As I mentioned in an earlier post, I started writing up my experience of CFUnited 2009 but it turned into a giant essay as I was going into a lot more detail than I’m sure anyone would really care about. So here’s the condensed version:
CFunited 2009 was awesome!
OK, you probably want a bit more detail than that so read on.
I really can’t say enough good things about the location. The Lansdowne Resort was a beautiful location, it had great rooms, amazing food – and snacks and drinks were available all day, every day! – incredibly helpful staff and a good bar. The conference area was great and, again, the staff were very helpful, ensuring that speakers had everything they needed and that any technical problems were resolved quickly (and they knew about Adobe Acrobat Connect too – impressive!). Because of the great location, the atmosphere was very upbeat – it managed to feel both like a vacation and and a deeply immersive technical conference.
What about the conference content? I went to more sessions this year than ever before at CFUnited so that speaks volumes about the content. When the schedule had first started to appear, I thought I would have a hard time filling my time but gradually new sessions were added, repeats were added and before I knew were I was, I had something planned for every slot – even tho’, as usual, I didn’t get to everything I’d planned. The highlights were as I’d expected: Adam Haskell’s “Red Green Refactor”, Joe Rinehart’s day two keynote and Cameron Childress’ Subversion talk (I didn’t get to Todd’s 2.0 Startup talk but I was very glad to see SlideSix spoken of so highly throughout the conference). Peter Bell’s requirements and estimating talk was an unexpected highlight too (unexpected because I’d planned to go to a different talk and changed my mind at the last minute).
Ray Camden’s “What’s Next?” iPhone web application was a great help, always being able to pull up whatever the current / next sessions at any time was so useful.
The Stellr team did a terrific job and CFUnited 2010 is already in motion with registration open (so soon – at such a discount!) so we can expect another great conference next year!
