So what was this big announcement that I have been dancing around? First, the technology team is to be commended. POLITICO’s big night to shine, their Super Bowl, was the election night. While other news organizations cratered and even crashed their sites that evening, POLITICO made moves to ensure their success that evening. Their architecture was a mix of good caching on the dynamic side and the use of two CDN providers to distribute their flattened HTML files. The underlying servers that ran the dynamic content and that built the HTML files for distribution were ColdFusion. Although by comparison to other organizations, POLITICO’s technology footprint was mid-size and its ColdFusion development team was not very big at 9 developers, it enjoys popularity in the ColdFusion community because of its high traffic and visibility.

In 2012, POLITICO reached over a billion hits. Up from just 717 million the year before. Our record day BEFORE the election night was 8 million hits, whereas we hit that number in only one hour that evening, with a new daily record of 54 million. In perspective, we made our typical monthly average in just one day. Most of these stats were publicly available so I am not breaking news here.

After a record smashing election cycle and with deep reflection by POLITICO’s CTO Ryan Mannion, it was decided that in order for the site to properly scale and do so in a cost efficient manner some changes in the overall architecture would need to be made. The code needed to be run from and deployed from anywhere (portable to the cloud). And while the ColdFusion community is quite large in the DC area, we have still had a difficult job finding quality developers and when we did … keeping them. I won’t muse, ramble, or otherwise talk about the POLITICO culture beyond saying it too has been a topic to many in the media.

It was decided that while ColdFusion had been the right platform until now, going forward POLITICO would move to more open source platforms including PHP. With that, it began retraining its employees almost immediately. The good news is that they kept their team in place and were willing to retrain them. But it is a big loss to the CF community because POLITICO was a shining example of how scalable that platform could be. It is a tough decision to make and a huge investment, even if the software may be free. If the only argument for change was cost, many would have steered them to the open CF movement like Railo server. However the issue of finding quality CFers was in my mind the bigger issue.

So what is the lesson here? Even high profile companies like POLITICO have a hard time finding ColdFusion developers of a higher quality. Adobe hasn’t done enough, in my opinion, to push a CF based curriculum in colleges and universities to attract more quality developers. While we may continue to see growth by numbers in the community, I hope our experiences in finding quality advanced level developers is not an indicator of a larger problem.

Thankfully I made my decision to transition to another company long before this announcement. I am now working in the federal sector for a technology solutions provider called Segue Technologies.

First, before the upgrade I moved all my ColdFusion/Apache config to a separate config file included from the httpd.conf file: “Include /private/etc/apache2/other/*.conf”

/private/etc/apache2/other/coldfusion.conf

# JRun Settings
LoadModule jrun_module /Applications/ColdFusion9/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/mod_jrun22.so

JRunConfig Verbose false
JRunConfig Apialloc false
JRunConfig Ignoresuffixmap false
JRunConfig Serverstore /Applications/ColdFusion9/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/jrunserver.store
JRunConfig Bootstrap 127.0.0.1:51800
#JRunConfig Errorurl url
#JRunConfig ProxyRetryInterval 600
#JRunConfig ConnectTimeout 15
#JRunConfig RecvTimeout 300
#JRunConfig SendTimeout 15
AddHandler jrun-handler .jsp .jws .cfm .cfml .cfc .cfr .cfswf

Next, after the OS is upgraded to Mountain Lion I noticed an important line missing in the httpd.conf file. So I added the following line right above the first <Directory> tag:

NameVirtualHost *

Once I did that, all I had to do is restart apache and make sure ColdFusion was started. The apache restart command in Terminal is sudo apachectl restart. And that is all it took to make it work in my configuration.

The CFIDE directory had a 403 error, so to fix that I simply added the directory that was being aliased to my httpd.conf file.

<Directory "/Users/kbenore/cfdocuments/CFIDE">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Again, restarted apache and everything works beautifully.

Even though the venue is small, the quality of speakers was amazing. The last regional event I attended was one in Dallas. That conference, which will remain nameless, featured an array of different technologies including: CF, Java, and even PHP. Yet only about half the speakers at that one day conference were decent. RIACON on the other hand had a lot of quality speakers.

The only downside with any conference seems to be the tradeoff of sponsorship. When you pony up with the big bucks, you get to send your own speakers to fill some of the spots. Adobe has some great speakers, but sometimes you get an engineer who isn’t great at public speaking or a product person who is really good at sales, but not a technical speech. Most of the time their engineers and product people are fantastic, but no organization is perfect. That issue was minimized at RIACON this year. In fact, I only remember one “talk” that seemed more about selling the idea of the product instead of introducing me to how to use the product. I attended a non-CF session called “Intro to PhoneGap” presented by Andrew Trice, an Adobe employee. The presentation felt more like a feature list discussion than a “how to” session. I’d rather have “lab” format for that and skip what I could have read on their website.

