One of the great things about Scotch on the Rocks, is the ability to call on Adobe Consulting EMEA. The old iteration::two crowd were acquired by Macromedia and therefore Adobe and are based out of Edinburgh, and that gives us an incredible talent to call upon.

And with that, we have 6 sessions from Steven Webster's team.

• Alex Uhlmann - Test Driven Develompent Applied to Flex
• Alistair McLeod - Realtime Collaboration and Adobe Flex
• Paul Williams - Patterns and Best-Practices for Rich Internet Applications: Exploring the Presentation
• Peter Martin - Introduction to Data Management Services with Flex
• Leon Tanner - Modularising your Flex Application
• Borre Wessel - Automated Building and Testing of Rich Internet Applications

Steven won't be given a session this year, however he will be part of the Wednesday morning keynote session, that will also feature Ben Forta, Adam Lehman and Andrew Shorten.

We will be releasing a new version of the agenda soon to take into account these new sessions.

Originally posted at http://www.fuzzyorange.co.uk/blog/index.cfm/2008/4/8/Open-BlueDragon-Steering-Committee

Alan Williamson announced earlier today the folks who will make up the steering committee for the Open BlueDragon (OpenDB) project.

Having known Alan for 4 years now, since I first asked him to present at the ScottishCFUG, I was aware that OpenBD was on the cards.

The members of the committee should be known to most of the community, and as Sean Corfield points out, not all of them have enjoyed a "friendly" relationship with New Atlanta in the past. However, that just goes to show the level of interest and commitment to the OpenBD project, and ultimately what it could achieve.

If you want to get involved in the project, then please join the community mailing list, which can be found at http://groups.google.com/group/openbd

If you want to experience OpenBD firsthand, then the initial release of OpenBD should take place at this years cf.Objective() conference, and 6 of the Steering Committee will be at Scotch on the Rocks;Alan Williamson, Andy Wu, Sean Corfield, Matt Woodward, Mark Drew and myself

We're planning something special for Scotch, so stay tuned!

Next Friday (April 3rd) I'll be heading to Edinburgh for the one day Highland Fling conference.

The theme for Highland Fling is "The Browser and Beyond" and features speakers from Yahoo, Opera, and the one and only Aral Balkan. I'm looking forward to Aral's talk, and I'll also be catching up with him as he is also presenting at Scotch on the Rocks. More on that in a second.

I'm also hoping to jump across the water to Dublin to attend Scotch on Air. This is a half day event taking place April 11, being organised by the Scotch on the Rocks team to replace the cancelled Adobe OnAir, Dublin.

Adobe's Ryan Stewart and Ted Patrick will be presenting, along side Scotch's Kev McCabe. It's a free event and should be good fun.

Next, we have the biggie. Scotch on the Rocks. Three days, 45 sessions, 150+ delegates and more ColdFusion, Air, Flex and LiveCycle than you can shake a stick at!

After this, it will most likely be MAX Europe in Milan. With any luck I'll be back as a speaker, but regardless I'll be in attendance.

A little off-shoot of the Scotch on the Rocks conference will take place in Dublin, Ireland on April 11th.

Scotch on Air effectively replaces the cancelled date of the Adobe onAir tour.

Scotch organiser Kev McCabe, who was attending the Dublin leg of the tour, has taken the lead on putting together this little show, and we're delighted to say that Adobe's Ryan Stewart and Ted Patrick will be there to talk about Air and Flex respectively. Kev will be dicsussing ColdFusion.

Unless my schedule changes at the last minute, I unfortunately won't make it over, but if you can be there, make sure you are cause it will undoubtedly be a blast.

Let's talk Scotch on the Rocks.

Three days. 45 sessions. 150+ delegates. World renowed speakers from the ColdFusion, Flex, Air, Flash and LiveCycle communities. Held in Edinburgh, Scotland's picturesque capital city.

Ticket Prices

We have four ticket types for you to buy, but unlike the UKs rail ticket system, ours is easy to understand.

• 1 day ticket: £99
• 2 day ticket: £149
• 3 day ticket: £199
• Flexi Pass: £299

All prices are exclusive of VAT @ 17.5%. The VAT can be claimed back, even from outside the EU, so speak to your accountant as well as reading up on the following sites.

