CFUG Melbourne 2009 Survey

We are conducting a survey to try and tailor CFUG Melbourne to best fit the ColdFusion users in Melbourne, and provide you guys with the best CFUG we can.

Please take 10 minutes to fill out this quick survey on Google Docs, we would greatly appreciate it:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pJCuG-fQNocTuTRAdDmagGg&hl=en

There are also prizes for filling out the survey! If you write your email at the end of the survey, you will be in the running for:

1st prize: An Adobe Backpack
2nd Prize: A copy of the latest Fusion Authority Quarterly Update (Vol III, Issue 1)
3rd Prize: A Metal Adobe Lunchbox

More details on the user group can be found on the Adobe Groups page .

Thanks for taking the time, and look forward to seeing you all at a CFUG meeting this year.

 

Melbourne CFUG - 20th of November

The last Melbourne CFUG for the year!

Location:
NGA.net, Level 2, 17 Raglan St, South Melbourne
Map: http://link.toolbot.com/google.com/73016

When:
November 20, Meeting starts at 7:00, so get there before hand (doors
open at 6:30).
   
Agenda:
Steve Onnis talks about virtualisation

Steve will be presenting on server virtualisation using VMWare.  VMWare allows you to create
virtual operating systems that run independent of your main operating systems giving you the
flexibility to create development environments for testing.

Demonstrating the setup process and vm tools, you will gain an understanding of what virtualisation
is and an insight into what virtualisation can do for you.

If you are going to attend, please RSVP to mark (dot) mandel (at) gmail.com.

Only those that RSVP are eligible for the door prizes, so make sure you apply!

See the CFUG Melbourne Calendar at:
http://www.cfcentral.com.au/Events/index.cfm

Or add to your Google Calendar - search for 'CFUG Melbourne'.

As per usual, we'll grab pizza during the evening, so we have
something to scoff down!

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Melbourne CFUG - 16th of October

All,

This Month's CFUG is lined up!

Location:
NGA.net, Level 2, 17 Raglan St, South Melbourne
Map: http://link.toolbot.com/google.com/73016

When:
16th of October, Meeting starts at 7:00, so get there before hand (doors
open at 6:30).

Agenda:
Recorded Presentation by Dan Wilson

Refactoring in ColdFusion

If you would like to know how to migrate an existing procedurally programmed application into an object oriented one, grab a chair and sit for a while. We'll discuss some sensible guidelines designed to help you make incremental changes towards OO nirvana. We'll also look at lots of code samples, we all like code samples, right?

If you are going to attend, please RSVP to mark (dot) mandel (at) gmail.com.

Only those that RSVP are eligible for the door prizes, so make sure you apply!

See the CFUG Melbourne Calendar at:
http://www.cfcentral.com.au/Events/index.cfm

Or add to your Google Calendar - search for 'CFUG Melbourne'.

As per usual, we'll grab pizza during the evening, so we have
something to scoff down!

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Melbourne CFUG - 21st of August

Sorry about the late blog post on this! I just realised I hadn't put one up!

Location:
NGA.net, Level 2, 17 Raglan St, South Melbourne
Map:  http://link.toolbot.com/google.com/73016

When:
21st of August, Meeting starts at 7:00, so get there before hand (doors open
at 6:30).

Agenda:
Dale Fraser

Dale Fraser is the Chief Technical Officer at CogState Limited. Working on
varied projects using ColdFusion, Flex and C++, CogState develop Cognitive
Testing Software use mostly in Clinical Trials.

Report Builder (The Hidden Gem)

People may or may not realise that a report builder is included with
ColdFusion since version 7. Along with this report design tool, comes some
additional ColdFusion tags to allow you to incorporate full featured
reporting into your application without additional expense. While Report
Builder is not as rich featured as Crystal Reports or similar, it provides
all the necessary components to create reports, and being part of ColdFusion
the code and syntax used within reports is ColdFusion code that will
familiar to you all.

So if you either don't know about the Report Builder or have never has a
chance to play with it, this introduction will get you started. Things
covered will include

1.    Designing a Report (No Code)

2.    General Reporting Concepts, grouping, totalling etc.

3.    Passing a Query into a Report

4.    Generating a Report silently to a PDF

5.    Printing a Report silently to a local printer.

If you are going to attend, please RSVP to mark (dot) mandel (at) gmail
(dot) com.

