I presented twice at the CFObjective() conference on Refactoring in ColdFusion from Procedural to OO. I love giving this presentation because it is the culmination of many many hours of practice and research expended when I made the transition from procedural programmer to OO programmer.

The basic premise of the presentation is how to take a pragmatic approach to refactoring. Rather than feeling the need to completely rewrite your application to achieve a good OO architecture ( Managers never like this idea), I offer a reasonable, incremental approach on moving pieces and part of your application at a time.

In the presentation, there are a handful of slides with guidelines and high-level talking points about migrating to OO and move right into the code samples. The code samples show common procedural structures and then a comparible Object Oriented structure. This compare/contract method helps programmers understand how to move toward common software patterns in their applications.

If you missed the presentation, and were not at one of the user group presentations I gave last month, you can still get in on the action by showing up at CFUnited. I've also included the slides and code samples in a zip. You can download it from the Features Pod on the right hand side of the page, or better yet, from the Flagrantly Cool SlideSix.com

I just finished giving my presentation on Refactoring in ColdFusion to the Triangle Area ColdFusion User Group. This was the first time I've given the presentation to a live audience and it went rather well. All the slides were in order and all the code samples were in place. We had a fun time, thanks to all who came out. I'd like to present this talk at least once more before May 1. If your CFUG is short a speaker and can host a Connect, let me know.

This presentation timed at 1:15. This is fine for a CFUG but a little over time for CF.Objective(), where the sessions are 60 minutes. To shorten it for the big show, I've whacked two of the 18 slides and have my eye on a third. Most people would rather see code samples than slides anyways, the slides are really to keep some structure in the presentation.

I could talk on this topic all day long but I'm definitely going to stick to the alloted 60 minutes at CF.Objective(). I'll save my pontificating for afterwards at the get togethers.

In other news, Phill Nacelli and I are having our sessions repeated on Sunday at CF.Objective(). Phill is talking about Leveraging Basic Design Pattern in ColdFusion and his session is the most popular of all sessions at CF.Objective() so far. Congrats Phill! We are both pretty stoked to be on the list of repeats.

If you haven't yet signed up for CF.Objective(), what are you waiting for? The Schedule is jam packed with awesome training from luminaries and experts in ColdFusion/RIA. Reading blogs can only get you so far. Come get trained by the best in the business. I plan on walking out of the conference 72% smarter, myself.

On the first day of 360|Flex Atlanta 2008, I presented my hands on session titled "Building an XML Reader in Flex" to a packed room. During the 4.5 hour session, we built a working application that pulled remote data and displayed it using charts and tables. The session was geared towards walking newcomers through building their first Flex application.

I really had a lot of fun during the session. The plan was a little ambitious, walking 35+ people through completing the Surfing Stats application but due to a stroke of luck, Michael Labriola graciously volunteered to play Teachers Assistant and assist course attendees while I kept us moving. It felt a little strange, almost like having Jimi Hendrix offer to tune my guitar and I was grateful for the help. Thanks to Michael for selfishly volunteering! (my offer to carry your backpack for you stands. Just say the word.) We finished the session on time and with a working application.

Through it all, we walked through basic Flex concepts, from MXML syntax to ActionScript functions, from Remote HTTP Calls, to Custom Components. Each concept was layered into the final application. The attendees were also given a copy of the fully working application to poke through on their own time.

I hope everyone left the course having learned something new. I know I did. :)

Thanks to Adobe and Ben Forta, I am the proud owner of a fancy Flip video camera. I've been tasked with recording 10 segments from the community answering the questions:

• Why Flex?
• Why ColdFusion?
• Why AIR?
• Why Flash?

Since I'll be at 360|Flex next week, finding 10 people to share will be easy. Come on over and let's hear your answers to these questions. Support your favorite platform!

360|Flex, be there or be square!

On Feb. 5th, 2008 I'll be giving a Hands On Flex Training session to members of the Triangle User Experience (Flex User Group). This will be the first time I've had a run through of the Surfing Stats course I'll be presenting at 360|Flex Atlanta.

The training will last about 2.5 hours. We've capped the audience at 40, a number which is about what I expect at the 360|Flex Atlanta conference. Of course I'll have to trim a little off the course to account for a shorter time period. The attendees will learn a lot and get to build a working Flex application before they leave for the night. I'll also include the full application so the more enterprising ones can dissect it at their leisure.

There might still be space available. If you would like to attend, fill out the registration form on the Triangle User Experience website. If there is enough demand, we'll probably hold another one once the smoke from the 360|Flex conference clears.

Thanks goes to Adrian Pomilio for managing and coordinating the Triangles First Flex User group.

I've interviewed John Wilker, who along with Tom Ortega, founded 360Conferences. John is an interesting guy who came up through the ranks as a ColdFusion programmer and later moved over to also developing Flex applications. Not mentioned in the interview, John has taken a co-host spot alongside Jeffry Houser on the Flex Show podcast. Be sure and tune in regularly.

360|Flex Atlanta is February 25-27, 2008. I went to the first ever 360|Flex conference in San Jose. It was a really Good Conference

Not academic nor dry, 360|Flex is alive, unpretentious and exciting! I learned more in some 1 hour sessions than I did in a week of pouring over Flex documentation. The food was always good. The conference was packed with lots of interesting people.

You should get your ticket before they are all gone.

To date, in our series on Surfing Stats, we have covered the intent, directory structure, data sets and the main application file. (download the code using the download link at the bottom of the the Intro to Surfing Stats post). Now we examine ChartToggle.mxml.

[More]

To date, in our series on Surfing Stats, we have covered the intent, directory structure, data sets and the main application file. (download the code using the download link at the bottom of the the Intro to Surfing Stats post). Now we will look more in depth at our main application file and examine the layout.

[More]

To date, in our series on Surfing Stats, we have covered the intent, directory structure and the main application file. (download the code using the download link at the bottom of the the Intro to Surfing Stats post). Now we will look at the datasets.

[More]

In our series on Surfing Stats, we have covered the intent and the directory structure. (download the code using the download link at the bottom of the Intro to Surfing Stats post) We will now cover the main application file. It is important to note Surfing Stats does not use a framework. Frameworks are powerful code organization tools that contribute to rapid development and maintainability. Since the goal of Surfing Stats is to teach development of a simple application in 4 hours, I made the decision to avoid discussing or implementing any framework. After all, if you do not have the skills to build an application without using a framework, you probably do not have any business using a framework to build an application.

[More]