The Venue:

Thanks to Shawn Dunning and NC State University College of Textiles for an awesome building with unbelievable WIFI and AudioVisual equipment!  For conference organizers, if you can hook-up with a local college or university like NC State, then this is a great way to go!  The extra classrooms were very handy in providing extra learning opportunities for Hands-On Labs participants—with no additional overhead.

Adobe Keynote:

Adobe brought its best available speakers to NCDEVCON.  The event also provided the first opportunity for Adobe’s ColdFusion Product team to introduce its new Product Manager — Rakshith Naresh.  Adobe Evangelist, Terry Ryan, did the keynote introduction + provided an overview of where Adobe was headed in the web and mobile space.  This overview and vision was much appreciated!   So, there were a lot of sessions and most of them can be viewed online via NC State College of Textiles Video Services (again outstanding facility!): go.ncsu.edu/ncdevcon2011

There were some links to presentations, demo scripts, or .pdfs which are available on presenter’s blog OR at the Adobe Groups Online presentation repository.

Adobe Sessions & Speakers:

• What’s Next in “Zeus” (the next release of ColdFusion) – Awdhesh Kumar @kawdhesh
• Hands-On Labs - Getting Started with ColdFusion - Josh Adams @jladams97
• Introduction to jQuery Mobile - Ray Camden@cfjedimaster
• Underused, Under-appreciated, and Under-loved features of ColdFusion - Ray Camden
• “Advanced ORM” – Hemant Khandelwal @khandelwalh
• ColdFusion Builder Extensions - Ramchandra Kulkarni
• Hands-On Labs - Build your First Flash Mobile App - Terry Ryan @tpryan (Terry’s Android App “NCDEVCON Schedule” )

Adobe community team and ColdFusion Product team engineers staffed a table at NCDEVCON. There was a new T-shirt to giveaway, dubbed the “CF is Da Bomb”. This was a new T-shirt designed by Adam Lehman’s wife (Rachel). There were 15% off coupons available to attendees looking to upgrade/purchase Adobe software. Attendees also got check out some of the news tablets loaded with mobile apps that were created Flash Builder 4.5.

 Evening Social + Free Software Raffle:

Adobe gave out lots of software and promotional items at NCDEVCON, but attendees had to be present for the drawings at the evening social event and the event wrap-up session.  Prizes were drawn by the NCDEVCON organizers.

Congrats to the Winners:

FlashBuilder 4.5 Premium (includes ColdFusion Builder 2)

• Phillip Molaro
• William Lee Cherry
• Michael Schore
• Jonathan Morgan
• Jose Galdamez
• Andrew Duvall
• Birgit Pauli-Haack
• Sam Singer Jr
• Christian Abad
• Nancy Schipon

CF 9 Standard:

• Nolan Erck
• Kip Robinson

Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection

• Andrew Abbott
• James Locus

 

I personally donated a boxed copy of Flash Builder 4.5 to www.5bucksischange.com.
“5 Bucks is change” is an initiative that supports several “micro-charities” through public donations of $5 increments.  Janet Kennedy volunteers for this organization and is based in Raleigh, NC.   As their marketing and social media person, Janet raffled-off the Flash Builder 4.5 software to the NCDEVCON attendees raising over $400.  The NCDEVCON staff  matched that amount for a total gift of $800 that will then be given to various micro-charities.

More Photos:

Wrap Up:

NCDEVCON certainly provided a great opportunity for developers to get up-to-date with the latest web and mobile tools — And Adobe Was There!  But, NCDEVCON was also good for Adobe! While Adobe is expected to be out amongst its developer community, the event also was the first chance for Adobe’s ColdFusion team and evangelists to meetup, since the program transition to India.  Supporting regional conferences is good for the community eco-system; good for business; and, good PR.  We hope to be at NCDEVCON next year.  

Tweets captured:

Adobe was called in to be a last minute sponsor of MuraCON.  Over (70) ColdFusion and Web Developers attended a 2 day conference at Drexel University campus in Sacramento. Nice venue right by the river and down the street from the California capital building.  The MuraCon organizers assured me that they wanted to start small with this event.  In fact, they weren’t even sure anybody would come! Boy, were they surprised when their conference sold out a month prior to the conference; and, they had a decent size waiting list too.

 

I was helping out Josh Adams (@jladams97) our Sales Engineer for ColdFusion.   Josh was speaking at the event and needed help at the Adobe table.  And as it turned out, there were several Adobe User Group Managers and their members there.  The community aspect was great, but what is this Mura stuff? They were at MAX, but I’d never heard of them.

WHAT is MURA?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mura is a CFML based Content Management System (CMS) that was created by Blue River Interactive Group, a full-service interactive agency based in Sacramento, California.

Blue River was founded by 3 guys who played in Sacramento area rock bands.  They wanted to find a simpler way to update their band websites.  So one thing led to another and they developed a flexible web based content management system.  They’re young, agile, and they have got some great clients.

1. Continue the dialogue with your users; plan for MuraCON 2012.
2. Identify influencers who know your technology well, and then invite them to meet Mura staff offsite.
3. Discuss with your influencers, how they might get involved in forming meetups and speaking about your technology as “outside evangelists”.  (They key thing is they have to feel so passionate about your technology that they will do this evangelizing on their own….they can’t be paid or else they lose their street credibility)
4. Then start thinking about how Mura might engage and recognize them publically.  Community Spotlight? A Speaker session @MuraCon2012? Perhaps then, set up a User Groups or a “Champions” program…..centered around these influencers. Things will build from there.
5. Next Mura will need to think about hiring a Community Coordinator/Manager to help them with event planning, social media outreach, and other engagement opportunities.

I hinted further that a great place to look for community folks is at the Community Leadership Summit or CLS-West (in So. San Francisco).

A good book to read is Jono Bacon’s (Ubuntu Community Mgr) book: “The Art of Community“.

Here’s a video below of Jono talking about the rise of communities in corporations/foundations.

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MuraCON Attendees

• Scott Sloan aka “rubbergumball” will be synching-up with Sean Corfield to be the new leader of Bay Area ColdFusion User Group http://www.meetup.com/bacfug which meets at the Adobe building in San Francisco. Thanks Scott for stepping up and helping BACFUG to remain officially in the Adobe User Group program.
• Sean Walsh from Inland Empire CFUG http://www.iecfug.com  – I had a long conversation with Sean, we naturally talked about doing a joint developer event in Southern California amongst several So. California Adobe User Groups.
• Steve Farwell from the Orange County ColdFusion User Group http://www.occfug.org

Will there be a West Coast ColdFusion Event in 2012?

I certainly hope so! The guys from Mura could probably do it with additional sponsorship.  Adobe will likely be there, but all depends on how things are organized!