In the past, the US has held a near monopoly not only in ColdFusion-based user groups, but also conferences, with CFUnited, cf.Objective() and the more general Adobe MAX leading the way.

But the landscape is changing and the UK is challenging for its share of the scene. 2008 is seeing a renaissance in the ColdFusion world following on from the buzz created around the release of ColdFusion 8 in 2007 and the eagerly anticipated future release of ColdFusion, codenamed Centaur. This buzz has resulted in not one but three conferences for 2008: CFUnited Europe was held in London in March, Scotch-on-the-Rocks was held in Edinburgh in June and soon we will see the return of CFDevCon.

The inaugural CFDevCon one-day-conference was held back in 2006, in Croydon, but in September 2008 it is heading down to what is arguably one of the creative capitals in the south of England, Brighton. The conference has not only become a two-day conference, but its scope has moved beyond simply Adobe-based products, with the introduction of Microsoft-based technologies, specifically IIS7.0, Silverlight and SQL Server 2008 and technology-agnostic topics such as Regular Expressions, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Accessibility.

As with all great conferences, CFDevCon has a great line-up of speakers with the likes of Sean Corfield, Hal Helms, Peter Elst, Peter Bell, Aral Balkan and Simon Bailey, to name a few, all presenting sessions.

So, lets get excited people, support the conferences and user groups and evangelise ColdFusion.