I just got back from the "Powered by Detroit" (http://poweredbydetroit.org/) ColdFusion and Flash conference in Detroit Michigan on April 9-10.

I arrived Friday morning in time for the User Group manager sessions and met some old friends and gleaned some tips on running my group (MDCFUG) better. The conference was sponsored by local user groups and there are many strong groups in the area. Over 120 people attended.

The conference hotel was a Hyatt and was right next to the Ford world headquarters building (Detroit is motor town - freeways going everyway - walking is not a big option here!). Next, it was on to the speaker dinner and a chance to chat with other speakers from across the country. I met R Blank from the LA Flash UG who had just flown in to be here from Flash Forward in LA.

Saturday morning kicked off the main conference with local user group leader Cornel Ivanescu of CI Web Design, who organized PbD (the acronym for Powered by Detroit), speaking after breakfast. Then it was in to one of 3 sessions. I chose to talk with some of the exhibitors instead - including Macromedia User Groups, PaperThin and InterAkt. It turned out that Cornel and InterAkt are both from Romania, but fortunately for me they all spoke excellent English!

Next up were some cool talks on Flash video and streaming content. Then Macromedia's Greg Rewis gave the Day One keynote. He demoed the cool new features in Flash 8 (faster graphics, animated text, alpha channel video) and talked about Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). It is all about the experience, he said (and high sales on RIA sites!)

After lunch I took a break to walk the Henry Ford house and gardens that were opposite the hotel. Then back for some more sessions on Flex, Flash sound and e-commerce. When they finished it was time to check out the House of Fusion community suite - a place to read books, talk with fellow developers and play video games. I tried out a dance video game with Angela Buraglia (Dreamweaver book author and speaker) that involved touch sensitive dance mats and an Xbox. It was my first time with this user interface but I had a good time! I tried to get Michael and Judith Dinowitz (who run House of Fusion) to join in but they couldn't join in until after sundown.

Who's Going to CFUNITED in June?
Suitably fired up by the Community Suite I went for dinner with the InterAkt guys, Charlie Arehart, Barbara O'Neil, Rick Mason and some other attendees to the Big Fish restaurant. Again avoiding driving, we walked there - which definitely confused some Detroit natives. Once we'd eaten it was time to hit the conference Saturday night event, which was held in the revolving restaurant at the top of the hotel. Access was via a special elevator that goes through the roof. I felt I was in a James Bond movie until I saw Ben Forta at the bar without a Martini. There was lots of ColdFusion to talk about and it seemed that the topic on everyone's lips was "Who's going to CFUNITED in June?" My informal poll of attendees suggested that more than 50% were going. I met a lot of speakers and user group managers and rotated around the Detroit skyline a few times before calling it a night.

Ben Forta's Keynote
Sunday dawned bright and early for me as I was giving the first talk of the day on Project Management. The audience gave lots of interaction for early Sunday morning and we shared many good tips on how to manage a software project. Then I checked out some sessions on CFMX 7 before lunch and the Ben Forta keynote. Cornel had planned a big entrance for Ben, so he was in a Hummer car just offstage. I joined the other user group managers in pushing the car with Ben in it on stage. As we pushed, Cornel said "Macromedia goes a lot faster with User Groups behind it."

Ben talked about some of the lesser known features in CFMX 7, including improved Verity text search and better graphing.

After lunch I saw some talks on Flex and e-Learning. Other speakers at PbD included Kevin Hoyt, Michael Dinowitz, Simon Horwith, Michael Smith, Jeffry Houser, Charlie Arehart and Shlomy Gantz. Then it was on to the first 1Flash/CFM Application Festival and Awards Ceremony. The show ended with raffling off prizes from CFUNITED, Centric Web and many books from the Community suite.

All in all it was a great show and hats off to Cornel for organizing it. See you there next year.