BFusion & BFlex '10

Matt Boles is the Technical Lead for the Adobe Customer Training group and has been developing and teaching courses on Flex since the 1.0 release. Matt has a diverse background in web development, computer networking, and teaching in both professional computer classes and the public schools. He coauthored the Flex Training from the Source books for both Flex 2 and Flex 3, and was also a coauthor on the Certified ColdFusion Developer Study Guide. He has also developed official Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe curricula in the Flex, ColdFusion and Flash development content areas.

Mike Brunt has been coding web applications since 1993 and began using ColdFusion at version 1.54 in 1995-6. He designed and created the first on-line international industrial equipment mart in 1997 (Power Bank International) at the request of a Cummins Engine Company subsidiary. In 1998 he worked with Kodak and Lucent Technologies to create a pioneering web based TeleRadiology cross-consult portal when Radiologists and Primary Care Physicians could review patient medical images. Allaire recruited Mike in 1999 to join a ColdFusion-JRun consulting team. This team was dispatched world-wide to help Allaire then Macromedia clients design and troubleshoot ColdFusion applications. In 2001 Mike co-founded his own company – Webapper Services LLC along with another Macromedia consultant, Patrick Quinn. From 1999 to the present day, Mike has been very focused on the server-side of ColdFusion helping users worldwide to troubleshoot applications and to create strategies which ensure Enterprise level ColdFusion applications can be scaled effectively and efficiently.

Ben Clinkinbeard earned a Bachelor of Science in Design degree from the University of Cincinnati’s college of DAAP as a Digital Design major. He has worked as a web developer since graduating in 2002, with a strong focus on the Adobe Flash Platform. Ben is passionate about creating highly usable software that benefits the end user. His background in design and self taught technical skills give him a unique perspective that make RIA development a perfect fit, and he is thrilled about the current sea change recognizing that design plus technology is the game changer. After all, he has believed it for years.
Ben was a co-creator of the FlexMDI library for Adobe Flex which was subsequently integrated into flexlib. Ben is now a contributor to the Swiz framework, a lightweight IoC container for Adobe Flex, and works for Universal Mind as a Flex consultant.

T Scot Clausing is a Flex architect in Nashville, TN. He has a strong background in software development for field data collection, analysis and reporting – and out of that he developed a passion for application architecture. Scot is currently working for DaVita (DVA) building the future of EMR applications with a nationwide Flex development team.

Will Emigh is the co-founder of Studio Cypher, a small game company in Bloomington. He has Batchelor degrees in Computer Science and Philosophy from NC State University and a Masters in immersive mediated environments from IU.

John Farrar has been working with computer programming since the late 70’s. He is the author of the ColdFusion 8 Developer Tutorial, speaks at multiple conferences and an Adobe Community Expert. He may be known best for his work with COOP and SOS open source projects. COOP version 2 will be in public beta at this conference and it will be the first public showing. He is also known for his work with AJAX (esp. jQuery). He is excited about showing others how to simplify the day to day frustration of code challenges with both these technologies.

Adam Flater is a Technical Architect and Evangelist at Roundarch. His career has been centered on building innovative graphical user interfaces and research of emerging technology. Adam has designed and implemented solutions using Microsoft, Java and Adobe technologies. Since the beta release of Adobe’s Flex 2.0 platform in October of 2005, he has been an active member of the Flex community. Adam has been a featured speaker at at several developers conferences including: The eBay Developer Conference, Fig Leaf’s Web Maniacs, 360 Flex, The Adobe OnAir Bus Tour, The Adobe MAX Conference, and several industry groups. He served as a Software Architect for Universal Mind and EffectiveUI where he was involved with projects like eBay Desktop and NASDAQ’s Market Replay (both Adobe MAX award winners). Adam is also the project founder and principle contributor to the Merapi Project, a bridge for Java and Flex.

