References and Comments

Interested in hearing what others have thought of services Charlie's provided to them? Here are references and comments from Charlie's consulting clients, colleagues, students in training classes, and attendees at presentations.

Clients

  • Kevin Hamada
    Director, Systems Technology (for a Fortune 100 company)
    I have worked with Charlie for about six years, but have known of his excellent reputation in the ColdFusion world for about ten. Charlie has been a very valuable resource for my group. Working with Charlie is an absolute pleasure. His outstanding communication skills enable him to teach people unfamiliar with the software, as well as explaining technical details to experts in the field.

    I work for a large Fortune 100 company. My group is responsible for the company's internal web site, which has over 35,000 users and gets close to 2,000,000 hits/day. Charlie has helped with examining and quantifying performance for ColdFusion. He explained the different components and how to measure, examine and understand the feedback from these components. Not only did Charlie find and resolve our bottleneck issue, but he also helped establish a preventative maintenance plan. The results of his interactions enabled us to move from having performance bottlenecks on our web servers every hour to servers that are now running smoothly.
  • Byron Shank
    Home Reserve LLC
    We were having some trouble with one of our applications eating up memory so I searched Google for “coldfusion consultant”. I clicked on Charlie’s website www.carehart.org and instantly recognized his picture from a number of postings that I had read on Adobe’s devenet page. (Here is an example: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/monitoring_pt1.html.)

    I sent him an e-mail with a general description of the issue I was having, he responded very promptly.

    Working with Charlie has been a joy. He helped me quickly identify loose ends in the server configuration as well as areas in code. The best thing about the experience is that rather than just peek at code and server configurations and then make changes, Charlie walked through both with me over the phone and online. The whole process became a learning experience with my own personal instructor looking over my shoulder.

    I feel smart for having chosen Charlie as go-to resource.
  • Karin Stevenson, PowerWeb Development Manager
    CyberWolf, Inc.
    We started working with Charlie Arehart in February of 2007 when looking for help with some of ColdFusion's more challenging aspects which had suddenly started to affect our operational stability.

    Charlie was extraordinarily helpful, not only by working side by side with our IT staff, analyzing even the most obscure bits and pieces of the ColdFusion setup and configuration on the servers but also by pointing us to many tools that have proven invaluable to us since then (from general load testing tools to log analyzers and ColdFusion monitoring).

    Thanks to Charlie we were able to understand and remedy issues on multiple levels within short time. His great ability to teach while solving problems makes him an extremely valuable partner to have.

    For me, particularly, Charlie often meant the difference between getting the job done or fail in my newly assigned ColdFusion development tasks. Even today, with a lot more experience under my belt, I consider Charlie my "CF Guardian Angel" and never hesitate to consult him when I have a problem. And I never walk away from a discussion with Charlie without having learned something valuable.
  • Charles Garber
    Clark Associates     (referring to FusionReactor consulting Charlie offers, in addition to his own)
    You were a life saver! Really, the server is performing better than when we purchased it. We hit a record today with # of simultaneous users and stand to do well in sales.
  • Barbara S. ONeal, President/Co-Founder
    Centric Web®, Inc.     (referring to FusionReactor consulting Charlie offers, in addition to his own)
    I was very pleased and impressed by the consultant's professionalism and knowledge, not only with the FusionReactor and ColdFusion but with other simple short cuts as well. It isn't often that when you pay for the extra support you actually get someone who really knows his stuff and is willing to really work through the details with you.
More coming...

