Mark Drew (Redux)- cf_etc...

I am sure lots of people use google analytics on their site to track usage. Its very good for conversion funnels and what have you but it doesn't really have the immediate effect of reporting that I like for blog posts. I have to admit, I am a nosey bugger. I want to know when people are coming to my blog and what they are looking at. I want to know WHO is on my site, I know you dont mind, of course, its only me knowing this stuff right.... right? So, I have been using a service called reInvorate for a long while. It was beta, closed down, become beta again. It has a great feature of showing you who is on your site at the present moment, which is fine if you like knowing that everyone is called "X88893-333-5555"... but if you are using Ray "The Jedi" Camden's BlogCFC, people can ask for the website to remember their details. Now on a tangent, ReInvigorate have released a little tool for Windows and Mac called Snoop which simply displays people coming onto your site. The problem is that they are still pretty anonymous, but I checked something out over at the ReInvigorate site about adding names to these sessions And it turns out that its pretty easy to do it in BlogCFC, you just have to add the following code before the call to ReInvigorate: <cfif isDefined("cookie.blog_name")>
var re_name_tag = "#blog_name#";
</cfif>
<cfif isDefined("cookie.blog_email")>
var re_context_tag="mailto:#cookie.blog_email#";
</cfif>
re_("your_reInvigorate_id"); And then you can finally see who is coming to your site. Nice to see you again too! :)

So its the saturday after the conference and I am sitting here in Starbucks in the Haymarket in Edinburgh mulling over what an excellent conference this was (and nursing a cold. Now I know why I lost my voice on the last day!). Lots of cool people turned up and Andy Allan, Stephen Moretti andKev McCabe did a most excellent job at sorting this out (and a big thank you to Stephen for letting me share a hotel room!) Overall I think this conference was a coming out parade for ColdFusion 8, which is now on Adobe Labs and both of the keynotes and one of my presentations had to do with the new features in the "Highly Anticipated Upcoming Version of ColdFusion" as Tim Buntel put it! Pros of the conference:

• It was a nice and intimate conference, it felt that you could get to talk to everyone there
• Speaker's VIP room. An excellent idea, since it gives speakers a chance to finish off their presentation etc, in peace
• The goodie bags! I love those Fuzzy Oranges!
• The venue (and the garden for us smokers) was excellent, and as a note, did you know that the "European in Scotland" Building used to be Adobe's headquarters in Scotland, and they put the lift in?
• Great to see the Railo guys next to the Adobe guys!

and actually, overall this was a superbly organized conference, I cant complain about much, but some constructive criticism I am sure can be welcomed... Cons:

• Name badges! I am terrible at remembering names (including my own some mornings) so it would have been great to have the delegate/speaker's names on the badges
• Aircon: now, I cant really be nasty about this, since the temperature in Edinburgh went from pretty damn warm to cold, but in one of my sessions (the AJAX one I think) the room got really hot, but they did sort this out the following day

And that is about it!, Well done guys! Presentations that I gave in the end: When I was asked to speak at Scotch, I was going to do my "usual" CFEclipse presentation and that was it, but with a couple of weeks to go I was asked to also do a CF8 AJAX presentation, which went well considering and even I learned a fair amount as I was giving it! Despite some of the changes in the language with the latest release! After talking to a few of the delegates, I asked Andy and Kev if they minded swapping one of the sessions out on the last day so that I could do (not prepared!) session on Coldspring as I thought this would give a lot of benefit to the delegates. Thankfully this went down fairly well (I think!) despite the fact that I was loosing my voice! And I hope people got a lot out of it! So, another great conference done and dusted. Andy can now have a very well earned rest!

Yep, I am looking for a talented ColdFusion developer to come and work for/with me at Design UK's offices in the centre of London. If you want more information about the role, head over to the Design UK Careers section of the website and apply via there. You don't have to use CFEclipse, just be damn good... are you that good? Apply now! (the obvious bits...)

• You need a valid EU working permit
• This is an on-site role, sorry
• No agencies, how many times??? NO AGENCIES!
• Experience in frameworks is a must

UPDATE: this role has now been filled! Woohoo!

David Harris just sent me the url of the presentation I did this morning to the Auckland CFUG where I was presenting CFEclipse. If you would like to see the presentation too, just head over to https://admin.adobe.acrobat.com/_a200985228/p56436186/ Let me know what you think!