Only those that RSVP are eligible for the door prizes, so make sure you
apply!

Or add to your Google Calendar - search for 'CFUG Melbourne'.

As per usual, we'll grab pizza during the evening, so we have something to
scoff down!

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Melbourne CFUG - 17th of July

We're back to regular CFUG's, after the break for WebDU, and I think we have a pretty interesting presentation lined up!

Location:
NGA.net, Level 2, 17 Raglan St, South Melbourne
Map: http://link.toolbot.com/google.com/73016

When:
17th of July, Meeting starts at 7:00, so get there before hand (doors open at 6:30).

Agenda:
Elliott Sprehn

Elliott is a software engineer at TeraTech, Inc. and the lead developer for the Conferences department. He has worked on a variety
of projects that include network services, realtime messaging systems, survey processors and most commonly web applications. As a strong advocate of web standards and accessibility he volunteers his free time to help new developers learn standards and best practices. He is also proponent of design patterns and draws his vision about application design from experience with many languages that include ColdFusion, Java, ruby and php.

Internals of the Adobe ColdFusion Server
To many CF developers the ColdFusion server is a block box that just works. This presentation takes a look at how the internals of the engine operate. The presentation covers how variables, scopes, functions, cfcs, custom tags, includes and java objects are implemented and how we can use this knowledge to do things not normally possible with the CF functions.

Melbourne CFUG - 15th of May

All,

Another CFUG on the way!

(Apologies for the delay in getting this out, I was in the US!)

Location:

NGA.net, Level 2, 17 Raglan St, South Melbourne
Map: http://link.toolbot.com/google.com/73016

When:
15th of May, Meeting starts at 7:00, so get there before hand (doors open at 6:30).

Agenda:

Richard Herbert, CTO of NGA.NET, Australia's leading e-recruitment company, has been working with ColdFusion since 1997 and version 2.0. With a background in the legal and training industries Richard has developed applications for retail, point of sale, aviation, training, manufacturing, government and of course the HR industry. Also Telstra (but who hasn't?)...

Since 2000 Richard has been building NGA.NET's e-recruitment product and delivering solutions to Top 500 companies and federal government, where NGA.NET have 100% market share.  The application has gone through many evolutionary steps, with a brand new version built on mach-ii/ColdSpring/Transfer architecture in beta for 2008. NGA.NET is in the BRW Fast 100 for 2008 - a list of Australia's top 100 fastest growing companies.

And the presentation...

...will be titled 'Usability for Developers - The Ugly Truth'. I will be seeking to provide the audience with an understanding of what the field of usability covers, how to apply usability methods during the development cycle and the surprising results you can achieve.

Depending on time, Mark Mandel will also take us through some of the CF9 discussion that occurred at the cf.Objective() conference, and give us some insight into what could possibly be coming in CF9.

If you are going to attend, please RSVP to mark -dot- mandel -at- gmail -dot- com.

Only those that RSVP are eligible for the door prizes, so make sure you apply!

See the CFUG Melbourne Calendar at:
http://www.cfcentral.com.au/Events/index.cfm

Or add to your Google Calendar - search for 'CFUG Melbourne'.

As per usual, we'll grab pizza during the evening, so we have something to scoff down!

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Melbourne CFUG - 17th of April

Another CFUG Meeting for us all,

Location:

NGA.net, Level 2, 17 Raglan St, South Melbourne
Map: http://link.toolbot.com/google.com/73016

When:
17th of April, Meeting starts at 7:00, so get there before hand (doors open at 6:30).

Agenda:

Dale Fraser will be taking us through....

Flex for ColdFusion Developers

This talk will cover the basics of how to get setup on FlexBuilder to start writing Flex applications that will leverage your existing ColdFusion code.

Topics covered will several of the standard flex components and how to return various types of data from ColdFusion to flex. You will be amazed how easy it is.

Specifically:
Returning Simple Values
Returning Structures
Returning Arrays
Returning Queries

And how to bind these to common components in Flex such as

DataGrid
ComboBox
TextInput

We will also cover dymystifying the install and configuration of Flex to ColdFusion, and a simple way to setup the necessary mappings between the two. This is for anyone who loves ColdFusion and wants to start with Flex and for anyone who is trying to decide between Ajax & Flex.

