Max 2008 marks my 25th (differently named) CF conference as a speaker!

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

I mentioned last night my delight in learning that I'd been selected to speak at Adobe Max later this year. It got me thinking: that was the one remaining major CF conference that I'd not yet spoken to over the last 10 years. I mentioned that I'd spoken at the MM and Allaire Devcons before it, but as I looked back in my records (carehart.org/presentations/, and elsewhere), I was surprised to see just how many there had been.

I can now say that (as of July 2008) I've been selected to speak at:

1. Adobe Max (2008)
2. CFunited (all 10, starting with when it was called CFUN and the DCCFUC before that)
3. cf.objective (2008, 2007)
4. Scotch on the Rocks (2008)
5. Webmaniacs (2008)
6. CFunited Europe (2008)
7. WebDU (2007)
8. CFUnited Express (2007: Atl, SF, Chi)
9. Minimax (2007, 2005)
10. CFDevcon (London) (2006)
11. Powered by Detroit (2005)
12. MX Vegas (2003)
13. CF Europe (2003, 2002)
14. MX On The Rocks, Denver (2003)
15. Southern Cal Regional CF Conf (2003)
16. Macromedia DevCon (2002, 2001)
17. CF Underground (2002, 2001, 2000)
18. MX/CFNorth (2003, 2002)
19. Colorado Macromedia TechCon (2002)
20. MXDC (2002)
21. CF Edge Conference (2001)
22. Fusebox Conference (2003, 2001)
23. CF Odyssey, Bethesda (2001)
24. Allaire DevCon (2000)
25. The first national CF Conference in Ft Collins (1998)

Sadly, a lot of them were one-off events, but I always want to support conference organizers. (No one at the first CFUN would ever have imagined it would turn into CFUnited, for instance.)

And while I was invited to speak at CFSouth in 2001, I ended up being unable to attend due to my father's passing the weekend before.

I should note that there are still a couple more conferences that I didn't make or haven't made. No slight intended in not mentioning them. I'm just listing those I did speak at.

Add in user groups...for about 200 presentations!

Considering that I've spoken at some conferences for multiple years, that makes over 45 appearances total. And it's still more presentations, really, since I've often presented more than one topic at a single conference. Then if we count repeated sessions...it's been a lot of talks.

And of course, that's all in addition to all the presentations I've given to, wow, I count now nearly 60 different user groups around the country (and internationally) during the past 11 years! All told, again since I've often presented to a single user group more than once over the years, it looks like I've given nearly 200 presentations total across all CF user groups and conferences. (And that's not counting other conferences like SQL Pass, MS CodeCamps, Wireless Devcons, and then several other IT conferences during my 15 years prior to getting into CF in 1997.)

And I'm happy to say that they've not all been the same talk! :-) It's been nearly 80 different topics!

Details on past talks

If anyone's interested in the details of the talks, I list nearly all of them (with titles, descriptions, dates, locations, and links to the slides) at my site's presentations section. I can say that some are as valuable today as years ago, since I sometimes still point them to to people looking for discussion of a given topic (sometimes I've never ended up writing an article on a topic that I presented as a speaker.)

Not bragging, just looking back on a career, encouraging others, and giving thanks

I don't say any of this to brag. Not at all. It's really just rather unusual when one has a chance to stop and look back on their career (other than when writing a resume.)

You just do things day in and day out, and often you never realize how much you can accomplish with a slow and steady pace. Same with the more than 60 articles I've done, too. You just don't notice the pace while you're in the middle of it. Like the journey of a 1,000 steps, it all begins with the first. In that respect, I'd like to encourage any who've thought of giving a talk or writing an article to *just do it*. You never know where that first step may lead. :-)

Anyway, again, it's really nice to add Max as the capstone to this list. Thanks to all the organizers and attendees who've supported my presentations over the years.

For a real time warp, you can find out more about the various conferences I mentioned (including seeing speaker lists, topics, pictures, and more) at the CFConf.org site, which lists them all going back to 1998.

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