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageVAT_InfoGuides&propertyType=document&id=HMCE_CL_000860
http://ecb.scotlandrefunds.com/

These prices are valid up until April 30th, after which the prices will rise to:

• 1 day ticket: £149
• 2 day ticket: £199
• 3 day ticket: £299
• Flexi Pass: £399

I think you'll find we're better value for money that any other European conference this year

Speakers

Oh, and we haven't even mentioned the Adobe Consulting EMEA team of Steven Webster, Ali McLeod, Peter Martin and Alex Uhlmann yet.

Accommodation

Stay in the conference hotel, the George, for £124 per night (includes breakfast and VAT) for single occupancy. Or why not room share for £139 per night (includes breakfast and VAT). That works out at £70 per person per night.

If you're looking for something else, why not use our Hostel Bookers widget. The widget takes in not just hostels, but also guest houses and hotels.

Airport Transfers

Simply tell us when you arrive at Edinburgh airport and if we have enough people, we will arrange your transport straight to the hotel, and at absolutely no charge. You're paying enough money on the ticket, hotel and travel so the least we can do is help out. We care.

Edinburgh

The venue is slam bang in the centre of Edinburgh. Everything is quite literally 5 minutes walk. When you come to Scotch, it's not just about the technical sessions and networking, we also want you to see as much of the city as possible.

Edinburgh Castle, the Scott Monument, the Royal Mile, Dynamic Earth, Arthur's Seat, Ghost Tours, Edinburgh Dungeon, Edinburgh Zoo, Royal Yacht Britannia, five of the National Museums of Scotland, Whisky Heritage Centre, Holyrood Palace, and so on...

And we're going to give you the information on how, and where to find all of these attractions plus more.

The Fuzzy Orange "hop-a-thon"

And last but not least. For those who attended in 2007, there was a "fuzzy orange hunt", which involved finding one of 6 fuzzy orangies scattered throughout the venue, and if you found one, you won a bottle of single malt whisky.

For 2008, we're having a "hop-a-thon-" ... right now, we're saying no more. You'll need to buy a ticket and come along to find out just what we're talking about :)

So BUY now!

I announced this in Aberdeen on Friday night at the ColdFusion 8 presentation I was giving, but:

One and Two Day Tickets now Available

We've listened to the feedback we've received, in that 3 days for some people, is too long to be out of the office. To accomodate those folks, we're introducing one and two day tickets.

• One day tickets (you choose your day) are priced at £99+VAT.
• Two day tickets (Wed/Thurs or Thurs/Fri) are priced at £149+VAT

These prices will remain until April 30th, which is when we are now extending the early bird pricing till. After which, each ticket will jump by £50 (except the full 3 day which will jump to £299 as previously announced).

You really can't find a better deal than this anywhere. Our full 3 day ticket - priced at £199+VAT - is miles cheaper than the vast majority of two day ticket conferences, and let's be honest, who can argue with our speaker line up. Plus it's a trip to Edinburgh. Absolute bargain.

Go sign up now!

If you can't afford the George Hotel, even with our discount (contact me for the code), then we have set up an affiliation with Hostel Bookers.

Just use the widget below.

If you are flying into Edinburgh airport, please let us know at scotch@fuzzyorange.co.uk, with your planned date/time of arrival. If we have enough folks arriving at a certain time, we will book the Edinburgh Shuttle Service on your behalf, and at no cost to you.

I'm up in sunny Aberdeen this Friday (which is also the last day of the early bird pricing for Scotch on the Rocks), giving a presentation on ColdFusion 8.

Fuzzy Orange will also be sponsoring the event so that everyone gets some food and a few beers.

Additionally, I will also be giving away a ticket to Scotch on the Rocks.

The presentation will be aimed at both experienced and novice ColdFusion developers. Heck, if you're a PHP/.NET/Java/Ruby/etc developer and want to know what the fuss is all about, come along.

See you on Friday.

Save yourself £100 and get your ticket for Scotch on the Rocks before end of play next Friday.

This month saw the first in a series of articles by myself, published by Web Designer Mag on ColdFusion for Novices.

Issue 141 sees me showing easily and quickly, just how we can pull data from a database and display it in an Ajax grid. I think it takes around 28 lines of code. Real basic code.

Next month (issue 142) will see a more in depth look at programming using CFML - this should be on the way to the printers - and issue (143), well, I can't tell you what's going to be in that just yet.

In addition to the tutorial, I'm quoted on what we here at Fuzzy Orange think is "Hot for 2008". Scotch on the Rocks is top of our list, and it's very encouraging to see Web Designer agree with us, as it's number 51 in their list.