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.

Apologies for the short-ish notice. I'll try to get back on my game and provide more notice next time. This month we're meeting a little earlier than usual. Our presenter, Daria, will be presenting at NCDevCon on May 22nd and 23rd, and asked if she could practice her presentation with us before then.

Daria will be presenting An Introduction to Caching.

Caching is such a deep and complex subject that it can be difficult to know where to begin. This session will cover the basics of caching in ColdFusion from using page and query caching to using CFCs to cache data and functions into a persistent scope to create a service, as well as the new caching functions in ColdFusion9. We will discuss the pros and cons of each solution and workarounds for caching and refreshing the cache as you need it. You'll be amazed at the difference caching can make for your websites.

I will also add RSVP details soon. For now, just mark your calendars!

So with today's release of ColdFusion Builder it's no longer a secret why my original announcement for our upcoming meeting was somewhat restricted by NDA. Now that CFBuilder has been released, I can officially say that a few members of Adobe's evangelism team are touring some of the CFUGs and demoing the end result of the engineering team's hard work, as part of the launch. Terry Ryan (not only an Adobe evangelist, but also a Philly local) will be stopping by our CFUG to share the love.

I can personally vouch for CFBuilder as a solid product, worth your consideration. I have been testing it and working with it every day since early on in the private beta process, and it has definitely improved my coding productivity. It isn't free, but it does have some very worthwhile benefits, and anyone doing both ColdFusion and Flex development should be very pleased with the new pricing model: Buy both Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Builder for $299!

There are a lot of compelling reasons to buy ColdFusion Builder, and Terry is well qualified to demo them all for you and answer your questions. Heck, bring your boss if you think it will help make a case for the purchase.

Along with the ColdFusion Builder Launch Tour, Adobe is also allowing Ray Camden to run another "Best of" contest, similar to the Best of CF9 contest around the launch of ColdFusion 9 last year. This time, it's the ColdFusion Builder: Educate and Expand contest. If you've had an idea for something that might be useful as a CFB Extension, now is the time to make it happen.

See you at the meeting a week from tomorrow!

I just spoke with Simon (our speaker for tonight's meeting), and as of now he's still planning on making the trip down from New York City; so I'm still planning on holding the meeting. If that changes, I will update this post, post about it on twitter, and if there's something big that everyone needs to be notified of (what that might be, I'm not sure), I'll send out a mass-email to the group.

Don't forget that we're not in the usual building. We're still on Penn's campus, but instead of Jon M. Huntsman Hall we're in Steinberg-Dietrich Hall, room 211. In case you're not familiar with the location, here's a map. Click for a larger version.

Lastly, we're still planning to head to the American Pub for Happy Hour afterward.

I've taken the liberty of creating a Philly CFUG discussion group on Google Groups. You can join it here. (Your first post will be moderated so that we can keep spammers out of the group.)

I considered posting here on the blog to ask if there was any interest, but I figured that was a little too-meta. I know there are at least a few people who would use it, because it's been requested more than once.

What would it be useful for? It would be a great place to organize carpools and hotel room sharing for conferences, for example — in fact, I've already posted a thread for doing just that. I'm sure there other things that it could be useful for, too — perhaps discussions searching for candidates for open positions in your company or discussing places you're considering applying or accepting a position.

So if you're interested in things like that, join the group.

Date: Thursday, January 14th
Time: 6:00pm – 7:30pm EST
Location: UPenn, Jon M. Huntsman Hall. 3730 Walnut Street, or near 36th/37th st Trolleys
Room: F90 (Basement/"Forum" Level)
Speaker: Steve Rittler, CounterMarch Systems

We all know that no matter how awesomely relational your database is, all they ever want from us is one spreadsheet after another. ColdFusion 9 has a new tag and a whole boatload of functions to make reading and writing fully Microsoft Office— and Open Office—compatible spreadsheets a piece of cake. It's now simple to take the data directly from their "too big to fail, yet too complex to understand" spreadsheet and use it in your applications — and likewise to build a stylish, functional (formulas too!) and up-to-date spreadsheet directly from ColdFusion. Come out and learn how to make use of this awesome new functionality!

