The conference was in a new place this year, the convention center in downtown DC instead of in Bethesda, MD. I decided to go at the last minute, so I stayed with another User Group manager who lives in Springfield Virginia. I got a last minute flight on Hotwire.com so I couldn't help missing all the regular sessions on the first day. I did make it to the evening event and to the BOF's (Birds of a Feather) though.

I did miss mini-MAX and wish I hadn't. It sounded hilarious this year. Better luck with projectors next year Adam.

Anyway, the first day went a little something like this for me: Once I got here I quickly registered and we made it down to the evening event. The biggest and most unusual thing that happened for me at this event was there were a ton of people here at this conference I follow on Facebook and Twitter and the like. Many also follow me. So never having met before, we just walked up to each other and started a conversation. Now this might not seem strange to you, but did I mention we had never met before?

What a difference these social apps have made for me. No more having to have someone introduce you. "(your name), I am sure you have heard of (insert other person's name here), you two have lots in common and should meet". That has been the norm, but now with all our pictures online we all recognize each other.

The event was nice, there wasn't enough food, and the Adobe crew were pulled aside forever by just a few people forever. I had traveled all day so I was tired. The BOF I went to was Judith's on why print is still alive. I was suppose to help, but Judith had it covered. There weren't many people in that session as most had gone to Ray's Sci-Fi session, where there was standing room only. The only redeeming part for me was I met Ben Nadel in person that night. That was fun.

So the next day I take the metro in and don't get there early like I wanted and missed a session I had wanted to see. I did get to go to several sessions and a really funny thing happened for me. A local user group member was also at the conference. He's very advanced, but we kept ending up at the same sessions. I never realized putting together FAQU and being VP of KCDevCore that I had absorbed as much about CF as I apparently have. I actually understood most of what Sean Corefield was talking about with his new framework, Edmund.

So Sean is an amazing presenter, that's a given. Dan Wilson did a great preso on refactoring. I sat in on Hal Helms and Clark Valberg talking about changing the game. Basically, making sure you going about things the correct way when you are a freelancer or own your own business. It's a mental state really, to make sure you are making sure you are thinking outside the box when it comes to your client. Are you doing the best you can for them. Not just your job, but are you doing more than the next guy. Things like that.

I sat in on several others but couldn't tell you about them now, which is why I should have wrote this a long time ago.

I did go the next day, but as I am a social creature, I made more of an impact networking than I did going to sessions. I introduced people, met people I'd wanted to meet, talked to authors of FAQU and suggested others become authors. I solicited speakers for KCDevCore, and had dinner at some Brazilian meat restaurant that was uber expensive. I did make some new friends along the way, and like the user group Summit, will miss my new friends till we meet again at the next conference.

Oh, I do keep up with almost all of them on Twitter, Facebook, jakiru, FriendFeed, www.coldfusioncommunity.org/, Slidesix and half a dozen other social networks.

Dee

This animal is a unique parallel species of homo sapien more properly classified as homo sapien³. Unlike any other species, this one rarely procreates amongst its own kind and is typically a genetic mutation resulting from a homo sapien union. As rare as the discovery of a mating pair of Gnurds is, it is even rarer that their own offspring possess the mutation that makes them a Gnurd. Though Gnurds are often not accepted or understood in mainstream homo sapien society and tend to sport unique eccentricities, it is this same rarity and uniqueness that make them special as well.

Habitat and Social Tendencies
Though usually alone, it is also what could be termed as "socialite by proxy", communicating profusely and consistently with its kind in one of several remote fashions, but rarely encountering one another physically. There are, however, certain times of the year when these typically solitary creatures stir from their dimly lit recesses and amass themselves in what would appear to be a ritualistic manner. Exactly what the purpose of these mass gatherings are remain for the most part a mystery. Some speculate that it is a re-establishment of the pecking order which cannot be accomplished by remote means; others have observed it to be more inline with a mating ritual, necessary because of the gross unbalance between the number of males of the species as compared to females. The fact that it is still a mystery is what moved me to pack my bags and go to Washington D.C. in order to observe and document one such gathering. What follows are my notes, observations, and hypothesii regarding the things I witnessed there.