Hopefully the organizers will continue to shape the conference to contain less overview materials and more technical sessions. Don’t get me wrong, there were a good number of technical sessions but they could have stood to have more of what I would call “advanced technical” sessions. The national conference that comes to mind that does a great job at that is CFObjective. If that format could be adopted at RIACON, then RIACON would become the first choice for local developers. It is slowly getting there but with some leadership it could be exactly that at RIACON 2013. In fact, I would probably just dump most of the introductory sessions in favor of more technical sessions.

Being a regional conference, the keynotes were not really “noteworthy”. They did highlight information that was interesting, especially when talking about mobile trends. Code names for future products aside, there was no real breaking news but that is not important at a regional conference.

Overall, I would say this conference was well worth the money. It was particularly a value for local attendees like me. With 10 main sessions, it worked out to be about $12.50 per session. You can’t get that kind of value at a national conference. I will definitely try to attend RIACON 2013.

This morning, RIACON returns for its second year and is being held right outside of DC. RIACON is billed as a technical conference that focuses on 3 major tracks: Mobile, HTML 5, and Enterprise Architecture. I love what the folks behind RIACON are doing. I do, however, have one minor complaint. So begins my rant. <RANT> Most (if not all) of the sessions in the “Enterprise Architecture” track are somehow related to ColdFusion development. But, when you peruse the conference website you get no hint that this is at least in part a ColdFusion conference. Sure, with sponsors like Adobe and Railo it is hard not to put 2 and 2 together. When you look at the session tracks, the CF nature of this conference becomes obvious. Yet on the front page (or any other conference description page) the term ColdFusion is glaringly absent. Granted, only 45% of the conference is directly related to ColdFusion but that is a big percentage for them not to make any mention of it on their website. Not to mention many of the non-CF sessions are being led by well-known CF developers. </RANT>

Now that I am done ranting, I am very excited about RIACON. Last year, RIACON was a small technical conference at a small venue that was trying to fill a void left by a very large but defunct conference, CFUNITED. RIACON in its first year, was very regional in its feel and size. It was also held on the weekend, which although appeals to employers does not appeal to the employees who would want to attend. Most attendees like going during the week, so that they may still spend time with their families on the weekend (or for the single developers – keep their “social calendars” open). This year, RIACON feels much larger. It has some big name speakers, it has a bigger venue, and even the weekday schedule makes it feel like a bigger conference. I say all of that but RIACON hasn’t even started yet. So its size remains to be seen, the excitement level for me and some of my developer friends in the DC area is very high.

I am not a mobile developer, nor do I play one on TV. But some of the mobile and HTML5 sessions do look impressive. All in all, I can’t wait for the sessions to start this morning. But I better stop typing or I won’t make the drive in!

So why am I blogging about it? Because POLITICO is powered by ColdFusion. We flatten our CF to HTML for content distribution and our dynamic sites are all CF. So congrats to my colleagues at POLITICO for delivering another great example of the power CF in a high volume enterprise!

Some of you are probably wondering why in the world I am blogging about Steve Jobs, since I typically blog about ColdFusion. It’s because what I do has been influenced greatly by Steve Jobs. I used to read the Apple Fanboy Credo and laugh at those ridiculous Apple Fanboys. Now I read it thinking to each point, “yep that makes sense” in a playful sort of way. I am a ColdFusion developer. And while mostly the ColdFusion instances I deal with would please the man from Redmond instead of the one from Cupertino, my development environment is an Apple MacBook Pro. Yes, I am still forced to use a Windows VM (which Windows 7 isn’t all that bad since they have been borrowing from Apple since the early days). But I digress as I watch some video podcasts tonight on my hotel TV that is connected to my iPad 2, all the while answering texts on my iOS 5 device (an iPhone 4).

Even companies that have were not directly started by Apple, were built or indirectly effected as a result of decisions Steve made. I can’t help but think that Netflix would not have just completely changed their business model had the iPod not launched 10 years ago this November. Hear me out, before the iPod only music geeks had digital music. After the iPod, all media types have now gone digital. This transition to digital was consumer friendly largely because of what Apple had accomplished in cooperation with (or arm twisting) the entertainment industry. Therefore, streaming bits can flow through the Internet made possible because of the foundation Steve Jobs laid. Mobile devices, like the iPhone and iPad, have been a large contributor in making digital media become a more important medium than print. For instance, we now have large “internet only” video networks, such as Revision3, TWIT, ESPN3, and more! Newspapers who were once huge in print are finding new life on the web and on mobile. The company which I work, POLITICO.com is a predominately online political news destination. Sure we have a print newspaper too, but it reaches the DC area where our website and mobile apps reach the world. These successes are largely because Steve Jobs made the web accessible to everyone on the go.

Indeed, there were mobile web sites before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. But that is almost like saying there was global transportation before the airplane. Just as the airplane cut weeks of travel down to several hours, Steve Jobs turned a largely “mobile is text links” situation into a “rich media experience.” The Internet would be a government project still if it were not for the personal computer which Steve Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak brought to market. Perhaps a PC would have come to market, but would it be like it is now? Without Steve Jobs, there is no Pixar. Without Steve, you still may be buying your music at a store on CD. Who knows what life would have been like without Steve. And who knows what technology we could have had sooner, if Steve did not have to leave us so soon. Thankfully, his legacy will continue to live on at Apple. However now, we must say goodbye to possible the greatest CEO of our generation. Goodbye, Steve … your vision for the technology we have in our lives has inspired us all.

