Ok so in all seriousness I wasn't a special guest or anything, but I did get the opportunity to participate in the recording of Episode 4 — released early this morning — and I couldn't pass it up. I'll do my best to get links together for everyone that participated, but I don't think they all have a blog or even twitter account — or I may just not have them all. Sorry if I miss anyone! (But tell me, so I can update the list…)

• Host and Discussion Leader: Brian Meloche (and of course, operator of cfconversations.com)
• Adam Haskell, who wasn't in the BOF/session, was also part of the Podcast.
• "PHP Reformers" group:
  • Myself,
  • Seth Bienek,
  • Ken Auenson,
  • Chris Hough, and
  • Tim Farrar
• "New Blood" group:
  • John Farrar,
  • Brian Swartzfager,
  • Rick Mason,
  • Dana Tierney,
  • Ezra Parker, and
  • Jeff Coughlin

I'm not going to spoil the podcast for you, but I thought it might be interesting to write about some of the things we discussed in our BOF-turned-session (… turned-podcast) that didn't go into the podcast. The BOF was, of course, part of CFUnited 2008. The exercise was to brainstorm ideas for promoting CFML outside of the CFML community, and then to pick the best ideas as a group, and come up with a potential strategy for implementing them.

One person in each group was assigned the task of thinking of ludicrous ideas that would never get implemented. My perception of this role was that it was there primarily to set the tone in the group that there were no limitations — that no idea was too grandiose — and that the important thing was just to get the creative juices flowing, and sort out the good from the bad later. I have to say that I think this was a brilliant move on Brian's part. Here are some of the ideas that the PHP Reformers group came up with that, while … "interesting" … didn't get voted high enough to be given much attention. I suppose I should preface this by saying that these aren't intended to be condescending or hurtful to the PHP community, a majority of these came from our designated ludicrous idea contributor.

• Write a PHP Virus (Written in PHP? Attacks PHP? Who knows?)
• "Adopt a PHP Developer" week
• Free hosting
• CF vs. PHP commercials (ala Mac vs. PC)
• Spy on PHP for new feature ideas
• Get a CF Mascot / spokesperson
• Hold CFUnited @ Hooters Casino in Las Vegas
• Buy CF and get a mail order bride
• Guerilla warfare — Join the PHP team and sabotage their codebase
• Make star wars style movie for CF
• Nascar driver for CF — Adam Haskell actually mentioned this in the podcast…
• Rent a blimp
• Two words: Superbowl Ad
• <CFPorn />
• Celebrity Advocation
• Smear campaign against PHP (Bad spokesperson, false rumors, etc)

Can you build on this list? What other ways (again, the point is to be over the top!) could you convince more PHP developers to learn CFML?