• You already know about the great sessions at BFusion/BFlex, but stay tuned for information on Saturday night BOFs as well. If you have an idea for a BOF you’d be willing to lead, drop me a line bob@bflex.info.
• We are partnering this year with The Combine a tech conference in the days preceding BFusion/BFlex. It has a wonderful lineup of speakers and an eclectic schedule of events. If you would like to attend The Combine contact me (bob@bflex.info) and I’ll see if I can hook you up with a discount code.
• You don’t have to be a participant in The Combine to take part in Ignite Bloomington 3. If you’ve never been to an Ignite event you should plan on going. They are 5 minute presentations of 20 slides. Slides advance automatically every 15 seconds. The topics are all over the place. The first one I attended had presentations on learning to read gang tag graffiti, the history of scotch whiskey and a proposal for a city-wide developers challenge. I missed the second one, but there was a presentation by young boy (aged 8?) about the items he keeps in his utility belt (think superhero utility belt). Ignite 3 takes place at 8pm on Friday, September 10th, the night before BFusion. It will be in Alumni Hall in the Indiana Memorial Union on the IU campus. If it is like previous Ignites, tickets are free. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE. If you act NOW there is still time to submit your own proposal to give an Ignite presentation. According to this post you can submit proposals to present through 11:59pm tonight (Sunday, August 22). Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. Just saw it on FB this morning.
• Maybe a five minute presentation is just a bit too little, too passive for you. Maybe you want to get in the trenches and flex your Flex muscles, fuse your ColdFusion skills or flash your … well, you get the idea. This year BFusion/BFlex, in partnership with The Combine, is hosting Dev Derby! Dev Derby is a day-long programming challenge where teams of developers representing different programming languages—PHP, C#, Ruby, ColdFusion, and Java—work to create an application serving a real-world need. It is a full day commitment but prizes, glory and bragging rights await the worthy winners. ColdFusion guru Adam Haskell will be leading the CF team. If you’d like to be a part of his squad or, heaven forbid, one of the other teams please submit your name soon. It doesn’t say on the site, but I think they plan on closing applications at the end of the week. NOTE: We are working on a deal to let all Dev Derby participants into BFlex for free on Sunday so this is a great way to be a part of the BFusion/BFlex/Combine/Ignite/BOF/Free Love scene without any cost.
• Lest you forget, this is a college town. There is a lot happening all the time, but of particular note is the opening festival for IU’s Themester. Live music, free food, crazed college students a week or two into the semester…what’s not to love about that? Themester is a cool concept. Check it out. This year’s theme is “sustain.ability”, something that is always important to the BF/BF staff.

Those of you who come to BFusion/BFlex know that I love to show off my town. Bloomington is a great town with a lot going for it. If none of the above tickles your fancy there is so much more. Check out the campus events calendar, the calendar of the world-renowned Jacob’s School of Music, the city events calendar (looks like you could catch David Bowie at the Movie in the Park) or the student news events calendar (Hmm, awesome local artist Krista Detor at the Buskirk Chumley Theater on Saturday). Yeah, we have too many calendars, but I want you to have too many options.

Obviously we’d love for you to come to BFusion/BFlex, but if you get here and there is just too much other stuff going on and you can’t make it by, we’ll understand. Just don’t forget to stop by the Chocolate Moose before you leave town. I’d be a terrible host if I didn’t insist on that!

Bob Flynn
Event Director, BFusion/BFlex

Please do not forget that the special rate for hotels ends this Wednesday, August 18. Do not delay on hotels any longer. See http://bflex.info/travel-information for details.

I will have more news in the coming days, including our BFlex Keynote speaker. He’s a newcomer to BFlex, but a very welcome addition. Stay tuned for that!

Bob Flynn
Event Director, BFusion/BFlex

• 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

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.