With the topics not coming until later September/early October the speaker list for Scotch On The Rocks 2011 has been released
scotch-on-the-rocks.co.uk/blog/index.cfm/2010/9/1/SOTR2011-Speakers-Unleashed

The 2010 conference was a great 2-day ColdFusion overload of information and networking opportunities so if you haven't got your ticket for 2011 go now!

Get 'em while they are Super Cheap, Fairly Cheap, or Kinda Cheap ... but just get 'em! Scotch on the Rocks is Europe's Longest Running ColdFusion Conference and in 2011 its gone back home to Edinburgh for 2011!

Register now at: http://sotr2011.eventbrite.com/

The title seems like the beginning of a joke but its all to do with Scotch On The Rocks in 2010.

So to answer questions like: Where the hell is SOTR2010?, is it going to be a tour, will it be in Amsterdam, go over to blog and read all about it

And the price of the ticket should make the tightest of managers happy - €0,00 (thats £0.00 or $0.00). You read that right, its free as in beer, so check out the scotch-on-the-rocks.co.uk site for more information. Below are the dates and locations. I'm already registered for London and trying my hardest to get to the Amsterdam one as well.

Location	Date
Munich	October 19th	[Register]
Zurich	October 21st	[Register]
Milan	October 23rd	[Register]
Amsterdam	October 26th	[Register]
Brussels	October 27th	[Register]
London	October 29th	[Register]

This is a shout out to anyone attending Scotch on the Road!

Conferences are a great place to network but with the amount of developers attending you might miss the chance to ping a question, or buy me them a beer. Also with Scotch being in 3 different places this year saying you're going isn't enough.

So in an effort to put bloggers/twitter'ers together leave a comment here letting everyone know your name, blog and/or twitter account, and the venue you're attending!

For the record I'm at the London event this year, and my twitter account where I tend to ramble, rant, talk crap is twitter.com/andyj

Please update your bookmarks and feeds for my site.

I now have a Mango Blog at:

http://www.andyjarrett.com/blog

Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/andyjarrett

Just to let you all know a new Facebook group has been created for the Scotch on the road!

Make sure you register today!

Still not got a ticket for Scotch on the road. Can't convince your manager to part with the £49+vat. Don't worry, you can still win a ticket! Check out http://www.andyjarrett.com/andy/blog/index.cfm/2009/5/7/A-free-ticket-to-Scotch-up-for-grabs

For first prize in the the Fridays Joke: Scotch on the Road competition there is now 1 ticket for Scotch on the Road up for Grabs! You can use this ticket at ANY of the three venues, London, Manchester, or Edinburgh

Nick Tong from TalkWebSolutions.co.uk has sponsored my Fridays Joke: Scotch on the Road competition to offer this prize so get your entries in.

The prizes:

• 3rd place will get their joke posted on my blog on Monday, June 1st which is the first day, London, conference.
• 2nd place will get their joke posted on my blog on Wednesday, June 3rd which is the second day, Manchester, conference.
• 1st place will get 1 Ticket to Scotch on the Road and they will be the Fridays Joke on both my blog and the Scotch blog on the June 5th which coincides with the last day Edinburgh event. Plus there is a bottle of whisky i'm giving away that I was fortunate enough to win at a previous Scotch event

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Update: First Prize now includes a Free ticket to Scotch on the Road. Nick Tong from TalkWebSolutions.co.uk has sponsored my Fridays Joke: Scotch on the Road competition so get your entries in.

I'm running a "send in a joke" competition for the Scotch on the Road conference and it's simple, all you have to do is send a joke!

The prizes:

• 3rd place will get their joke posted on my blog on Monday, June 1st which is the first day, London, conference.
• 2nd place will get their joke posted on my blog on Wednesday, June 3rd which is the second day, Manchester, conference.
• 1st place will get 1 Ticket to Scotch on the Road and they will be the Fridays Joke on both my blog and the Scotch blog on the June 5th which coincides with the last day Edinburgh event. Plus there is a bottle of whisky i'm giving away that I was fortunate enough to win at a previous Scotch event

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If the low low price of £49+vat (which is at a low of 15%) for a ticket to Scotch on the Road wasn't enough the guys have put together a Managers Information Pack for download.

Designed to give you're boss a little extra incentive for convincing that, "conferences are good; benefit you and your company ... and you get a ton of freebies too."

Check out: http://www.scotch-on-the-rocks.co.uk/blog/index.cfm/2009/4/20/SOTR-Managers-Information-Pack

Scotch On The Rocks has changed a little this year and is going on the roads with hopefully 3 one day events up and down the country, 2 of them already confirmed.

• Monday 1st June, London. This will be at the Sway Bar. Click here to learn more
• Wednesday June 3rd, Manchester. More details to come
• Friday 5th June 2009, Edinburgh This will be at the The Caves. Click here to learn more

And the cost of the One Day Events:

• £49 + VAT - 1 Event
• £89 + VAT - 2 Events
• £129 + VAT - 3 Events
• Group discount of 5 for the price of 4.
Being a one-day event will make it even more accessible to developers that can't usually afford to take a couple of days of and the price should make it a little easier for your manager to swallow too!

After last weeks Wee Dram announcement more information and registration is now available.

