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I've already blogged this over on the Fuzzy Orange site but I'll repeat it here....

Fuzzy Orange are running a Scotch on the Road promotion as part of the upcoming ColdFusion Insider Workshops.

If you register for either the London or Edinburgh ColdFusion Insider Workshops, and purchase an upgrade from ColdFusion 6 or 7 to ColdFusion 8 either before the workshop or within 30 days of attending the workshop, receive one free ticket to your local Scotch on the Road event for each license upgraded.

Conditions:

1. You must attend the workshop
2. You must purchase your ColdFusion upgrade via Fuzzy Orange
3. Offer only open to UK

We hate country specific competitions and promotions, so for those in mainland Europe, if you can provide the necessary proof of upgrade (from your local Adobe reseller), as well as confirmation of attending your local ColdFusion workshop, then we will honour the promotion when we bring Scotch on the Road to Brussels and Munich.

For the full list of dates for the ColdFusion Insider Workshops, head over to Claude Englebert (of Adobe)'s blog

http://www.englebert.be/blog/index.cfm/2009/1/18/ColdFusion-workshops-tour-2009

To purchase your ColdFusion upgrades, contact Fuzzy Orange using the information provided on our Contact page, or email me directly on andy[.]allan[@]fuzzyorange.co.uk

Adobe's Claude Englebert has blogged an updated listing of the ColdFusion Insider Workshops taking place through Europe.

As you will see, an Edinburgh date (March 16th) has been added and Fuzzy Orange will be presenting at this one, in addition to the London workshop. 

Adobe EMEA have organised a series of half day ColdFusion workshop, and on Thursday 5th February, the workshop comes to London.

Taking place at Adobe's London office at the Regents Park office, Claude Englebert (Adobe), Fuzzy Orange, and Monochrome will deliver a series of sessions on how to get the best out of ColdFusion 8.

I'll be giving the following sessions:

• Beyond HTML: Using Ajax, PDF, and More to Create Engaging Applications with ColdFusion 8
• The ColdFusion 8 Server Monitor

To attend free of charge, fill in the attached PDF and submit it to recieve your voucher from Adobe.

As Big Kev announced last night, preparation is now under way for Scotch on the Rocks Road 2009.

Due to the financial implications of going to a conference in the current financial climate (conference ticket, travel, hotel, etc) we're bringing the conference to a city near you instead.

The dates are:

• London June 1st
  
• Edinburgh June 3rd
  
• Dublin June 5th 
  

We'll have some common speakers across all dates, but we'll also be tapping into the local area so it definitely won't be the same sessions in every location.

Oh, and whilst we don't expect folks to attend every date, if you do, you'll get a little something extra on the final day.

More details coming soon!

Well, ColdFusionCamp is only a couple of days away, and I leave for Munich on Wednesday morning arriving just after lunch time.

The event is now sold out - which is fantastic news - and I'm really looking forward to giving my session on "ColdFusion and PDF: Improving Your Workflow". I'm trying out something new with my presentation to hopefully it goes down well.

I'll see you in Munich!

I've been considering a post like this for a while, and for one reason or another I've just never got around to it. However considering the recent Connect meeting given to the Adobe User Group Managers and Community Experts, in addition to Ray Camden's blog posts [1][2], I thought it was time I finally hit submit on the post.

As a Certified Instructor for CF it pains me to teach the official courses. They suck just as much as the whole certification process.

I'll explain why in the next couple of paragraphs. Just to answer a few questions first. Why do the certification? Because I need it to be a Certified Instructor. Why be a Certified Instructor? We (Fuzzy Orange) write our own ColdFusion courses, so when teaching them it's nice to be able to say that although the courses aren't certified by Adobe, I am.

I don't need to repeat what Ray has already said about the certification process, other than it seriously does suck. Unless you're going after Certified Instructor status I tell all clients, developers and any one else who asks NOT to do the exam.

As for the two main official courses; Fast Track to CF and Advanced ColdFusion ... boy, where do I start.

First, if you decide to go after your certification, neither of these courses will actually help you. The courses are lame, only cover certain aspects of CF... in the exam you can get asked on anything. Even the parts the courses cover won't help you. Honestly.

As for the Fast Track course... to accurately describe it, it's an Introduction to Dreamweaver. You really learn sod all about ColdFusion, and any coding you do is done via Dreamweaver's wizards. You come out of the Fast Track in no way better prepared to do any ColdFusion coding.

