CFConversations - an Adobe ColdFusion and CFML podcast - Episodes

CFConversations 33, Interview 22 - Adam Lehman and Terry Ryan of Adobe!

Brian Meloche — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:27:00 -0400

On Day 3 of cf.Objective() 2009, May 16th, I was able to interview Adam Lehman and Terry Ryan of Adobe. I knew Adam back when he was a user group manager. Adam's been with Adobe for three years, first as a ColdFusion specialist on the sales team, and later as a product evangelist for ColdFusion and government. He recently took over as product manager for ColdFusion and Bolt, the code name for the new ColdFusion IDE. Terry, or Terrence as you might know him, joined Adobe this year as a product evangelist for both ColdFusion and Adobe in education. Before that, he was an Adobe Community Expert, and an IT director at the Wharton School of Business. In this interview, we talk about Centaur, Bolt, the reaction so far, presenting the new stuff, release dates, and what might be coming in what might be called ColdFusion 10 and the second release of Bolt. We talk about what it's like to be former ColdFusion fanboys now working for Adobe, and for Adam, taking over the reigns of ColdFusion. I also ask Adam about his recent accident while in London for a Wee Dram of Scotch and his recovery, the CFML standards committee, and the other open source engines. We also talk about the user group tour, which starts today, is hopefully coming to a city near you in June. Check your local user group's website, or groups.adobe.com, for more information. In Cleveland, Adam is coming June 17th, and you can find out more and RSVP by going to www.clevelandcfug.org. Please note: RSVP is for those who will attend the meeting in person. This is not going to be recorded or available on the web. Sorry... this is a in-person event only! The only thing I regret about this interview is that it's not long enough, but that's all the time we had. I didn't get to ask everything I wanted, and skimmed the surface on several topics. However, maybe that's a good thing. I hope to sit down again with each of them very soon. A few announcements... Several people have asked for my What to Do When OO Fails You in ColdFusion" presentation from CFObjective. I'm going to be presenting it next month to the CFMeetup group, and I had some issues with my demo code for the conference, so I'm going to hold off posting it until that presentation's over and I have better demo code. The wait will be worth it. Ryan Mannion at Politico.com contacted me, and they are looking for a Senior ColdFusion developer. Politico.com is a high-traffic site, with 40-100 million page views per month and you may have seen them mentioned on CBS' Face the Nation or CNN. The position is full-time, in Arlington, Virginia, and if you're interested, please check it out http://www.politico.com/employment/senior_coldfusion_developer.html. If you haven't found it yet, there's a new ColdFusion podcast out there. It's called CFHOUR(), with Dave Ferguson and Michael Sean Becker. They're up to episode 9, and you can find them in iTunes and at cfhour.com. Lastly, and I don't know who to thank, but just before CFObjective, a beautiful new 24" ASUS monitor showed up at my door. The shipping label had my name for both the bill to and the ship to, so I'm not sure who sent me this wonderful monitor. It appears to be an upgrade from one that was on my Amazon wishlist. Whoever you are, thank you. If you're curious, my Amazon wishlist can be found here. Run time: 43:27

CFConversations 32, Roundtable 11 - The cf.Objective() Roundtable!

Brian Meloche — Wed, 20 May 2009 02:34:00 -0400

I had hoped we would have been able to get in more than only one roundtable at cf.Objective(), but one is all I was able to get, and it's a good one. I had hoped to get this out before the conference ended, but I had a few issues on Saturday, and I just didn't quite finish it. Once I got home, it took a few more days before I finished it, but here it is, still fresh! On the roundtable panel:

Recorded during the last Birds of a Feather (BOF) time slot on Day 2 Friday night (around 8pm), this roundtable covers Days 1 & 2, but not Day 3 except to say what sessions we were looking forward to. We start with the keynote, which covered Centaur and Bolt and a few other things. Several Centaur and Bolt features were discussed and shown during the conference, both during the keynote and during sessions Adam Lehman and Terry Ryan did during the first two days, and a few more on Day 3 that we don't talk about here. We also cover the interesting sessions we attended in the first two days, our own sessions (we were all speakers), the BOFs we saw, the Flash Builder renaming announcement, sessions we were looking forward to on Day 3, and some of the well-known speakers that did not attend this year (though we missed several). Enjoy! Run time: 59:53 Note: The episode is the eleventh roundtable episode, not the twelfth. I corrected the title, but the link will remain as is.

