Just arrived in Minneapolis and checked into my room. Waiting for Scott Stroz, Dan Wilson and Jason Delmore to arrive and hit our tee time. Looking forward to another great CF.Objective() 2009 Conference.

If you happen to see me on the hallways, do say hi. I'm looking forward to seeing and meeting you there!

CFUnited folks have asked the speakers to answer some questions regarding the conference and post on our blogs, here's my response:

Topic: Leveraging Basic Object Oriented Concepts in ColdFusion - http://cfunited.com/2009/topics/295

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past? What would you tell someone who hasn't been to CFUnited before?
I spoke at CFUnited 2008, and I have attended every year since the CFun days. If you have never been to CFUnited, you are missing out in one of the best chances to trully make your job better in a number of facets. You'll learn from industry experts on the latest ColdFusion and Flex/Air trends, not only this gives you the power to build better apps but makes you more marketable when looking for a new job. You'll have a chance to meet and network with a great number of people who's day to day experiences are similar to your own, this is a huge resource when you stumble on a problem or if you are also looking for talent to help in your projects. The Expo hall is a great chance to checkout what products and services are there to make your day to day life easier and help achieve your development goals.

2. Why should people attend your session(s)?
If you are not yet doing Object-Oriented programming because you keep hearing all those buzz words like Singletons, Decorators, and other Design Patterns and can't find an example using ColdFusion to help you understand what they mean, you may want to checkout my "Leveraging Basic Object Oriented and Design Patterns in ColdFusion" session. This session is built to help you break into the OO world with a basic understanding of Design Patterns and how they help solve re-occurring problems.

3. Do you have any projects in the works that you will be revealing at CFUnited?
It's too early to tell...

4. Besides your topic, what other sessions are you looking forward to?
I'm looking forward to seeing some of the Coldbox sessions, more on Flex and AIR development with ColdFusion.

5. Where can people find you at CFUnited? (At the bar, networking, working, in your room, etc.)
AboutWeb booth, sessions, bar, networking, bar, pool, golf course and yes.. the bar!

6. What's the latest news with you? Has anything changed since last CFUnited?
My wife and I are expecting our first child, boy, due July 1st! He may be making his first appearance at CFUnited this year!!!

7. When you are not working what do you like to do in your free time?
Try out new technologies and frameworks, golfing and grilling with family and friends.

The CFUnited 2009 Topics Survey is now open, you can go there and vote for your favorite topics you'd like to see presented.

I have re-submitted my topic (you can find it under the "Please choose 4 from the list of topics that cover OO" section) from last year as it was well received and attended, and I'm hoping to make this year's presentation even better, so please head on over to the survey and voice your opinion and hopefully vote for my as well. I promise you won't be disappointed.

Leveraging Basic Object Oriented Concepts and Design Patterns in ColdFusion - Phill Nacelli

This session will introduce you to the basic concepts of object oriented development along with some basic design patterns by looking at real world code examples. Today's ColdFusion developers are bombarded by complex terms such as Singletons, Facades, Data Access Objects(DAOs) and other design patterns, making it hard for the novice to understand these valuable concepts without looking at actual code. This session will demystify those terms and give you the basic knowledge needed to build a foundation into the real advantages of Object Oriented programming.

My company AboutWeb is again sponsoring the community pit at this year's CFUnited. Every year we look at coming up with something new to make your experience more enjoyable. This year, to go with the Green/Sci-Fi theme of the conference, we are going to be having a movie theater showing the greatest Sci-Fi movies, ever!

How do we know that they are the greatest ever, you ask? Because you get to tell us what you want to watch!!! That's right, we are running a poll to get your opinion on what movies will make the cut. To vote for your favorite movie, please go the following link:

http://www.aboutweb.com/dsp.poll.cfm

Just a quick meeting reminder that the Capital Area Flex User's Group is meeting this Wednesday night at 6:30pm at AboutWeb.

We have another amazing meeting lined up for you tomorrow night. To start off the night we'll have Ashish Jaiman from Microsoft present on Silverlight. This should be an opportunity to see where Microsoft stands with it's competing product and perhaps inspire some friendly rivalry.

After a break for food and drinks, Kelly Brown will be presenting on BlazeDS, an open source Flex/Air server initiative from Adobe.

Please arrive by 6:30pm at our Rockville office as presentations will begin promptly at 7:00pm. For directions and more information visit www.dc-flex.org.

As always, we will be broadcasting the event live on Adobe Connect. To follow the event online (sorry no e-food though!) go to http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/capfug0408/.