posted under category: AZCFUG on August 26, 2009 at 2:38 pm by MrNate
I always forget to blog. There's a quickly growing list of things I have to update every month when we have a new Phoenix ColdFusion User's Group meeting. I did pretty good except for the blog. You see, I have to update...
The AZCFUG Site - It was so out of date, Alan finally replaced the text with some boilerplate stuff and links to our other sites. Some day, we'll have real content here.
AZCFUG on Adobe Groups - We are using this because it's a pretty nice app, and does everything we wanted, but we hate the extra-long URL.
AZGroups.org - I update our schedule here via a shared Google Calendar.
My status on Twitter - just to pimp the event.
This Blog - which I was just saying I forget about far too often.
Then, if it's a particularly exciting meeting, I may also advertise it on various mailing lists, etc.
Anyways, sorry, where was I?
Oh man, tonight, Sean Corfield presenting Railo. I'm really excited to see what's in this new version and what's coming next. It's tonight at the UAT building in Tempe, AZ. If you're not in the area, you can tune in at 6:30 PM PST via Adobe Connect.
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posted under category: AZCFUG on February 26, 2009 at 7:54 am by MrNate
If you follow the fullscreen link, you should be able to see my speaker notes as well, which my help tie the concepts together. If you want to see the demos, you MUST turn on the speaker notes.
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posted under category: AZCFUG on February 17, 2009 at 6:03 pm by MrNate
Yes, it's a week from tomorrow. Alan & I have had some trouble getting speakers, but we need to have some get-togethers still, so let's do it.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 6:30 PM, UAT main theatre room.
We're calling this "skills month."
Presentation #1:
Alan Rother, AZCFUG Manager: Intro to XPATH
Alan is a Senior Applications Developer at Interactive Sites in Scottsdale, juggling the application development of dozens of high profile sites for the hospitality industry. Also, he is insanely smart, so this will be good (no pressure here, Alan). Alan's presentation will run around 30 minutes and will take you from little-to-no knowledge of XPath to some actual applicable knowledge that you will want to use.
Presentation #2:
Nathan Strutz, AZCFUG Manager: Build Automation with Ant & Groovy
Nathan is a serious coder at The Boeing Company in Mesa who hacks on internal web 2.0 style applications, usually with his headphones on and nose buried in CFCs. Nathan's 25 minute presentation will discuss build automation with Ant, and some creative ways to use it. You'll like it.
We have a potential speaker for next month, but would love to fit in another short presentation if anyone wants to give it. As I said before, it doesn't have to be anything cerebral, and it doesn't even have to top 5 minutes. We'll be bugging you all about this, pretty much forever, so you might as well give in now :) Also, remember, presenting for the user group is a great resume item, and a great way to get your name out there.
As usual we've got the typical schwag giveaways (Somebody, please take our CF8 posters!), and we will most likely meet up at Aunt Chilada's after the event. Check the UAT map here.
More information is online at the Phoenix ColdFusion User's Group site and the AZCFUG Adobe Groups site.
Immediately following the AZCFUG presentations, the AZFPUG (Flash) group has a presentation lined up with Jason Crist, who will talk about the Facebook AS3 API, starting at 7:30 PM. You're invited to stay, but I will probably hit Aunt Chilada's before that.
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posted under category: AZCFUG on December 24, 2008 at 12:51 pm by MrNate
I know a lot of us out in the general work force really do a lot of work, and some of us put in way more hours than is healthy, but with the holidays being upon us, I'd like to suggest one thing: have other projects.
By other projects, I mean a personal project or an open source project where you can do what you do best, whether that's bean counting, programming or technical document writing, do what you do best and what you love to do (or at least loved to at one point), and do it on your own time outside of work. In having this other project, you give yourself a number of great opportunities.
First, you get freedom - be creative, do it on your own schedule, do it your way. Freedom ignites the passion you have for what you do. At work, you conform to rules, legacy problems, people problems, and things that make what you do not fun. Freedom from that structure makes things fun, and you can bring that fun back with you to your job, something everyone will appreciate.
