So, the very first Adobe ColdFusion Summit is being held this week in Las Vegas, NV. What started out as a small conference, originally capped to 250 participants, is now nearly twice that size, with people coming from all over the world to attend.
We've had a lot of discussions here recently about What's Wrong With ColdFusion, and things that can be done to fix those perceptions. Ultimately, there's been a lot of positive feedback, some reasonable initial response out of Adobe, and a community that's started talking again.
What I'm hoping for is for that discussion to continue, hard, at the Summit. As much as I would like to be there, due to constraints I am unable to attend. So, I'm hoping that the community will come together to ask some hard questions. What really is being done to address the concerns brought up? How does this change current development practice, timeline, and direction? How soon can we expect to see x, y, or z? When, and how, is marketing of ColdFusion going to change?
It's important that we, the community, use this opportunity to speak to some of the engineers. "Why are we doing this? (in this new version) And not doing that?" We have to tell them what we think, and why, to assist in defining new directions. They're always gathering requirements, and you are the perfect focus group. The suits (management types that buy the licenses) can tell them that it should do this or that, but you (the developer) are the ones who truly know the things that are needed.
I know that I've talked a lot about "Adobe" ColdFusion. I am an Adobe Community Professional, so I have to choose my words carefully sometimes. Ultimately, any positive changes are changes that push innovation, competition, and advancement of the platform. In that vain, the Team CF Advance initiative, to write, support, and contribute to Open Source software solutions written with ColdFusion, is one of the single greatest things to come out of our discussion. (Big kudos to Denny Springle [with a side of Corfield], for pulling this idea back out of the hat and getting it up and running) Any time, and assistance, that anyone can give, is a good thing. While we need people to write code, we also need people that can assist with requirements gathering, documentation, and other things. Of all of the suggestions pushed in these discussions, this is the one that we (the developers) can have the most say and control.
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