This Monday sees the start of the annual Scotch on the Rocks conference at the Sway bar in London. This year there’s a change in format as the conference is going on the road, visiting a city every other day through all of next week. There’s a fairly good line up of speakers (alongside a decent showing from Adobe) and a fair few people making their way up there.
But that’s not why I’m writing this blog post. Something I’ve noticed this year is the complete absence of any Adobe conferences containing ColdFusion content in and around Europe. Aside from Scotch and the odd ColdFusion camp here and there, there’s nothing.
For the Americans this is a very different story. For instance, there’s the Adobe MAX conference in October, CFObjective() a couple of weeks back, CFUnited plus a host of other smaller localised ones. This goes to show a common problem with software companies based in the states – the belief that the world stops when you hit the US coast. Admittedly, last year there was an Adobe MAX in Europe (and Japan), but this year, they’ve been binned, and Adobe are expecting everyone to go to the LA event instead. However, for nearly everyone outside of the US this is an incredibly expensive proposition – nearly always costing into the thousands just to attend and have somewhere to sleep for the night.
So, for those of you who may not live on this continent, please note that without the valiant efforts of FuzzyOrange and the Scotch team, we would have absolutely nothing in the UK (or nearby) until towards the end of 2010 (assuming MAX comes back).
Therefore, if you live in northern europe, and can make any of the venues next week, please buy a ticket and attend Scotch – as it’s the only chance you’re going to get for a ColdFusion orientated conference this year.
cf.O() and CFUnited are entirely organized and executed by third parties. Adobe does sponsor them. If there were companies in Europe who wanted to support CF and hold conferences such as these I am certain Adobe would have little issue supporting these events.
I don’t think blaming the US vendors is the solution, I think blaming the lack of European companies supporting CF events is the issue.
Gotta agree with TJ on this one. As with any of these conferences/events, its up to local companies or individuals to run these. Jared Rypka Hauer came up with the idea for cf.Objective() and got the funds together to run it (and it has grown since). Teratech runs CFUnited (though they spun it off this year under a different company name). Adobe signs on as a sponsor but they do not run these conferences.
As for MAX, its a tough one even for those of us in the US. Being that I am on the east coast, its still 6 hours flying and thousands of dollars in expenses. Thus, likely why I am not going this year. I think the end of MAX Europe and MAX Japan had to do with budget cuts this year. Despite the fact that its expensive to attend, my understanding is that MAX still loses money…I assume this would be more pronounced in these other markets.
So, if you would like to see a CF focused European event, I suggest organizing it. As someone who ran a few smaller events here in Boston, I can say its a lot of work but its also great fun.
I think Neil’s main point was that Scotch on the Rocks (on the Road) is the *only* chance for people in the UK/Europe to attend an Adobe oriented conference this year, and it’s on next week! So for those of us in the region – buy buy buy! Scotch is a great event and it would be a shame for any CF’ers / Flex’ers to miss out.
Be there or be… at work, or at home, or something. But preferably be “there”
Another point I wanted to make its that Europe now has Railo, and they make a great CFML engine. Maybe it’s time to put some pressure on them to hold a few conferences, or sponsor them, in Europe.
Railo already sponsor Scotch and the Rocks and have done since 2007. And Adobe (Macromedia) have sponsored it since 2005.