CFUnited, originally called CFUN, is an annual conference held in August by Stellr. The four-day conference focuses on Adobe Systems web-application development language ColdFusion, the related technologies Flex and AIR, and related skills such as customer interaction, project management, team management, programming methodology, and databases.[1] In addition to over 100 topic sessions, the conference includes "birds of a feather" and discussion panels, and several optional day long classes.[2] The conference has changed venues annually, shifting between Rockville and Bethesda, Maryland, and most recently Leesburg, Virginia.
The conference first debuted in Bethesda on June 26, 1999 as a free one day conference hosted by TeraTech and the Maryland Coldfusion Users Group called "DCCFUC'99 ColdFusion User Conference".[3][4] The conference hosted over 500 attendees. With the success of that conference, and a subsequent user group meeting held by TeraTech in May 2000, TeraTech decided to make the conference an annual event. The second conference, renamed CFun, began July 29, 2000, was expanded to a two day format and added a game event modeled on Who Wants to be a Millionaire that awarded the winner a copy of ColdFusion Server Enterprise Edition, valued at $5000. As in the previous year, the conference was free and was held in the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda.[5] TeraTech expected 750 attendees.[5] The following year, the conference name changed to 2001: A CF Odyssey.[6][7]
For the 2002 event, the conference returned to using the name CFUN. The two-day event had a registration fee of $249, with an early registration discount offered, and moved to a hotel venue in Rockville. It was the first to feature Ben Forta as a keynote speaker.[8] With the switch from a free to a paid conference occurring the year before, attendance dropped severely. Though it was sold out, only 300 attending the 2002 event.[9] CFUN-03 moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland, expanded to include 24 speakers, and introduced more formalized topic tracks to the event, with four concurrent sessions offered at a time, one from each track.[9][10][11]
Attendance continued to grow, and in 2005 the conference took on its current name of CFUnited to reflect its larger size. Now a three-day conference with 64 sessions and costing $849, the conference saw nearly attendees.[12][13][14] In 2009, TeraTech's conferencing organization arm became a separate division in the company called Stellr. The conference was moved to August, the venue shifted slightly to Leesburg, Virginia, and it was expanded to a four-day conference, with sessions from the first three days with the most popular ones repeated on Saturday, and included a choice of over half a dozen day long classes the day before the conference.[2] The conference had 600 attendees, the costs increased to $1149 (not including the class), and had approximately 60 speakers.
   | Official CFUNITED site - CFUnited 2009: A ColdFusion, Flex & AIR Conference |
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