CFConversations - an Adobe ColdFusion and CFML podcast - Roundtable Episodes

CFConversations 46, Roundtable 16 - The Duct Tape Programmer vs. The Architecture Astronaut

Sun, 23 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

In the final episode recorded at CFObjective 2010, here's one of the sessions from the conference, a panel discussion called The Duct Tape Programmer vs. The Architecture Astronaut, where we discuss the balance of getting things done without a lot of planning vs. doing a lot of planning what you are going to build before you starting building it. The emcee is none other than former co-host of the ColdFusion Weekly podcast, Matt Woodward. Our panel members are:

This session starts with a skit. I'm not in the skit. Matt's the narrator, Simon's the boss, Peter's the "Duct Tape" guy and Dan's the "Astronaut". At the end, the consultant that you hear is Mark Mandel. This panel discusses a "get'er done" kind of developer or an obsessive planner trying the architect the perfect system. The discussion soon turns into a discussion about failed projects, lessons learned and best practices each of us use (or would like to use). Over the last two years, I've had several requests wanting me to be interviewed for the podcast (and I'm willing to do that... I just haven't found an interviewer). That doesn't happen this time, but what you do get to hear a lot more than normal, since I'm not the emcee in this one, I give a lot of my own views and share some experiences. That said, I had to bleep out a few things I said in the session, but not any details that are missing from the experience - you still get the gist of what I was talking about. This episode was recorded on Day 1 of CFObjective, April 21, 2010. This was an interesting session that I think you'll enjoy. The audio quality, especially at the beginning, is not so good, but by the time we get into the panel discussion, the quality improves, so if you don't like what you hear at first, try to stick it out until the panel begins. Run time: 1:05:11

CFConversations 44, Roundtable 15 - We're back! Day 2 at CFObjective 2010!

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Listeners, it is with great pleasure that CFConversations is back!!! And we're back with a vengeance! This roundtable episode was recorded on Day 2 of CFObjective 2010. We had:

Brian Meloche
John Mason of the RIA Podcast
Charlie Arehart, who is a regular on the RIA Podcast

We talk about the first couple of days of the conference, and various sessions we attended and presented. Here is a link to my presentation. I also want to mention that John, Charlie, the CF Jedi Master himself, Ray Camden and Josh Adams recorded a roundtable earlier in the day for the RIA Podcast, and you can find that on the website or by searching for RIA Podcast on iTunes. Believe me sincerely when I tell you how much it pains me when I can't get out a podcast, and the joy I am feeling right now that I was able to get this to you and in short order (24 hour turnaround). The last several months have been pretty tough on a lot of levels. Thankfully, things have stabilized and I'm hoping I'll be able to resume a regular schedule. I recorded two other episodes, including the Duct Tape Programmer vs. Architecture Astronaut session. I had planned to record my session, but I am planning something special for that later. Stay tuned! Enjoy! Run time: 40:45

CFConversations 38, Roundtable 14 - Post-CFUnited 2009: Wrap-up, Withdrawal & Fallout

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:18:00 -0400

Recorded on Thursday, August 20th, this episode is a post-CFUnited 2009 "wrap-up fallout" roundtable, where we review the conference as a whole, "post-conference withdrawal and fallout" of things that both happened and what didn't happen during the conference. On this roundtable, we have:

Brian Meloche (Host)
Adam Haskell
Dan Wilson
John Farrar
Mark Mandel (who had to leave about 45 minutes into the podcast)

If not mistaken, aside from the last roundtable (which I split into two episodes), this is the longest episode published so far! I could have split this one in two, but I've decided that it has to reach two hours to be split. And, besides, it took me long enough to edit this one, and splitting it would have meant even longer delays. During this episode, we discuss whether or not CFUnited 2009 was the best ever, the venue, some of the highlights from the conference, including the day 2 keynote (where my friend Todd Sharp's SlideSix was prominently mentioned), the day 1 keynote, as Dan tells us about the 4CFF.org foundation (he's on the board), the CFML Advisory Committee, and memorable sessions from the conference. We also talk about some of the things that happened on the periphery of CFUnited. We ask Adam about the Fusebox fork to FuseNG. We talk about Model-Glue 3.0, Railo 3.1.1 coming out and going out of beta, and Mach-ii 1.8 beta. We also talk about what I call "Post-conference fallout & withdrawal", especially the "fallout" portion of that. We talk about several speakers cancelling last minute, the most prominent of them being Hal Helms. We talk about his last minute cancellation, and his training offer, and offer some other suggestions, like doing a ColdFusion Meetup and giving his slides to Liz so they can be put on CFUnited's website. Lastly, we talk about upcoming conferences, such as CFObjective ANZ, CF in NC, bFusion/bFlex, RIA Unleashed, and MAX. Here are some links to things mentioned in the episode (in no particular order, and please add any not mentioned here in the comments):

Run Time: 1:41:22

CFConversations 37, Roundtable 13 - CFUnited 2009 Day 2, Part 2!

