This year I was lucky enough to get permission from work to attend CFUnited (thanks SRA!). I’m so glad I did! It was a bit overwhelming: 4 days, 600+ people, presentations, networking and several late nights at the bar! I met soooo many people, some new, some I’ve ‘talked’ to online for quite some time. It was great meeting folks in person!
A few people I want to thank:
First I’d like to thank Dan Wilson for dragging me along. We had a great drive up and back and talked to a lot of people about CFinNC. Next time I’ll bring my Iron Maiden CD!
Dan and I drove up early on Tuesday. Dan hit the golf course and I was fortunate enough to meet up with Jason Dean and Kurt Wiersma and we headed over to the Air and Space Museam and wandered around for a few hours looking at planes, missles and other cool stuff. I just realized I think I still owe Jason $.50 for the shuttle trip back to the hotel. I’ll buy you a beer next year!
Next I’d like to thank Liz and the Stellr team for putting on such a great conference. As we get deeper into the planning stages of CFinNC I’m coming to the realization that planning a conference is hard! Planning something the size of CFUnited must be a monumental effort and Liz and her crew did a fantastic job! Listening to other people at the conference that seemed to be the general consensus… I heard a lot of “best CFUnited ever” going around.
It was great meeting Rachel, Dee, Josh, Brian and everyone else I’m probably forgetting from the Adobe User Groups. I still think the user groups are Adobe’s most important asset. We had some great discussions and I look forward to seeing how we can help increase exposure to the user groups and get even more great people involved in the Adobe Community!! Maybe next year we could have a session or BOF just talking to people at the conference about finding, joining and participating in their local user group.
Two people I didn’t get to talk to as much as I would have liked were Adam Lehman and Mark Drew. Wanted to chat with them both about our favorite IDEs! :) I did sit in on Adam’s preso about CFBuilder extensions and I think that one feature will be a huge selling point. I’m looking forward to getting back to the office so I can tinker!
I also enjoyed sitting in both Doug Hughes’ and Marc Esher’s presentations, both of which dealt with Ant and automation. Marc even kindly pointed me out in the crowd which was completely embarrassing. :) Both of these sessions were packed and it was great to see people so interested in these topics!
Overall it was a great time. I was a bit burnt out prior to the conference but I feel as though my batteries have been recharged and I have a few things I hope to blog about in the near future!
If you weren’t on this list I apologize, I met so many great people! Hopefully next year I can attend again and maybe even speak? And I look forward to seeing folks again at CFinNC!
