• The schedules have been posted. See BFusion ‘10 and BFlex ‘10 in the navigation above. They are subject to change, but we are close to solid there.
• The registration form was waiting on the schedules. Now that we have those done we’ll get that out the door tomorrow (8/13), or Monday (8/16) at the latest.
• The hotel has been kind enough to extend our hotel discount block until Wednesday (8/18). See the Hotel & Travel page for details.
• Our Call for Proposals deadline has passed. I’m leaving the details up for a few more days because we are looking for just the right piece to finish our BFlex schedule. If you’ve got something to teach. Let’s talk…
• We’ve actually got a new website coming. Two of our instructors, Shashikant Penumarthy and Steve Withington are working hard to get us off of WordPress and onto ColdFusion-based Mura. When it’s ready we’ll redirect you. Don’t be too shocked with the new look.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned. We have much more to share once we are past all of this administrivia!

Bob Flynn
BFusion/BFlex Event Director

It’s a great event. We take good care of our instructors. Come be a part of BFusion/BFlex 2010!

Bob Flynn
BFusion/BFlex Event Director

Yes, it really has taken this long for us to figure out how much we were going to have to charge and, quite honestly, whether we were even going to be able to pull off BFusion/BFlex this year. In the past 24 hours I went from being given a tentative OK to go ahead without the (senseless) extra university registration processing fee to being told that we must. So here’s the bottom line. BFusion/BFlex this year will be $30 if you attend one day and $45 if you attend both. We’ve been able to keep it so cheap for so long because we use university facilities for free. I guess I can’t really begrudge them a little bit of the fee. NOTE: If you are going to register for both, do so at one time. Otherwise you’ll get charged $30 for each individual day. Sorry, there is nothing I can do about that. We will no longer control the registration system.

Next Steps

If you have ever tried to put on an event like this you’ll know there are a crazy amount of dependencies. Throw into that mix an all-volunteer staff and a bunch of summer vacations and you’ll realize what a mad rush the next week will be. Here is where we are and where you need to be if you are coming to the event.

• Hotel information has been posted. The rate is $109+tax/night. We couldn’t finalize until we knew we’d be holding the event. The discount code is on our Hotel and Travel page. It’s only good till August 10 so do not delay!.
• The Call For Proposals is still open. It closes August 7. It is our goal to turn around confirmations to speakers in two days.
• Registration will open by the end of next week. We need to finalize the tracks so you can make your choices. Can’t do that until the Call for Proposals is over. Do not wait for the registration form to show up before you reserve your hotel room. If you don’t like our lineup of sessions you can always cancel the room. Of course you’ll love the sessions, but that’s for a later post.
• We are working to simplify the technology needs of the event. If you are new to BFusion/BFlex you should know that every attendee is required to bring his/her own laptop. The laptop must be up to the task to run the software used in the sessions. Since there are always a few time-consuming problems with installation and configuration of the software we are trying to find a way to deliver a virtual image with everything installed to make that easier. We’ll update progress in that area in a later post.

That’s it for now. This is the critical information that needed to get out today. So please plan on joining us. Please spread the word that the event is on. We have a very nice hotel. We will have great food. We have great list of instructors. We will open registration sometime next week.

If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact me bob@bflex.info

Bob Flynn
BFusion/BFlex Event Director

BFusion

• What: A full day of beginning, intermediate and advanced hands-on ColdFusion training
• When: Saturday, September 11, 2010

BFlex

• What: A full day of beginning, intermediate and advanced hands-on Flex, AIR, Catalyst training
• When: Sunday, September 12, 2010

• Where: Both events take place at the Kelley School of Business Godfrey Graduate and Executive Education Center on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington.
• Why: Because you will not find this kind of instructor-led, hands-on training cheaper anywhere.

How Much?

“So what’s it cost?” you might ask. Now to the complications. I always prefer transparency, so here’s where we stand. Last year we instituted a cost for the events because we had too many no-shows in previous years and there was too much wasted food, materials, time, etc. Last year the event cost a whopping $10. It turns out that did little to get some people to feel they had an investment in the event and we still had a lot of no-shows. See the following good posts about why that might be (1|2). So this year we’ve discussed upping the fee to maybe $20. Yes, I know that’s doubling, but it’s still not a lot compared with the training you receive. We also want to respond to calls for better food and “free” drinks. We intend to give you increased value for that increased investment and we also hope to get move of you here.

If only it were that simple… Here’s why it is not so simple and why I can’t say exactly what the cost is at this time. The university has a new policy that all events that charge a fee must use our university conference bureau to handle registrations. I won’t go into all of the whys and wherefores, but it’s the law of the land. Here’s why this matters to you. The conference bureau charges something like $15-20/person just to process the registration! That means you could be looking at $35 or $40 for one day, $55 or $60 for two days. (Presumably we only have to pay that overhead fee once per registration). We have a meeting with them next week to see if they will let us use our own payment collection system (already university and PCI DSS compliant) and thereby avoid this additional cost. Believe me, we’re as anxious to know as you are and will post as soon as we know.

What’s on the (Learning) Menu?

We try to make every single session, from beginning to advanced, hands-on. As the presenters/instructors get used to that we get better at it each year. While I’ve already reached out to many of the rock stars who have taught for us in previous years, I will only be posting the official call for proposals today. That means we won’t have a final slate of sessions until mid-August. Here’s what I can tell you know though.

• We have “Pure Beginner” and “Beginner” tracks on both ColdFusion (Saturday) and (Flex) Sunday. These are full-day intensives. The Pure Beginner is for attendees with no programming experience whatsoever. Never heard of a variable or a loop? No worries. Come and get a great introduction. We’ll have you building your first apps by the end of the day. Beginner is for those with programming experience who are just new to ColdFusion or Flex.
• On Saturday we will have an intermediate-level ColdFusion track on Mach-ii. This full-day session will move you from a procedural to an object-oriented ColdFusion programmer using one of the most popular ColdFusion frameworks. If you’ve never experienced the power and convenience of developing with a framework this is for you.
• Also on Saturday we will have a series of offerings to help you learn about setting up and developing with a completely open-source ColdFusion environment. These intermediate sessions can be consumed a la carte or as a full-day track.
• This event is not just for our programming sisters and brothers, but the designers as well. On Sunday we will have a full-day Flash Catalyst session so designers and developers can map their magical (to me) skills into functioning Rich Internet Applications. Very cool stuff!
• Sunday’s Flash Platform offerings will include a lot of Flex 4 as well as AIR 2 development. It doesn’t matter if you develop in ColdFusion, .NET, PHP, Java, Ruby, etc. You will love the speed, power and beauty of the user interfaces you can develop using Flex. We will have a range of Intermediate and Advanced topics. We’ll post the schedule as it gets built.

There is more to tell, but I’ll save those for future posts. If you are a speaker/instructor and would like to be on the giving end of all this techno-goodness, please see our Call For Proposals page. The deadline for proposals is August 7.