For those of you who will be at MAX next week, we're going to try to get together for breakfast on Tuesday. No agenda or anything, just getting the Philly peeps together to hang out over breakfast before heading over to the convention center.

Location and exact time TBD (we'll try to accommodate your morning schedule), but you can RSVP here if you're interested, and we'll share more information as we figure it out.

If you're primarily a developer looking to sharpen your entrepreneurial skills (a "Developer-Entrepreneur", if you will), or an Entrepreneur looking to sharpen your development skills (an "Entrepreneur-Developer", if you will), then this post is for you.

Former Philly CFUG manager Steve Rittler and I are starting a new local Philly conference for, you guessed it, Developer-Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneur-Developers: Philly Merge. The idea is pretty simple: Take these two types of people, put them in a room together, give them some opportunities to learn and network, and let magic happen. Whether you've got no idea where to start, or you're already bootstrapped and just want to get tips from local pro's, join us on July 15th at Wharton to fill in the blanks.

July 15th at Wharton

We've got content lined up from local attorneys, accountants, business consultants -- and yes, software developers. We'll provide lunch and snacks throughout the day. We're even thinking about lining up something social but almost entirely unrelated, like an Eniac tour (no promises!). And what's it going to cost you? $29 bucks.

Tickets are on sale now!

It's going down on Friday, July 15th, at the University of Pennsylvania (Huntsman Hall). I'll be there. Will you?

If you're undecided or just want to get an occasional email when there's news to share, you can subscribe for email updates on our website.

I apologize to anyone who already made arrangements to attend our May meeting on migrating from Verity to Solr, but I need to reschedule.

Instead of meeting on Thursday May 19th, we will meet on Wednesday May 18th. I'm still waiting for confirmation on the room reservation, but I will update all of the appropriate blog posts once it has been confirmed -- as well as tweet it.

Finally, and in case you didn't already know, I would like you to Please RSVP if you plan on attending so that I can try to prevent food over- or under-ordering.

Thanks for your understanding. See you there!

In order to reduce food over-ordering and the occasional under-order, I'm re-instituting RSVPs for meetings. If you're planning to attend the May meeting: Solr Powered - Making the move from Verity, please RSVP here.

While we normally meet in Wharton's Jon M Huntsman Hall, we were unable to get space in that building for our February meeting. Instead, we'll be meeting in Steinberg-Dietrich Hall, room 1203. A map showing Huntsman Hall (in red) and Steinberg-Dietrich Hall (in green) is below:

(click for full size)

Happy new year!

With the new year, I'm introducing a small policy change to encourage meeting attendance. Unless and until otherwise noted, the following will hold true for all future raffles (not for smaller swag given away, as we tend to have enough to go around):

We will no longer simply give away the semiannual software raffle gift (up to $2,100) to a raffle winner who happens to show up on the right night. Instead, raffle tickets will be cumulative over the course of 6 months, and a winner will be drawn at the June meeting and the November/December meeting. You must be present to collect raffle tickets. We are occasionally able to stream presentations live via Adobe Connect, but in order to be eligible for raffle tickets for that meeting, you must be physically present. You do not have to be present at the time of the drawing to win (I will contact you). The purpose of these changes is to encourage as much participation as possible, not participation at specific times of the year. You can earn multiple chances to win by doing any or all of the following:

• 1 ticket:
  • Come to a meeting
  • Review a relevant book on this blog

• 2 tickets:
  • Bring someone new to a meeting
  • Present something
    • A development topic (30-60 minutes)
    • A book review (5-10 minutes)
    • A post-conference review, or something along those lines
    • Anything else that you and I agree on (contact me and we can discuss it)

What's this about book reviews? Well, several publishing companies are willing to send us "review copies" of books in exchange for reviews. We get the books for free, and in return they expect a brief, fair review to be posted online or shared with the group. What publishers and what books? Check out the sponsors page. (They all also offer discounts if you just want to buy, but not review.) As an added benefit, if you like, you can either keep or raffle off the book after your review. If you would like to get a review copy of a book, please contact me.

I hope you'll agree that these changes should encourage and reward attendance and participation. If you have any other ideas to accomplish these same goals, I would love to hear them.

If you can't make it in to town to attend tonight's meeting, you can catch this one on Adobe Connect. All you need is Flash Player and an internet connection. You can also watch via the Adobe Connect app for iPhone, if you're on the go.

The URL for the meeting is: http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/phillycfug/ and we will start shortly after 6:00 Eastern Time.

While the streaming of the presentation will be open to anyone who would like to attend (and feel free to share the URL), you must be present to win any of the raffle prizes, including up to $2,100 in Adobe software.

I hope to see you there, but if you can't make it, we'll see you online.

Former Philly CFUG manager Steve Rittler will be presenting for us once again. This time, he'll be presenting ColdFusion 9's new Hibernate integration.

Unlike every other CF9+Hibernate presentation I've seen, Steve manages to skip over boring fluff and jump right into the interesting, important details, and practical examples. If you are curious about ORM but don't know anything about it yet; or even if you know just enough to get yourself into trouble, this presentation should get you on the right path in no time (well ok, an hour).

Rumor also has it that Steve can answer all of the questions you may have about LOST.

Apologies for the short-ish notice. I'll try to get back on my game and provide more notice next time. This month we're meeting a little earlier than usual. Our presenter, Daria, will be presenting at NCDevCon on May 22nd and 23rd, and asked if she could practice her presentation with us before then.

Daria will be presenting An Introduction to Caching.

Caching is such a deep and complex subject that it can be difficult to know where to begin. This session will cover the basics of caching in ColdFusion from using page and query caching to using CFCs to cache data and functions into a persistent scope to create a service, as well as the new caching functions in ColdFusion9. We will discuss the pros and cons of each solution and workarounds for caching and refreshing the cache as you need it. You'll be amazed at the difference caching can make for your websites.

I will also add RSVP details soon. For now, just mark your calendars!

So with today's release of ColdFusion Builder it's no longer a secret why my original announcement for our upcoming meeting was somewhat restricted by NDA. Now that CFBuilder has been released, I can officially say that a few members of Adobe's evangelism team are touring some of the CFUGs and demoing the end result of the engineering team's hard work, as part of the launch. Terry Ryan (not only an Adobe evangelist, but also a Philly local) will be stopping by our CFUG to share the love.

I can personally vouch for CFBuilder as a solid product, worth your consideration. I have been testing it and working with it every day since early on in the private beta process, and it has definitely improved my coding productivity. It isn't free, but it does have some very worthwhile benefits, and anyone doing both ColdFusion and Flex development should be very pleased with the new pricing model: Buy both Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Builder for $299!

There are a lot of compelling reasons to buy ColdFusion Builder, and Terry is well qualified to demo them all for you and answer your questions. Heck, bring your boss if you think it will help make a case for the purchase.

Along with the ColdFusion Builder Launch Tour, Adobe is also allowing Ray Camden to run another "Best of" contest, similar to the Best of CF9 contest around the launch of ColdFusion 9 last year. This time, it's the ColdFusion Builder: Educate and Expand contest. If you've had an idea for something that might be useful as a CFB Extension, now is the time to make it happen.

See you at the meeting a week from tomorrow!