New User Group Co-Manager

I’d like to welcome Simon Janssens as Co-Manager of the ACTAPUG User Group.

Welcome Simon, please feel free to co-blog here

Cheers,

Rae

The Best Ever WebDU Gala Event

Finally I have arrived back in Canberra after 6 hectic days away, WebDU was absolutely awesome, thanks Geoff and the Daemon team, you are simply the best!

It’s been 3 years since I last attended MXDU held at Star City Casino way back in February 2005.  It was wonderful to catch up with so many old friends, particularly Tim Buntel from the US.  I also had the pleasure of meeting the beautiful Stephanie Sullivan and Greg Rewis.

I caught up with many fellow User Group Managers, and had the pleasure of assisting with the User Group event held on the night of the 11th, Code Wars at the Connections Bar at the Crowne Plaza on Day Street in Sydney.  I have pics to upload, I will create a slide show and upload them to slideshare as quickly as possible.

The trading card game was a huge hit with almost everyone I spoke to, it was a lot of fun and tended to dominate the conversation, loved your horns Kai, I should have kept my extra card of you, it was a struggle to let go of the unique cards and hand them in.

The Gala Event for WebDU 2008, was held at King Pin in Darling Harbour, it was sooo much fun, umm until the end of the evening when we decided after a few drinks to do the 10 pin bowling, Rae is nursing a possible torn ligament in her right arm, best case scenario a bad sprain.  The night was so much fun, I would not give up a thing, not even the sore arm :)  My favourite part of the evening was the Laser Tag, it was like playing Quake 2 Capture the Flag for real.  My solemn vow is to get my butt into gear and get fit before the next WebDU, I ache in places I had forgotten existed.

One last thing, the Keynote on the first day blew me away totally, things to come are awesome, but don’t look here for spoilers, I saw nothing

I have a particularly good pic of Andrew Muller on a clear blue Sydney day against the Sydney skyline, with a perfect daytime crescent moon to upload.

Looking forward to next year with much anticipation!

Cheers,

Rae

PS.   Simon J, great to catch up with you again after a couple of years, and Mark Mandel please ORM me

ColdFusion 8 Wins Codie Award!

The winners of the 23rd annual SIIA prestigious Codie awards for 2008 have been announced, and ColdFusion 8 has won the award in the “Best Web Services Solution” category. This is a very exciting announcement as it cements ColdFusions place in the Middleware market, as the best solution there is.

Other Adobe Codie award winner were:

Best Collaboration Solution

• Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional, Adobe Systems, Inc.

Best Corporate Learning Solution

• Adobe Captivate 3, Adobe Systems, Inc.

Industry news links:

Computer World

Info World

Software Information Industry Association

Newz Fire

Yahoo

Call for New Members

Now that I’ve crawled out from under the rock of responding to three RFT’s concurrently, taking a deep breath, relaxing the shoulders OM, OM, OM!

It’s time to focus on the User Group. Proud to announce that I’m now on the AUG list and received a hearty welcome from many.

Here is a link to the Google group for discussions, please, please join http://groups.google.com/group/actapug tell all your developer and non-developer Adobe users about us and encourage them to join. Although the group in Canberra based, outside members are more than welcome.

Remember the group is not product specific and covers all Adobe products, the more members we have in the group the more useful and successful it will be.

ACT Adobe Product User Group - Launched today

ColdFusion 8 set to take over the Web World!

ColdFusion 8 has scored the prestigious Jolt award for Web Development at this years awards.

The Software Publishers Association (SPA), now the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) recently announced the Codie Awards Finalists for 2008, and Adobe ColdFusion 8 has made the short list.

All those nasty rumours that have been circulating about ColdFusion being dead, can now be totally ingnored (phew… that makes my life easier, I was sooo sick of hearing that rubbish). It’s even more relevant with the recent announcement that BlueDragon is going open-source, it’s free for non-commercial use and for commercial use has minimal cost.

Not only have Adobe/Macromedia not dropped this awesome product, but they have now groomed it into a very, very slick adult.

Web Development

Jolt Winner:

• Adobe ColdFusion 8 (Adobe Systems)

R

Welcome to ACTAPUG

Welcome to the home of the ACT Adobe Products User Group (ACTAPUG),  the group has now been officially launched by Adobe today, making our birthday 12 April, 2008 for us Ozzies.  First meeting will be scheduled for July, hope to see everyone at WebDU, June 12-13!!

The first 10 people to subscribe to this blog receive a free AIR stubby holder!