You also get learning opportunities that you would never have when you're slaving away for a dollar. They want things done their way, and you have 2 hours to do it, while on your own time, you can try something new and it doesn't really matter how long it takes you. Be creative and come up with the best solution. Once you get there, you've probably learned something new. Keep at it until this becomes a point on your resume.
For me, I typically learn new programming frameworks and languages, and try creative methodologies that initially sound like they could never work. This eventually trickles down to work for me in ways that I thought never would. One of them was quite tangible in getting me hired at better places - the more I know, the more people want to hire me, and the more money they want to give me. I honestly didn't expect that. Strange, I know, I'm a little dense.
One of my pet projects is doing little things in C#. I find it fun and can't explain why. Playing with C# has made me a better programmer in general, as well as it has been able to solve some relevant issues in my day-to-day work where I use it for utility chores and small projects. I'm not saying that C# should be your project; I'm just throwing that out there.
At one previous company I worked at, one of the interview questions was about extra, non-work programming projects. This was literally one of the measures of how serious a candidate was at programming - if it was more than just a chore and if it bled over into a way of life. Lucky for me (... ?) you can almost never find me far from a keyboard, hacking away at something.
Finally, with completed projects, there's always the chance to monetize them one way or another. You never know if the project you've been kicking around has million dollar potential until you've put some real work into it.
Let me suggest some projects to get you started. If you like starting new things, make a personal web site, or one for your family. Be creative with where things come from (like Photoshop & Illustrator for design, your Flickr account for content, etc.). If you have one, be improving it. If you make something cool along the way, consider open sourcing it. If there's a tool you always wanted to use, make it. If there's some boilerplate code you keep re-typing on each project, make a real tool or framework out of it.
If you don't like starting new things, download code from an open source project, make a few improvements and send them in. Open source developers LOVE this. If they don't want to take the app in the same direction you're going, fork it and start your own project. This is a great addition to your resume as well.
In conclusion, I'm urging you to get a personal pet project of your own, or a few. It's good for everyone, most of all, yourself.
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posted under category: AZCFUG on December 10, 2008 at 10:45 am by MrNate
Hey everyone in the Phoenix valley - This month's AZCFUG meeting is going to be super-casual. We're going to Aunt Chilada's in Tempe next Wednesday, the 17th at 6:30. As usual, we will probably be out back somewhere, so look around until you find us.
There's an official post at our Adobe Groups site with a little more info.
The agenda? Nachos, the user group and giving away our schwag. Buy your own drinks, but bring something to say about the CFUG.
I'll get you started.
"I think one cool idea for a meeting next year would be __________."
"I think Alan would look better if his hair __________."
"I think, in regards to virtual presenters, we should __________."
"I would like to do a presentation on __________."
Oh snap, did I just involve the community?
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posted under category: AZCFUG on August 26, 2008 at 2:07 pm by MrNate
Oh man, only 2 posts since last month's meeting. Am I ever slacking. Anyway, tomorrow, Wednesday, August 27, 2008, is another valley-of-the-sun CFUG meeting in Tempe. Jim Bambrough from Amkor is going to be talking about Mach-II and Eclipse, and giving us basically a nice overview of the technology he uses and how he uses it. It should be good.
As always, there's door prizes and stuff just for showing up. Check the site for details and directions: azcfug.org.
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posted under category: AZCFUG on July 24, 2008 at 2:58 pm by MrNate
Bryan did an awesome job at conveying how simple it is to begin using Java in our CF applications, how helpful Eclipse is for Java development, how to make a simple Java GUI with NetBeans, how to work with the Java threading model, how to use a generic JDBC driver (jTDS) and how to create Excel files with Apache POI. It was awesome how much he covered in about 30 minutes. Bryan was well prepared as well, which was great because I only gave him like a week to prep (sorry!).
We don't have anything planned for the August meeting, so we're looking for volunteers!
As a final note, Alan asked me to co-manage the group with him, which I accepted. I guess I was the heir to the schwag box anyway, so this way he doesn't have to die first. It's good all around because I hate doing that. (yeah, of course i'm kidding).
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