So, if you haven't already bought your ticket for RIA Unleashed : Boston, I have good news and bad news. The good news is there will be even more prizes to give away including a copy of CS4 Web Premium, Flex Builder Professional and ColdFusion Standard thanks to Adobe. In addition, we will have 3 licenses of FDT Pure thanks to Powerflasher. Finally, ThinkGeek has offered us several items from their extensive array of products to give away. This means you have even more reasons (as if any were needed) to come to RIA Unleashed.

What's the bad news? Well, the bad news is that if you don't act fast, you may not be able to get a ticket. As of writing this post with still 2 1/2 weeks to go, we only have 15 tickets remaining. Given the rate they have been selling, we could be sold out as early as even today! While that's bad news if you are still procrastinating, its great news for me, for the event and everyone who is attending and for the future of RIA Unleashed : Boston. So, register today! I hope to see you there!

An article I wrote for the Adobe Edge has just come out entitled "A guide to Adobe developer groups and resources online" which covers a myriad of options for getting involved in the Adobe developer community. Some of the options it discusses are about joining a user group, reading blogs, going to conferences or local events, joining mailing lists, tapping into social networking and even directly contacting an Adobe Community Expert with your questions. Obviously, if you are reading this post, you are likely doing many of these things already.

What You Can Do
Chances are, you know many people who aren't doing any of them. The goal of the article is to offer a wide range of options for getting involved so that anyone could feel like there is something in there that fits them. Feel free to point your coworkers or friends who you think could use this information to the page or even expand on it by creating a post of your own that adds resources and links that I didn't (I had to choose more general items in order to not make this a book and admit that the events are very US-centric). The point is, help people get involved! Often it seems that the active part of our community is small. The more people involved the more active evangelists we have and the more feedback there is to make the products better.

Some Missing Items
As I note above, the events were very US-centric so I missed items like Scotch on the Rocks in Europe and cf.Objective(ANZ) in Australia (and probably others). I also forgot to mention RIAdventure, which is a unique opportunity to join fellow developers on a cruise that is also a conference. I'm sure each of you has a favorite resource or event I missed - so, as I mentioned, expand the list by posting your items either here, on your own blog, or via any of the other channels listed on the article.

I caught a post on TechCrunch about a service called TweepML which is a new XML-based, open format for sharing groups of Twitter. They actually have a published spec for developers to use and extend if they wish. However, you can also simply use the site to create groups of users and get a link that should allow people to follow all of the suggested users with a single-click (or maybe a click or two). I thought this was a very useful idea for businesses and sites that include multiple contributors. It is also interesting, in part, because I know a lot of people just getting started on Twitter who don't know who to follow. I decided to try it out and create two lists - one of ColdFusion bloggers who are using Twitter and one of Flex bloggers. I did my best to include everyone I know (both are a subset of people I follow) but focused on those that a) have an active blog focused on the specific technology and b) actively use Twitter (so don't be offended if I didn't include you). Also, some people write about both but I decided to include them in one list or the other depending on what I perceive as their emphasis. If people find this useful I will try to keep the lists up to date, and if you have suggestions on users to add (or remove) please email me or comment on this post.

ColdFusion Bloggers
Flex Bloggers

My latest article for the Adobe Edge Newsletter has been published. It is a beginner's guide to using the Mate framework for Flex and while the example in the article uses a ColdFusion back-end, that isn't the focus of the article. Frameworks, whether in Flex or ColdFusion, can be a bit of the "flavor of the week" type of thing and its easy to get caught up in the hype. However, I have found that, for me, the Mate framework has been a fantastic help in my Flex development. So, if you've been looking to get started with the framework, please check my article out.

On a related note, I will be presenting this very topic at this year's CFUnited. My presentation is "A ColdFusion Developer's Guide to the Mate Flex Framework" and, obviously, will have a stronger focus on how Mate works spefically with a ColdFusion back-end.

Just a quick note to let readers know that my review of the 360Flex conference was just posted to InsideRIA. As you may have noticed by reading my session summaries, it was a great conference - but I will let you get rest from the review. Thanks to Rich Tretola for adding me as an InsideRIA contributor and I look forward to contributing more.