The Gathering
The first day of the gathering found other gnurds still arriving. It was already apparent, though, that certain ones were being viewed in higher esteem than others, and I could see by the plumage being displayed that some of these creatures had been leading solitary lives FAR too long for their own good, boasting such outer markings as "CF_RELAX" and "What Would Ben Do?". There were what I am calling the "groomer" birds who would meet each gnurd as they arrived and adorn them all with similar vestments and a large grey gnurd bag. Soon the gathering place was a sea of Gnurds, constantly churning in every direction. As part of their acclimation to physical socializing, the gnurds at first milled about with very little interaction between them, though that was quickly beginning to shift. What just hours before could be called an 'awkward moment' when two gnurds accidentally made eye contact was now resulting in physical interaction and inquiry. The standard initial Gnurd meeting cry was something along the lines of, "so where do you work?", with the standard gnurd reply of "for so and so". In short order these rhetorical ice breakers were resulting in gnurds pairing off or congregating into small sub groups, typical conversations consisting of discussions of their more esteemed peers and latest gnurd controversies.

The second day of the gathering was when the formalities were casually imposed, with those gnurds higher in the pecking order taking turns addressing the hordes of other gnurds. There was obvious respect for these articulate birds, with the crowds growing silent and attentive as their knowledge was conveyed. The remaining days of this brief and rare gathering followed a similar style and pattern.

Gnurd Rivalry
Blatant rivalries among Gnurd birds during their gatherings is almost unheard of and rarely witnessed. Any kind of conflicts that may exist between these creatures is manifested at such a subtle level that only another Gnurd can even detect it. Only one time during the entire gathering was it ever obvious. The situation occurred between one of the beasts which was present at the gathering and another who had been unable to make the trek but was communicating via remote means. The first beast would squawk out some nearly uninteligable phrasology, challenging the other and ascerting its point on something that sounded to the human ear like "framework bad". The remote Gnurd would respond calmly and with utter confidence. After a few moments of the sqawking gnurd getting his own feathers ruffled, the spectator Gnurds suddenly lost interest, seeming to have sided with the remote Gnurd almost unanimously, and then disseminated into the rest of the flock.

Gnurd Mating Ritual
Very little is known about the details of the Gnurd's pre-coital rituals. Chance smiled upon me, however, as I was given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness the attempts of one male Gnurd. He was sitting and casually preening his feathers when a female Gnurd approached and sat within squawking distance. The male Gnurd immediately turned her way and began spouting a unique blend of casual conversation and techno babble. The female gave the male her attention for a few moments, and then suddenly put her wing up against her head, as if to cover her ears. The male took this as a sign of disinterest, and rather bullishly inquired as to whether or not she would prefer that he cease his noise. The female responded with a squawk that meant "no, it's just that my allergies are acting up and my ear is itching inside". The male then held out his pinky and replied (and I'm going to translate the Gnurd babble here), "You wanna use my finger to scratch it"? It became obvious to me at this point why the Gnurd population is so limited and unique, and why the male of the species has such difficulty procuring a mate.

In Conclusion
All told, the trip was well worth it. Gnurds are such awkward creatures that simply to have the opportunity to observe them in social settings provides a steady stream of unique, inexpensive entertainment. Oh, and if you REALLY want to be entertained, set a keg in their midst and see what a mild alteration of their perception of reality does to spice things up.

Well, I'm back at home sitting cozy in bed with my 17" Powerbook and my nice fast wireless connection. What a week. One of my favorite things, besides meeting Sean Corfield, was all the Macs at the conference. Which is why I admired Sean, because he's a hard core Mac lover in a development world that doesn't always love Macs. That and I love to see people passionate about what they do. He has no ego problem and is on the managers list and the first to help someone out.

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

Well, I've been working the booth, House of Fusion, more than I've done almost anything. Right now I'm at the last day, sitting in a Flex 2.0 class. CF people should be able to pick up Flex, since it's tag based. That's nice to know, even as a HTML girl. OK, on to my thoughts.

All in all, it's been very educational. I'd say I've learned more than I thought I would, considering how much time I've spent selling raffle tickets at House of Fusion. They are gone today, so no booth for me today. Yippee.

My main complaint about the hotel would be it's freezer level cold here at the Marriot that is hosting the conference.

I have also met a fair share of other UG managers. Quite a few actually. As a designer who codes, I have to say my favorite moment so far was when I met Sean Corfield. Why beyond the fact he is extreemly well known in the community? The new team he's on at Adobe is the Breeze/Acrobat team. So, after we talk about the magazine (Fusion Authority which Sean says he thinks is well designed. wow)Sean and I get into a conversation about Acrobat. Ah... I was finally back in my environment. Non designers don't understand this maybe, but it was nice to talk about something, with someone I so highly respect, about something I actually know a lot about.

