I'm finally getting around to really digging into ColdFusion 9 and stumbled on a very strange error with Flash Remoting (specifically the Flex Messaging Gateway) in one of my applications. The app worked just fine on CF 8 but I started getting a 'foo is undefined in event.data.body' when I tried it in 9. So I started doing my standard troubleshooting. Step one was to dump out the struct in question. Oddly enough, my key was there and it had a value. Next I tried structKeyExists() and sure enough CF told me that the key did in fact exist. However, when I tried to access the value I'd get the exception. I even tried associative array notation and accessing the keys as uppercase in case there was some weirdness going on. That didn't work either.

A buddy sent me an opening today on behalf of his friend who is looking for help developing a Flex/AIR app. Here is the listing:

I wanted to help spread the word about two new conference options for developers. The first is the RIAdventure 360 Cruise that will be held December 6-13 on the high seas of the Western Caribbean. This is the second iteration of this event which is organized by my buddy Josh Cyr. Josh says:

I'm thrilled to announce the launch of a new community effort, cfpanel. This is an effort put together by myself and Dan Vega to bring a new live podcast hosted by a rotating panel of community members to discuss relevant topics.

Read more here.

The ColdFusion 9/Bolt/Flex 4 world tour makes it's highly anticipated stop in Cleveland tomorrow night. World famous ColdFusion Project Manager extraordinaire Adam Wayne 'Adrock' Lehman will make his illustrious solo debut when he presents information about the highly touted new software releases from Adobe.

From the Cleveland CFUG site:

The June meeting will be held on Wednesday, June 17, 2009, from 6:00PM - 8:00PM, at the offices of Dealer Tire, LLC, located at 3711 Chester Ave., Cleveland, OH 44114. Dealer Tire is located just east of the I-90 Chester exit, and just west of the East 40th Street traffic light. Note: If coming from I-90 and Chester, prepare to do a U-turn at East 40th.

If you're within driving distance of Cleveland I seriously recommend you come up for the event. I can't be certain, but I hear rumors that Adrock will be giving away $10,000 to one lucky attendee. (OK, that's a complete lie, but I wouldn't be surprised if he gave out some cool schwag).

Be there!!!!

I'm happy to announce that the CFEmmy awards have now evolved into the Adobe Community Achievement Awards. I started the CFEmmys a few years ago as a way for community members to recognize the outstanding achievements of their peers for the sometimes thankless work they do to grow our community. I'm really excited that Liz and Nafisa have thrown their support behind this effort - it should be a blast to present the awards at CFUnited.

Nominations are being accepted until June 8. Feel free to nominate those who you think deserve to be on the ballot. We'll hold a round of voting once all the nominations are in and the winners will be announced during CFUnited in August.

We are in the midst of 'conference season' where many folks within the Adobe Developer Communities (ColdFusion, Flex, AIR, etc) are attending any of a number of amazing events to learn about our favorite technologies. I specifically mention Adobe technologies because the majority of my audience here at my blog use those technologies on a daily basis, but this post certainly applies to anyone who has a need to present material in front of an audience.

So as many of my readers know, I run a presentation sharing community called SlideSix. I often encourage friends and acquaintences to post their slides to SlideSix. Many of them actually do, albeit sometimes reluctantly. By far, the most common complaint I hear from folks is some variation of "my slides really aren't that helpful without my presentation."

My response to that statement may surprise you - I completely agree. Which is why SlideSix is much more then slide sharing. There are other sites for that, and they seem to be pretty happy in letting folks post slides that may be meaningless outside of the context of the material that was actually presented. SlideSix is about presentation sharing. Once you've uploaded your slides you can easily record audio or video narration for your slides within our management console. Recorded narration can take a simple slide deck and give it meaning. It can put context to your bullet points and images and let you tell the story behind your message. Want to show a demo of something? Record it with any standard screencasting software, upload it to YouTube or Vimeo then search for it in SlideSix and attach it right to your slide. Sure, it may take a little time to put together a proper web based multimedia presentation, but the payoff is an impressive product that you can embed on your site so people who may not have had a chance to see your presentation in person can have a very similar experience to those who were lucky enough to see it live.

SlideSix is also the perfect tool to practice your presentation. How many times have you stood in front of a mirror or your dog and practiced giving your presentation? Did you really benefit from doing that? Wouldn't it be much better to actually record (and re-record) your material so that you could actually view it back and share with others for feedback?

I encourage presenters to take a look at SlideSix for your presentation needs. You'll be happy you did, and so will your audience.

Last week I learned that I've been selected as an Adobe Community Expert. I'm very excited and honored to be chosen to participate in this program. Adobe explains the program this way:

Why should I attend CFUnited 2009?

Over the weekend I quietly implemented a new feature at SlideSix. The management console is a great way to have full control over your presentations, profile and groups, but I realized that sometimes users just want to quickly upload or import a presentation. To that end I've added a new page to allow you to do just that. Now when you login to SlideSix you'll see a new link at the top of the page: