Community Kitchen » mobile development

MuraCON Sacramento Aug 25-26th, 2011

Aaron Houston — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:33:12 +0000

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. Adobe Table @MuraCON 2011 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 Guys Delivering the Keynote 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. Mura is discovering that they are the verge of creating a new community of CFML developers and designers. Getting A Community Started: I was asked by one of the founders (“Malcom”) this question: ” When does a software company know when to support a User Group Community? “ Awesome question! I replied: ” Hmm, you’ve held your first user conference; and, it sold out a month ago….Seems like you already have a community! No time like the present to start engaging them! “ I also added a couple of things: Continue the dialogue with your users; plan for MuraCON 2012. Identify influencers who know your technology well, and then invite them to meet Mura staff offsite. 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) 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. 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.
The Software Giveaways! + the Swag We gave away several copies of Flash Builder Premium 4.5 which comes bundled with ColdFusion Builder 2. There were also developer t-shirts and some assorted swag. In talking to a couple of the winners, they had lots of ideas on creating ColdFusion Builder extensions; and some even had an interest in creating Mobile Applications with FlashBuilder 4.5. There was one developer who works for a military organization who wanted to create an Android App and reader device for Java Card ID’s to access their internal intranet. Sounded interesting! All in All, there were a lot of happy CF developers.
Adobe User Groups @MuraCON Met a couple of Adobe User Group Managers and members at MuraCON: 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! objectivebias Tony Garcia: #MuraCon was amazing. Was a privilege to meet so may passionate developers. Now let’s see how much Irene messes up our homeward travel plans grantshepert Grant Shepert: @davidpanzarella sure, maybe Thursday? Heard you met my bud @JasPanesar … jeez, there goes the #MuraCon envy again heatherbowman Heather Bowman: East coast next RT @stevewithington : #MuraCon went so fast, can’t believe it’s over! maybe we should take this thing on the road stevewithington stevewithington: #MuraCon went so fast, can’t believe it’s over! maybe we should take this thing on the road #ColdFusion #MuraCMS #opensource southofshasta South of Shasta: #MuraCon was awesome! Left w/ lots of ideas, and a ton of excitement about some project ideas. Winning the raffle prize didnt hurt either JasPanesar Jas Panesar Great meeting everyone at #muracon! Thanks to @muracms, @Adobe, @railo, @ten24web, @hostmediauk for making it possible an accessible! Aaron Houston Adobe Community Mgr – North America @thisishouston1 San Jose, CA

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.

Adobe Table @MuraCON 2011

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 Guys Delivering the Keynote

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.

Mura is discovering that they are the verge of creating a new community of CFML developers and designers.

Getting A Community Started:

I was asked by one of the founders (“Malcom”) this question: ” When does a software company know when to support a User Group Community? “

Awesome question! I replied: ” Hmm, you’ve held your first user conference; and, it sold out a month ago….Seems like you already have a community! No time like the present to start engaging them! “

I also added a couple of things:

Continue the dialogue with your users; plan for MuraCON 2012.
Identify influencers who know your technology well, and then invite them to meet Mura staff offsite.
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)
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.
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.

The Software Giveaways! + the Swag

We gave away several copies of Flash Builder Premium 4.5 which comes bundled with ColdFusion Builder 2. There were also developer t-shirts and some assorted swag. In talking to a couple of the winners, they had lots of ideas on creating ColdFusion Builder extensions; and some even had an interest in creating Mobile Applications with FlashBuilder 4.5. There was one developer who works for a military organization who wanted to create an Android App and reader device for Java Card ID’s to access their internal intranet. Sounded interesting! All in All, there were a lot of happy CF developers.

Adobe User Groups @MuraCON

Met a couple of Adobe User Group Managers and members at MuraCON:

: 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!

objectivebias Tony Garcia:

#MuraCon was amazing. Was a privilege to meet so may passionate developers. Now let’s see how much Irene messes up our homeward travel plans

grantshepert Grant Shepert:

@davidpanzarella sure, maybe Thursday? Heard you met my bud @JasPanesar … jeez, there goes the #MuraCon envy again

heatherbowman Heather Bowman:

East coast next RT @stevewithington : #MuraCon went so fast, can’t believe it’s over! maybe we should take this thing on the road

stevewithington stevewithington:

#MuraCon went so fast, can’t believe it’s over! maybe we should take this thing on the road #ColdFusion #MuraCMS #opensource

southofshasta South of Shasta:

#MuraCon was awesome! Left w/ lots of ideas, and a ton of excitement about some project ideas. Winning the raffle prize didnt hurt either

JasPanesar Jas Panesar

Great meeting everyone at #muracon! Thanks to @muracms, @Adobe, @railo, @ten24web, @hostmediauk for making it possible an accessible!

Aaron Houston
Adobe Community Mgr – North America
@thisishouston1
San Jose, CA

JAX-SJ-VegasFlash-LAFlex-June2011

Aaron Houston — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 23:09:02 +0000

“June was a busy month for the Adobe Community & Evangelism Teams, so here are some highlights“ — Aaron Houston (Adobe Community Mgr)

JAX San Jose Ca – June 21-22, 2011

Ben Forta (above), Adobe’s Evangelism Director, addresses Java Enterprise audience at JAX San Jose about Adobe’s launch of new product: Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform. JAX also coincided with the update to Flash Builder, so Ben was also there talk about Adobe’s mobile story. Ben, pointed out that one can also write Flex/AIR Apps for iOS devices with the new FlashBuilder 4.5.1 update, and then mentioned the Politifact Mobile App which is the best selling new app on iTunes.

Here is a video of Ben’s talk at JAX-San Jose (link to his slides forthcoming):

Presentation slide links:

Adobe Speakers @JAX:

Christophe Coenraets (“@ccoenrats“) had a session on Mobile Application Development with Flex and Java using the new FlashBuilder 4.5.1 tooling to deploy the same code across multiple mobile devices (iOS, RIM Playbook, and Android).

Cédric Hüsler (“@keepthebyte“) is an Evangelist from Day software; and, he had a session about Data Structures, Restful Web Services, OSGi, & Java Content Repository (JCR; JSR-170, 283. He also demo’d (CRX) the new Java Content Repository Platform which is part of Adobe’s new Digital Enterprise offering. It was my first chance to meet one of the enterprise evangelists that came over in the Day Software acquisition.

JAX-SJ Adobe Booth:

Liz Frederick (left); Aaron Houston (right, background)

Liz Frederick (Adobe Community Team) and I helped out to staff the Adobe booth. While the attendance of JAX-San Jose was not spectacular, the event did provide a chance for Adobe to mingle with the Java Enterprise crowd. And, I got an opportunity to reconnect with some of my former Java community folks: Chris Richardson (Oakland JUG, POJOs in Action author, Java Champion); Chet Haase (Google, formerly w/Adobe, & Sun); Romain Guy (Google); Kevin Nilson (Silicon Valley Web JUG and Java Champion); Sonya Barry (java.net), Jasper Potts (Oracle, Sun, JavaFX); Pieter Humphrey (Oracle, BEA), Kito Mann (www.jsfcentral.com)

Folks I met @JAXCONF:

VegasFlash – Flash Builder 4.5.1 Tour 22June2011

After the JAX conference, I hopped on a plane to make an evening meeting with VegasFlash. Adobe Evangelists Renaun Erickson & Greg Wilson demo’d the new features in the FlashBuilder 4.5.1 (update) which was released earlier in the week. VegasFlash has a nice setup for larger meetings like this. They use McMullen’s Irish Pub’s backroom which has its own bar. McMullen’s is on 4650 W. Tropicana by the Orleans Casino & they have a pretty nice Flash website (mcmullansirishpub.com). There were about 50 Flash Developers onhand to watch Renaun’s demo. Greg Wilson was also in town following-up with one of the casinos who is very interested in expanding into mobile apps of tablets/phones…. FlashON! After the meeting, I got a chance to talk to a couple guys from Zappos about their plans to move into the old Las Vegas City Hall and help revitalize the area as a technology business incubator for startups. One of the Zappos guys even won a boxed-copy of FlashBuilder 4.5 that I brought to the meeting, so I know they will put that to good use. We will be checking in on the Zappos guys in the future! Wish them the best of luck bringing new jobs to downtown LV.