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:35:00 -0400

I told you that I wouldn't keep you waiting for part 2 of the Day 2 CFUnited roundtable. Well, I did not disappoint! In part 2, we cover a lot of stuff, including things both at the conference and other things to think about. We talk about the importance of giving feedback to speakers, particularly if the talk didn't meet expectations. I shared reactions from my recent CFObjective presentation and how, although most feedback was very positive, some of the more negative comments helped me for when I present it next. That sent us off on a tangent about OO in ColdFusion and the recent discussions in the Blogosphere, including the podcast Hal Helms recently did that OO (and software development in general) is not a destination but a journey. We discuss several of the birds of a feather sessions on Monday night. John Farrar talked about his silent authentication BOF. Listen to the recording if you don't know what that means; I didn't myself know what silent authentication until I heard the definition. FYI, the Google Group hinted at in the recording is: http://groups.google.com/group/cfauthentication We also talked about the CFML standards committee BOF, the user group BOF, the iPhone development BOF, and the sci-fi BOF. We discuss Joe Reinhart's inspiring day 2 keynote that prominently featured my friend Todd Sharp's Slide Six site as an example of sites CF developers should aspire to build rather than oldschool CF CRUD-style apps that ColdFusion no longer has the same advantages it historically had over other languages. We also talk about some of the other announcements that might be lesser known by CFUnited attendees, such as Railo officially going gold on Wednesday, Model-Glue 3.0 going gold on Monday, and Mach II 1.8 beta being released. We FINALLY talk about 35 minutes in about the Fusebox forking announcement, as the fork will be called FuseNG. We discuss some of the interesting day 2 sessions we attended. Janine Driver, Mark Phillips, Charlie Arehart, Mike Brunt, Adam Haskell and Barney Boisvert were singled out as speakers with interesting talks. Lastly, some of the demo derby apps were discussed, as the two Johns and Timothy are each competing in the derby. If you are at CFUnited, we'll be doing another roundtable tonight (Friday, August 14th) at 7:30pm in the Legolas room (Dogwood E) if you would like to participate in the next CFConversations roundtable. Also, I am trying to schedule some CFConversations interviews for the rest of today and tomorrow morning with speakers, sponsors attendees. Even if you only have a few minutes, I'd like to talk to you. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook contact me through the contact form or just yell at me in the hallway! Run time: 1:03:50

CFConversations 36, Roundtable 12 - CFUnited 2009 Day 2, Part 1!

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:36:41 -0400

Unfortunately, the roundtable scheduled on Day 1 of CFUnited kind of fell through, but we made up for that big time on Day 2! It was two hours of non-stop podcasting goodness! Since it went as long as it did and there was nothing to cut, I decided it would be best to split the episode into two parts! That is a first for a roundtable episode. On the roundtable panel:

Brian Meloche (moderator)
John Mason - By the way, check out John's new RIA Podcast.
Timothy Farrar
John Farrar
Anita Neal
Jason Dean

In part 1, we talk about the new venue for CFUnited this year, Stellr, the day 1 keynotes from Liz Frederick and Adobe, day 1 sessions, birds of a feather and hints at several other things that we dive deeper into in part 2. I think you'll really enjoy this one! Run time: 59:46

CFConversations 32, Roundtable 11 - The cf.Objective() Roundtable!

Wed, 20 May 2009 02:34:00 -0400

I had hoped we would have been able to get in more than only one roundtable at cf.Objective(), but one is all I was able to get, and it's a good one. I had hoped to get this out before the conference ended, but I had a few issues on Saturday, and I just didn't quite finish it. Once I got home, it took a few more days before I finished it, but here it is, still fresh! On the roundtable panel:

Recorded during the last Birds of a Feather (BOF) time slot on Day 2 Friday night (around 8pm), this roundtable covers Days 1 & 2, but not Day 3 except to say what sessions we were looking forward to. We start with the keynote, which covered Centaur and Bolt and a few other things. Several Centaur and Bolt features were discussed and shown during the conference, both during the keynote and during sessions Adam Lehman and Terry Ryan did during the first two days, and a few more on Day 3 that we don't talk about here. We also cover the interesting sessions we attended in the first two days, our own sessions (we were all speakers), the BOFs we saw, the Flash Builder renaming announcement, sessions we were looking forward to on Day 3, and some of the well-known speakers that did not attend this year (though we missed several). Enjoy! Run time: 59:53 Note: The episode is the eleventh roundtable episode, not the twelfth. I corrected the title, but the link will remain as is.

