Introduction
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is to those who would like to know what the hell this is all about and why. This email will cover reasoning behind the decisions along with how it will help you the developers in the long run. Its open for debate, but at the same time it needs to be approached with serious attitude (to which may surprise you all, I can be serious at times) and share a common goal (more on the goal). CFUG? Why Care? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lets all take a step back and think outside the square as to why we are all on the CFAUSSIE list and to participate in the CFUG State Meetings? Heres my personal reasoning. Informed: To keep abreast of the ever changing technologies that I deal with in my career, along with a heads up on what the future holds Share: To share information about the tools I love using, to interact with other people who also love and share the same tools and most of all to see the tools put in use. Learn: To learn from my peers, people who most would assume are hacks tend to sometimes be the smartest of all? Never underestimate a person's ability and potential, as with enough encouragement they could be the next "guru". I like to learn from people's theories, mistakes, successes and most of all general abilities. Network: Through CFAUSSIE and QLD CFUG, I have gained not only business contacts, but also landed a few choice contracts here and there. In the last few years I have received job offers from companies within this list, and recently landed a nice sweet fulltime gig with Tourism Queensland due to the CFUG meetings and the list. This isn't brag; it's a case study of how it has helped me further my own career with little if no investment other than my time? (Lately TQ's time. got to stop shit posts on CFAUSSIE) Promotion: Through these outlets I have promoted my abilities to others, around Australia and jokes aside, I do sometimes know what I'm talking about. Once again, you all know me whether it is for good or bad reasons due to my voice being rammed down your throats through CFAUSSIE or when I help you out with problems within the toolsets we use? Once again, not a stroke of my ego while it does flatter it, its just a case study. So keep all these factors in mind as to how powerful places like CFAUSSIE and QLD CFUG Meetings can be? You may not have experienced one or all of these points, but would you like to experience them? If so how would you go about doing so? These are questions I am sure others have! CFUG.ORG.AU GOALS? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hopefully by reading this, you all will see a clearer view of what mine and Barry's vision of what a CFUG site should be and task it should perform. ".To provide an ONLINE resource, within the one location for topics of interest for the community at large." That's the only goal, to be a central source for two types of traffic. New and Old. As the great Ben Forta said in more ways then none. "You have to decide what a site should do, either absorb traffic or divert it elsewhere" Do you all want a portal firing off to just bookmarks after bookmarks of information, or would you prefer a summarised version of these bookmarks to help you make more decisive decisions? CFCENTRAL vs CFUG? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Steve has a site called CFCENTRAL.COM. The overall story behind this site was to breathe some life back into the CF Community as whole, while providing promotion of the CFCENTRAL's teams capabilities? I at one stage was geared up and ready to proceed with steve in such a project. We spent a couple of the hours one night brainstorming shit for the site and it was a great vision. The reason, I personally wanted to join such a project was due to CFUG.ORG.AU not being approachable or that it had swfa content within the site. So I bitched one day on a thread, "When is gonna be updated and how soon?" to which people said "fark it man, you want it, you build it.. carn help out?" .. Couple of days after such post, Marc contacted me and asked if I would consider taking over the Webmaster role of the site? At first I thought shit, big project, how will this pan out? Will it offend Geoff and the Daemon guys? Will it offend Steve and CFCentral? What the hell.. Through consultation with Barry (who later informed me he was geared up to be the new NAT CFUG manager) we both agreed that you know what? Lets just build something we can all use and lets all focus on the one thing instead of separate areas of the web. All CFUG needs is someone to be the Director of the show, point out what we need, work with people to achieve these needs and at the end of the day provide the Australian community an outlet for people who are fond of the Macromedia product range. MXDU taught us but one important thing, CFMX and FLASHMX are very powerful applications and most if not all had allot of misinformed opinions of such products. I looked around the room from time to time and saw all the light bulbs pinging on top of peoples heads, Andrew refers to it as the "wood factor".. Why does it take a large conference like this to motivate us to get more involved, to spark that interest and understanding of the technologies we all USE daily? Development? Who? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You can be apart of the team? It's the irony of it all in that in order to share information about the CFMX based products you first have to understand CFMX. If you understand CFMX then you know that CFC's have opened up the ability and potential for you to work in black box environments without having to rely on how presentation layer works, or how the database should be set out for an entire application. You want an IRC chat system Viktor? The others want this and that.. Hey, build it. I've got a set of basic coding standards (variable naming and all that fluffy crap) to enable us to have some solid and clean code, but by all means build the "features" you need. All I need from these developers who wish to be involved is simply the tables that are needed for the database side of the feature in question. The cfcs / methods used to interact with the database and that's it. If your afraid of Presentation layer logic, that's where I will come in, that's my main job in all this to make the presentation layer work seamlessly with the overall website. In return, you get to be on the CFUG.ORG.AU development team for which you get instant fame and recognition and best of all, you get "Feature Designed by: your name" and link back.. Great for those who need case studies to show potential employers? Furthermore, if a commercial entity one day wishes to buy a copy of the site, hey why not sell it? We could sell it and everyone gets his or her fair share of the pie? Passive income? Don't be alarmed though, I don't anticipate this being a monkey making exercise and I won't to state that CFUG.ORG.AU is a non-profit project and will be treated as such. Features?? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The skies the limit, I have a few sponsors already interested in leadning their goods and services to enabling this project to go ahead. I disagree with Mark in that tutorials and "already" features available on the web should just be linked to and that's it? I disagree in that it defeats the purpose of the goals of CFUG. Why not instead summarise the content on that link, allow them to either be imported into the site or then link to relevant areas. Provide ability for the community to comment on such aspects of the content within the one area and above all, keep the masses informed of updates to such content. Links are over-rated and god knows I get sick of loading my bookmark profiles on various machines.. bookmarks suck and I like others sometimes wish that "just once" I'd love a central area.. Its reasons why FullAsAGoog, Devnet and countless other sites are successful, is due to the fact that it provides you with a central area of streamed information. It's the reasons as to why Webservices where invented in the first place. Its why we are going to have a feature proof site known as CFUG. Conclusion ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You can either be with the CFUG team on this project or you can either be somewhere else, but either way make your choice to join or step aside and let others who want to. CFUG.ORG.AU can be as big as you want it to be, just requires some proactive people who would like something more out of their careers other then making some fuck above you richer by the day. Its that simple folks, so its now up to you. --- You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MX Downunder AsiaPac DevCon - http://mxdu.com/