FlashBuilder 4.5 User Group Tour:
The VegasFlash meeting was part of a series of FlashBuilder 4.5 Launch Tours with select Adobe User Groups who could accommodate both in venue and the busy evangelist schedules. Here’s a list of tour dates & facts:

Date	User Group	Adobe Speaker	#’s
10 May 2011	Boston Flex	Christophe Coenraets	45+
14 May 2011	IndyFlex	Kevin Schmidt	50+
07 June 2011	NYFLEX	Terry Ryan	50+
16 June 2011	Dallas Flex	Renaun Erickson	45+
22 June 2011	Vegas Flash	Renaun Erickson & Greg Wilson	45+
23 June 2011	Mid Michigan Flex	Ryan Stewart	40+
28 June 2011	LA Flex	Renaun Erickson	60+

Next, a couple days after the Vegas/JAX events, it was on to the LAST Stop of the FB 4.5 Tour: a joint meeting of Los Angeles Flex User Group, LA Flash, and LA ColdFusion UG.

LA Flex – Flash Builder 4.5.1 Tour 28June2011

So after a quick flight (SJC to LAX) on a new eco-friendly Horizon Q400turbo-prop, I found myself in Los Angeles….land of Gourmet Food Trucks, Hollywood, Fine Beaches….AND MANY Adobe User Groups!Something Very LA:

I checked in to the Crowne Plaza at the LAX row of hotels and to my surprise I ran into a little bit of LA Culture (ala First Fridays) in the back parking lot — Gourmet Catering Trucks. Every Tuesday from 11am-2pm, the back parking lot transforms into a lively spectacle of colorful food vendors, outdoor seating, and music (i.e. there was a Dee-jay). And the food, very interesting! Where else, but in LA can you find Korean Nachos, Chimales, and Indian Curry alongside Southern BBQ! So here’s a slide-show of what I found.

Later, that evening I mentioned to LA Flex UGM Tom Bray that it might be kinda a cool idea to connect up with catering trucks for User Group meetings; it would solve a problem most UGMs have: FOOD! (& how to fund it). Tom seemed to like the idea…and it would be something “very LA” to draw folks to the meetings.

But food was not why I was in LA, I wanted to check out how the LA Flex holds their meetings and the venue that they use. Venue: Coloft is an interesting place, because it’s a place where “freelancers” can come an rent a space and focus on their projects in an work environment. Sometimes, working at home isn’t as productive as it could be, so there are places like Coloft where developers & designers can come and perhaps even collaborate together.

All in all, I was impressed with LA Flex’s organization and venue. Renaun gave a great talk on FlashBuilder 4.5.1; We gave away some software, T-shirts, & books. The member’s appreciated Adobe’s effort to visit their group. The visit also gives me as a Community Manager, a good idea what the User Group venues are like for future engagements. I also got to meet one of the local Adobe Community Professionals (ACP), Elliot Mebane (aka “Roguish”). Tom Bray the User Group Manager mentioned that his group has had only (2) Adobe Speakers in its entire existence. Hopefully, I can help overcome that + writing this blog will help internally @Adobe. Tom, we’re working on potential visit from folks @Zend to talk about FlashBuilder 4.5 for PHP… (So, stay tuned).

Where do LA Flex’rs hang out after the meeting?

The party continued at LA Flex’s local pub, the “Warzsawa” (a Polish Pub & Restaurant which has cool outdoor seating); it’s a couple of blocks from the Coloft facility. I got to chat with a couple of LA Flex’rs on the projects they were working on over a beverage!

Some feedback from the event: