First thing I couldn’t help but notice is the beautiful location, in the middle of the mountains covered with snow. This alone makes the trip worthwhile. It must be one of the most unique locations for a conference.

Then there’s the format of this conference, which is skiing and other activities during the day and sessions at night. And yes, I do mean AT NIGHT, because sessions didn’t stop before 1 AM at least. I still find it amazing to have so many people staying for the last sessions after a full day of intensive skiing.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that I haven’t been skiing for over 12 years, I didn’t want to risk breaking and arm or leg, but that didn’t stop me from having some fun in the snow. But you know, this isn’t a vacation, it’s a conference. Well, at least, that’s what I told my boss .

About that conference, it has a great atmosphere. With a limited amount of participants the stress lies on networking. It is nice to be able to talk with so many geeks. I must say, I’ve had some inspiring conversations and got to know a couple of designing and coding nut cases.

As for my session, that was about using ORM in AIR (mobile) applications. At first I thought it would be way to much code oriented for this conference. Especially when I looked at the other session descriptions. But when I saw those sessions, I began to wonder whether it would be complex enough for this conference . I knew some of the speakers already and from them I knew what to expect. But I was pleasantly surprised by the speakers I didn’t know. There was some really great talent there and I certainly got inspired by some of the sessions.

I want to express my thanks to Fernando Colaço for organizing this awesome event and for letting me be part of it. I’ve had a wonderful time, met wonderful people, got inspired and I hope to be part of it again next year. I’ll have to make sure I’ll take some skiing lessons before that though… .

Tonight I got one of the “coolest” emails you can get: I’ve been invited to give a session at gotoAndSki(); Switzerland on January 26th, 27th and 28th, 2012, which is really awesome. Unfortunately I haven’t been to this conference before, but I’ve heard very nice things about it and let’s face it, skiing during the day and conferences with diner at night is not your typical conference setup. So I’m really looking forward to it.

Now, about my session, it’s going to be titled “Database Driven Mobile Applications: the power of ORM”. Now, some of you may think “what the hell is ORM?”. Well let me reassure you that it is not magic, but it does some really magical stuff.

ORM allows you to create database driven applications by writing virtually no SQL statements.Normally, this type of feature is restricted to the server side of your application, but now you can use this server-side feature on the client-side in an AIR application.

This session will talk you through the basics of using ORM in AIR and how to “automagically” synchronise your local data with a remote server. Whether that’s a PHP, Java or ColdFusion, it doesn’t matter. That’s not all: we’ll go one step further and take that ability to create database driven applications onto the mobile platform as well. Just like that!

If you are digging this and the other topics presented at gotoAndSki(); make sure you get your tickets in time to enjoy the conference and the gorgeous surroundings of the Swiss Alps. I hope to see you there: switzerland.gotoandski.com

Getting Started with Web Application Development Using ColdFusion
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek01
Monday 10AM PDT

Working with PDFs Made Easy with ColdFusion
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek02
Monday  1PM PDT

Introduction to ColdFusion Components (CFCs)
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek03
Monday  4PM PDT

Improve Your ColdFusion Code Through Unit Testing
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek04
Tuesday  10AM PDT

Using ColdFusion Frameworks for Application Development
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek05
Tuesday  1PM PDT

Understanding and Using the ColdFusion Server Monitor
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek06
Tuesday  4PM PDT

ColdFusion Builder: The Professional IDE to Boost Your Productivity
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek07
Wednesday  10AM PDT

Expand Functionality with ColdFusion Builder Extensions
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek08
Wednesday  1PM PDT

Developing Your First Application Using ColdFusion 9 and ORM
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek09
Thursday  10AM PDT

Speed Up Your Apps with Caching in ColdFusion
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek10
Thursday  11:30AM PDT

ColdFusion and Mobile – Browser-Based Applications Made Easy
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek11
Thursday  1PM PDT

Become ColdFusion Empowered in Under an Hour
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek12
Thursday  4PM PDT

Accessing ColdFusion Services From Flex Applications
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek13
Friday  10AM PDT

Securing your ColdFusion Applications
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek14
Friday  11:30AM PDT

Make Your Site Searchable with Solr
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek15
Friday  1PM PDT

Bringing ColdFusion to Java SpringMVC
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek16
Friday  4PM PDT

In a second part join Tridib Roy Chowdhury, Senior Director of Products, and Priyank Shrivastava, Senior Product Marketing Manager, for an exceptional meet the team session where you will get the highlights of ColdFusion and ColdFusion Builder roadmap. This is also your best chance to come and raise your hand for questions and/or recommendations you have about ColdFusion.

PROGRAM:

18.30: Coldfusion powered AJAX Applications with jQuery
19.45: Meet The Team
21.00: Free drinks and networking

This event is free of charge, but seats are limited. Make sure you register quickly!

The CFUG team, Cyril & Steven

So now I’m sitting in my hotel room, waiting to leave for the airport in half an hour. It gets me thinking about the past couple of days and the Flash Israel event.

