User:MrsGorilla/Matt Gifford

Matt Gifford (born 23 July 1979 in Cambridge, England) is a British author, web developer and international speaker, specializing mainly in ColdFusion and Flex development.

In addition to writing a blog focused on ColdFusion development, Gifford has also written for industry magazines, notably .net magazine and Web Designer magazine, and is a regular contributor and author on the Adobe Developer Connection.

His book Object-Oriented Programming in ColdFusion was published by Packt Publishing in 2010.

Gifford is an Adobe Community Professional for ColdFusion and is the manager of the Hertfordshire Adobe User Group. He also presents at industry conferences including Adobe MAX and Scotch on the Rocks.

In 2005, Gifford worked for the UNEP-WCMC as a database and systems developer, working on numerous front-end applications and back-end systems to assist in global awareness for various environmental issues. Most notably, he developed the database system used in an online reporting tool as part of the Global Marine Assessments project, in collaboration with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO-IOC)

Matt Gifford lives in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England with his wife and family.

Open Source Development
Gifford is a keen proponent for open-source development, and frequently releases ColdFusion components, script sources and applications to be used within the development community. One of his first open-source releases, a component to interact with the MTV Network API, was released in less than a day.

He currently has 14 open-source releases for ColdFusion development alone, with over 6,500 downloads to date.

Object-Oriented Programming in ColdFusion
Gifford's first book, Object-Oriented Programming in ColdFusion, was the first published book to focus purely on the use of object-oriented programming (OOP) design patterns and practices using the CFML development language. Published in October 2010 through Packt Publishing, the book covers the basic foundations of developing OOP applications using ColdFusion Components, before moving on to clearly explain the fundamental principles of OOP development using beans, data access objects and gateways.

The book was technically reviewed by Raymond Camden, a leading figure within the CF community. Of notable interest, the publication contains three forewords supplied by important and revered members of the ColdFusion development community: Ben Forta (Director of Platform Evangelism at Adobe Systems), Terry Ryan (ColdFusion Evangelist at Adobe Systems) and Ben Nadel.