"Painting the Forth Bridge". This phrase was used to identify the fact that painting one of Edinburgh's iconic structures was a never ending job. The current painting of the bridge however, is slightly different in that a new approach has been taken that will see the paint work have an expected life of anywhere between 25 and 40 years, thereby eliminating the need to repaint continuously.

Organising Scotch on the Rocks (and I would imagine any conference) is somewhat similar to Painting the Forth Bridge. As soon as you're done, you start organising for the next year.

Now, we wouldn't persist in running the conference every year if we didn't enjoy it, but with anything in life, we're looking to streamline our approach so that we can spend less time on ... well, the time consuming areas. This was made a tad more difficult the last two years due to the economy and the fact we had to adapt or die.

I'm delighted to say that our 5 year plan, which was conceived in 2008 after things headed south, has proved to be fruitful.

Scotch on the Rocks 2011: March 3-4, 2011

2011 will see the conference head home to Edinburgh after 2 years traveling. Taking place at the Apex International hotel, in the Edinburgh Grassmarket, underneath the skyline dominating Edinburgh Castle, Europe's longest running ColdFusion conference will bring the best of the best from the world of ColdFusion, Flex, AIR, HTML5 and more to Edinburgh on March 3rd and 4th.

Tickets are already on sale, and in fact are already 50% sold out after just two weeks. For more information on the 2011 conference, and to purchase your ticket, head over to http://www.sotr.eu.

Our 3 year paint

Just like the painting of the bridge, we've managed to reduce some of the repetitiveness. One of the biggest tasks with organising a conference is finding a venue. For the next 3 years (2011-2013) we will be at the Apex International Hotel and this reduces our workload considerably. It also allows us to build up a good relationship with the hotel, and with that comes the opportunity to provide better deals with our delegates and sponsors.

Here's to a long and illustrious life, for both the Bridge and Scotch on the Rocks.