I'm hoping to do a CFConversations Open Mike at CFUnited this year... but I need your help to get on the schedule.

I'll be at CFUnited regardless (well, hopefully; I'm planning to be there), but I'd like to have a big audience for one of the podcasts.

If you want to see it, vote for it here:

http://callforspeakers.cfconf.org/?event=vote&eventId=188

Also, I've sent in another three topics that could use your vote:

1. Improving Website Performance in the Browser
2. LightFront - The CFML Framework that you don't need to be a rocket scientist to use!
3. Object Oriented CFML: 2010 Edition

I probably won't get another podcast out until March, as I'm pretty swamped with work right now until the end of the month, but I've got a few episodes coming, including a few guest interviewers, and two that are already recorded. I have to hit it hard in March, as CF Hour() is about to lap CFConversations. :( I'm all about healthy competition. :)

Thanks to everyone that voted for CFConversations in the Community Achievement Awards (CFEmmys) for Best Podcast. It's much appreciated, and good to know that the community supports what we're doing. It's not always easy producing the podcast, believe me, but things that are worth doing aren't always easy.

For those of you who are at CFUnited, you're all welcome to attend our next roundtable at 5:45pm. We are in the Legolas room, which is Dogwood E. If we need a bigger room, we can move if we have to. Recording will begin at 6pm sharp, but you can pop in any time between 6 and whenever we finish. I want to encourage fans of the podcast to attend!

Yes, I know... I am the suck! :-)

I have been trying, but I've had a whole bunch of things going on that have prevented me from getting out a podcast since the last one, which came out June 8th, some of that I can tell you about (work, user group stuff, personal stuff), and something new that I can't yet talk about that's been taking up a lot of my time. Let's just say I've been pretty busy lately, but there are other CF podcasts now (which I'll promote later), so I hope you haven't missed us TOO much.

I wanted to just send out a quick post to let you know, that CFConversations is still around, and that content is coming your way.

I have a bunch of stuff planned for CFUnited! We have a day 1 open mike round table podcast scheduled for 5:30 on Wednesday, and CFConversations will be situated in the Legolas room throughout the conference, interviewing and podcasting away. Anyone who's at the conference can attend the open mike session, and I'll be looking to schedule interviews throughout the conference.

In addition, I am going to TRY (can't promise) to get some of the many interviews we have done over the last few months out DURING... yes, DURING... CFUnited. This may sound like a bad idea, but, trust me, although I am not going to explain why right now... it isn't. Already recorded are interviews with Peter Bell, Sean Corfield, Barney Boisvert, Lawrence Cramer, Dee Sadler and Rachel Lehman. I think I may be able to get out one or two of those during the conference (or even today).

We've already got some new interviews scheduled while at CFUnited... so although I've kept you waiting... you're about to be flooded with podcasts from CFConversations!

I know it's been a while since CFConversations has released an episode - since February 24th, over two months. There are reasons for that, and for those of you that don't know what those reasons are, I've finally blogged about it, so please read it if you're interested. Bottom line, the short version is that I had gastric bypass surgery on 2/27. That entry explains what's been going on, although it may not explain why it's been this long. Thankfully, we're coming back!

Unfortunately, CFConversations went on hiatus, as I recovered from surgery. We had hoped to get a few podcasts out while I recovered, but it didn't work that way. As I have struggled a bit getting everything into my new schedule, the hiatus got extended. I've got more things to do, like working out, now that I'm serious about getting this weight off, but it hasn't left me much time for the podcast. I'm finally starting to figure out a balance, so it's time to return.

Before I went on leave, I recorded two interviews as part of our CFUnited series: One with Lawrence Cramer and the other with Peter Bell, which was recorded before his announcement that he was joining Railo. I haven't gotten them out yet.

Also, I just interviewed Sean Corfield, the latest to join the Railo team. That's going to be released as a three part interview, also part of the CFUnited series. We got through a lot of questions tonight, enough to split the interview into our first three-part episode.

Due to all the recent Railo news, the plan is to release as follows: Episode 31 with Peter Bell and part 1 with Sean as episode 32. The next two episodes I'm going to try to get out by cf.Objective(). I'll get out part 2 and 3 of Sean's interview as well, if I can, but I doubt it will be before the conference. They will probably wait until after cf.Objective(). Once all three parts of Sean's interview are out, I'll release the Lawrence Cramer interview, which would in theory be episode 38, and then any more we get.

At cf.Objective(), we're going to try to do three roundtables: Day 0 (the night before the conference begins, Wednesday night), 1 (Thursday night) and 2 (Friday night). If you are at the conference and would like to join in, you're welcome. Watch me on Twitter and I'll tweet where we'll do it and at what time. We're also planning to get more interviews while at the conference, as many as we can. I'll have a few people helping with interviews, so I hope we'll get quite a few.

So, sorry for the hiatus. I thought it would be 2-3 weeks, but it ended up a LOT longer. We're about to be back and we're coming back strong, better than ever.

One of the planned episodes from MAX 2008 is a partial recording of the Meet the ColdFusion Team Birds of a Feather session. It's the episode I've been working on for the past three weeks. It's about a 38 minute portion of the session.

Unfortunately, the recording has several issues. After several weeks of trying, I came to the conclusion that, with my current skill set, I couldn't fix the episode in a timely fashion. It's delayed the release of episodes, and enough is enough. I had decided to scrap the episode altogether. I decided last night to push up an interview in its place, with Doug Hughes of Alagad. I also have two other great interviews coming: one with Luis Majano and another with Charlie Arehart.

Notice, I said had scrapped.

I tried one final mastering of the recording, and had originally given up on it. However, after listening to it, it looks like I'm going to be able to publish at least a portion of that recording after all. It will mean a few things - a stereo recording instead of mono (sounds clearer in its original stereo) and a larger filesize, but I think that's OK in the circumstances. That said, that will still take more time, so I'll change the schedule, publish at least one interview first, maybe all of them, and then try again.

I had hoped to have delivered at least three of the episodes we recorded from MAX 2008 San Francisco by now, since episode 24 was released. Unfortunately, a few things have delayed the release.

After MAX, I went on a week and a half vacation. When I got back, I discovered that many of the recordings taken from MAX were of VERY poor audio quality (one exception is an interview with Charlie Arehart). What's worse is that, since back from vacation, my six year-old desktop that I'm using to edit the podcasts has been giving me some instability problems, crashing, while editing the recordings, and I'm yet to have a fully edited episode. It's been very frustrating, as these recordings need a lot of work before they can be published, and my current computer isn't up to the task. Although I am really trying to get a new computer, the reality is that I don't have enough money yet to buy a replacement. You could help me out a lot by donating to my Amazon wish list, and buy an Amazon gift card of any dollar amount you feel comfortable with. Specifically, I'm looking for gift cards, not anything else (unless you want to buy me a computer). I'm sorry to ask, but I don't know what else to do except ask for donations.

I'm hoping to get out the next few episodes out soon. Stay tuned.

We're still looking for some help to pretty up the site, but I've gone ahead and created a new design. This is based upon a favorite of mine for a long time, Community MX's Jumpstart Traverse City. One person commented it's "too blue", but some graphics and even a pic or two should break the blue up nicely.

We're trying to get our first roundtable podcast scheduled for Friday night, with release on Sunday. It will be a roundtable podcast, covering various conferences over the last several weeks, open source news (there's been a lot of that) and CF9 rumors and hints.

CFUNITED is next week, and we plan a full schedule with roundtable sessions, and we have some interviews planned. More on that next week!