UK CF developers, where are you?
There's been a discussion brewing today. It started off about the potential need for a ColdFusion User Group in Northern England (the UKCFUG in London and and the ScottishCFUG in Edinburgh being too far away) and from there it digressed to the topic of where are all the UK based ColdFusion developers.
As an aside, the ScottishCFUG have moved to an entirely online medium, using Adobe Connect to deliver all their meetings. This removes a lot of the restrictions often highlighted by people who don't attend. We also try and arrange quartely meetups, whether it be the pub, Karting or the as yet ill-fated poker night, to maintain that real life interaction.
From the various blog postings about CFDevCon, there were around 200 developers in attedance yet neither the UKCFUG nor the ScottishCFUG sees anywhere like that for the Groups monthly meetings. In fact, you're lucky to get 20.
In regards the ScottishCFUG, we have around 160 folks on the old mailing list, and 60 subscribers to the more recent Google list. So, have we really lost 100 folks? The answer is no, because I still have discussions with folks from the old list who have never signed up for the new one.
The UK CF Developer list was also talked about. Whilst there seems to be a steady stream of posts, it always seems to be the same people posting. I can't confirm numbers on that list (run by Russ Michaels) but it's fair to say that neither the SCFUG or UK CF Developer list are a fair representation of just how many CF developers there are based in the UK.
So, this brought up a roll call to try and find out where these CF developers are, and more importantly why they don't attend User Group meetings, post on lists, etc.
So I'm taking this opportunity to appeal to the UK CF community to come forward and let themselves be know. Why not register yourself on the UK CFDeveloper Frappr map.
Additionally why not post here and say why you attend/don't attend User Group meetings, why you don't post to lists, etc.
From a Scottish perspective I'm pointing fingers at Alienation Design, Network Build, NHS Tayside, Fife Council, Edinburgh University, Robert Gordon University to name but a few.
I only found out about the UK Dev list just before CFDevCon (despite doing CF since v4 !), and have joined it. I'm active on the main House of Fusion lists (for years now !), as well as (more recently) in the Blogsphere.
I can't get to any of the user groups, much as I'd like to, because they are too far away - rock on setting up a north west based one :-)
I am due to email all the cfdevcon delegates soon with a survey about the conferece, i'll ask them to put themselves on the map at the same time.
I don't understand people who don't want any interaction though - how will they learn all the nice new things (that may be better than what they have or do at the moment) or solutions to (common) problems that someone else has already solved ?
How do I create a gravatar ?
http://www.frappr.com/cfdevelopers
I am relatively active online (blogs & HoF), but I can't remember hearing about the UK CF Developer list before; I've just subscribed to that now. :)
Funny enough this topic also got brought up at the CFDevCON in the evening. I was on Vodka and Tequilla (not mixed) by then so I cannot remember exactly who I was chatting with. But I think it came down to the fact that in any field there are a higher percentage of users that don't have blogs or are active in any way in the community. Take me, I subscribe to lists but hardly post on them (I am trying to get my CFDev list working still!) though im not exactly quite in the blogspere. And there are others which are the other way around too. This is always the way it will be. The best thing we can do is keep publishing the content and push for comments and interaction!
As for the usergroups its hard. I think in USA travelling is a culture thing, travelling distance is the norm for such a huge country. Where here it isn't. I do try and get to the UKCFUG when I can but im travelling by train and tube at 5pm (rush hour) for a 7pm meeting. Sometime I just cannot do it or have the will :o) I think the best way forwards to use the Adobe Breeze (sorry Connect) for meeting but push for a good turn out at the actual event. Nothing beats turning up to these events and meeting other developers in person. If anything the best part of CFDevCon was meeting so many people and chatting about projects, other developer and sharing horror stories.
I tend not to contribute much as I'm not nearly as knowledegable about CF as most of those posting. Some additions to livedocs regarding event gateways recently but that's probably the extent of my contributions.
We work for a large private helath care company who shall remain nameless and everything we produce is INtranet based. But big apps whihc practically run this part of the company. We're just looking at a big fat Flex proj for early next year but lots of integration dross to slog through before then.
London is just too far away for me to get to for the regular meets though i do read up on what's posted. I also owe Russ several crates of beer and don't fancy lkugging them down there. A North West CFUG would be great if Tom wants to find some time but how many people will utrn up is an interesting question.
Either way its a 400 mile round trip to the UKCFUG - too far on a Thursday evening :(
When I was contracting in Croydon, I used to regularly attend the CFUFG. I was down at CFDEVCon - and plan to be down at any future events if at all possible.
If there were a Northern CFUG meeting within about an hours drive of where I work or live, I would attend it - but I remember when there was a Northern CFUG, that it was generally pretty sparsely attended...
I have been away from the CF community for about 3 years - been working mainly with .NET for a while, and I'm now trying to Grok up on 3 years of CF happenings.
One thing I will say, is that independent of any advantages / disadvantages of the actual platforms, I really missed the cohesion and community spirit of the CFCommunity while I was in .NET land...
Hopefully when I'm back up to speed, I'd like to play a more active role within the CFCommunity again - but until then, I'll probably stay pretty quiet (which those who know me would probably say was a good thing!!!)
I'm from the midlands. I was there at the CFDevCon, although turned up halfway through the Flex presentation which I was gutted about due to M25 and usual Croyden traffic. Please make it more friendly for people north of the Watford Gap this year, there are plenty of us.
Dont' usually tend to visit much of the user groups due to family and my location, however do keep in touch with users' blogs.
Regards
Paul