Hi there! This is Michaela Light. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it personally to the CFCamp in Munich. However, my associate Paul has gone in my stead. And boy, from the pics and videos he’s been sending me. It looks like a great time and an informative one too. Let’s take a look at some of the sessions from Day 1 and the speakers thereof.

Looks like a decent spread…

Michi (Michael Hnatt) started the welcome note by a very interesting question:

Do cybercriminals and hackers really wear masks when committing a crime?

The day opened with a session from Adobe! They were there to present their latest version of ColdFusion. ColdFusion 2018. They touched on all the sweet features that it could bring to the table including:

• The New REST Playground
• Asynchronous Programming
• The New Server Monitor
• The Code Profiler
• And More!

After this intro session, it was time for the individual sessions.

So, there were two simultaneous tracks going on. This was to ensure every speaker had an opportunity to showcase their presentations.

Track 1

I do CFML, Java, PHP and… human rights!

• Session Briefing: This session is based on the principle that IT professionals are human rights specialists. Claude went over how the IT community should protect their clients’ privacy. He also put out how the GDPR has policies in place to help you protect individuals’ personal data.
• About the Speaker: (Claude Englebert) Before joining the Brussels bar as a lawyer, Claude Englebert has built a strong 15 years experience in the software and IT industry, both in the startup environment and in the corporate world, including 5 years as ColdFusion Product Specialist at Adobe. He practices now law mainly in fields where his knowledge of the business world is an added value: intellectual property, IT, privacy and commercial law.

GDPR: Concerns of a WebDev

• Session Briefing: Our two speakers presented what technical and legal problems were created since the start of the GDPR back in May. They also presented current solutions to those problems.
• About the Speaker: (Markus Laymann) As Geschäftsführer from Bokowsky + Laymann Markus Laymann is responsible for the administration, the development of business strategies, HR, content administration and Data protection within the company. Due to his juridical background, one of his focus topics is the development of legal parameters for online media.

• (Tom Ladek) Tom Ladek graduated from the Technical University in Munich with a Masters degree in Computer Science. He’s now working for Bokowsky + Laymann as a Software Developer specializing on application development for the ColdFusion-powered Contens CMS, as well as Android apps. He has a decade-long programming experience with Java, C#, python and the web technologies. He is quite obsessed with clean code style and code quality in general. When not tinkering with his own private coding projects or hardcore gaming, he likes to play the piano (which he taught himself) or go on long cycling tours.

Cybercrime

• Session Briefing: This was an exciting preso for those able to attend. It was conducted in German, however still very informative. They discussed current threats and phenomena. They also discussed possible motive and action by perpetrators of cybercrime and what safeguards are in place to stop them. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures, but everyone (that speaks German was so excited to hear what was discussed- next year Paul said he will learn a new language).
• About the Speaker: Zentrale Ansprechstelle Cybercrime – LKA Bayern

Create a 2-factor Authentication for your own Website

• Session Briefing: At this session, we saw the second of our freebies that were given away. All attendees received a YubiKey 4 (worth $40) to use for their own purpose. This is a great device you can use to authenticate yourself throughout your web accounts–including your own website. And that is exactly what this session was about. Authentication and security.
• About the Speaker:(Rob Dudley) Rob is a software developer, CTO, company co-founder and has spent his professional life growing applications beyond their initial designs often with limited resources and budget. Based in Jersey in the Channel Islands he is a keen tinkerer, a bad DJ and a self-confessed coffee snob who loves nothing more than sharing knowledge with others across a range of topics.

CFML is Java

• Session Briefing: This was an in-depth session into the JVM–the heart of ColdFusion. Igal spoke on what it really means for us CF’ers and what we can do with that knowledge.
• About the Speaker: (Igal Sapir) Over 20 years of experience in designing and implementing scalable, data-driven, web applications. I have a deep and extensive knowledge in the field of software development, with emphasis on the technologies that make the Internet work, from the high level of design and development, all the way down to the low level of protocols that define how systems communicate with one another.

ORM Love and Hate

• Session Briefing: Wil spoke on the love-hate relationship that most of us CF’ers have with ORM. He also went on about the handy ColdBox ORM Module to make our lives easier.
• About the Speaker: (Wil de Bruin) Wil graduated in Environmental Sciences and started off his career as a research microbiologist. It took him almost 10 years before he continued fulltime as an IT specialist. In 1994 he founded Site4U BV, at that time a company specializing in software development and web design. One of his first application was to find Dutch ISPs at local area rates written in PHP/Mini SQL, but soon he discovered this kind of interactive websites could easier be built with DBML using Cold Fusion by Allaire.

High-Performance CFML

• Session Briefing: Gert focused this session primarily on high-speed performance and issues concerning the latest versions of Adobe ColdFusion and Lucee. He also brought up the latest version of the Rasia Tool ArgusCache.
• About the Speaker: (Gert Franz) Gert was born in 1967 and lives in Switzerland since 1997. Back in the late eighties he studied astrophysics in Munich but switched to later IT as a profession and programmed for several companies in the past as a database administrator and system analyst.

Track 2

Going live with CommandBox and Docker!

