning and narrowly avoided telling him the conference would still be as valuable at twice the price. $500 got me in to a bunch of sessions that made me a better developer. All told. for under $2000 (travel. registration. hotel. food/bar tab. misc) I improved my knowledge of tools and techniques that will ultimately raise the value of the work I do. A great investment for sure.

I'm sure there will be a bunch of these recap posts going up if they haven't already. so here's my 2c on what rocked and what wasn't quite as awesome. Maybe the community will come to some agreement on these. maybe not. Either way. there's not much that they should change about this conference - the formula works and works well.

Great things about cf.Objective() 2008:

• Content & Speakers: The strongest aspect of this whole event. I learn a LOT at cf.O() - a lot of stuff that I started poking at on Sunday and will work with this week. Effective!
• Attendees: A veritable "who's who" of the CF world. If they blog. they're likely to be in the crowd which is also just the right size. An overwhelmingly friendly bunch that is coincidentally lots of fun to hang out with and learn from.
• Power: Power outlets at most of the tables in the meeting rooms. Nice touch and a great acknowledgment that we're gonna be on our machines anyway.
• Twitter: Goofy little tool becomes the backchannel of choice. Had more thoughts exchanged via that than blogs. which I barely looked at at all this weekend.

Not quite as great:

• Wireless: Yeah. I'm sure you saw a few comments about the speed of the wireless network. Day 1 was so sluggish hopping on the VPN to deal with an issue was impossible. Got MUCH better on Saturday. however...not sure what changed or if half the attendees just gave up.
• Food: The food at Sofitel was great; the food at the Crowne Plaza just didn't measure up to that really high standard. Not a deal breaker. just not fantastic.

I did not attend any of the BOF sessions on Saturday night (except for the Bar BOF that closed the place down). but I do understand they ran really late. Will look forward to more of those recaps as well. Seems like the Open BD one excited more than a few people!

Hope to see folks at WebManiacs in a few weeks!

It's just about time for us to hit the road again!

Steve and/or Matt will be attending the following conferences this spring:

Sungard Summit: Anaheim. CA. Our work has involved a lot of back-and-forth between our system and Sungard's Banner product. so it's time to bite the bullet and attend their conference. Rumor has it Steve will be co-presenting with one of our clients there...

cf.Objective() 2008: St. Paul. MN. Just going to absorb knowledge and enjoy being surrounded by smart people. This conference ROCKED last year; I expect to be wowed again this year.

WebManiacs 2008: Washington. D.C. Steve will be presenting on "Integrating with Salesforce.com" (CF. Flex and AIR) and "Using the Yahoo! UI Library" in two separate sessions on Tuesday. Steve will be found facedown on his bed shortly thereafter. but available for conversation later that evening.

We will not be attending CFUNITED this year - we needed a break from that one - but will likely be back next year. Still TBD is Adobe MAX and the User Group Manager summit.

I sat in on Peter Farrell's Mach-II 1.5 presentation yesterday and it was TOTALLY worth my time!

I'll save myself a ton of typing and use a link instead:

Dave Shuck's recap of the Mach-II 1.5 preso

We'll be looking at it this week for sure - our app architecture could be much cleaner if we use these new features when it's out for real!

I've been out at cf.Objective in Minneapolis this weekend. learning more than I have in quite some time at a conference. One might assume that the real "theme" of the conference would be Scorpio. but it's really only a part of what's being discussed inside and outside of the sessions.

Most of the discussions have been about making us all better programmers. Using smarter tools. better techniques and debating our philosophies has been the real "meat" of the weekend. We're talking about frameworks (current and future). helper codegen tools and our authoring/monitoring tools.

What's surprising to me (living in something of a bubble) is how many people *here* are true professionals and are dealing with programmers "back home" who. simply. aren't. The most common frustration is with developers who refuse to investigate or adopt these tools. It's perplexing that any developer would be so stubborn as to fight the one thing that could improve their code and make them a more marketable professional!

So here we are...230 top-notch CF (and Flex) developers sequestered in our really nice hotel. constantly working to improve not only ourselves but the overall perception of ColdFusion developers. It's not all preaching and idealistic expectations - the people who build the frameworks and have that incredible skill to translate an idea into code overnight are here. It's inspiring. especially so close to an expected major version release. that we're still so focused as a community on being better developers and NOT as much focused on what Scorpio can do for us.

That's not to say Scorpio isn't going to be outstanding. The features that have been announced have been widely blogged and I fully expect another round of them after Ben's presentation in about an hour. Rumor has it there will be another feature announcement. but I have no idea what it will be. I had a great chat in the hallway about CFPRESENTATION with Jason Delmore (CF Product Mgr). Adam Lehman and a couple of the guys from the Philly CFUG. I know how I'll be using it for at least one eLearning app I thought up during the opening keynote. These are the conversations I look forward to at conferences!

In terms of the value of the conference versus the expense. this has got to be the best return on ANY conference trip I've taken in at least 3 years. Jared and his crew have done an OUTSTANDING job with this event. Up to and including the food. which is a recurring conference weak spot! It's been consistently good here. Clearly the organizers know what really counts :-)

I strongly recommend this conference for folks who are looking to take the next step with the CF development skills. There aren't any newbie sessions - every single one is geared towards "our kind" and is absolutely top notch. Be here next year for sure!