Dale will also announce the launch of a new website on this night that specifically is aimed at the ColdFusion to Flex developers.

If you are going to attend, please RSVP to mark [dot] mandel [at] gmail [dot] com.

Only those that RSVP are eligible for the door prizes, so make sure you apply!

See the CFUG Melbourne Calendar at:
http://www.cfcentral.com.au/Events/index.cfm

Or add to your Google Calendar - search for 'CFUG Melbourne'.

As per usual, we'll grab pizza during the evening, so we have something to scoff down!

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Melbourne CFUG - 21st February

The first CFUG of the new year!

Location:

NGA.net, Level 2, 17 Raglan St, South Melbourne
Map: http://link.toolbot.com/google.com/73016

When:
21st February Meeting starts at 7:00, so get there before hand (doors open at 6:30).

Agenda:

Tonight we will be viewing and discussing Sean Corfield's Presentation on Design Patterns:

Come find out what design patterns are really about and how they can make your life easier. (You're probably already using some design
patterns, although you may not know it.) For this session, we have distilled decades of software engineering experience into a well-documented set of blueprints that can be applied to common problems to ensure clean, maintainable code.

Sean Corfield:
Sean is currently a freelance consultant. He has worked in IT for nearly twenty five years, starting out writing database systems and compilers then moving into mobile telecoms and then finally into web development about nine years ago. Along the way, he worked on the ISO and ANSI C++ Standards committees for eight years. Sean is a staunch advocate of software standards and best practice. He wrote C++ coding guidelines for several companies during the 90's and more recently maintaining the Macromedia ColdFusion MX Coding Guidelines and Mach II Development Guide, which are also published for the ColdFusion community. He has also given several seminar talks, both in- house and publicly, on these subjects. Sean has championed and contributed to a number of ColdFusion frameworks.

If you are going to attend, please RSVP to mark [dot] mandel [at] gmail [dot] com.

Only those that RSVP are eligible for the door prizes, so make sure you apply!

See the CFUG Melbourne Calendar at:
http://www.cfcentral.com.au/Events/index.cfm

Or add to your Google Calendar - search for 'CFUG Melbourne'.

As per usual, we'll grab pizza during the evening, so we have something to scoff down!

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Flex and AIR User Group Pre-release Tour - Melbourne, 29th January

In case people missed this the CFAUSSIE List: 

Flex 3 and AIR are getting close to launch and in preparation, the dobe Platform Evangelist team is travelling around the world, and to elbourne, to show off the great new features and some brand new
demos.

Flex 3 is a feature-packed release, adding new UI components like the advanced datagrid and improved CSS capabilities; powerful tooling additions like refactoring; and extensive testing tools including
memory and performance profiling, plus the addition of the automated testing framework to Flex Builder.

Adobe AIR is game-changing in so many ways, extending rich applications to the desktop, enabling access to the local file system, system tray, notifications and much more. Now you can write desktop applications using the same skills that you've been already using to create great web apps including both Flex and AJAX.

Don't miss out on the opportunity to see and hear about this highly anticipated release of Flex 3 and AIR during this special pre-release tour.  Plus, in addition to giving away some one of a kind Flex/AIR branded goodies, we will also be raffling off a copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional (pending availability) and a full commercial copy of CS3 Web Premium at this event!

Melbourne event details...

Danny Dura is an Adobe Platform Evangelist at Adobe U.S.A, who will be in Melbourne for a special Flex/AIR evening meeting on Tuesday the 29th of January, 2008.

This will be a joint effort/presentation of the Flash UG and the ColdFusion User Group (CFUG), but the venue is still the same.

Many have expressed interest already, and this event will go ahead, but we would still like to get an idea about how many are coming for catering reasons, please express your interest via, if you have not done so already:

Edit ::: 18-Jan-2008 ::: This event is at (or even over) capacity.  You can still apply for interest, but if you do not get an invite, you cannot attend.  We just have too many people wanting to come! :) (which is not a bad thing)

http://www.techevents.com.au/flex/

This event will be catered for and we will be giving away a copy of Adobe Flex 3 (pending availability), as well as Creative Suite 3 Web Premium, all courtesy of Adobe. Please note you must have expressed interest once via the link above to been in for a chance to win the Adobe software.


Meeting time...

7PM, Pizza and refreshments at 6:30PM, doors open 6PM.

