So Scotch On The Rocks 2010 is over: 1 week already but I didn’t have the time to write a review before,  I had to recover Seriously let’s have a quick look at what happened for me but I won’t go into the detail of each sessions that I followed, it does not really makes sense after so many days.

Day 0 – aka “pre-Scotch”

Well, I should avoid saying that I managed to loose myself in London while trying to find my hotel: no map, my phone refused to load Google Maps (conspiracy?) so after 30mins I decided to call Guust, who was already in London, to guide me. The fun fact is when I got him on the phone he was 150 meters from me and my hotel was just 1.5 km away Later, after that “false start”, we met some folks at the Tiger Tiger: Leanne, Andy, Matt, Ben and Ray were already there, then later the other Adobians (Alison, Terry and Claude) joined us and also some other EU ColdFusion folks. We had a great time!

Day 1

Andy and Terry kicked off the conference with a good keynote – not much marketing stuff. Then I attended my 1st “Ben Nadel session” I really enjoyed it and learned about what you can do in the Application.cfc. I was curious about the HTML5 session and I was not disappointed: the only thing is that Chris could avoid the “Flash bashing”. Hopefully it was not systematic and usually non relevant (I could write pages on that). Terry impressed the audience with another good Catalyst demo. Aral is definitively a showman and his talks on Emotional Design is very good and inspiring. Don’t miss his talk if you have the occasion! Ray has done a good job talking about ColdFusion Builder extensions – now I have no excuse for not writing at least one (stay tuned…). Reachies and an informal meet the team ended this 1st day. People splitted into small groups for diner so I ended up in my hotel room quite early: “Legally Blonde The Musical” was playing just in front of my hotel but it was too late to get a ticket…

Day 2

I was a bit lazy on that second day but I wanted to talk a bit with the crowd so I missed some sessions. I started with Serge‘s presentation on mobile: I’m currently trying to develop for Android I missed the 2 other morning sessions but couldn’t miss Luca‘s one on AIR & printing: it’s something that I need to investigate more as reporting is always the most difficult part when creating businness apps. As an early adopter of tweetdeck I couldn’t miss their session: good stuff again and a bunch of tips to remember when developing with AIR. Finally my last session was with Ben about creating an API.

Conclusion

The Fuzzy Orange Team made it again this year: Scotch On The Rocks 2010 was a blast! A very good line up of speakers, a really cool place, a wonderful crowd, everything rocked! I  also finally managed to put real faces on some twitter friends (the CF twitterers hunt)

Now what? You’re serious about ColdFusion (but also about Flex and AIR), you’re living in Europe and you never attended any conference? Damn you, you must attend Scotch On The Rocks 2011 ! It will be:

- in Edinburgh, March 3-4 2011
- Apex International Hotel
- 3 tracks per day
- pricing: from super cheap (£50) to full price (£199)

I hope to see a lot of you there!

]]> http://cyrilhanquez.com/blog/2010/06/05/scotch-on-the-rocks-2010-review/feed/ 10 http://cyrilhanquez.com/blog/2010/05/20/my-sotr2010-schedule/ http://cyrilhanquez.com/blog/2010/05/20/my-sotr2010-schedule/#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 14:20:27 +0000 Cyril H. http://cyrilhanquez.com/blog/?p=801

Only 3 days left before Scotch On The Rocks (BTW there are few tickets left) and I finally decided which sessions I will attend (If I don’t change my mind in the last minute).

Monday 24th May

09:00-10:00 – Keynote (Adobe)
10:15-11:15 – Mastering the ColdFusion Application Framework (Ben Nadel)
11:30-12:30 – A whistlestop tour of HTML5 and CSS3 (Chris Mills (Opera))
13:30-14:30 – How Catalyst Will Transform The ColdFusion Developer (Terry Ryan)
14:45-15:45 – The Art of Emotional Design: A story of pleasure, joy, and delight. (Aral Balkan)
16:00-17:00 – Supercharge your ColdFusion Builder (Ray Camden)
17:30-18:00 – Raffle and Awards Ceremony
18:15-19:30 – Birds of a Feather

Tuesday 25th May

09:00-10:00 – Get ready for the mobile revolution (Serge Jespers)
10:15-11:15 – AJAX is the answer to everything and we never need to worry again and life is full of unicorns! (Ray Camden)
11:30-12:30 – SQL to HQL (John Whish)
13:30-14:30 – AIR & Printing (Luca Mezzalira)
14:45-15:45 – An enlightening insight into the world of ‘TweetDeck labs’. (Tom Woolway/James Whittaker)
16:00-17:00 – Applying Twitter’s API “Best Practices” In A ColdFusion Application (Ben Nadel)

See you there!

About 1 month ago I wrote a blog post regarding Scotch On The Rocks Award Nominations. It seems that some people misunderstood  that only EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) entries are accepted and I also have some people telling me that they only know US ColdFusion developers blogging – ouch!

So to help a bit I started (with the help of my twitter friends) a list of EMEA ColdFusion bloggers that I’m sharing on Google Reader and I also created a list of EMEA CF twitterers. It’s far from being complete so please add in comments any new blog or twitter account that I missed (sorry in advance) and I will update the list.

You have no more excuses now, go vote!

