For our November meeting, yours truly will be presenting.

Taffy is a simple convention-over-configuration framework for writing semantically correct REST web services using ColdFusion. Here's a rough outline of what I plan to present:

• Why use web services at all?
• When and why should you choose REST over SOAP?
• What are your options for writing REST with CF (pre-Taffy)?
• What don't I like about those options?
• What does Taffy do to alleviate these pains?
• Demo: Building an API, one (Taffy) feature at a time

Note that, due to school being back in session, room availability is a little limited and while we did get the room reserved, we do not have the room during the usual 30 minutes prior to the meeting for socializing. You can come early, but we will not be able to go into the room until 6:00. We will probably start around 6:15.

I will stream the presentation live via Adobe Connect, and record it as well. You can join the connect room here: http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/phillycfug/ and I will post the recording URL after the meeting.

We've decided not to have a meeting this month. I'll be in Los Angeles for MAX, as well as some additional travel for work, and my co-manager Gary is also quite busy this month. Not to fret, we're already making plans for November and beyond, so stay tuned for the announcement for next month's meeting.

That said, if you're looking for some other local nerds to hang out with in October, might I suggest checking out Build Guild Philly? I know the organizer (good guy!) and it sounds like a great time.

While I've got your attention, I want to reiterate that if there's anything you would like to see presented at a CFUG meeting, or if you would like to present something, all you need to do is ask. Send an email to manager@phillycfug.org, or tweet me, and we'll see what we can do to make it happen.

Have a great month, enjoy the fall foliage while it lasts, and we'll see you in November!

Go Phillies!

Tired of broad but shallow overviews of HTML5 functionality? Me too. Nathan Mische has built some interesting stuff with HTML5's Web Sockets functionality and ColdFusion Event Gateways, as well as similar functionality in BlazeDS; so I asked him to do a more narrow but deep presentation on just that. I have no idea what to expect, but I'm sure it will be good.

Here's your reminder that our next meeting will be tomorrow, Thursday the 19th. Nathan Strutz of the Phoenix CFUG will be presenting on what he calls, "Holistic Program Quality, and Technical Debt" -- but I just call "Why and how to make informed decisions about taking shortcuts in your code."

I hope you're planning to attend, because everyone from Newbie to Expert can get a lot out of the presentation. And to top it off, we'll be giving away over $1,000 in free software from Adobe, among other swag.

Our August meeting will be a little different from the last few. This time, we'll have a remote presenter. Nathan Strutz is co-manager of the Phoenix CFUG, and when I saw him give this presentation last May it really opened my eyes to how much technical debt I have taken on over the years; and how I should approach similar situations going forward. I knew immediately that I wanted him to present it for our user group.

Don't let the fact that Nathan won't be here to present in person deter you, the presentation is top notch. And don't let the buzzword-rich title scare you, there is little to no code involved, and even a beginner can get a lot out of this presentation. Discussion will cover the concept of taking shortcuts and what they end up costing you in the long run.

If you still need encouragement to come out to the meeting, how about this? We'll be running our semi-annual software raffle -- your chance to win over $1,000 in Adobe software of your choice (and yes, you can choose a ColdFusion 9 Standard Edition license)!

Meeting details below. I'll update with a room number after my reservation is approved.

Just a quick reminder that we will be meeting on TUESDAY next week -- the 20th. Steve Rittler will be [presenting](http://www.phillycfug.org/post/july-meeting-no-longer-lost-with-coldfusion-orm-with-steve-rittler) on ColdFusion ORM. I've updated the original announcement with the room information, but here it is again for your convenience:

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.

Just a quick note to remind everyone that we're meeting tonight at Wharton's Huntsman Hall at 6:00. David Patricola will present on Model-Glue 3. See you there!

David is one of our local members, and has volunteered to present on Model-Glue 3.

Model-Glue, one of many open source, object-oriented, front-controller MVC frameworks offered in ColdFusion, allows developers to focus more on building the business rules of their applications and less on the boilerplate. Focusing on an Object-Oriented approach, it uses XML markup templates for site configuration tasks like default events, shared functionality, page formatting, and database connectivity. Built-in functionality also allows you to create scaffolding for common CRUD tasks, which you can then edit to suit your needs. Separating the business rules from the presentation of the data (as with any MVC framework) also makes it easy to create multiple themes and easily switch between them. The learning curve is fairly gradual and you can have a website up and running in 10 minutes.

David is a local Philadelphia ColdFusion developer by trade, and dabbles in PHP on the side. He has been working with ColdFusion for 10 years, and considers himself a CSS "wingnut." He is currently a Senior Developer at Thomas Jefferson University, and based on the fact that the head shot he sent me was cake.jpg and the expression on his face, I assume that he comes down squarely on the side of cake in the age old cake vs. pie debate.

Just a quick reminder that our next meeting will be this Thursday, at 6:00pm. We will be in the usual building, but in a different room. Details on that below.

Now that we have a feel for how many people will be attending most meetings, we won't be doing an RSVP every time. That said, the meeting is posted here and if you'd like to RSVP you may do so there (you must be logged in & a member of the group).