First of all, for everyone who has been thinking about bringing Phidgets or Arduino on a plane: don’t do it. I mean, I did eventually make it to Israel in one piece (I’m not yet sure I’ll be getting back safely as well), but the security nowadays is so tight I actually needed a couple of hours to get past the security check. Even getting into the mall where the event was held turned out to be quite the challenge. Imagine a stranger walking up to security and then saying he’s carrying some batteries with some wires attached to that, which powers some electronic components… Right, that does sound suspicious, doesn’t it? But in the end they finally understood that it was actually quite harmless.

With that said, let’s turn the attention to the event. It has been a very good 2 days for me, meeting a lot of interesting people and kick-ass developers here in Tel Aviv. These guys do amazing stuff. I even learned that lots of things have been invented here in Israel, such as the flash drive and the firewall. Didn’t have a clue…
I also met a couple of guys who were already into Arduino programming and have gotten some insight to some great applications for that technology. I may find some inspiration there for my next Phidgets project.

The speakers at the event were top-notch as well. You had the ones we all know: Lee Brimelow, Kevin Schmidt, Ben Forta and Grant Skinner and their presentations rocked, as usual. But then you had a couple of unfamiliar faces (at least to me) and they definitely surprised me with their sessions. Apart from the fact their were a couple of presos in Hebrew, which I don’t understand at all, there was large variety of interesting topics, ranging from game development to LiveCycle Data Services.

Since it was my first time at this event and even my first time in Israel, I didn’t quite know what to expect. But the crowd here was very interactive and I loved being here. So, that means I say a big thank you to Almog Koren for inviting me over here and I certainly hope to be back next year.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited to present at Flash Israel on February 22-23. There were a lot of topics I could choose from, but looking at the list of speakers that were already selected, such as Ben Forta, Lee Brimelow, Grant Skinner, … I knew I had to come up with something mind blowing.

So, after doing some soul searching I reached back to my experience with Phidgets and Arduino. Over the past year I’ve been experimenting with both and found out I love playing around with electronics. Now the great thing about these two brands is that their components can be accessed through Flash technology.

This is exactly what I’ll be talking about, showing some actual real-world applications as well; even using the mobile phone to control these devices. I can’t tell you exactly what I’ll be doing because that would ruin the scoop of my main demo. But I can tell you there’s a laser involved! So if you happen to be in the neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Israel next week, be sure to come over and enjoy all the awesome speakers.

Well now, this morning at 1:40AM my beautiful wife gave birth to our third son Yantis. Mother and son are both doing excellent. Below you can find an early picture.

I know I was supposed to give a workshop about the designer-developer workflow using Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst and I was so looking forward to it, but Mother Nature decided otherwise.

So, although I’m very sad not being able to be there, I’m sure you can all understand the reason why. And I’m sure that you are now in very capable hands of the Flash Catalyst team members who are taking over my workshop: same content, same exercises, teacher who knows even more about the products than me.:-)

Anyways, have fun! And I’ll hopefully be seeing you next year at MAX.

Steven

Discover how to make your vector art stand out. You’ll learn about the variety of output options within Adobe Illustrator that can be used to create dynamic designs and illustrations. Artist Greg Geisler, one of the creators of the Illustrator how-to guides on Adobe.com (http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/howto/), will walk you through his process for creating visually rich artwork. He’ll show techniques using various tools in Illustrator, discuss integration between Illustrator and Flash Professional, and explore going beyond Illustrator with additional techniques such as laser cutting.

So, if you’re a designer wanting to know how to optimize your graphics for Rich Internet Applications, this is one session you shouldn’t miss. The session takes place on October 25th, 2010 , 2PM – 3PM. Join this session and get more out of Illustrator.

Adobe MAX 2010 is less than 2 months away and while I’m in full preparation for my lab sessions I though I’d give a small teaser about what you can expect from it.

The lab I’m doing is going to be about the designer-developer workflow topic, which has become quite hot since Flash Catalyst has been released. I’ll be giving a brief introduction to Flash Catalyst for those who are not yet familiar with it. After that, I’ll talk a bit about the different kinds of workflows when using Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst. And of course you will get your hands dirty on the exercises to show you some cool tips and tricks. You will also walk away with a fully working web shop component (not including payment modules of course, since that would take us too far of-topic).

There are two sessions. The first one is held on Monday, October 25 at 5.00 PM and is already almost full. The second session is on Wednesday, October 27 in the morning. I know this is the morning after the MAX awards, but if I can make it there, then so can you. So, if you haven’t already registered, you should hurry before the session runs full.

As for the topics of this event, we have found a community member to come over and share their history in the ColdFusion world.

	Claude Englebert is the EMEA ColdFusion Specialist working for Adobe. He’ll briefly introduce ColdFusion to the non-ColdFusion developers out there and talk about how to leverage your PHP, .NET or Java application with ColdFusion without writing a single line of CFML.
	Prosteps is a company that has been working with ColdFusion for quite some time and they are coming to tell you all about the cool stuff they’ve been doing with it.

PROGRAM:

19h00: Writing ColdFusion without CFML – presentation by Claude Englebert.
20h00: ColdFusion in the real world – presentation by Prosteps.
21h00: Free drinks and networking

The event is free of charge, but seats are limited. Make sure you register quickly!