CFUnited is, by far, the biggest ColdFusion conference available in our region. Well, it will be for one more year. They've announced that they are closing up shop. If you weren't already planning on going, I would recommend trying to make it this year. In fact, they even extended early-bird pricing until July 15th to help make that easier.

I suppose all good things must end. I'll be sad to see it go, but happy for the opportunity to check out other CF conferences like NCDevCon and CFObjective without fear that I'm missing something at the CFUnited.

At last week's meeting, we had an attendee who was there in search of potential hires for a company he is starting. I told him I would be happy to pass along his request here on the blog.

The position is part time to start, but could grow into a full time position; doing highly technical email and phone support, answering questions about AIR and Flash, but primarily about AS2 and AS3. See their post on Adobe Groups for more information:

We are looking for someone who can provide highly technical email and phone support for technical questions regarding flash actionscript (mostly as2 and as3) and air development. The ideal candidate will have at least 2 years full time experience in flash actionscript. Good communication skills is a key requirement. Our budget is $500 a month for what is expected to be 8 to 10 hours of work. Candidates with a science, engineering, or math degree are preferred but not required.

This is a ground level opportunity with a company that is just getting started. This could grow to a full time position.

The company is listed as a "Stealth Mode Startup." If interested, contact Jack by phone at 215-609-4170.

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.