CFConversations 31, Interview 21 - The "Railo Gang of Four" from cf.Objective() 2009

Brian Meloche — Fri, 15 May 2009 03:46:00 -0400

I've finally managed to get out an episode! Woo hoo! I'm happy to finally break the long hiatus. Recorded on Day 1 of cf.Objective() 2009, this features an interview with the new "Railo Gang of Four": Gert Franz, Mark Drew, Peter Bell and Sean Corfield. We go into how Sean, Peter and Mark each joined Railo, Railo UK and Railo US' corporate ties to the Swiss mothership, and how they are building a consultancy. I also ask them some challenging questions, like Railo going after the enterprise market of Adobe's, the relationship with Adobe, preaching to those Java and PHP developers they'd promised, and how the new guys each lost their Community Expert ties with Adobe. It's a great interview, and it was something I could turn around fairly quickly (only a few hours), given the fairly decent quality of the recording and little editing needed. Thanks guys, for doing this! Run Time: 42:30 A few It's worth noting that the Peter Bell and Sean Corfield interviews are NOT this interview. I interviewed Peter back in February, before the hiatus and him joining Railo. Sean's interview was on May 3rd, after him joining Railo, so it appears there are a lot of Railo episodes in the pipe. Also, much to my disappointment, I have been unable to get a Day 0 or Day 1 roundtable done. Although I had interested people each night, both roundtables fell through. I'm going to try again on Day 2. I'm hoping that getting this episode out during the conference will help get a few more interviews and a roundtable done tomorrow (well, today, I guess). :)

CFConversations 30, Interview 20 - Charlie Arehart - 02/24/2009

Brian Meloche — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:05:00 -0400

For the fourth installment in our Speakers of CFUnited series, I interview longtime pillar of the ColdFusion community Charlie Arehart. This interview covers a lot of ground. We got into a lot and uncovered some of Charlie's own personal "hidden gems". We talk about Charlie's early career before ColdFusion as a Model 204 developer and the parallels between the ColdFusion and Model 204 communities, the early ColdFusion community, his involvement with ColdFusion user groups, speaking, and writing, his time at New Atlanta evangelizing BlueDragon, leaving there and going independent, and the type of work he does with ColdFusion today as an independent consultant. We find out Charlie is an old "song and dance man". We also talk about Charlie's seminary studies, and what he plans to do with it once he graduates. This is a great interview, and I think you'll enjoy it. If you don't know Charlie, you will after listening, and you will know him even better if you already know him. Charlie is one of the nicest guys around, and his detailed knowledge of ColdFusion and teaching that knowledge are what makes him one of our community's greatest assets. Of the episodes we recorded at MAX 2008, the sound quality of this interview is definitely the best of the lot. The audio quality is as good as you can get for taking it in a hallway at a major conference, and you can hear both of us very well throughout the interview. Enjoy! Run time: 1:06:33

CFConversations 29, Interview 19 - Douglas Knudsen

Brian Meloche — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:06:00 -0400

In our third installment of the Speakers of CFUnited series, Dan Wilson interviews Douglas Knudsen, consultant with Universal Mind, who is speaking on Connecting Flex to ColdFusion at CFUnited. Doug talks about topics from his talk at CFUnited, working in a coworking group environment instead of working from home, his start with ColdFusion, and music to work to, including Chinese Silk music. Run time: 46:37

CFConversations 28, Interview 18 - Luis Majano - 02/03/2009

Brian Meloche — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:50:00 -0400

Yes, I've gotten through my computer problems! This is first episode almost entirely edited with my new Gateway desktop computer. I've also added a beautiful new ASUS 22" 1080p monitor to replace my old 22" NEC CRT, more memory and a new KVM switch. I'd like to thank Charlie Arehart and past donations I've already thanked in previous episodes to help make those additions possible. This episode was edited in a brand new "studio" of sorts. Over the holidays, I set up a new office in my house for podcasting and other work, built a desk I had received as a Christmas gift back in 2007, and all in all have a much better setup now than the tiny mobile desk I had before. Recent delays were not due to hardware at all, but were mostly audio related, as well as some health issues in my family that have taken some time away from the computer. As mentioned here, the audio from the Meet the ColdFusion Birds of a Feather at MAX 2008 has severe problems, making it very difficult to edit. Sixty hours of editing - yes, that's right - 60 - have not produced an episode of enough quality for me to release it. One good thing from the experience is that I'm now using Audition for my editing, and, after a bit of a learning curve, it really gives you a lot of power. I think I can still recover at least some of the content from the BOF, but I've decided to put that on hold for a few episodes and release some interviews, including a couple that have been on the shelf for a while. For our second episode in the Speakers of CFUnited series, Adam Haskell and I interview Luis Majano, the creator of the ColdBox framework. This was recorded October 24, 2008, so it predates the MAX conference, the Bolt announcement, and Adobe layoffs, and ColdBox is now up to version 2.6.2. Of course, Luis talks about Coldbox, but he also talks about growing up in El Salvador during its civil war, including Salvadoran cuisine, coming to America, how he started in ColdFusion, pre-Coldbox, what led to Coldbox and why Luis is excited about ColdFusion's future. This interview, which was originally scheduled to be released before MAX, is one of my favorites so far. It was delayed due to some time sensitive episodes, vacation, and the MAX episodes (including ones not yet released, as mentioned earlier) but I'm proud to bring it to you now, and I think you'll really enjoy it! Run time: 1:07:26 CFConversations wants to let listeners know that the UK CFUG, including Mark Drew, Niklas Richardson, Neil Middleton, Andy Allan and Kevin McCabe are now doing a monthly podcast called CF Docs. It's on iTunes, and you can find it here. And, the ColdFusion Muse, Mark Kruger, has released his first podcast episode in some time.

CFConversations 27, Interview 17 - Doug Hughes - 01/18/2009

Brian Meloche — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:58:00 -0400

For our first episode of 2009, we begin a new series of podcasts, called The Speakers of CFUnited. In this episode, Doug Hughes, best known for his Alagad consulting company and as the creator of the Reactor framework. They discuss, among other things, Alagad, Reactor, advice for developers who want to start their own consulting company, and the future of ColdFusion. Although the first three episodes in this series do not specifically talk about CFUnited, expect most of these interviews will include some information about their planned sessions at CFUnited, along with the usual interview stuff. We're planning a lot of activity around CFUnited, and we have some special things coming up in upcoming months between CFConversations and CFUnited. Stay tuned! And thanks to Dan Wilson for producing another great interview episode! Run time: 54:12 (NOTE: Episode 27 was originally going to be a portion of the Meet the ColdFusion Team BOF session recorded at MAX 2008 North America. Why it's delayed is explained here.

CFConversations 26, Roundtable 10 - 12/30/08 - MAX 2008 Day 3 podcast of the ColdFusion Uber Panel

