ColdFusion… where are you ?!?
WednesdayOct 15,2008
I’m a ColdFusion developer for almost 10 years now and I’m starting to wonder why ColdFusion is not making the buzz on the web anymore (even with version 9 on the way). Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems that since the release of Flex2 and all those RIA technologies which are currently invading the web space, ColdFusion is hiding somewhere doing only furtive apparitions on some blogs - I even heard that ColdFusion is a phase out product on which you cannot rely anymore !
I had some hope when I heard about the success of Scotch On The Rocks conference (sorry for not being able to attend it), but in the end nothing really changed - except maybe in UK and US ?
I think also that Adobe could do a better promotion of ColdFusion: this year at Flash on the Beach, there were those pins that you can grab for free at Adobe booth. But look at the picture, none of ColdFusion (btw if any exists, I’m interested 
) ! The product was only mentionned twice during Adobe presentations. I think that it should have disserved few more words to describe how great the couple Flex/CF is to develop RIAs.
In Belgium, it seems that our CFUG is trying to get back from it’s grave (which I applaud), but the way it’s done doesn’t seems to be so efficient :
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they’re using facebook events to communicate !
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the Belgium AUG has not been informed on it - a few months ago I tried to ask AUG members if they would be interested in a CF session but got only one reaction.
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moreover it’s lead by someone from Adobe - which is, in my point of view, a bit strange.
I hope that I didn’t offend anyone here (Kristen, Ben, Raymond…) and please don’t misinterpret what I’m trying to tell : I still love ColdFusion (which is my main development platform), I greatly encourage Community events, but I think that Adobe could/need to do a lot better.
Posted in ColdFusion, Personal
October 15th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I have a comment about what you mentioned related to the Belgium AUG. In one of their presentations, I mentioned I’d be keen to give a CF session, but they simply said “cool”, and that was as far as I could get.
I personally know all the guys from the Belgium AUG, and really respect them, but I think they are only focusing on the Flash stuff, and are not open to any other kind of technology (IMHO)
Cheers
October 15th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Man I feel ya,
Being one of the faces (And bodies) behind Scotch on the Rocks, I feel your pain. We hope to rectify this next year from out point of view. By taking Scotch on the Rocks on the Road so if you like Scotch on the Road and we have plans for Europe. Hell even A Wee Dram one day event take people from Europe (Sweden, Germany, Ireland off the top of my head).
Also the UKCFUG has had a “Summer” break and hope to be working more at pushing things out. I think the key is to have all the CFUGS link up and push the message outwards at the moment we seem to only be selling to ourselves and we need to get into the PHP UserGroups and the Java UserGroups and show the value of ColdFusion.
I think we need to regroup and take note and attack once again and RISE, RISE I SAY!!!!
October 15th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
It’s sure odd that they didn’t have the CF buttons as well, but I don’t think CF will disappear anytime soon. I’ve heard that the customer base keeps growing with each release and that it apparently fits well into the Adobe product mix. It’s a niche product though and it could definitely do with some better marketing outside the community
J
October 15th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Marcos, we definitely haven’t forgotten your offer to speak and are currently restructuring the AUG and will be covering more products outside of the Flash platform.
With the CFUG coming on the scene it isn’t quite clear how we are going to proceed with regards to ColdFusion, but as far as I am concerned we can definitely do some sessions on it.
Take care,
Peter
October 15th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I would not have written “ColdFusion 8 Developers Tutorial” if my view of the community was a down one! I see CFML on the up pattern. There are more frameworks, there is RiaForge and good things coming at Adobe. MAX is going to be some cool news for CF based on chatter. It would be nice if we could get some official word before the conference but it looks like Ben Forta will be giving us the details at Adobe MAX.
Again, look at the growing buzz on RiaForge! The poor Jedi is having issues now and then with server load for the growing interested and activity. We are also doing some things that will be giving some “buzz” to the CFML world at SOSensible. Over the next 3 to 6 months we will see more spin. Yet, pushing CFML in a PHP group! LOL, that is like going to a dating site to find a spouse! Come on guys… CFML is attractive. If that is how people try to sell it no wonder it isn’t being sold!
October 16th, 2008 at 7:28 am
While Adobe tells us that CF is “stronger than ever”, Adobe really does nothing to promote it in Europe.
Look at MAX Europe… 11 sessions on CF, 2 of which are general information that is available from the web site (e.g. the CF roadmap in the evangelism kit), 7 more are in reality Flex or AIR. Leaves 2 sessions: “CF 8 best kept secrets” has been done by Charlie Arehart since the advent of CF 8 and the “Architecting ColdFusion for Scalability and High Availability” talk has in essence been unchanged since CF 7 (or maybe even 6.1)
For a CF developer (or the CF community for that matter) there is nothing in this year’s Adobe MAX Europe.
@John
I’m not saying CF isn’t attractive…. been doing it for twelve years solid now and I still love it. My point is that Adobe does not push it enough in Europe, and, wherever it is mentioned, it is with regards to Flex or RIA. I mean, come on, there’s more to web applications than just RIA.
@Cyril
Please email me, I’d like to share some information in this regard and would like your opinion on one special aspect.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:29 am
@Marcos Placona, @Peter I definitively think that we should organize a meeting between the people trying to revive the Belgium CFUG and the AUG team : the current CFUG audience is probably not so huge to do a separate User Group at the moment. As I already said in my post, Belgium CFUG communication and schedule really need to be improved !