Tuesday the 29th of January, 2008.


Meeting location...

Edit ::: 24th of January ::: Due to unforeseen circumstances, there has been a last minute venue change.  Please check your invite emails for the new address.

About Danny Dura...

Danny Dura is an Adobe Platform Evangelist - His main focus is AIR, Flash Player, ActionScript and Flex.

http://www.danieldura.com/

Special Flex Event in Melbourne

In case people missed it via the CFUG list, please put down interest ASAP, so we get everything confirmed. 

We are happy to have some potentially very exciting news for our Cold
Fusion User Group for very early in the new year.

Danny Dura is an Adobe Platform Evangelist at Adobe U.S.A will be in
Melbourne in late January so we are making preliminary enquiries to
see if our members would be interested in attending a special
Flex/AIR night meeting.

The planned date would be the evening of Tuesday the 29th of January,
2008. If you don't know much about Flex or AIR, this will be right up
your alley. If you already know about Flex or AIR, this is a great
opportunity to be brought up to speed with Flex 3 and AIR pending
their release this year.

We realise that many of you will be away, given it's still the
holiday season. However, if you'd be interested in coming, please let
us know by simply clicking on the link below.

http://www.techevents.com.au/flex/

If the event goes ahead, it will be catered for and we will be giving
away a copy of Adobe Flex 3 (delivered after release), as well as
Creative Suite 3 Web Premium, all courtesy of Adobe.

About Danny Dura...

Danny Dura is an Adobe Platform Evangelist - His main focus is AIR,
Flash Player, ActionScript and Flex.

http://www.danieldura.com/

Melbourne CFUG - 20th December

A quick reminder for the last Melbourne CFUG Meeting of the YEAR!

Location:

NGA.net, Level 2, 17 Raglan St, South Melbourne
Map: http://link.toolbot.com/google.com/73016

When:

20TH of December, Meeting starts at 7:00, so get there before hand (doors
open at 6:30).

Agenda:

Dale Fraser will be presenting on CFAJAX!

ColdFusion 8 includes a lot of Ajax features, and if you think Ajax is
complicated, think again. Ajax will make some of the things you do now
easier, and if you can write ColdFusion code, you can easily use Ajax
with ColdFusion Ajax features. So if you have always wanted to do some
Ajax stuff or you want to learn what Ajax is, then this is for you.

Topics covered include:

• <CFAJAXPROXY to bind to controls and CFC's
• <CFGRID a DHTML grid with binding and paging
• <CFINPUT an autosuggest feature using Ajax binding
• The ColdFusion. javascript methods that come with ColdFusion 8
• And more

If you are going to attend, please RSVP to mark [dot] mandel [at] gmail [dot] com

Only those that RSVP are eligible for the door prizes, so make sure you apply!

See the CFUG Melbourne Calendar at:
http://www.cfcentral.com.au/Events/index.cfm

Or add to your Google Calendar - search for 'CFUG Melbourne'.

As per usual, we'll grab pizza during the evening, so we have
something to scoff down!

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Melbourne CFCAMP Wrapup

Melbourne CFCAMP was last week, and I have to say, I think it went really, really well.

We had an attendance of about 50 people, so it made it a good intimate environment, and everyone asked lots of questions from the presenters, which was great to see.

It was also a great chance to catch up for drinks with the likes of Geoff Bowers, Robin Hilliard, and Peter Bell, who may be local to Australia, but rarely are in the same place at the same time.  (Albeit Peter is new to Australia).

We all went out for a few drinks after the CFCAMP events had finished, and the conversation continued over wine and beer, and we had a pretty good discussion about all sorts of things... including Robin's calculations about the Red Bull challenge (which I don't think were ever fully explained)

I'd like to say a big thanks to Mark Blair, and all the Adobe staff that came down to support the event, it was really appreciated, a good time was had by all, and we even learnt a thing or two.

If anyone is still sitting on the fence on whether or not to go to Perth, I would highly recommend it.

Melbourne CFCAMP this Week!

Just reminding everyone that the Melbourne CFCAMP is on this Thursday!!!

The agenda has been locked down, and can be seen at http://cfcamp.pbwiki.com/Agenda:+Melbourne and I have to say, it looks really exciting!

