Renewed as an “Adobe Community Professional”

Yesterday Liz Frederick published the list of the 2010 “Adobe Community Professionals (ACP)”.

ACP is a rebrand of the “Adobe Community Experts” program to avoid the confusion with the Adobe Certified Experts(ACE) . I’m very glad to be part of it for the second year and I will do my best to deserve it.

Thanks again to Adobe and the Community team!

Posted in General, Personal   1 Comment »  

Hello 2010!

Happy New Year 2010 to my readers!

We are already the 16th January and my latest post is at least 3 month old… shame on me! After Adobe MAX conference things went crazy and I had very little time between my work and family (I have 2 kids, 2 and 6 years old and a family member is currently at the hospital), and as I’m quite active on twitter, I neglected my blogging duties - sorry

2009 was a mixed year for me: almost no time to learn other advanced techniques not related to my project, not enough time to play more with the “fun part” of the Flash Platform (Flash Platform services, 3D engines…), I missed many well known conferences [...] But let’s have a look at some positive facts:

Work

- my current project is still going on in 2010: it’s a multilingual document management, workflow and reporting system built using Flex3/ColdFusion 8/Java/Oracle.
- at least 4 projects at the European Commission are now using Flex – I’m not aware of every projects, only those where I met the team. I know that more people at the Commission have express their interest in the technology too which is a good sign for 2010.
- some big Belgian companies in transportation, telecom or media have now Flex projects ongoing, expect more to follow.
- my Adobe Community Expert status: thanks again to the wonderful team at Adobe!
- the launch of ColdFusion 9 - no, it’s not a dead technology :-)

Conferences

 I attended probably less conferences than in 2008 as I had to pay for my expenses in 2009 (another story) :-(

- Multi-Mania in Kortrijk (Belgium)
- my 1st Scotch on the Rocks in London – and made a “quick greetings” in Brussels
- my 1st Adobe MAX US in Los Angeles
- several Belgium AUG meetings

I love attending conferences, not only for the interesting topics and the well known speakers, but also for the networking part. Again last year I met several friends that I only knew from the internet (twitter, blogs, Community Experts…)… I really enjoyed talking to them!

Gadgets

- finally bought a HTC Hero, after months of hesitation – I’m really enjoying it!
- I have finally a complete HD installation with my brand new AV receiver Denon AVR-1910: I’m now able to enjoy Dolby TrueHD and DTS MA.

Others

- I’ve seen for the 1st time Kylie Minogue in concert at the Hollywood Bowl – What a show!
- the same for Star Wars in Concert at the Nokia Theatre in LA.
- I visited Universal Studios Hollywood – really loved The Simpsons ride.
- my first flight in an Ultralight aircraft.

I’m probably missing some other facts and events…

I won’t talk about my resolutions for 2010 but more about “directions” that I will try to follow:

- definitively more blog posts! That’s why I subscribed to Project52
- be ready for Flex 4, AIR 2 and other products like Flash Catalyst.
- learn mobile development with Slider: Flex mobile framework and Elips Studio 3.
- attend more conferences if I can.
- do more talks: I just need to find some interesting topics not yet covered.

I think that’s all for this post. Again Happy New Year 2010, lots of love and happiness your life and I hope to see you around very soon.

Posted in Conferences, General, Personal   No Comments »  

My MAX 2009 schedule

Already less than 20 days left until MAX 2009: I’m quite excited because it’s my first MAX U.S. (no MAX Europe this year) and it will be in L.A.! I will finally meet some faces I know only from blogs and social networks I will arrive a bit earlier (September 30th) for some tourism but let’s have a look at my “tentative” schedule - it’s always hard to decide between one session or another:

Monday, October 5, 2009

General Session
Preview: Flex for Mobile Devices
Community Matters
Introduction to ColdFusion ORM
What’s Coming in Adobe AIR 2
Meet the Teams

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

General Session
Multitouch Development with Flex
How NOT to Code Flex
ELIPS 3.0: Mobile Flex Builder Toolkit
Sneak Peeks and 2009 MAX Awards
MAX Bash

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Flash for the Digital Home: Flash on TV!
Building Mobile Applications with Adobe AIR
Using Flex Frameworks to Build Data-Driven Applications

I hope to meet many of you there, so drop me a line if you’re coming. See you there…

Posted in Conferences   3 Comments »  

Scotch on the Road Europe

Sorry as I don’t have much time to update my blog but I’m really busy with my undergoing project-  I hope to have more “free” time in the next coming months.

Anyway I wanted to tell you about Scotch on the Rocks coming to Europe – if you’re not aware already (is it possible?). You don’t know what is Scotch on the Rocks, just read my review of the London event on Inside RIA, no excuse!

Now what makes SOTR09 even greater? The event is completely FREE and they are coming in 6 cities:

• Munich,  October 19th
• Zurich,  October 21st
• Milan, October 23rd
• Amsterdam, October 26th
• Brussels,  October 27th
• London,  October 29th

Registration is required, but be quick because Amsterdam is almost sold out already!

Of course this conference will be focused on ColdFusion 9 as you can expect. You can find a detailed list of the sessions here. I will be at the Brussels venue… see you there!

Posted in ColdFusion, Conferences   2 Comments »  

AUG Belgium – Introduction to ColdFusion9

Last Wednesday I did an “Introduction to ColdFusion 9″ at the Adobe User Group Belgium for the Flex 4, Flash Catalyst, ColdFusion 9 pre-release event: Other speakers were Serge Jespers, and Maarten Cox. My talk was targeted mainly to non-ColdFusion developers, so I showed only simple features.I tried also to make the audience realize how simple but powerful ColdFusion is and how it could be a great addition to any existing data center (especially with CFaaS/ESL and new integration capabilities).

Peter Elst managed to record a video of my talk (except the last 5 mins I think) – thanks a lot to him! So here is the video and the slides. Hope people enjoyed it even if I think that I could have done better   Next time for sure… 

Posted in AIR, AUG Event, ColdFusion, Flex   1 Comment »