To start off, I am one on the lucky ones to receive my copy of the Fusebox
book at the conference and I wanted to thank all those involved for their
hard work. I owe much to the names listed in it.
That said a review of the conference is in order.
The CF_Underground, an interesting event focused on strengthening
community(CF/Fusebox) relationship was a great ice breaker to my first day
in DC. I'm not going to go into detail but I think I raised some hairs and
I want to apologize for that.
Well besides the absolute pandemonium, the entire event was very well
organized. At any moment I could ask for assistance and someone who looked
much like myself (thanks Allaire fashion studios inc!) would offer me the
info I needed. The seminars were (for the most part) well organized and
informative. My only peeve was the discrepancy between course name and/or
description and the content the session actually presented. I went to one
session labeled, "Advanced User interfaces with DHTML" which I thought meant
advanced DHTML, not so. The name should have put more emphasis on the
content, such as "Introduction to DHTML and interface design" or some such
thing.
I only managed to squeeze into one hands-on session and it was perfectly
tuned to a 90 minute window. I would have enjoyed some programming hands-on
and it would have been my only other suggestion for next year, More actual
programming content for CF programmers. Some may argue that it is not
Allaire's position to provide material on this matter, but most of the
questions I heard from the audience revolved around simple programming
concepts that most non-programmers don't know to look for. Michael Dinowitz
suggested as much in his talk at the CF_Underground...knowledge is the key
and some of the attendees simply needed way more of it.
To use Michael D as an example, his session on IA(Intelligent Agents) was
both well on with theory & practical insight. He got us up to speed on the
concept and then gave us some very (very) useful info on how to code them
(regex anyone?)...perfect.
On a side not I found it very peculiar that the lunch on Monday vs. the
lunch on Tuesday vs. the, for lack of better word, lunch on Wednesday were
very disproportionate...
The most lasting impression was the feverishly frantic attendees jostling
about, preaching their mastery at this and that while slopping down some
free food and trying to seem normal in a sea of socialy inept look alikes.
The inability to communicate effectively between pregrammers and clients
actually came up in the Application Management session. This tied in very
nicely with the Fusebox push towards effective Project Managemt. Fusebox
and fUseML are so well thought out infact that I didn't even need to listen
to Ben Forta's session on Architecture and Stategies as he was just glossing
over topics detailed very clearly in my past experience with Fusebox. I
apologize for not offering my experience with Fusebox, at the BOF session
but my stories are not good examples unfortunately. I will say that Fusebox
is simply an excellent way to think and co-ordinate any programatic task.
That in the course of learning how to make dynamic Web Sites you will
ultimately evolve to a system very similar to Fusebox and so why re-invent
the wheel, adopt it and use it.
In closing, my time was well spent at this conference and I would highly
receommend going to one if you are fortunate enough. The conference brought
me a wealth of reference material and a sense of reality by actaully seeing
the faces of and hearing the voices of names I only see in my inbox.
Nothing can be said about the benefit of human interaction over the sterile
interaction we get over the Internet.
Take that as you will. :-)
Emilio
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