@Big Mad Kev I really like the idea to have European CFUGS link up - maybe we need a brainstorming CF Summit in Europe ?
Something I didn’t really specify is that in my opinion - it’s for @Jensa and @John Farrar too - the situation is really different in US and in Europe. In US ColdFusion seems to be always on top (just look at the job offers) but in Europe I’m seeing interest in ColdFusion really going down : less job offers - only the European Commission seems to look for CF dev., current developers are switching to other technologies (Java, pHp…) [...]
October 16th, 2008 at 8:35 am
The bottom line is: ColdFusion is good, and nobody has doubts of it. It’s been slowly growing in the past few years, but it could be much better.
We’ve all seen PHP and .Net coming up to the world, and if you compare the time they’ve taken to be on the top, ColdFusion really is struggling to get there.
The reason for that: _________________ (fill the blank with your answer and let me know)
@Chris: I agree with you that Max doesn’t really give a rat’s a** to ColdFusion, and it’s another thing that leaves me wondering.
Max Europe is pretty much a big copy of Max US, which isn’t too bad at all if you consider you shouldn’t change a winning team, but the fact that they’re not open to European speakers (not all of them) just really annoys me.
@Peter I don’t blame ya, and didn’t mean to put all the weight on your back. Your interests are in Flash/Flex, and of course you’ll give your best to keep that going. I just think a CFUG (alied to the AUG) will be a BIG favour to Belgium.
@all On the other hand, as most of you know, I used to work for the EU Commission as well, and am aware of the number of CF Developers they have (more people than you imagine mind you).
My question is: Where are those guys? I’ve tried to set up a CFUG myself in Brussels, but had like 2 or three guys interested.
I don’t mean to generalize here, but most of the developers working for the commission are purely interested in their long coffee breaks, huge holidays and bank holidays. There’s no “passion”. I really gave up on setting up any CF meetings there, as they didn’t seem to be interested anyway.
The last presentation I gave at the Commission, counted with 2 developers (those working for me, ’cause I kinda forced them to come)
I invited all the developers from the building I was working for. It wouldn’t just be in CF (jQuery in general instead but using CF), so I thought the Java Developers would also be interested.
Well I’ll stop ranting here, and see what others say.
Cheers
October 17th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Hi folks,
I hear you. For the past year since I’ve been in the marketing role my focus has been on bringing more community and marketing attention to EMEA. With the addition of Claude as well as a local team focusing on events, activities, and on enlisting local partnerships -we’re been ramping up on CF specifically in Europe. Over the coming months we have campaigns, events and outreach activities planned. Claude can give you the details re: what and where. Regarding MAX, I’ve heard from other customers that MAX doesn’t have enough CF and we’re now in the process of updating and adding more CF sessions to MAX in Europe. MAX Europe has fewer sessions than the US one for all Adobe content but CF advanced topics will be better represented. We’ll also have a specific session focused on CF similar to the one I am doing in the US titled “Be Your Own Ben Forta” where we’ll discuss points like you’ll find in the and more. If you have specific ideas re: what is needed, let us know. I look forward to seeing you on the road.
Kristen
October 17th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
The formatting on the above post got jumbled and it should read .. “I am doing in the US titled “Be Your Own Ben Forta” where we’ll discuss points like you’ll find in the ColdFusion Evangelism Kit http://www.adobe.com/go/cfevangelismkit and more.”
October 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
It’s good to hear more advanced sessions are going to be added. The word going around is that the MAX Europe organising team simply took the most popular sessions from MAX NA and used them, effectively ignoring any sessions that were submitted by speakers.
I, and I think I can speak for the rest of the European CF community, can only hope that isn’t the case.
Of course, another big issue is that the Early Bird for Europe ends this Sunday, and so far the vast majority of CFers I know and speak to in Europe have so far said they are not attending MAX due to the lack of CF content. With it now being the end of the working week, even if new advanced sessions are added, companies may not pay the increased price now (especially with the world currently not having two cents to rub together).
October 17th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Hi all,
Next Brussels CFUG meeting is next thursday, October 23rd, from 4PM to 7PM at the Adobe’s location in Diegem.
Simon Slooten will cover the topic of ColdFusion Powered Flex And AIR Application Development.
You can also participate to the group’s activities on http://www.cfforum.eu.
I hope to see you there.
Claude
October 31st, 2008 at 8:33 am
Hi Cyril and readers,
We finally have 3 more ColdFusion sessions at MAX Milan :
Object-Oriented ColdFusion Development
Discover how object-oriented development best practices can be applied to ColdFusion. Learn how CFCs can be turned into objects and how to get them “ready” as the back end for a Flex/Adobe AIR application that uses remote objects.
Be Your Own Ben Forta
Promote your organization’s adoption of ColdFusion and spend more time on your favorite development platform. Learn how to communicate the value of ColdFusion, its advantages over the competition, its relevance in application development today and tomorrow, Adobe’s commitment to the software, and its integration with the Adobe platform stack.
ColdFusion Performance Tuning, Multi-Instance Management, and Clustering
Discover how to tune ColdFusion and how to set up ColdFusion instances and a cluster on a JRun server.
There is also a MAX bus leaving from Cologne on november 30 to Milan, arriving the next morning at 7. This bus will full packed with developers, Adobe products specialists, journalists, community managers… so if you want to join this is going to be a lot of fun.