Colleagues

  • "Charlie Arehart is like the master of information organization. Between the User Group TV collection, Object Oriented Programming round-ups, and documents like this one, Charlie seems to have a super power for rounding up all the useful information on a given topic or area of interest and packaging it neatly for our benefit.", in a blog entry by Ben Nadel
  • "I have known Charlie for more than a dozen years. I have found him to be detail oriented and methodical in his approach to creating solutions to complex multi-faceted challenges. His ability to communicate without the use of technical jargon made working with him an exciting opportunity to learn from one leading experts in his field.", Michaela Conley, CEO, Founder, HPCareer.Net, llc (reference as offered on LinkedIn)
  • "Thanks for the massive volume of wisdom you continuously pour into the community via your articles and involvment in the various community lists. you know you're always welcome to come see us again anytime in AZ!", Sean Tierney in a comment on a blog entry
  • "Charlie is one of the most dedicated individuals (if not the most) I have ever had the opportunity to work with. His contributions to the community are second to none and his ability to work with people of all levels is phenomenal. If you want a project to be done correctly and require all angles to be covered then look no further. A true pleasure to do work with!", Ron West, Director, Product Strategy and Professional Services, PaperThin, Inc. (reference as offered on LinkedIn)
  • "Charlie is a highly reliable and technically skilled individual who doesn't like to leave problems unsolved. He has a reputation for caring about associates' issues, rather than just lending a hand out of obligation.", Jeff Peters, Owner, Proton Arts (reference as offered on LinkedIn)
  • "Folks, this is the holy grail of "does anybody know of a tool that can do...." if it exists, it's on this list. not only was i suprised by how all-encompassing this list was, but it's also remarkably up-to-date. it's one thing to put forth the effort to compile such a list. it's another to put forth the effort that it must take to maintain it and keep it useful. Twice in the past two weeks i've been duly impressed by two of the many resources that charlie manages. i figure that if nothing else, that deserves a public "thank you" at the very least. so, thanks charlie. i'm sure i speak for quite a few people when i say that all of your efforts on behalf of the community are appreciated.", Charlie Griefer in a blog entry discussing Charlie's CF Tools/Resources to Consider list.
  • "[Charlie] goes out of his way to ensure every angle has been explored and that information is presented as clearly as possible so that as large an audience as possible can benefit from the information. He's a tremendous asset to the community, has produced countless excellent presentations and articles and columns and he works very hard to provide much needed, approachable information for people new to ColdFusion.", Sean Corfield, in comments on a blog entry
  • "Thanks...to one of the true leaders of our community. I can still remember reading some of his first articles in cfdj, and I was really impressed, because to me, I wanted to learn more, do more, and be as efficient as possible. To me, he seemed [to ask], "how can I help people from any level of experience in cfml, program faster, easier and more efficiently?" From his tips about CF Studio and Homesite, to his different articles on developing. I mean we all knew synax of Cf, but putting it together in a professional and efficient manner isn't something that we had the ability to take classes on. So in bits and pieces, he is the guy that gave you that extra depth, made things faster for you to develop. Gave you some undocumented features and knowledge of how CFML works. I think that it is because of cf writers and programmers like Charlie Arehart [that] I wanted to blog and become a writer. Remember your committment to the cf community: is not just about how many articles or books; it's about your passionate committment to the craft of programming in cfml. Thank you Charlie", in a blog entry by Craig Rosenblum
  • "I've been around the CF community since ver 1.5 and I always had great respect for you. The CF community is special because of people like you. We're all grateful you have been, and will continue to be, a part of it.", Tom Nunamaker in a comment on a blog entry
  • "I worked with Charlie for a few months while he was CTO at New Atlanta. You'll be hard pressed to find another guy with more knowledge of CF and other web technologies, and a higher standard of morals and professionalism. He is fantastic to work with and has tons of knowledge he doesn't mind sharing.", Allen Underwood, Consultant, UPS (reference as offered on LinkedIn)
  • "I worked with Charlie for over 3 years and found him to be one of the nicest, smartest and most patient people I have ever met. His knowledge of CFML is second to none and his overall IT knowledge is amazing and ever expanding. Finally, he is a wonderful teacher!", Brian O'Reilly, VP - Sales, New Atlanta (reference as offered on LinkedIn)
More coming...

Students

  • "Charlie has a very clear and concise presentation style and I felt very enthused about the topic afterwards. I'll certainly be looking at doing the advanced class soon. ", Will Swain, Technical Director, Hot Horse Ltd (referring to FusionReactor training)
  • "I really enjoyed the webinar! Charlie totally got me pumped about FusionReactor. I am ready to start investigating our web server indepth!", Robin Sexton, Senior Web Developer, The Marco Corporation (referring to FusionReactor training)
More coming...

Conference/User Group Presentation Attendees

  • "Charlie Arehart is a really polished speaker. I’m not knocking anyone else, but he’s just really smooth.", Namir Ivory in a blot entry referring to a CF.objective presentation
More Coming...

FusionReactor Training Attendees

These comments relate to the online FusionReactor Training Charlie offers for the makers of the product.
  • "Charlie has a very clear and concise presentation style and I felt very enthused about the topic afterwards. I'll certainly be looking at doing the advanced class soon.", Will Swain, Technical Director, Hot Horse Ltd
  • ""The presenter skillfully tailored the course to the participants and added good value.", Leslie Connor, Project Manager, Fisheries and Oceans Canada
  • "Thanks for the presentation today, I thought it was excellent! I think that people should be flocking to this - it's obvious to me that many users are just scratching the surface of what FusionReactor can do for them.", Nick Gleason, CitySoft, Inc.
  • "The presenter had a deep understanding of FusionReactor and did an excellent job in presenting. He tailored the presentation to answer my questions and demonstrated how to troubleshoot a real issue using the tools. The training will really help me apply FusionReactor and do more with our site!", Christina Legris, Business and Internet Systems Manager, State Bar of Wisconsin
More Coming...