I am back from cf.Objective and I finally have a second to write about it. I actually tried to write a review of my whole experience, but that ended up being pretty long, so I decided just to hit some of the highlights.

First off, the presentations were all great and I learned a lot. It was also great to meet some of the people whose blogs I had seen.

I also got to have Mark Mandel (of Transfer fame) show me his Oracle implementation code (looked exactly like code I had used without luck, so I am not sure what I am doing wrong).

I started using CFEclipse about 2 weeks ago, but I have been having trouble figuring out some functionality. So it was great when I got the opportunity (thanks to Brian Rinaldi) to sit down with Mark Drew and have him show me how to do those things I needed but hadn't yet figured out.

The biggest impact for me will be on process. I certainly feel like our existing process has been working well, but I learned several areas in which we could stand to improve it.

The process presentations I attended were:

Each of these presentations was really good and will influence our new processes. Most of the rest of the presentations were generally on new features of Scorpio or on Flex integration or specific tools/frameworks (eg Mach-II, ColdSpring, Model-Glue).

The social aspect of the conference was great as well. Whether that was going to Hard Rock Cafe or hanging out trying to watch the fight (still haven't seen it so don't tell me what happened). It was great fun to finally put faces to names that I have seen and meet some new (to me) developers as well.

Things I plan to change as a result of the conference:

• Start using Test Driven Development
• Improve our security practices
• Implement several of Hal's development strategies
• Dedicate some real time to testing Scorpio

One of the things I really wanted to find out more about this conference was ColdSpring. I was really impressed with it.

I have been using a home-grown DI/IOC Engine for some time now (since before ColdSpring was released). As to whether I will switch to ColdSpring, that is a topic that deserves an entry of its own.

My only complaint is that the rooms were a bit cold. Certainly a small complaint for such a great conference. I had learned a lot and had a lot of fun.

I will remember long-sleave shirts next time, because I am definitely coming back next year!