Ideally I'd like to have presentations lined up several months in advance. So far, I've been pretty lucky to have a topic, speaker, and date nailed down by a few days prior to the meeting preceding the one being planned (January's as of November, February's as of January, etc). What might make this process easier would be to get a list of topics and speakers you would like to see at meetings in 2010.

So consider this post an open call for topics and speakers. I can't promise anything except that I will consider every request and try to make as many of them happen as possible.

Do you want to learn more about CFBuilder? Writing REST APIs in ColdFusion? Learn Selenium? ColdFire? MXUnit? The sky is the limit, as long as it's relevant to ColdFusion development. In addition, are there any specific presenters you'd like to have present to us? Since we operate on zero budget we can't afford to fly people in from all over creation, but sometimes we can take advantage of someone coincidentally being in town or nearby.

And of course, if you have something you'd like to present, I'd be happy to talk it over with you.

I welcome your input. You can comment on this post, email me at manager@phillycfug.org, or bring it up on the discussion group.

First of all, thank you to everyone who responded to the poll. I've already received more responses than I was hoping for, so we're off to a great start. I'm going to leave it open for a few more days - so if you haven't already, please take the survey - but I figured it might be interesting to go over some of the results.

1. CFUG Meetings are just as much a social gathering as they are an opportunity to network or learn something. Which of these things would you like to do at upcoming CFUG meetings? (Choose as many as you like.)

Responses to this question were overwhelmingly in favor of presentations, both on ColdFusion specific and web-development general topics. Happy hour garnered a vote from just shy of 50% of responders, so while this isn't a priority it sounds like there's some interest.

2. Around this time of year people are often busy or out of town with Holiday plans and may not have time for extracurricular things like CFUG meetings. Please indicate which, if any, of the following time-ranges you would be interested in and able to attend a CFUG meeting. (Choose all that apply.)

The most-to-least ranking of these answers was: Late January, Early December, Early January, Early November, Late November, Late December. It's a little late to schedule something for early November, so I'll shoot for our next meeting to be in early December. Stay tuned for an announcement of the topic, date, and venue.

3. If we were to try to have meetings on a regular and repeating schedule, which day of the week works BEST for you? Remember that this is on an ongoing basis, not just for the next few months. (Choose all that apply.)

Thursday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (descending, in that order) were all voted for by more than 60% of people, so we'll shoot for Thursdays with a "Plan B" of Tuesdays.

4. What do you hope to gain by attending CFUG meetings? (Ex: Networking, Job opportunities, Learning stuff, Having fun)

A majority of you wrote that you were looking for learning and networking, which reflects what we saw in question 1 - presentations. Speaking of which, if you're ever interested in presenting on something, then I would encourage you to email me: manager@phillycfug.org.

5. Do you have any other comments about improving your CFUG experience or things you would like to see the CFUG do? Please let us know here.

It's hard to summarize this, but I'll try: More notice before meetings, a few specific presenter/presentation requests, back-to-basics topics for less-advanced developers / CF101, record presentations and post them on the blog, start later for those traveling from outside the city.

Does this sound representative of the group as a whole? Do you have anything you want to add to this? I'm basing my approach to organizing meetings on this information, so it's sort of a "speak now or for a while hold your peace" situation.

Well hello there. Due to Chris' growing obligation to the Swiz framework (which I highly recommend!), among many other things, he has decided to step down as manager of our CFUG, and hand the reigns over to me. Who am I? Well, I'm Adam Tuttle. I work at UPenn's Wharton school, I blog at FusionGrokker, and I've lived in the area for the last 5 years and been lucky enough to be developing with ColdFusion professionally for a bit longer than that.

What I hope to bring to the CFUG is renewed interest in the local ColdFusion and Adobe developer community at large, not just our user group. I want the CFUG to be everything you want it to be, and I'm going to do my best to cater it to the people that attend meetings. I believe it can be just as much a social group as it is an opportunity to learn something. That's why I've put together a very brief survey - just 5 questions - to gauge interest in what you want and need from the group.

So if you wouldn't mind, could you take a couple of minutes to fill out the - again, very brief! - survey? I would really appreciate it! Click Here to take our survey

We are expecting a visit from Josh Adams from New Atlanta on May 1st to talk about BlueDragon 7, a CFML runtime from New Atlanta.

I'm trusting you've read (or heard) something about this at some point over the last few years. We've hosted speakers on BlueDragon in the past.

BD7 has some very interesting features and remains a competitive alternative to Adobe's CF runtime. Do you plan on attending the meeting to learn more? If not, why not?