]]> http://cyrilhanquez.com/blog/2010/04/26/sotr2010-reachie-awards-emea-entries-only/feed/ 16 http://cyrilhanquez.com/blog/2010/03/18/scotch-on-the-rocks-award-nominations/ http://cyrilhanquez.com/blog/2010/03/18/scotch-on-the-rocks-award-nominations/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:53:34 +0000 Cyril H. http://cyrilhanquez.com/blog/?p=614

For the first time in the history of Scotch on the Rocks they will run an award ceremony to honour the best of what the ColdFusion community within the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) territory has to offer.

This is definitively a very good idea as most of time my CF friends are talking about US ColdFusion Rock Stars – you know who you are guys, no offense - but we have also great guys within the CF EMEA community… I must admit that Twitter helped me a lot to discover those people – who said that social networking is useless?

You can do nominations in the following categories:

• Best ColdFusion blog
• Best ColdFusion developer to follow on social media
• Best ColdFusion site
• Best open-source ColdFusion application
• Best all-round ColdFusion community member

Register your nominations NOW!

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.

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…

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!

I wanted to do a quick post regarding those two conferences I attended: if there is no reviews here it’s just because I put them on InsideRIA. I started to contribute with those reviews but I’m planning to do more.

review: Multi-Mania (2M09) is rocking again!

I forget to mention in my review the Award Show at the end of the day, and Live Music from SX who just won the Road To Fame (video below) – congrats to them!

review: Scotch On The Road is waking up the European ColdFusion community!

It was my first SOTR so I was happy to finally meet IRL Andy Allan and Leanne (I already met Kev McCabe last year at MAX Europe). We had also a great Pre-Scotch at O’Neills listening live to the Bible Code Sundays. Stay tuned for SOTR in Brussels, Munich and Amsterdam around the end of October this year!

Those are definitively 2 conferences not to miss in Europe!

First of all I want to wish you a “Happy New Year”. May 2009 be a year full of love, friendship, laughter and “happy coding”

Yeah I know that it’s a bit late to review MAX Europe, but just after the last day of the conference Peter, Pablo and me heard that Adobe was laying off 600 people so I wasn’t very motivated in blogging anything. Then came the holiday season, the New Year and now we are already the 22th… Time is flying by and I can’t keep up ! Should I mention that we were out of water for an entire week at home ? Then I should also tell you that I finally received my brand new MacBookPro (my first Mac!) W00t! Thanks again  Nokia :-)

Back to MAX Europe 2008: I won’t do a detailed review - really useless – instead I will share some personal thoughts. I must start by saying that It was my first MAX conference and I had mixed feelings about it : lots of information was available on the web after MAX U.S. (It was already the major complain in 2007) and there was some negative talks on twitter (pricing, topics…).

General sessions and Sneak Peeks

Really great, especially the “Men in Black” parody. It’s really a nice way of presenting new products or features – they were doing the show ! It was mainly focused on CS4, so after the CS4 launch event that we had few weeks ago at our User Group, I didn’t learn a lot of new things – luckely there were some other impressive things shown that I really enjoyed.

Sessions

As a AIR/Flex/ColdFusion developer it was really hard for me to choose which session to attend. Some were a bit disappointing – skill level is hard to determinate sometimes – while others were great. It’s the same for all conferences in fact

Labs

Definitively the most disappointing thing for me : it’s not due to the teacher, of course, but why the content is based on the examples shipped with the product ? Normally you already try them at work/home and you expect the labs to go further,  don’t you ?

Networking

The best part in any conference I was happy to see some familiar faces (I really wished some others could have been there) , people that I only knew from twitter, some others that I didn’t knew at all. Also seeing all those enthusiastic evangelists in one place was so cool!

Location, arrangements and events

Everything was perfect and very well organized : rooms were quite comfortable, there was enough food for everyone, everyone was nice., lots of free stuff and goodies. I was a bit surprised to see that half of the attendees left the party very early and that evangelists were hiding…

In conclusion I would say that I really enjoyed MAX Europe 2008 but, as suggested by someone else I think, it would be nice to postpone MAX Europe for 6 months after MAX U.S. – in that way, there will be new things to present, new reasons to attend

my Pictures of MAX Europe 2008.

First of all sorry for the missing post about MAX US keynote #2 but I was quite busy and there was already a lot of information on other blogs and on twitter.

Let’s start this first blog post from Milan. Peter Elst and me were lucky enough to be able to attend the Nokia OpenLab event on time : we had to run a bit from Malpensa airport, to the convention center to get our MAX badge, then we did a quick check-in at our hotel to finally reach Sophia’s Restaurant at 6.30pm. We didn’t really know what to expect from this event but it turned to be a really great idea :

teams of 2 needed to think about a “new” mobile application concept and present the idea to the others. Sounds pretty simple, no ? After all presentations, attendees needed to vote for their favorites 3 concepts and the best team will win a MacBook Pro and a CS4 Design Premium (for each teammate). There was several really great ideas unveiled during the evening, and at our own surprise, Peter and me won (thanks to Peter for putting the original idea on the paper) ! Our idea :

A Mobile Emergency Alert Service

I won’t give you more details at the moment on this concept: it’s something that I still need to discuss with Peter to see if we will try to make it something real or not. Anyway, I really want to thanks Nokia for organizing such event and it’s somehting that I really to see more often, even in the non mobile world. Pictures available here.