Simon Free works at Nylon Technology as a Senior Developer and Lead Engineer on several high profile projects. These range from a start-up athlete skin care shopping cart application to a full blown CMS requiring multiple workflows for publishing and editing several types of content, to messaging and event management requiring the integration of a variety of different technologies including ColdFusion, Flex, InDesign, Air and Blaze DS / LiveCycle DS.
Constantly learning, Simon is always looking for new challenges and reports those discoveries on his blog http://www.simonfree.com/.

Shannon Hicks is a Senior Developer at Webapper, and concentrates on ColdFusion, Flex and AIR development projects. After over a decade as a ColdFusion developer, Shannon made the jump to Flex 2 during the public beta, and now splits his time between the two. You can currently find his CF and Flex examples and other ramblings on the Webapper Blog and on his personal site http://www.iotashan.com/. Twitter: iotashan

Rob Huddleston has been developing web pages and applications since 1994, and has been an instructor since 1999, teaching web and graphic design to thousands of students. His clients have included the United States Bureau of Land Management, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the States of California and Nevada and many other federal, city and county agencies; the United States Army and Air Force; Fortune 500 companies such as AT&T, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Safeway, and Coca-Cola; software companies including Adobe, Oracle, Intuit and Autodesk; the University of California, San Francisco State University, and the University of Southern California; and hundreds of small businesses and non-profit agencies. Rob is an Adobe Certified Instructor, Certified Expert, and Certified Developer, serves as an Adobe User Group Manager, has been named as an Adobe Community Expert for his volunteer work answering user questions in online forums and also helps users as an expert moderator on Adobe’s Community Help system. Rob lives in Northern California with his wife and two children.
Rob is the author of XML: Your visual blueprint^™ to creating expert websites using XML, CSS, XHTML, and XSLT; HTML, XHTML and CSS: Your visual blueprint^™ to creating efficient websites; Master VISUALLY: Dreamweaver CS4 and Flash CS4 Professional, ActionScript 3.0: Your visual blueprint^™ to creating interactive projects in Flash CS4 Professional, and the upcoming Flash Catalyst Bible, all published by Wiley Press. You can visit Rob’s blog at www.robhuddleston.com , or follow him on Twitter: @robhuddles.

Doug Hughes is a veteran programmer who founded Alagad after briefly flirting with a career in computer animation. Doug has a strong record of achievement with large, complex web applications. His ability to learn and apply new technologies and techniques has helped Doug become one of the web application development industry’s most highly regarded experts.
Doug’s current focus at Alagad is leading an application development team dedicated to helping organizations improve operational efficiency and performance. This commitment to client success has helped Alagad achieve record growth. A frequent speaker at industry conferences and user groups, Doug also regularly contributes to several well-known open source projects. In addition, his articles have been featured in numerous technical publications.

Peter J. Farrell has a Bachelor of Music degree from the Peabody Institute at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. While studying music, Peter took his life-long interest with computers to a new level and started learning about web development technologies. He has been working with ColdFusion since 2001 and is the lead developer of the Mach-II framework since the 1.1.0 release. Peter is the Chief Information Officer for GreatBizTools, a human resources consulting firm. He and his wife, Allyson, live together in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Mike Labriola is a Founding Partner and Senior Consultant at Digital Primates IT Consulting Group. He has been developing Internet applications since 1995 and has been working with Flex since its 1.0 beta program. Michael is an Adobe Certified Instructor, Community Expert, Flex Developer Champion, Flex and AIR book author, and international speaker on Flex and AIR topics who has consulted for three of the world’s ten most recognized brands. As a consultant, he mentors software development teams using emerging technologies and architects enterprise applications with high business impact. His free time is spent escaping from technology through wine and food.

Andy Matthews is currently a Senior Web Developer for Dealerskins, Inc., an enterprise shop focusing on professional websites for the automotive space. He manages a recipe website called Coop Cookbook; is the author of several open source ColdFusion libraries: PicasaCFC, and ShrinkURL; has published a jQuery based Adobe AIR Application, Shrinkadoo, featured in the AIR Marketplace, and is available to speak at User Groups or Conferences for the RIA crowd. Andy lives in Nashville, TN with his wife, two children, and two dogs.