Brian Meloche — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:07:00 -0400

For the last ColdFusion Conversations podcast of 2008 (you might see me refer to it as such from time to time), we finally have the long awaited podcast of the ColdFusion Uber Panel from the Day 3 ColdFusion unconference at MAX 2008 North America in San Francisco, recorded on November 19, 2008. As previously mentioned in CFConversations episode 25, the quality of the raw audio recording for the uber panel was pretty bad, but, somehow, through several false starts, I think I've finally made the audio listenable, even fairly good in some spots, although the quality does vary with the speaker. It's as good as I can get it, although it's still not as good as other roundtables. The Uber panel features Ray Camden, Sean Corfield, Charlie Arehart, Jason Delmore and Joe Reinhart, with me as the host and moderator. You'll also hear Kristen Schofield, the ColdFusion Marketing manager in the second half of the recording (although she wasn't a panelist, you do hear from her several times). Unfortunately, you probably already know that Jason Delmore was among the 600 laid off at Adobe earlier this month. Jason was speaking as the ColdFusion product manager at the time this was recorded. A replacement has not been named, but I just wanted to extend a holiday well wishes to Jason, Steven Erat, and to all of you former ADobe employees affected by this untimely layoff. Speaking of the holiday season, I wanted to let listeners know that my Christmas gift was a new computer, and many of you donated funds and gift cards that were used in part to fund the purchase of a new computer, along with some of my own funds. Many thanks to those of you that helped me out with this, and it's very much appreciated. I didn't get everything I need, but it's a start. Unfortunately, I'm still not using that computer, as it has a bad memory stick. Once the replacement RAM comes in, I'll be using that machine for CFConversations editing and producing for the foreseeable future. In case you're curious, I got this refurb from Tiger Direct, via Amazon. Yeah, you Mac guys will say why not a Mac? Well, I couldn't afford one, so I got the best computer I could for the money I had. Once it's fully up and running, it should make podcast editing a lot faster. I'm still saving up for a monitor.

CFConversations 25, Roundtable 9, 12/13/08 - MAX 2008 Day 2

Brian Meloche — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:06:00 -0400

After a long layoff, longer than I had hoped, we're back with episode 25. I was delayed in putting out this episode. I had hoped to get this episode out during MAX, but there were some difficulties in both scheduling and audio quality that delayed this recording. We were unable to record a regular day 2 roundtable as we had hoped, due to ColdFusion's placement in the Sneak Peeks at the end of that demonstration. We were prepared to leave the hall to do the roundtable after the ColdFusion sneak, but with it being the last shown, that meant there was no time, since people going to the event had to get right on the bus after the sneak (I skipped it this year - it would have costed us $100 for my wife to attend). Thankfully, I recorded Ram Kulkarni's sneak peek of ActionScript3 in ColdFusion from the sneak peek, and the audio recorded is the first part of this episode and I think the quality is pretty good. Here is the recording on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uImhKFhwAu0 With the lack of a day 2 roundtable, I tried to record an impromptu day 2 roundtable on day 3, which is the second part of this episode, just before recording the Day 3 uber panel, which will come out in the next episode. Immediately after MAX ended, I went on vacation with my wife for a week and a half, visiting with family and getting some much needed rest, which delayed the release of further episodes until December. We didn't fare as well with CFConversations recordings at MAX as I had hoped. We did get some good content, but not nearly as many interviews as expected, and several of the recordings came out REALLY bad. With the exception of an interview I did with Charlie Arehart, all of the recordings have flaws, and this impromptu day 2 roundtable and the day 3 uber panel, recorded directly after, are the worst of the lot. We had some problems with the amplification causing reverb and echo, and the microphone setup just didn't work. I've spent days trying to fix the next two episodes, and I'm still going to try to fix up the uber panel, but I'm done working on this one... It sucks, my desktop wants to crash every time I try to fix it... four times today! and if this gets out, you'll know I'm washing my hands of it (it sounds OK if you aren't listening with headphones). The content of this and ESPECIALLY the uber panel in the next episode are worth listening to... but the quality degrades beyond the sneak peek. Hopefully, I will have learned something from the 40+ hours I've spent trying to fix this episode, and I'll definitely be experimenting with audio setup of a venue with an audience and amplification for next time. Thanks to Doug Laakso for his recent Amazon.com gift card and Felix Tjandrawibawa for his recent Paypal donation. After creating this MP3, I was able to purchase a new desktop computer through Amazon with the gift cards received plus some of my own money, which should make it to me as an early Christmas present, and I hope to use Paypal to bump up the memory on the desktop. Enough of me apologizing! Here is episode 25! Run time: 17:48

CFConversations 24, Roundtable 8, 11/18/08 - MAX 2008 Day 1

Brian Meloche — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:01:00 -0400

This roundtable features talk Day 1 coverage of MAX 2008, from Moscone West in San Francisco. Panelists:

We cover, in no particular order, CFUnderground, the MAX Day 1 Keynote, some info from Judith shared at a press conference by Kevin Lynch, sessions, food, the unconferences, festivities, how it compares to MAX 2007, and, especially, a look to tomorrow. ColdFusion wasn't covered at all, but the buzz is that ColdFusion will get a LOT of coverage during the day 2 keynote. I've rushed this one out to you, so it may be a little rough in some spots, but I think I was able to clean it up quite a bit. Run time: 40:57

CFConversations 23, Interview 16 - Michael & Judith Dinowitz, with a special MAX announcement!

