Our next speaker would've betted with absolute certainty that he was going to be a university professor of English literature. As you may have guessed, because his  ITB session isn't a lecture on SonnetBox, even best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Everyone, please meet Matthew Clemente.

Matt will be leading the “Do It with CFML: Building Your Own Tools with CommandBox” session on Thursday, May 7th at 1:00 PM - 1:50 PM. You should attend since “CommandBox has made managing CFML servers so much easier - but if you're only using it to spin up servers, you're barely scratching the surface of what CommandBox can do. If you're interested in all the other stuff that CommandBox can do, and more ways that it can make you life easier, and automate your workflows, my session should provide you with a solid starting point.” 

As to what he’s looking forward to, he states: “So, so many of the sessions. Most of them for practical, real-world uses. However, I'm particularly looking forward to Tony Junkes session, "Build A Desktop Application Powered By Electron, VueJS & CFML", because I probably would get the chance to explore that tech, were it not for the conference.”

Our next Into the Box speaker is a  fanatic pizzaiolo, home baker and never buys bread from supermarkets. He is also the admin of the Dutch home baking forum. He’s been using CF since the dark times of CF 1.5 when CFML was still called DBML and Java was just something to make the  Netscape browser slower. Everyone, please meet Wil de Bruin. 

Wil will be leading the Validate! (or fail…) session on May 7th from 3:10 PM until 4:00 PM. In his own words, you should attend his session even though “ cbvalidation is already [considered] an 'old' module, but most people don't use it to its full potential. I want to show people more ways to use it. You don't need other ways of validation. And I will discuss where we can still improve on this module.”

When it comes to a Box product of his liking, he states: “CommandBox, and many many modules. Some of my favourites: qb and cfmigrations for most database stuff, cbvalidation for it's power, and the new cbsecurity for all new features. And HMVC rest templates. They make developing our API a lot easier. Now the REST handler will be part of coldbox6 it makes it even more usable, and better documented.” 

At our previous conferences, Wil always liked the discussions with other people, the party and of course the inspiring content. However, “this year it is just the content, I will really miss the people. The thing I do like this year is: no jetlag and not being in a plane for 2x10 hours.”

We’d like to introduce you to Shawn Oden, our next speaker in our Blog Post Series. When asked  to share something funny about himself, he turned to his son and this happened: “I asked [him] what he thought was funny about me, he said "Your face." Which is rather ironic, since he looks almost exactly like me.”  Oh how the have tables turned!

 

Shawn will be leading the “The Golden Hammer: Confessions of a Recovering Database Abuser” session on May 8th at 11:00 AM until 11:50 AM.  You should attend since “almost every developer touches a database in some way.” I spent a long time being annoyed that my database was always a bottleneck. I was fortunate enough to have a patient DBA who was willing to work with me to show me a better way to do the things I was trying to do.  I'll try to share some of the lessons I learned.”

 

Having our virtual conference has benefits and drawbacks as Shawn mentions: “Normally, my favorite part of conferences is the Hallway Track, but that's going to be a bit different this year.” Yet he is hopeful since “over the past several years, the sessions at Into The Box have always looked pretty amazing, and this year is no exception. I always have the dilemma of figuring out which sessions to attend, and even with a virtual conference, I already know I'm going to be watching some recordings later.I'm very interested in the available containerization features, and I want to hit the sessions on Testing and CI. But mostly, as a data guy, I'd love to learn more about QB and Quick. Those are probably the sessions I'm most looking forward to.”

At Into the Box, we consider ourselves modernizers and innovators. As such, we choose speakers and sessions that will benefit and teach attendees about the ever-changing technology. Today we’ll highlight Michael Born. Michael is an Ortus senior developer, and will lead the “Power Up Your Search with cbElasticSearch” session on May 7th from 2:00 PM until 2:50 PM. He’s the one with different colored eyebrows and eyelashes - one blond, one dark brown. All this makes him suspect he’s his own twin…

 

Debating whether to attend? According to Michael, “if your web app needs search capabilities, you almost certainly need Elasticsearch. If you need Elasticsearch, you need CBElasticsearch. And if you need CBElasticsearch, you need my talk to teach you how to use CBElasticSearch. I cover using Elasticsearch in CFML from basic concepts all the way to integrating search into your API handlers.” 

 

Still hesitant? Follow Michael’s advice: “You know, they tell us in school "don't choose a course, choose a professor". That's no different for ITB. I learned a lot from Brad's talk last year and I'm really looking forward to his "Migrating The Legacy Out of your Applications!" for this year.” 

 

As to his favorite Box product,  he states “definitely have to go with ColdBox. Everything else is just a supportive role - we can't have "nice things" without ColdBox. I wrote APIs using vanilla CFML for years before I ever started using ColdBox, and I would never go back. Basically, ColdBox makes CFML modern and powerful.”

In an effort to have attendees “meet” our speakers, we have started our Speaker Blog Post Series. Next up, we have Brian Klaas. Brian is the Senior Technology Officer at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Teaching and Learning but he has also been voted The Meanest Dad in the World ™ four years running by the voting academy of his children.

 

He will be leading the “I Didn’t Know S3 Could Do That” session on May 7th from 5:10 PM to 6:00 PM. According to Brian, “there is so much more to S3 than just storing files. Really. There's a huge amount of functionality — and cost savings! — if you step beyond the basics of what our CFML runtimes provide us with S3 integration. It's not terribly hard to achieve, and I'm happy to share with everyone just how easy it is to make that happen. Improved security, significant cost savings, and powerful functionality — all in a couple of lines of code. Sounds like a bad marketing ploy but it's shockingly true!” 

 

When it comes to his favorite Box product, he states: “there are many good choices, but today it's ColdBox. Any programming language doesn't go very far these days without a great, de facto framework. ColdBox is and has evolved from a simple MVC framework to one that agilely handles a variety of web application tasks. And all the good ColdBox packages via ForgeBox? Damn.” Make sure to tune in to his talk and after that, stay for a little mingling! He’s looking forward to connecting with “people much, much smarter than me showing me better ways of working. And, always, the Happy Hour, to which I will gladly bring my awesome bourbon punch this year.”