CFConversations 26, Roundtable 10 - 12/30/08 - MAX 2008 Day 3 podcast of the ColdFusion Uber Panel

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:07:00 -0400

For the last ColdFusion Conversations podcast of 2008 (you might see me refer to it as such from time to time), we finally have the long awaited podcast of the ColdFusion Uber Panel from the Day 3 ColdFusion unconference at MAX 2008 North America in San Francisco, recorded on November 19, 2008. As previously mentioned in CFConversations episode 25, the quality of the raw audio recording for the uber panel was pretty bad, but, somehow, through several false starts, I think I've finally made the audio listenable, even fairly good in some spots, although the quality does vary with the speaker. It's as good as I can get it, although it's still not as good as other roundtables. The Uber panel features Ray Camden, Sean Corfield, Charlie Arehart, Jason Delmore and Joe Reinhart, with me as the host and moderator. You'll also hear Kristen Schofield, the ColdFusion Marketing manager in the second half of the recording (although she wasn't a panelist, you do hear from her several times). Unfortunately, you probably already know that Jason Delmore was among the 600 laid off at Adobe earlier this month. Jason was speaking as the ColdFusion product manager at the time this was recorded. A replacement has not been named, but I just wanted to extend a holiday well wishes to Jason, Steven Erat, and to all of you former ADobe employees affected by this untimely layoff. Speaking of the holiday season, I wanted to let listeners know that my Christmas gift was a new computer, and many of you donated funds and gift cards that were used in part to fund the purchase of a new computer, along with some of my own funds. Many thanks to those of you that helped me out with this, and it's very much appreciated. I didn't get everything I need, but it's a start. Unfortunately, I'm still not using that computer, as it has a bad memory stick. Once the replacement RAM comes in, I'll be using that machine for CFConversations editing and producing for the foreseeable future. In case you're curious, I got this refurb from Tiger Direct, via Amazon. Yeah, you Mac guys will say why not a Mac? Well, I couldn't afford one, so I got the best computer I could for the money I had. Once it's fully up and running, it should make podcast editing a lot faster. I'm still saving up for a monitor.

CFConversations 25, Roundtable 9, 12/13/08 - MAX 2008 Day 2

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:06:00 -0400

After a long layoff, longer than I had hoped, we're back with episode 25. I was delayed in putting out this episode. I had hoped to get this episode out during MAX, but there were some difficulties in both scheduling and audio quality that delayed this recording. We were unable to record a regular day 2 roundtable as we had hoped, due to ColdFusion's placement in the Sneak Peeks at the end of that demonstration. We were prepared to leave the hall to do the roundtable after the ColdFusion sneak, but with it being the last shown, that meant there was no time, since people going to the event had to get right on the bus after the sneak (I skipped it this year - it would have costed us $100 for my wife to attend). Thankfully, I recorded Ram Kulkarni's sneak peek of ActionScript3 in ColdFusion from the sneak peek, and the audio recorded is the first part of this episode and I think the quality is pretty good. Here is the recording on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uImhKFhwAu0 With the lack of a day 2 roundtable, I tried to record an impromptu day 2 roundtable on day 3, which is the second part of this episode, just before recording the Day 3 uber panel, which will come out in the next episode. Immediately after MAX ended, I went on vacation with my wife for a week and a half, visiting with family and getting some much needed rest, which delayed the release of further episodes until December. We didn't fare as well with CFConversations recordings at MAX as I had hoped. We did get some good content, but not nearly as many interviews as expected, and several of the recordings came out REALLY bad. With the exception of an interview I did with Charlie Arehart, all of the recordings have flaws, and this impromptu day 2 roundtable and the day 3 uber panel, recorded directly after, are the worst of the lot. We had some problems with the amplification causing reverb and echo, and the microphone setup just didn't work. I've spent days trying to fix the next two episodes, and I'm still going to try to fix up the uber panel, but I'm done working on this one... It sucks, my desktop wants to crash every time I try to fix it... four times today! and if this gets out, you'll know I'm washing my hands of it (it sounds OK if you aren't listening with headphones). The content of this and ESPECIALLY the uber panel in the next episode are worth listening to... but the quality degrades beyond the sneak peek. Hopefully, I will have learned something from the 40+ hours I've spent trying to fix this episode, and I'll definitely be experimenting with audio setup of a venue with an audience and amplification for next time. Thanks to Doug Laakso for his recent Amazon.com gift card and Felix Tjandrawibawa for his recent Paypal donation. After creating this MP3, I was able to purchase a new desktop computer through Amazon with the gift cards received plus some of my own money, which should make it to me as an early Christmas present, and I hope to use Paypal to bump up the memory on the desktop. Enough of me apologizing! Here is episode 25! Run time: 17:48

