So yesterday I hinted at an announcement regarding MAX. Unfortunately I wasn't 100% sure after I blogged if it was truly ok to talk about it. I just got formal approval so here we go.
When MAX was announced, it was mentioned that 4 unconferences would be run at the same time. The idea behind an 'unconference' is simply a more informal, community-driven conference. So while Adobe is (properly) exercising content control over the main sessions, the unconferences can be a bit more... loose in their content. While I'm not exactly sure what the other three will focus on, one unconference will be specifically on everyone's favorite programming language - ColdFusion!
To quote Ted Patrick, MAX Chaos Manager:
"The MAX team is really excited about the ColdFusion Unconference at MAX NA. It will be a great way for the community to share knowledge and exchange ideas."
So what's the plan? My thinking is that I want to gather a list of folks who will be attending ColdFusion. This list will be based on folks I know and folks who volunteer. I will then try to gather together a basic schedule. Obviously this will not be set in stone and will flex a bit (did you notice the product placement there?), but this could be a real good opportunity to go 'outside the box' a bit at MAX.
As an example (and I'm not saying this will happen for certain), I think the work Sean, myself, and others are doing for Broadchoice is pretty kick butt. We can maybe plan a session where Sean talks about the cool stuff he did with Transfer and clusters, and I can speak about what I did to enable dynamic plug and play applications within a greater Model-Glue framework. Joe could perhaps give an update on Model-Glue 3 (if it's not done by then, but I'm sure it will be). I'm a big fan of show and tell. While a session on "How do to RSS in CF" is nice - another session with multiple, deep examples of it is even more exciting I think. (Shoot, maybe I can talk about CFBloggers and it's use of cffeed,cfthread.)
My thought here though is to get some really deep, advanced type sessions, and perhaps even some good open discussions that folks would really enjoy.
So for now - that's the announcement. As we get closer to MAX I'll set up a quick wiki to host the schedule and will contact folks (who are attending MAX of course) I want to bribe into speaking. Please free free to suggest some ideas (and people, guilt works) now as well.