Brian Meloche — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:32:00 -0400

For our final podcast before MAX, we have a very special interview with Michael & Judith Dinowitz, of the House of Fusion, Fusion Authority and Flex Authority. Michael and Judith announce that they are giving away CDs with all issues of Fusion Authority Quarterly Update and Flex Authority at the MAX 2008 ColdFusion Unconference and Flex unconference. Of course, you'll be able to purchase subscriptions, too! Of course, we don't stop there! Michael & Judith go back to the beginning of ColdFusion, so Adam (who came in as an emergency interviewer, when my Skype recorder would only record my voice) and I ask about the early days of ColdFusion, the start of House of Fusion and the CF-Talk list, how Fusebox started with the help of CF-Talk, the technical side of the House of Fusion, other lists on House of Fusion, how Fusion Authority got started, then Flex Authority, the difficulties editing and publishing two journals, and family life. Since we didn't have enough time to do a pre-MAX roundtable, we end the episode in a mini-roundtable fashion, speculating on what Adobe will announce at MAX next week. You may hear a few weird things in the recording. It couldn't be helped, given the recording on Skype. Run time: 1:21:15

CFConversations 22, Interview 15 - Geoff Bowers of Daemon and FarCry - 11/10/08

Brian Meloche — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:32:00 -0400

In this episode, Jeff Coughlin interviews Geoff Bowers of Daemon Internet Consultants (pronounced demon). In North America, many developers may not know Geoff, but he's well known in his native Australia. Daemon organizes the WebDU conference, hosts the popular web aggregator Full as a Goog and are stewards of FarCry. One of the frameworks that wasn't featured in our recent part 1 and 2 controller framework roundtables, but is an important framework, is FarCry Core. Many ColdFusion developers only know FarCry for its CMS, and only think of FarCry as a CMS, but the FarCry CMS is written on top of a very powerful framework in and of itself, the FarCry core, that is used around many web applications, the CMS only being one of them. In this interview, Geoff talks about his personal relationships with his employees at Daemon, what makes WebDU different from other developer conferences, the FarCry CMS, and explains the differences between FarCry Core and other ColdFusion frameworks. Namely, FarCry Core is completely object oriented from the ground up, where everything in it is an object, and has a built-in ORM. This interview's a little long, but it's packed with content. I thought about splitting into two episodes, but we've got more coming before MAX 2008 San Francisco, so I'm releasing it as a single episode. Thanks to Jeff Coughlin for doing the interview and doing a fantastic job with the editing (I only had to tweak one thing, plus the intro/outro). Show links:

Run time: 1:24:48 This episode has been sponsored by Quality Logo Products, Inc.. Kurt Bonnet was kind enough to sponsor the podcast in exchange for this job posting: Chicagoland Web / ColdFusion Developer (60k-80k) Quality Logo Products, Inc. Quality Logo Products, Inc., located in Chicagoland, is a fast-growing company looking for a full-time experienced web developer to join our team. You'll have the opportunity to work directly with the business owners to design and implement new web sites, new features to existing sites, and digital marketing strategies. We offer an aggressive salary (60k-80k), $2500 per year allowance (in addition to the annual salary) for conferences/further education, annual performance bonus, retirement savings matching up to 3% of the employee's gross salary, 3 weeks vacation, telecommute/remote working opportunities, and more. Learn more at: http://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/jobs/ and apply at jobs@qualitylogoproducts.com. This is direct hire by a fellow CFer, not a recruiter. If you are interested in sponsoring an episode, you can do so with a PayPal or Amazon wish list donation. Email me at podcast at cfconversations dot com if you're interested.