Oh sure, many of you would think it exciting enough for me to meet Ben Forta, Michael Dinowitz, Ray Camden, Charlie Arehart, Joe Rinhart, Matt Woodward, and even Simon Horwitz. Tee Hee. After the first night's Death match, he isn't the most popular speaker here. Simon seems to bring it all on himself, and isn't fazed by any negative comments.

I have to say how surprised how many newbie classes/sessions there are here at CFUnited. More than you'd think. hmmmm. As a designer who codes, there were enough things like Accessibility/Usability and CSS, Database basics and Web services to keep you busy the entire time. Plus some very knowledgeable instructors.

I met a lot of great people here at the conference. Learned a lot as well. As the Flex class is ending, I'll close for now. We'll have tons of info for our memebers when we get back.

Dee Sadler KCWebCore Manager

If you've been anywhere near a blog or even another CF developer lately, it's quite likely you've at least heard of Coldspring, and you may even be aware that it is a 'framework'. In an informative session entitled 'Inversion of Control and Coldfusion: Using Coldspring', speaker Dave Ross succeeded in conveying a good basic understanding of what Coldspring does and why you should consider it as part of your application's architecture.

CFCs objects have the very useful ability to utilize other CFC objects within themselves. For instance, I may have a USER object that handles all aspects of a user, and an EmailServices object that handles aspects of email for my application. By creating an instance of my EmailServices object inside of my User object, my user object can, internally, utilize whatever methods EmailServices provides. In order to accomplish this from a coding perspective, however, we essentially have to do one of the things that OO says we shouldn't: hard code the relationship. This is the niche Coldspring fills.

Coldspring is a framework that is essentially an object factory. If you're using Coldspring, then whenever your app needs an object it asks Coldspring to instantiate it rather than the code instantiating it itself. In our previous example, rather than have our User object creating an instance of EmailService, Coldspring has already been informed via an XML file that whenever we ask for a User object it should ALSo include an instance of the EmailService object within it. Coldspring has just allowed us to keep our components decoupled, and this is a very good thing. Now, if my EmailService changes the way it is instantiated, I don't need to go into every other component that utilizes it and alter the instantiation code. Since Coldspring will be the one creating the EmailServices object, it will deal with those changes alone. By passing the control of object creation to our Coldspring factory we have implemented the buzzword mentioned in this session's title: Inversion of Control.

Dependency Injection is another buzz phrase associated with this topic, and essentially refers to the scenario where one object is depending on another (our User object depends on our EmailServices object), and the fact that Coldspring is 'injecting' an instance of the EmailServices object into our User object...Dependency Injection. There are two types of dependency injection, each one differing only in the way that the User object internally refers to the EmailServices object. The first type, called "Constructor-Argument injection", means that the EmailServices object will be passed in via the constructor of the User CFC, in the init method. The second type of injection is called "Setter Injection". With this one, rather than passing in the EmailServices object during instantiation, we're simply going to "set" it as a variable within one of the User object's methods. Here's why two methods even bother co-existing: circular dependency.

Circular dependency is another way of saying that object 1 uses an instance of object 2, and object 2 uses an instance of object 1. If you tried to use Constructor-Argument injection, CF would not allow you to have this circular dependency. By using Setter Injection, however, you can.

Lastly, Dave Ross elaborated on another facet of Coldspring called Aspect Oriented Programming, or AOP. In a nutshell, AOP is what allows you to take one method from a given component, let's say the LogIt method from the LOG.CFC, and cause that method to be executed at various times and places throughout your application. As an example, let's say that you wish to log every action executed against a user record, as well as when logging in or logging out of the application. Old-School style, you'd have to go to each of those methods and add a line to perform the logging. Ah, but with the beauty of Coldspring and AOP, you simply set up logging within the XML configuration file that already defines the relationship between CFCs, adding a few more definitions telling Coldspring to execute the logging before, during, or after the execution of other CFC's methods. Niiiice.

Setting up Coldspring is not or the faint of heart or those who are convenience enthusiasts, but if you will take the time to learn and implement it, you'll find yourself a better programmer for it.