Thanks to John, and as initiated by Sean Corfield, for pointing out that all of us are in part responsible for building and strengthening the Cold Fusion Community.
Sean's blog makes a number of very good points, such as what we learned in college/university and what we use in the real world is often not the same thing. I studied FORTRAN in college almost 20 years before Al Gore invented the Internet. Like many if not most CFers I learned every little bit I know by trial and error underwritten by my clients. The key word for the long-term success of Cold Fusion, IMHO, is community. Many of us by the nature of our work work alone. Our "community" then is most often a "cyber-community". But where I found the real community that helped me the most was the Atlanta Cold Fusion Users Group. Bar none, the best community of real people writing real-world code I have ever known. By the (personal) nature of my career path I have most often been a part-time coder never approaching the skill-depth and just plan real-world-know-how of the ACFUG-ers. It was ACFUG that showed me I could succeed. I looked forward with great interest to our monthly meetings. The program/subject matter was often way above my head--but I learned something never-the-less at every meeting. Including the weekly informal CFlunch get togethers. I now find myself living is a small town known as Los Angeles. By small I mean the CF community here is small. You know that line from a song "sometimes you don't what you've got till it's gone" That's the big wakeup call I got when I got to LA (in 2005) and went looking for the ColdFusion Users Group. There wasn't one. Unless I wanted to drive 100 miles to San Diego. It wasn't until just a year ago that I found by shear chance a newly formed users group of only about 6 guys. Getting together has been difficult at times. Our group's leader has no real help, he's doing it ALL on his own. We don't have a Board of Directors like ACFUG. My New Year's Resolution (one of many) is to help Bill as much as I can with meeting logistics and whatever else to promote membership and attendance. This where I feel Cold Fusion can and will grow--always at the grass roots. We--that's the collective we--need to encourage all our fellow CFers to rally around and build our community. No body else is going to do it for us. It's not Adobe's "fault". Give and your community will give back. And when Adobe sees growing numbers of users, applications, websites, etc. ...then they too will give with ongoing R&D, upgrades and whole-number version releases. Just my humble opinion, and thanks again to Sean for pointing some of this out and to John for bringing it to the list's attention. Dan Kaufman -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Mason Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 7:26 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [ACFUG Discuss] Convert a non-CF developer to CF Sean Corfield did a very interesting blog entry last week about the marketing and growth of the CF community. It's well worth the read.. http://corfield.org/blog/index.cfm/do/blog.entry/entry/Common_ColdFusion_Arg uments Sean gives a little challenge or new year's resolution if you like at the end. Simply convert a non-CF developer to CF. Pretty simple really. Apparently there's about 400,000 CF developers out there these days. If we each did our part, we could easily double that. John Mason [EMAIL PROTECTED] 770.337.8363 www.FusionLink.com - ColdFusion and Flex hosting Now offering ColdFusion 8 Enterprise hosting FREE Subversion hosting This e-mail message and all attachments transmitted with it may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information intended solely for the use of the addressee(s). If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any reading, dissemination, distribution, copying, forwarding or other use of this message or its attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message and all copies and backups thereof. ------------------------------------------------------------- Annual Sponsor FigLeaf Software - http://www.figleaf.com To unsubscribe from this list, manage your profile @ http://www.acfug.org?fa=login.edituserform For more info, see http://www.acfug.org/mailinglists Archive @ http://www.mail-archive.com/discussion%40acfug.org/ List hosted by http://www.fusionlink.com ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- Annual Sponsor FigLeaf Software - http://www.figleaf.com To unsubscribe from this list, manage your profile @ http://www.acfug.org?fa=login.edituserform For more info, see http://www.acfug.org/mailinglists Archive @ http://www.mail-archive.com/discussion%40acfug.org/ List hosted by http://www.fusionlink.com -------------------------------------------------------------