Steve Rittler is an unabashed Adobe fanboy primarily dedicated to the promotion of ColdFusion as one of the most productive web application development tools ever made. His company, CounterMarch Systems, specializes in ColdFusion and Flex consulting for a variety of industries, but primarily higher education.  He's been developing with ColdFusion for 10 years and served as the manager of the Philadelphia CFUG for about 7 years.  He's also an Adobe Community Expert for ColdFusion, so feel free to send questions, trick questions or fun challenges his way at srittler@countermarch.com or on Twitter: @scrittler.

So that we can get an accurate head-count for food, please register for this meeting. As always, there is no charge.

Since you'll already be in town and have your evening clear this Thursday (December 10th) for our next meeting, why not extend your stay to hang out at a Philly bar with other local geeks and have some free beer?

PANMA — the Philadelphia Area New Media Association — has graciously invited us to crash their holiday party on December 10th at Fuzion Grill. According to their announcement, (among many other reasons to go) there will be free parking, free food, and free beer; although they neglect to mention if it will be Free Beer (the brand), or beer you don't have to pay for — or better: Free Beer (the brand) that you don't have to pay for! I suspect it's just beer you don't have to pay for, but one can dream right? If you're a SEPTA-rider (as I am) you'll be happy to know it's just a quick walk from the Spring Garden stop on the Market-Frankford line.

Their event goes from 6pm until "??", but I've been assured it will continue well past the end of our meeting, so there will be plenty of time to head over afterward.

So I implore you: Come learn some great stuff at the meeting, then come hang out at the bar. I'm planning on going and I'd love to see you there.

Did you miss your opportunity to sign up for the Free Flex Training for ColdFusion Developers taking place today in Washington D.C.?

Well, you're in luck! They added another date in D.C. — you can now attend on December 17th. You better sign up quickly; I bet this one will sell out too!

Thanks to astute reader dsmith for keeping an eye on this and letting me know!

We're trying out something new. In order to get a good headcount and approximate how much food to get, please register for our December meeting.

This is strictly for the purpose of approximating food need, so if you're not sure if you can attend, or just not sure yet, then please wait until closer to the event to register. "Tickets" are free and there are more than enough for everyone, but they will only be available until 2:00pm on December 10th.

If you do register and then later need to cancel, please email manager@phillycfug.org before 2:00pm on December 10th, so that I can cancel your ticket for a more accurate head-count.

Thanks for your help!

UPDATE: There is no need to print the tickets you get from EventBrite for this meeting. They aren't required for entry — we won't be checking them, and you'll be putting trees to waste. So just don't print it!

Did you know it's our 10-year anniversary as an organized User Group? In that time, ColdFusion has been owned by Adobe, Macromedia, and even Allaire. I don't have any official records of when the group met for the first time, but our best estimate is in mid to late 1999. When our group was formed, ColdFusion at version 4.5. What a long way we've come! To help celebrate the milestone, we hope you'll come to next month's meeting… there will be cake!

Also? I have door prizes to give away! Books! Software! Hugs! … Maybe not hugs… And as usual, we'll have free pizza and soda. And of course, if your company or organization would like to sponsor these refreshments, the group and I would be extremely grateful and happy to return the favor!

A couple of people have reached out to me to let me know that they won't be able to attend the next meeting, but that they could really benefit from the content. Well, you're in luck! Or you might be, as long as I don't screw up!

I'm going to attempt to record the meeting via Adobe Connect, and publish it here afterward; to be watched by anyone at any time, anywhere. It will be my first attempt at recording a presentation with Connect, so I can't promise it will go smoothly; but you have my word that I will try!

If possible, I will also try to get the URL posted (and tweet it) before the meeting starts, so that you can attend from afar in real time, even if you can't make it into the city. Hopefully this will help our more suburban members participate, but unfortunately you must be present to win a door prize. All the more reason to come!