CFConversations 24, Roundtable 8, 11/18/08 - MAX 2008 Day 1

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:01:00 -0400

This roundtable features talk Day 1 coverage of MAX 2008, from Moscone West in San Francisco. Panelists:

We cover, in no particular order, CFUnderground, the MAX Day 1 Keynote, some info from Judith shared at a press conference by Kevin Lynch, sessions, food, the unconferences, festivities, how it compares to MAX 2007, and, especially, a look to tomorrow. ColdFusion wasn't covered at all, but the buzz is that ColdFusion will get a LOT of coverage during the day 2 keynote. I've rushed this one out to you, so it may be a little rough in some spots, but I think I was able to clean it up quite a bit. Run time: 40:57

CFConversations 20, Roundtable 7 - 10/26/08 - Part 2 on controller frameworks!

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 01:55:00 -0400

Following up on last week's Part 1 on controller frameworks, we now bring you Part 2, in what will be a continuing series on frameworks used in the ColdFusion/CFML developer community. Part 2 features other viewpoints not represented in Part 1. For this episode, which was recorded on Wednesday, October 15th (technically, Thursday, 16 October 02:00 UTC time), we have:

Brian Meloche (moderator)
Adam Haskell (representing Fusebox)
Ray Camden (representing Model-Glue)
Chris Peters (representing ColdFusion on Wheels)
Mark Mandel, of Transfer fame, but Transfer is an ORM framework, not a controller framework, so he wasn't representing it. On controller frameworks, Mark is framework agnostic.
Nick Kwiatkowski, who is anti-framework.

The plan is to do more roundtables on other kinds of frameworks, such as ORM/Data, dependency injection, and unit testing frameworks, after the MAX North America conference some time in December or January. We're also interviewing some of the framework authors and lead developers in other episodes (we have two of those already done, and more scheduled). The feedback on Part 1 so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and I believe part 2 is more of the same. This one was a little more contentious than part 1, and that leads to good podcasting! I personally think this episode is one of our best to date. Enjoy! Run time: 1:03:04

CFConversations 19, Roundtable 6 - 10/19/08 - The first in a series on frameworks!

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:00:00 -0400

This roundtable is different than the previous five roundtables on CFConversations. Inspired by the ColdFusion Weekly roundtable on Flex frameworks, and by popular demand, this episode is part one of a two part series on ColdFusion controller-based frameworks, and the first part of an ongoing series on ColdFusion frameworks in general. Although people were asking for it, this series is something I intended to do from the very early on in this podcast's development, and it was about time to start them. For this episode, which was recorded on Friday, October 10th, we have:

Brian Meloche (moderator)
Kurt Wiersma (representing Mach-ii)
Russ Johnson (representing ColdBox)
John Farrar (representing SOS and Co-op)
Isaac Dealey (representing onTap)
Rick Mason (uses a simpler, homegrown framework)

Now... are you reading this, and are saying, "Hey!!! Where's Fusebox?? Where's Model-Glue?" Well, those frameworks, as well as ColdFusion on Wheels, a framework agnostic and an anti-framework person, are represented in part two of this series, which was recorded on October 15th and is still being edited at the time of writing this post. We had to plan for two sessions, and with scheduling conflicts, this is the alignment we got. Some had advocated doing all of the major frameworks together, but that wasn't possible with scheduling. Considering how well both episodes came out, I wouldn't change a thing! :-) We're planning to do a series of frameworks roundtables over the next few months. We'll do roundtables that discuss Dependency Injection/Inversion of Control frameworks, database/ORM frameworks, and unit testing frameworks. Those episodes have not been recorded at this time, but we're planning to do those episodes after MAX in December and into 2009. I think you'll really enjoy this episode! It was fun to do, and we got into a lot of interesting points. What you won't hear is the 4 1/2 hour discussion most of us continued after the podcast recording was done... but, you know what they say... What happens on Skype STAYS ON Skype! :-) Run time: 1:12:37