Ben Nadel is the chief software engineer at Epicenter Consulting, a boutique software company in New York City that specializes in developing high-end, customized business solutions using Adobe ColdFusion and jQuery. He is also an Adobe Community Expert as well as an Adobe Certified Professional in Advanced ColdFusion. In his spare time, Ben co-manages the New York City ColdFusion User Group and blogs extensively about all aspects of obsessively thorough web application development. Ben’s blog is his platform for experimentation and community interaction. While most the content is inspired by the problems he faces every day as a web developer, he also does his best to freely answer any technical questions that people submit via his “Ask Ben” form.

Dan Skaggs is co-founder of Web-Meister Designs, Inc., a web development consulting firm he and his wife started in 1999 as a part-time endeavor. In 2006, Dan transitioned to the role of independent consultant, working full-time through Web-Meister for clients of all sizes located across the United States. A web developer since 1998, Dan has been developing ColdFusion applications since 2000 and has held multiple ColdFusion certifications. Recently, he has contributed to various open-source efforts within the CF community and is looking forward to expanding that effort in the future.

Lance Smith is a senior application engineer for O’Neil & Associates, Inc., a defense and commercial contractor in Miamisburg, Ohio. He has been developing with ColdFusion for over ten years, and has extensive experience in several aspects of the Web including design, development, architecture and optimization. He is a part-time instructor at Sinclair Community College and has taught such topics as Web design with Dreamweaver and digital media with Photoshop and Illustrator. Lance is an Adobe Certified Expert in ColdFusion 8. Lance is also actively involved in the ColdFusion community, and co-manages the Miami Valley ColdFusion User Group.
Lance lives in Dayton, Ohio with his wife and two children.

Zach Stepek is an Adobe Community Expert for RIAs, an Adobe Certified Instructor for Flex and Adobe AIR, and founder and manager of the Stateline Adobe User Group in Rockford, Illinois. His company, Crave Media Group, creates RIAs and rich media experiences built on Adobe technologies and is an Adobe Authorized Training Center. Stepek is also one of the founders of RIApalooza, a platform-agnostic mini-conference about the business of RIAs that debuted May 2008 in Chicago and should find its way to other midwest cities (USA) in the near future.

Ben Stucki is an independent Flex developer and consultant with a background in standards-based web development. After a long love affair with Flash experimentation, Ben got his hands on Flex and created some of the first custom Flex components available on the web. Today Ben continues to post sample code through his blog at http://blog.benstucki.net and contributes to many well known open-source Flex projects including FlexLib, Degrafa, and Reflex.

Rich Tretola currently holds the position of Applications Development Manager at Herff Jones Inc. He is an award-winning Flex developer http://www.adobe.com/newsletters/edge/july2006/articles/article1/ and was the lead author of Professional Flex 2 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470102675/002-4312150-6440857?ie=UTF8&tag=everythingfle-20 (2007 ISBN: 0470102675) and sole author of Beginning AIR (2008 ISBN: 0470229047). He is also a contributing author on Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596522506/index.html (2008 ISBN: 0596522509)
Rich has been building Internet applications for over 10 years and has worked with Flex since the original Royale beta version of Flex in 2003. Other than Flex, Rich builds applications using ColdFusion, Flash, and Java. Rich is highly regarded within the Flex community as an expert in RIA and is also an Adobe Community Expert http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/members/RichTretola.html . He runs a popular Flex and AIR blog at EverythingFlex.com http://blog.everythingflex.com , is the community manager of InsideRIA.com http://www.insideria.com and was also a speaker at the Adobe MAX 2007 conference in Chicago. He has been asked to be a speaker at Adobe MAX for three consecutive years.

For a non technical escape, Rich is also a co-owner of a chocolate bar manufacturing company located on Maui named WowWee Maui http://www.wowweemaui.com.

