CFUnited 2006: more thoughts from the newbie
I also saw Mac after Mac at the conference. Almost as many glowing Apple's when I looked over the room as people with PC's. I felt compelled to wear my MacWorld tee shirt the last day without worry anyone would give me a hard time about it. Maybe it's because of the MacBook and Intel chip, and maybe it's not. I don't care. In the airport coming back, the guy at XRay asked if mine was a MacBook Pro. I admited it wasn't. He was anxious to buy one and said he was a current Dell user and had heard how much faster they were. He, a PC user wanted to run both OS at the same time. I digress, back to my original thoughts...
I'm tired, but feel good about what I was able to learn over the week. No, I'm not a ColdFusion expert after a 4 day conference. Do I understand it better? Oh yeah. I must have talked to too many people with a British accent, as that's what I hear in my head now when I think. Too tired still maybe.
I already talked about how there were Boot Camp type sessions for us new to CF. I have to admit, the CSS and Database ones were more my style. Even the newbie sessions were still aimed at someone farther along than me, but being use to HTML, I understood most of it. Don't have any grand illusions I could write it yet, but understanding more all the time.
Many know I went to be support for the new magazine,Fusion Authority. There was a lot of work that went into putting that magazine together. I missed a lot of regular work and spent several weekends in a row working day and night to get it to CFUnited on time. I'd say all in all at least 200 hours of my time went into this. Thanks to Judith and Michael, I was there to see it actually printed and in the hands of the atendees.
I think it went over well. I hope that it makes people want to write. Getting good articles out is key not only to the success of the magazine, but it gives people hope to be the next big name. Gets new names out there and printed. I'm a graphic and web designer. In my field, there is a lot of ego running around. I don't see it with the ColdFusion crowd. The biggest name, maybe, Ben Forta, wasn't hidden away not talking to people, but freely walking around talking to people with questions. Same goes for all the bigger names. It was impressive and inspiring to see people sharing ideas like that.
Dee KCWebCore manager