We're going to be seeing coverage of topics ranging from ColdFusion 8 (Obviously), Flex integration, AIR Integration, Farcry, Transfer ORM, LiveCycle Data Services and Code Generation, not to mention its going to be a great opportunity to catch up with all the local developers, and see what is going on in the local development community.

If you have yet to register, I would highly recommend that you do! It's going to be a really good day!  And considering its all free, what have you got to lose?

Petitioning for Speakers for Melbourne CFCAMP

Melbourne CFCAMP is looming on the 22nd of November and we're in the need for speakers!

Topics can include anything from case studies, to frameworks, to development techniques, to pretty much anything that is related to ColdFusion!

Speaking time is 30 minutes long (although if you need more time, it can be arranged).

So if you have something you can present, or even an idea of something you can present, please write it up on the WIKI page, and share it with the rest of us.

Remember, CFCAMP is for the CF community, so the more your help out, the more your help your community.

If you aren't going to speak, don't forget to register for the event, it should be a great day, and the venerable Ben Forta will be down to join us well!

Melbourne CFUG - 18th of October - ColdBox

All,

A reminder for the upcoming Melbourne CFUG!  Still in our new boardroom! No more
tiny cramped room for us!

Location:

NGA.net, Level 2, 17 Raglan St, South Melbourne
Map: http://link.toolbot.com/google.com/73016

When:

18th of October, Meeting starts at 7:00, so get there before hand (doors
open at 6:30).

Agenda:

Luis Majano himself is going to talk to us over Connect about the
ColdBox Framework.

Luis Majano is a Computer Engineer currently employed at ESRI
(Environmental Systems Research Institute) in sunny Redlands,
California. Please Support GIS!!.  He graduated from Florida
International University and holds an Advanced Coldfusion MX 6,7
Developer Certifications. He has over 7 years experience in software
development, networking and system design.  He is also a freelance
engineer and president of Ortus Solutions, Corp.

Coldbox

ColdBox is a proven event-driven CFC based ColdFusion Framework,
specifically designed for high availability web applications. The
purpose behind ColdBox was to create a fast & stable development
methodology that could be shared among several developers. It makes
use of an MVC (Model View Controller) design pattern implemented via
CFC's. It uses event handler CFC's that hold all the code necessary to
prepare views, call model CFC's or a business layer (Soap/ws/xml/J2EE)
and render views (HTML).

If you are going to attend, please RSVP to: mark [dot] mandel [at] gmail [dot] com

Only those that RSVP are eligible for the door prizes, so make sure you apply!

See the CFUG Melbourne Calendar at:
http://www.cfcentral.com.au/Events/index.cfm

Or add to your Google Calendar - search for 'CFUG Melbourne'.

As per usual, we'll grab pizza during the evening, so we have
something to scoff down!

Look forward to seeing you all there.

Would you come to Melbourne CFCAMP?

I need to know some numbers for if we can run a CFCAMP in Melbourne, how many people would be likely to attend.

If you would be able to attend, please add a comment to this blog post, along with how many people you would be able to bring along with you.

I'm currently trying to see what option we have in terms of venue to incite Adobe to bring CFCAMP down to Melbourne, but if there isn't any interest, better we know now!

Ideally this would shortly thereafter the other state's CFCAMP, so please keep that in mind (short lead time, I know, but what can you do?).

I hope we get a large response! :oD

ColdFusion 8 Launch Party - 8th Aug - Melbourne

All! It's a special CF8 Launch party!!!!

Location:

NGA.net, Level 2, 17 Raglan St, South Melbourne
Map: http://link.toolbot.com/google.com/73016

When:

8th of August, Meeting starts at 6:30, so get there before hand -
** Please note, we are starting a little bit early this time, due to the crossover between states.

Agenda:

This is the official ColdFusion 8 Launch Party!

We will have presentations from Ben Forta via Connect, crossovers between the launch parties at all the other CFUGs across Australia and New Zealand, and prizes from Adobe for those people that attend!

Everyone is welcome, and if you haven't attended a single CFUG meeting yet, now is the time to come down!

If you are going to attend, please RSVP to mark [dot] mandel [at] gmail [dot] com.

See the CFUG Melbourne Calendar at:
http://www.cfcentral.com.au/Events/index.cfm

Or add to your Google Calendar - search for 'CFUG Melbourne'.

As per usual, we'll grab pizza during the evening, so we have
something to scoff down!

Look forward to seeing you all there.