CFConversations 11, Roundtable 5 - 08/07/08

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:30:00 -0400

Hey! Adam here... Brian got a bit of a break from editing and I took this conversation on to edit and produce, with Brian adding some finishing touches in the end. This was my first hack at producing an episode so please be patient as I learn more about editing levels. Editing it was a challenge but I had a great time, I hope everyone enjoys the episode half as much as I enjoy producing it! With CFUnited quite a few weeks in the past and 10 episodes under our belt it's time to bring back the round table platform. We're bringing it back in style we've gathered 8 stellar participants including:

"The God of ColdFusion" Sean Corfield.
Myself (Adam Haskell)
Brian Meloche (it rhymes with wash already!)
Rick Mason
"Mr Transfer" Mark Mandel
Bob Flynn
Jeff Coughlin, and
Richard Goodrow

As one should expect with this stellar group of participants, the content is great and covers a wide range of topics. Bob Flynn kicks this conversation off with an announcement about bFusion and bFlex, two days of free hands-on training in Flex and ColdFusion at Indiana University... check out the episode for more info! From there, you'll get the opportunity to pick up hiring tips and ideas from some folks that have been very successful in hiring top talent in the past (Brian's note: This was recorded before it was announced that Brian Kotek was also joining Broadchoice). The conversation doesn't stop there, as we had to take this opportunity to pick Sean's brain about the CFML Advisory Board. Brian also announced that a new vendor-neutral site to promote the CFML language is in development (Brian's note: I pulled the domain name from the podcast because, well, we're not quite ready to completely open it up to the general public yet [but the basics are up]. If you are really interested in helping out, use the contact form and I'll tell you more.). We asked Mark Mandel how he felt about ColdFusion 9's Hibernate functionality, and we all chimed in about other ColdFusion 9 functionality, and talked a bit about alternative editors and search tools. We also covered the SQL injection hot topic, including a free tool from HP called scrawlr and a project called Query Param Scanner. CFUnited was covered for the last time, I promise. We also talked about the Railo 3 beta and the Open BlueDragon releases. Sean and myself closed out the conversation with a short discussion of an announcement that should have been made by now. It seems this announcement still has not come out so it's exclusively made on this episode! (Brian's note... nope, we're not mentioning it in writing... you have to listen near the end of the podcast!) Run time: 1:36:37

CFConversations Episode 4 - Roundtable 4 - June 24, 2008

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:23:00 -0400

Recorded at the end of Day 3 of CFUnited. On this podcast:

Brian Meloche
Rick Mason
John Farrar
Dana Tierney
Ken Auenson
Chris Hough
Seth Bienek
Timothy Farrar
Adam Tuttle
Adam Haskell

Most of this episode focuses around the ideas that came out of the Promoting CFML Outside of the CFML Community session Friday evening. We think some of these ideas are a call to action for the CF developer community. Group 1 - Promoting CFML to New Developers Team Consisted of:

John Farrar
Rick Mason
Dana Tierney
Ezra Parker
Jeff Coughlin
Brian Swartzfager

Summary: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcdhg6m6_27dnzqx5gs Group 2 - Promoting CFML to PHP Developers Team Consisted of:

Adam Tuttle
Timothy Farrar
Seth Bienek
Dee Sadler
Ken Auenson
Chris Hough
Adam Howitt

Summary: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcdhg6m6_26frtdsbv8 We hope you'll find this long podcast worthwhile! Time: 1:37:27 Update 6/25: I have updated the MP3 to boost the volume level.

CFConversations Episode 3 - Roundtable 3 - June 20, 2008

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:31:00 -0400

Episode 3 is a roundtable summary of Day 2 at CFUNITED, with Brian Meloche, Adam Haskell, Rick Mason, Judith Dinowitz, Brian Swartzfager, Dee Sadler and Bill Shelton. We go through the morning and afternoon sessions, Host My Site's keynote, more conference discussion and we also get more opinions about Adobe's keynote, specifically the new educational licenses. Play time is 42:54. Enjoy! Update 6/25: I have updated the MP3 to boost the volume level.

CFConversations Episode 2 - Roundtable 2 - June 19, 2008

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:34:00 -0400

Episode 2 is a roundtable summary of Day 1 at CFUNITED, with Brian Meloche, Adam Haskell, Rick Mason, Dan Vega and Ezra Parker. We go through the keynotes, which included several important announcements from Adobe, sessions, birds of a feather, hotel and conference venue impressions, and a look to Thursday. Play time is 1:20:19. Enjoy!