Steve Jobs
1955-2011

Photo By: Matthew Yohe

I have heard from reliable sources that the history of Day 2 keynotes was that pre-Adobe they used to be more serious like they were this year. Now since Adobe is big enough, they wanted to release developer related news on Day 2 as they used to. Indeed they had developer news, just none for the ColdFusion community. In fact, I tweeted what a failure it was to see a myriad of developer product icons on the screen but not one CF product icon. No acknowledgement of CF at a developer keynote, even in a graphic, is a missed opportunity to at least say … “CF Community … stay tuned.”

Indeed, there will be news of features coming in ColdFusion Zeus. As they become public, you will see Ray Camden blog about them. As I can write about them, I will also do so. But I write this post to reassure all of those in the CF community, there will be a larger emphasis of CF at MAX next year. Why do I think that? Because CF Zeus will be part of next year’s release cycle and thus MAX will naturally emphasize it then. So even if Adobe doesn’t say it I will … “stay tuned.”

UPDATE:
Go check out some of the features Ray Camden has already started blogging about: http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2011/10/4/My-MAX-Preso–the-future-of-ColdFusion.

With other major company keynotes, you expect the CEO of the company to present info about upcoming product releases. Not so with Adobe. The main keynote was Adobe’s CTO (chief technology officer) Kevin Lynch which is completely appropriate for a software company. Now my discussion of the keynote may not be as verbose as others, because frankly I am not a design guy which is where the focus of these products lie. However, I did find some of this ridiculously cool so I did want to highlight.

The big announcement from Adobe on the first day was Adobe Creative Cloud.

Adobe Creative Cloud
The Creative Cloud is broken down into three areas: Creative Services, Creative Community, and Creative Applications. Each user gets 20GB of storage to use.

Creative Services
This represents a number of services, some existing like Business Catalyst and some new like Typekit which Adobe announced today they acquired. Typekit is an interesting company, as a web service they make tons of fonts available to use on one’s website as a web font. No need to make the font into an image like we had to in the past. Truly a cool service. They have a free option for super small sites, but most will have to pay based on their page views per month. A fun example of the font potential is: http://lostworldsfairs.com/atlantis/

Creative Community
Not much here, other than the cloud allows you to share with other people more easily.

Creative Applications
Other than the traditional desktop apps, now Adobe will focus a lot of attention on touch devices. Some of the cooler apps in include Photoshop Touch and Proto (a wireframe tool).
Photoshop Touch got lots of wows in the audience because of its the 3D layer effect. Very cool.

This new Creative Cloud includes all of the creative desktop apps you’ve come to know and love plus all of these touch apps. Beta coming in November to Android as well as pricing information.

I also fully expect more information about CF10 to be announced. Although there has already been some good tidbits about CF 10 released at previous conferences, MAX is Adobe’s official conference and as such we can expect a bigger “show and tell.”

I will be attending MAX this year and am looking forward to many great topics. For a list of the topics I am most looking forward to, scroll down to the bottom of this page. Also, you may want to plan to follow this blog during the conference because as long as bandwidth cooperates I plan on posting as much information as I can. This will include information in the keynotes, but also perhaps something will also catch my eye in the classes. In addition to MAX, I will be staying in the Los Angeles area for a few days afterward to take in some of the sights with my family. So needless to say, I am looking forward to MAX for a multitude of reasons!

Conference topics I am looking forward to:

To register you need your Adobe.com membership login and password. http://adobe.com/go/cfdeveloperweek 

Tuesday, September 13, 2011
1:00PM – 2:00PM US/Eastern
Improve Your ColdFusion Code Through Unit Testing

4:00PM – 5:00PM US/Eastern
Using ColdFusion Frameworks for Application Development

7:00PM – 8:00PM US/Eastern
Understanding and Using the ColdFusion Server Monitor

Wednesday, September 14, 2011
1:00PM – 2:00PM US/Eastern
ColdFusion Builder: The Professional IDE to Boost Your Productivity

4:00PM – 5:00PM US/Eastern
Expand Functionality with ColdFusion Builder Extensions

Thursday, September 15, 2011
1:00PM – 2:00PM US/Eastern
Developing Your First Application Using ColdFusion 9 and ORM

2:30PM – 3:30PM US/Eastern
Speed Up Your Apps with Caching in ColdFusion

4:00PM – 5:00PM US/Eastern
ColdFusion and Mobile – Browser-Based Applications Made Easy

7:00PM – 8:00PM US/Eastern
Become ColdFusion Empowered in Under an Hour

Friday, September 16, 2011
1:00PM – 2:00PM US/Eastern
Accessing ColdFusion Services From Flex Applications

2:30PM – 3:30PM US/Eastern
Securing your ColdFusion Applications

4:00PM – 5:00PM US/Eastern
Make Your Site Searchable with Solr

7:00PM – 8:00PM US/Eastern
Bringing ColdFusion to Java SpringMVC