Aaron West : For the past nine years I have been heavily involved in the Web development space building enterprise-level, database-driven Web applications and leading technology teams. I’m incredibly passionate about what I do and attempt to inject my enthusiasm and love for technology in all those around me.
In my overall strategy of building high performance teams and managing enterprise-level projects I could be described as a “cohesion warrior.” I strive each and every day to challenge those around me to build the absolute best software for our customers. This involves coordinating efforts from sales, marketing, executive management, product development, customer support, and ultimately the folks writing code, to ensure the best possible technology experience is delivered to our customers. I have a learned ability to communicate across an entire enterprise, from executive management and owners to customer support, bringing teams together to solve difficult business problems.
Whether it involves writing code or leading teams I aim to make a positive difference in the lives of those around me.

Kurt Wiersma is an Advanced Certified ColdFusion developer and has been working with ColdFusion since version 4.5. By day Kurt works for the American Academy of Neurology and by night he consults on web applications for small to medium size businesses. In his spare tech time, he is a member of the ColdSpring, Mach II, and CFHibernate open source projects. He recently started a open source project called, AppBooster, which aimes to show best practices for using several different frameworks with ColdFusion.

Dan Wilson is a principal partner of DataCurl LLC and founder of TheHealthChallenge.com. He began his IT career at a fast-paced start-up during the dotcom heyday. He has since then held senior program and development positions in Technical Consulting, Health Care, Online Publishing and Government Contracting. Dan is an avid participant in technology communities; currently serving on the board for the Triangle ColdFusion User Group in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and regular contributor to open source projects based on ColdFusion, Flex and AIR platforms. You can find his thoughts on ColdFusion, Flex, AIR and other technology matters at http://www.nodans.com.

Steve Withington : I have been using Adobe® ColdFusion® since CF5 and building web applications for over 10 years. His first “major” site was for a fantasy football league he was a commissioner for many moons ago. This was before Yahoo!, ESPN and others jumped on the fantasy sports bandwagon. I bought a program that would compile stats each week (think floppy discs) and I would transfer this information (by hand of course) to the web site. I had a form for team owners to submit their lineup which was sent to me via email (that was hot stuff back in the day!). Things sure have come a long way since then!
Today I’m the lead web developer at Ignition Studio, Inc., a full-service advertising agency located in Rockford, Illinois. I have experience working on a wide variety of projects ranging from small, non-profit companies to large multi-national corporations.
Recently, I’ve been leveraging the power of Mura CMS (along with my knowledge of ColdFusion, SQL, CSS, XHTML, JavaScript, etc.) to shorten the development timeframe for some of the most common feature requests and allow clients the ability to manage their own content. I’m excited to share my knowledge of Mura (a comprehensive, open-source content management system) with others in hopes of helping other CFML developers become acquainted with its power and flexibility.

Aaron Wolfe is a senior application engineer at O’Neil & Associates, Inc, a defense and commercial contractor in Miamisburg, Ohio. He has a bachelors degree in Management Information Systems from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. His ColdFusion knowledge started with ColdFusion 4.5 at Parts Express International Inc. in 2000 while converting their website from a hosted solution to an internally hosted solution. He has been doing web development for over ten years, and has extensive experience in several aspects of the Web including design, development, architecture, optimization, server management, highly available websites, and error handling. Aaron is an Adobe Certified Expert in Advanced ColdFusion 8. Aaron is also actively involved in the regional ColdFusion community, and co-manages the Miami Valley ColdFusion User Group.
Aaron currently lives in Dayton, Ohio with his wife Kathy and their two dogs.

Matt Woodward is Principal IT Specialist for the Office of the Sergeant at Arms at the United States Senate. Matt is the Community Manager and a contributing developer to the Mach-II framework, a member of the Open BlueDragon Steering Committee, and a member of the CFML Advisory Committee.
He has been using CFML since 1996 and primarily develops in CFML and Java, but his latest fascination is with Grails. Matt is also a member of the Free Software Foundation and the Association for Computing Machinery.