• Session Briefing: Mark broke down how they containerize their applications at CMD and how that has helped their customers.
• About the Speaker: (Mark Drew) Mark has been programming CFML since 1996, and even though he has had forays into Perl, ASP and PHP he is still loving every line of code he has crafted with CFML. His career has concentrated on eCommerce, Content Management and Application Scalability for various well-known brands in the UK market such as Jaeger, Hackett, Hobbs, Dyson, B&W, Diesel amongst others.

Why FusionReactor is the #1 Monitoring Solution for CF

• Session Briefing: In this session, we saw the first of our freebies… and boy is it a doozy. Each attendee received a free license for FusionReactor Developer Edition. That’s a €179 value for free! The session covered just exactly what FusionReactor is and how it can value ALL CF’ers.
• About the Speaker: (David Tattersall) David Tattersall has been in working in IT for over 30 years. Since co-founding Intergral in 1998, he focused on company management, business development and sales & marketing. Intergral has become a leader in server monitoring and application performance monitoring (APM) solutions in the ColdFusion / Java segment. His flagship product – FusionReactor – www.fusion-reactor.com is used on over 25,000 production servers and has been purchased by over 5,000 customers.

Related: What is new in Fusion Reactor 7 (20 new features), with David Tattersall

WebSockets from Scratch

• Session Briefing: This session covered everything you ever wanted to know about WebSockets and much more!
• About the Speaker: (Saravanamuthu Aka CF Mitrah) Saravanamuthu is a Full Stack (MERN & CFML) Web Developer at MitrahSoft, a 30 members Web Development company from India for your CFML & MERN applications. Mitrahsoft is Oper source Enthusiastic company contributed & worked with famous CFML OSS like PresideCMS, MuraCMS, Razuna, CFDocs ..etc. Muthu is an expert in CFML, NodeJS, ReactJS and MuraCMS.

Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)

• Session Briefing: This session was not an intro session. Some knowledge of AWS and Docker was required for full understanding. That being said it was not too tough to follow. Andrew went over what Amazon’s ECS is and its associated services.  
• About the Speaker: (Andrew Dixon) I started off my tech career working as an intern at Hewlett Packard in the R&D department for a year during my university course. Obtained a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronic Engineering and during the final semester found work with an up and coming web development agency as a part-time developer. I’m still working for the same company, 20 years later, as their Technical Director giving technical input on all new projects.

Building an API with cffractal and ColdBox

• Session Briefing: This session was all about building APIs with ColdBox with the added benefit ofcffractal. During this session, there was a live build of an API from the ground up. Really fun experience!
• About the Speaker: (Matt Gifford) Matt Gifford is owner and primary primate at his own development consultancy company, monkehWorks Ltd. His work primarily focuses on building mobile apps and ColdFusion development, although he’s such a geek he enjoys writing in a variety of languages. He’s a published author and presents at conferences and user groups on a variety of topics.
  

Dependency Injection, Why is it Awesome and Why should I Care?

• Session Briefing: Nolan went over the “whats, whys, and hows” of dependency injection. He also gave a crash course intro into AOP(Aspect-Oriented Programming) and IOC(Inversion of Control).
• About the Speaker: (Nolan Erck) Nolan Erck has been developing software for 21 years. Starting in the video game industry working on titles for Maxis and LucasArts, then advancing to web development in 1999, his list of credits includes Grim Fandango, StarWars Rogue Squadron, SimPark, SimSafari as well as high-traffic websites for a variety of clients.

cbStreams : Come Accelerate your Functional Programming with Java Streams in CFML

• Session Briefing: This session was all about Java streams and CFML.
• About the Speaker: (Luis Majano) Luis Majano is a computer engineer residing in Southern California. He was born in San Salvador, El Salvador and he is the president of Ortus Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in CFML web development, architecture, and professional open source support and services.

Well, the conference is in full swing and sounds exciting! Word on the street is that Day 2 is going to be chock full of surprises. Can’t wait to hear more updates! Once again, thanks to Paul for representing TeraTech at this year’s 2018 CF Camp in Munich!

And to continue learning how to make your ColdFusion apps more modern and alive, I encourage you to download our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.

Because… perhaps you are responsible for a mission-critical or revenue-generating CF application that you don’t trust 100%, where implementing new features is a painful ad-hoc process with slow turnaround even for simple requests.

What if you have no contingency plan for a sudden developer departure or a server outage? Perhaps every time a new freelancer works on your site, something breaks. Or your application availability, security, and reliability are poor.

And if you are depending on ColdFusion for your job, then you can’t afford to let your CF development methods die on the vine.

You’re making a high-stakes bet that everything is going to be OK using the same old app creation ways in that one language — forever.

All it would take is for your fellow CF developer to quit or for your CIO to decide to leave the (falsely) perceived sinking ship of CFML and you could lose everything—your project, your hard-won CF skills, and possibly even your job.

Luckily, there are a number of simple, logical steps you can take now to protect yourself from these obvious risks.

No Brainer ColdFusion Best Practices to Ensure You Thrive No Matter What Happens Next

ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist

Modern ColdFusion development best practices that reduce stress, inefficiency, project lifecycle costs while simultaneously increasing project velocity and innovation.

√ Easily create a consistent server architecture across development, testing, and production

√ A modern test environment to prevent bugs from spreading

√ Automated continuous integration tools that work well with CF

√ A portable development environment baked into your codebase… for free!

Learn about these and many more strategies in our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.

Originally published at teratech.com on November 9, 2018.