CFConversations 21, Interview 14 - Isaac Dealey - 11/04/08

Brian Meloche — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:24:00 -0400

You heard him on episode 19, and now, Adam Haskell and I interview Isaac Dealey, creator and lead developer of the onTap and DataFaucet frameworks. In this interview, we discuss onTap and DataFaucet in more detail, and we also get to know Isaac in a very candid and personal way. We discuss Isaac's struggles with Asperger Syndrome, an Autism Spectrum Disorder, his diagnosis two years ago and his decision to go public about it. When you hear Isaac's story, you may realize that you might know or work with someone who has Asperger, but doesn't know it, or you might even have it yourself. I know I have worked with a few people who are definitely candidates for it. Regardless, Isaac's a brilliant guy, and you'll hear that in this episode. We also discuss Isaac's artistic side, with his Woohooligan site. This interview's a bit long (for an interview), but we think you won't get bored and you'll enjoy every minute of this episode. Run time 1:10:55

CFConversations 20, Roundtable 7 - 10/26/08 - Part 2 on controller frameworks!

Brian Meloche — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 01:55:00 -0400

Following up on last week's Part 1 on controller frameworks, we now bring you Part 2, in what will be a continuing series on frameworks used in the ColdFusion/CFML developer community. Part 2 features other viewpoints not represented in Part 1. For this episode, which was recorded on Wednesday, October 15th (technically, Thursday, 16 October 02:00 UTC time), we have:

Brian Meloche (moderator)
Adam Haskell (representing Fusebox)
Ray Camden (representing Model-Glue)
Chris Peters (representing ColdFusion on Wheels)
Mark Mandel, of Transfer fame, but Transfer is an ORM framework, not a controller framework, so he wasn't representing it. On controller frameworks, Mark is framework agnostic.
Nick Kwiatkowski, who is anti-framework.

The plan is to do more roundtables on other kinds of frameworks, such as ORM/Data, dependency injection, and unit testing frameworks, after the MAX North America conference some time in December or January. We're also interviewing some of the framework authors and lead developers in other episodes (we have two of those already done, and more scheduled). The feedback on Part 1 so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and I believe part 2 is more of the same. This one was a little more contentious than part 1, and that leads to good podcasting! I personally think this episode is one of our best to date. Enjoy! Run time: 1:03:04

CFConversations 19, Roundtable 6 - 10/19/08 - The first in a series on frameworks!

Brian Meloche — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:00:00 -0400

This roundtable is different than the previous five roundtables on CFConversations. Inspired by the ColdFusion Weekly roundtable on Flex frameworks, and by popular demand, this episode is part one of a two part series on ColdFusion controller-based frameworks, and the first part of an ongoing series on ColdFusion frameworks in general. Although people were asking for it, this series is something I intended to do from the very early on in this podcast's development, and it was about time to start them. For this episode, which was recorded on Friday, October 10th, we have:

Brian Meloche (moderator)
Kurt Wiersma (representing Mach-ii)
Russ Johnson (representing ColdBox)
John Farrar (representing SOS and Co-op)
Isaac Dealey (representing onTap)
Rick Mason (uses a simpler, homegrown framework)

Now... are you reading this, and are saying, "Hey!!! Where's Fusebox?? Where's Model-Glue?" Well, those frameworks, as well as ColdFusion on Wheels, a framework agnostic and an anti-framework person, are represented in part two of this series, which was recorded on October 15th and is still being edited at the time of writing this post. We had to plan for two sessions, and with scheduling conflicts, this is the alignment we got. Some had advocated doing all of the major frameworks together, but that wasn't possible with scheduling. Considering how well both episodes came out, I wouldn't change a thing! :-) We're planning to do a series of frameworks roundtables over the next few months. We'll do roundtables that discuss Dependency Injection/Inversion of Control frameworks, database/ORM frameworks, and unit testing frameworks. Those episodes have not been recorded at this time, but we're planning to do those episodes after MAX in December and into 2009. I think you'll really enjoy this episode! It was fun to do, and we got into a lot of interesting points. What you won't hear is the 4 1/2 hour discussion most of us continued after the podcast recording was done... but, you know what they say... What happens on Skype STAYS ON Skype! :-) Run time: 1:12:37