I'll be honest, when I'm teaching the Fast Track course I tend to ignore most of the official course material. If the course material says you need to click on the Query Wizard tab, and then point and click on database columns you want returned, etc ... I ignore it. I make you type the code in manually.

If you want to know how to use Dreamweaver, go on a Dreamweaver course (though they probably suck too). I want folks to come out of the CF courses to be better prepared to handle CF code that is thrown at them. I want them to be that bit more knowledgeable about CFML and to have a better understanding of exactly what they are doing. Using wizards does NOT do that. Using Dreamweaver typically does not assist with that.

The Advanced course is ... anything but Advanced. It introduces CFC, covers Lists, Arrays and Structs, does a bit more on CFCs, looks at Custom Tags, Web Services and the .NET integration, PDF stuff, <cfimage> and <cffeed> and finishes with a crappy chapter on supposedly scaling applications.

Most of this so called advanced stuff should belong in an introductory class; lists, arrays, structs and CFCs all belong there. They are the bread and butter of any ColdFusion application. These topics are anything but Advanced. The other stuff, is just fluff. I don't mean that it isn't useful material, but I could buy the ColdFusion 8 special edition of the FAQU and save myself a fortune.

Seriously, go buy yourself a subscription to the FAQU, it's so much better value than the official Adobe ColdFusion training

Now, don't get me wrong, a lot of hard work has went into preparing these courses, good or otherwise. I'm in a better position that most to appreciate the amount of work. Aside from teaching courses, I also write them. Fuzzy Orange offer two courses based on ColdFusion Administration and we spend a lot of time re-evaluating these after every course and every bit of feedback. However, the official ColdFusion courses really haven't changed since version 6. It's obviously Adobe aren't listening to feedback. From anyone. Which leads onto ...

... In regards the official Adobe certification process, and not just for ColdFusion, it's obvious Adobe really don't give a damn. They've pretty much stated it in the Connect presentation. It's got to the stage whereby I'm wondering if being a Certified Instructor is worse all the hassle. When your Instructors are questioning the entire process, c'mon Adobe, you really need to take notice!

I could also go to town on the whole Adobe Partner set up; Solution Partner, Training, etc, but that's for another blog post. Actually, I could write a book about how bad the entire Partner program is. And I'm not alone in this opinion.

Back to the point at hand though; certification.

The ColdFusion certification is NOT worth it. It won't make you a better developer, the vast majority of people in the know will not put you before another candidate just because you have it. If you absolutely have to do it, then you have my sympathy. If you happen to fail the exam, or don't get the Advanced status, simply shrug it off. By no means does passing the ColdFusion exam accurately qualify your skills as a ColdFusion developer.

I've not had the chance to pick up the new edition of Web Designer Mag, but as you'll see from the front cover, there is coverage of last months Scotch on the Rocks conference.

We (Fuzzy Orange) have been doing our damndest to get CF more into the general developer community here in the UK, and our monthly articles and now the Scotch coverage is hopefully helping to do just that.

I've been considering this one for a while, but because of Scotch on the Rocks, moving house and planning a wedding - well, Leanne has been planning and I'm just nodding in agreement - it's sort of slipped off the radar.

The plan quite simply is... one days free training on "something" ColdFusion 8 related.

Since CF8 came out, I've given a few presentations, I've been writing tutorials for Web Designer Magazine, I've been organising Scotch and now I want to lay on a days worth of training. To be honest, if I can find some assistance I'll increase that to two days. I potentially have a venue lined up free of charge, and I'm going to give my time for free as well.

I'm expecting those who would attend to primarily be members of the ScottishCFUG, but I've decided to blog about it as well, just in case we have anyone from further afield who is interested.

Ultimately, the big question I've been asking, is just what features of CF8 do you want to learn more about?

Additionally, I'm looking at lining up a second batch of free training, this time on something complimentary. There's been a lot of demand for a bit of training on SVN/Trac/Mylyn/Ant. I know I can't fit all of that into one day, so again, if I can find some sponsorship I'll look at doing this over 2 days.

If you're interested in either course, please leave a comment, and in regards the CF8 course, some additional information on what you'd really like to know more about.

update: I should point out that this training will take place in either Edinburgh or Glasgow.

The third in my series of ColdFusion tutorials for Web Designer magazine is now available at a newsagent/bookstore near you.

This tutorial is on PDF Generation and Form Manipulation, Image Manipulation and Presentations on Demand.

May's edition will revisit the CF8 Ajax grid, and building a CRUD interface, whilst June will tackle the CF8 PDF features in more depth, and how you can build an online order system.