Its going to be a London ColdFusion conference in replacement for the sadly Cancelled CFDEVCON. A chance to see some of the best ColdFusion Speakers from the US and of course the UK's own Mark Drew (What ColdFusion Conference would be complete without him)

Where:
Square Pig
30 - 32 Proctor Street
Holborn
London
WC1R 4QG

When:
Thursday 25th September 2008, 10am to 6pm

Who (Schedule):
10:00 - Key Note - From Adam Lehman & Claude Englebert
11:00 - Break
11:15 - Coldspring by Mark Drew
12:15 - Break
12:30 - RAD Object Oriented CF Development by Peter Bell
13:30 - Lunch
14:15 - High Availability: Clustering ColdFusion Applications by Mike Brunt
15:15 - Break
15:30 - Subversion - better living through branches by Sean Corfield
16:30 - Break
16:45 - Setting up a Solid Level Local Dev Environment by Kurt Wiersma
17:45 - Thank Yous & Raffles
18:00 - Networking in the bar

How much:
£10 on the Door [Cash Only] (Includes 2 Free Drinks + 10% off SOTR09)
Click here to register now

For those of you who might not know A Wee Dram is a Scotish euphemism for a single shot of malt Scotch

Or in the case of ColdFusion developers its a single one day shot conference being held in the wake of CFDevcon being cancelled on Thursday 25h September.

Check out more at http://aweedram.com

For even more information check out http://inner-rhythm.co.uk/blog/index.cfm/2008/8/27/Anyone-for-A-Wee-Dram-of-Scotch

Being the last day of the SOTR i'd thought I should keep the joke topical even though I couldn't make it up this year. Enjoy!

A dude walks into a bar and says to the bartender : "I want a 12 years old scotch, and don't try to fool me because I can tell the difference."

The bartender is skeptical and decides to try to trick the man with a 3 year old scotch on the rocks.

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The first post of 2008 is here and its a joke, of course. Hope everyone had a good christmas/holiday. Enjoy the first of many Fridays of the year!

A fellow decides to take off early from work and go drinking. He stays until the bar closes at three in the morning, at which time he is extremely pissed. After leaving the bar, he walks home. When he enters his house, he doesn't want to wake his wife, so he takes off his shoes and starts tip-toeing up the stairs. Half-way up the stairs though, he falls over backwards and lands flat on his back. That wouldn't have been so bad, except that he had a half bottle of scotch in his back pocket, and it broke; the broken glass carved up his ass terribly. Yet, he was so drunk that he didn't know he was hurt.

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Scotch on the Rocks pricing announced

Also going to be title Comparing Costs of conferences. If you haven't seen already the SOTR blog has announced the pricing for next years conference.

£199 + VAT - Early Bird (Available until February 29th 2008) £299 + VAT - Full Price

I only really started attending conferences in 2006 at CFDevCon and since then have been a big advocate of them for many reasons! With Scotch on the Rocks just announcing it's prices I'd thought I'd see how it measures up against the other European options.

I've broken down the prices into two simple bands, early bird and standard. I've also not included bundled prices which add the pre and post tracks as these fall out of the scope of the general conference and are basically specialised training sessions.

Adobe Max (Europe) Full-Event pass: 3 days October 15-17th 2007

£535.70* (inc 16% VAT)	Early Bird discount, had to be purchased on or before September 7th, 2007
£709.20* (inc 16% VAT)	If purchased onsite October 14 - October 18, 2007

*Based on 1 GBP = 1.472 EUR CFUnited Europe: Full-event pass: 2 days March 12-13th 2008

£479 (inc 17.5% VAT)	Early Bird discount, had to be purchased on or before January 1st, 2008
£535.36* (inc 17.5% VAT)	without discount

*Based on 1 USD = 0.480119 GBP Scotch On The Rocks Full-event pass: 3 days June 4-6th 2008

£199 (+ 17.5% VAT)	Early Bird available until February 29th 2008
£299 (+ 17.5% VAT)	without discount

Just looking at the price in a plain format shows you what a good value SOTR is this year. Nearly half the price of its competition and a good speaker line up already. It looks like i'm heading back for some <cf_beer>

I don't know if this was meant for Andy Allan or me but I've come across this YouTube vid!

Stephen Moretti has just posted a new podcast with Andy Allan of Fuzzy Orange, the organiser behind Scotch on the Rocks.

In the podcast Stephen and Andy discuss what's coming with the next SOTR, covering how the next conference will be bigger and better, now 3 days and three tracks. From the sound of Andy, though nothing is confirmed, the prices will still be as reasonable as it's been this year which is a help, especially when either paying for it out of your own pocket or asking the boss to pay.

http://www.scotch-on-the-rocks.co.uk/blog/index.cfm/2007/9/3/Scotch-2008-Podcast-What-is-Scotch-on-the-Rocks

CFUnited Europe has released details about the conference on the site.

It looks like this will be a 2 day'er being held on March 12-13th 2008 at the Novotel London West, UK. The site is advertising a call for speakers still here, and i'm still thinking of added a Friday Joke category :o)

The hotel itself looks impressive with "5,500 square metres of highly adaptable space, a choice of 32 meeting rooms and 630 bedrooms"

To celebrate 10 years of CFUnited it's coming over the "pond" to Europe.

CFUnited is the only conference of its kind that is run by developers, for developers. The topics offered are exactly what web developers need to learn now and are based on real world experience.

The website doesn't have much content at the moment but it's coming along but at last it looks like Europe is starting to get its fair share of good conferences now!

If you want to present at the conference check out the CFUnited Blog there is an open call for speakers. It's times like this I wish there was a topic for Friday Jokes :o) I always liked the idea of speaking but just don't think I could cover a subject for an hour. Maybe 10 minutes in a pub with drinks ;o)