We will be co-hosting a MAX Europe BOF session entitled “ColdFusion In Europe”. Yes, the topic is deliberately vague and open-ended because we’d like a completely open free-form discussion about ColdFusion in Europe – and we want to discuss it all, the good, the bad, and even the ugly. So, if you’ll be joining us in Barcelona next week, and use (or want to use, or don’t want to use, or used to use) ColdFusion, please drop by to share and discuss. I don’t have an exact time yet, but it will be Monday evening. We hope to see you there.
MAX Europe ColdFusion BOF
13 responses to “MAX Europe ColdFusion BOF”
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I wish I could go to Barcelona. You probably know what I’d be asking, Ben. When will Adobe make it their practice to assign account managers to every CF Enterprise customer?
If I buy a $200 product from a small company I have usually been able to talk to staff who are happy to give me technical information, investigate bugs, sort out licensing issues, or even provide decent pre-sales support. At the other end of the scale I’ve spent large amounts of money with major companies who have been able to provide the same level of service. And all that is without a support contract. I think it comes under the banner "looking after customers." 😉
The size of Adobe and my $ spend fits within those examples but their service wouldn’t register a blip if I was to plot a chart. (I’m not counting asking Ben for assistance as he’s a unique exception and I thank him for being there for us.) If anyone feels the same and is going to Barcelona please raise this issue. Thanks. -
Gary,
In the US (and Canada) there are indeed account managers who sell CF and LiveCycle and Flex and Connect and more. Some accounts have dedicated reps, other accounts are handled by reps who manage a specific region, and so on. Customers can indeed talk to these reps at any time about all sorts of issues and all sorts of products – including ColdFusion. The problem, however, is that with so many products to sell, ColdFusion sometimes does not get the attention it deserves (put yourself in the shoes of a sales rep or account manager who gets paid based on what he/she sells – you’ll likely gravitate to the higher price point products, as an example). Which is why in the US we have added dedicated CF account reps – customers can still talk to their regular reps, but CF gets extra special attention, because it needs and warrants it. And it works very well.
In other locations, including in Europe, there are no ColdFusion dedicated reps. Actually, account management and sales in these locations usually involve partners and resellers, so things get a bit more complex. And yes, I agree that we’ve done a woefully inadequate job when it comes to ColdFusion in Europe specifically. We had incredible momentum in Allaire days, and lost it all in Macromedia days, and it’s an uphill battle now. We’ve made real progress, but we have a ways to go yet. And this this chat.
— Ben -
Glad to see this BoF being added Ben. We’ve got lots of things to talk about!
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Totally agree with Andy on this one Ben.
I went from 4.5 to MX7 in Washington DC and could have changed companies every other week it is so popular. Even now I get 3 to 6 emails from head hunters every week.
I think in all of Germany there may be a handful of companies that consider themselves CF solution providers. Heck even Germany’s CFUG (www.cfug.de) is offline! Someone from cfug.de please contact me if you need a hosting provider (gary [at] garyrgilbert.com)
I will definitely be there! -
Like Gary I can’t make it to Barcelona but I could I’d raise the issue of availability of CF staff.
I’ve been recruiting recently in the UK and have had prob’s getting quality CF staff.
Is there not a case for Adobe to subsidise the training of CF? It would help counter the claim from management against CF that staff are hard to come by as opposed to .NET/PHP etc.
dickbob -
@Gary: I am the UGM of CFUG.de … we were inactive for a couple of months, but, since July we are back. Our site is not offline, though indeed it is very …well… ugly. 😉 (We just had a design contest and the winning entry is being transformed into
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Just to throw in that representatives of both the Scottish CFUG (myself) and the UKCFUG (Mark Drew and Kev McCabe) will be there too, in addition to 3 of the organising team from the Scotch on the Rocks ColdFusion conference (myself and Kev plus one other).
Oh, I’m also giving the CF8 Server Monitoring talk … -
And I may now even give away another Scotch on the Rocks T-Shirt to the best Question / Answer at the BOF.
dickbob,
Indeed it is hard to find CF Developers Send me a mail 😉 -
Dickbob,
As a CF contractor I get calls about jobs quite regularly. One of the major issues is the rate. With other technologies the rates are around £350 per day, where as with CF, some clients think £200 per day is reasonable.
With the lack of support from Adobe and the low rates why would anybody consider getting into CF?
Adam -
Other technologies being .NET (C#)/Java or PHP/Perl?
If you are comparing other scripting languages then yeah thats pretty lame but if you are comparing .Net or Java programming to CF thats one hell of a bias to overcome. -
To get the higher rates you do need to be totally rounded and have the ability to do other stuff rther then just CF, and if employers can see that then you can get teh rates. Its the right person for the righ job and all that 😉
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Well recently a contract came up in Wales. (It’s still around I think) They wanted 2 people at £25 per head and have been surprised at the complete lack of candidates. The going rate for CF developers is around £37-45 per hour outside of London.
The best thing that happened to CF was MX. It absolutely blew away all those people that ‘fell’ into CF because it was easy to code in. Suddenly you had to use components. If you didn’t have a general programming background you very very quickly came unstuck.
I was in one contract where the two previous contractors ‘gave up’ because of the complexity of the development.
These days there is a push to integrate CF with Hibernate (and to some level Spring). I do believe the CF = php developer bedroom boy viewpoint is not as valid.
On a side point I think Hibernate is crucial as it allows you to Flex your web app…..
Adam -
Other technologies being .NET (C#)/Java or PHP/Perl?
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