A veteran ColdFusion developer since 1998, Brian Meloche is a longtime contributor to the Adobe/Macromedia/Allaire community. He's probably best known within the ColdFusion community as the producer and host of the CFConversations podcast. He has been an Adobe Community Expert in ColdFusion since 2007. He's been involved in user groups since 2003. He is the co-founder and current manager of the Cleveland ColdFusion User Group. He is the founder and is both the former manager and co-manager of the Cleveland Adobe Users Group (formerly the Cleveland Macromedia Users Group). He is also the founder and was the original manager of the the West Virginia Macromedia User Group, now called KVWILD.  He has also been involved in several efforts to help bring the user group communities closer together, and has mentored several user group managers get their groups going.  Brian has also written several articles for the ColdFusion Developer's Journal and Fusion Authority.

Brian has been in IT for many years.  He started out while being a co-op student at the University of Waterloo in Computer Science, where his co-op work terms had him working on mainframes and building complicated spreadsheets (for the time) and databases using Lotus 1-2-3, dBase III and DataEase.  Before graduation, he switched to a BA program and left IT, first trying the financial sector, and then trying to make it as a screenwriter in the early to mid nineties.  His one claim to fame during that period was that he sold a story idea to Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, made into the Season 4 finale "Broken Link" (although he's not listed in the credits, he has the proof).  Realizing it would take him longer than he wanted to break in as a Hollywood writer, he went back to school, going into the Illustration - Technical program at Seneca College, where he graduated with high honors. At Seneca, he learned computer graphics, graphic design, video and one little HTML course that re-ignited his IT career.  He started his web career as a Toronto-based freelance web designer, but over the course of a few years, his Computer Science background solidified his path as a web developer.  After a few years working with Perl, PHP and ASP, he settled on ColdFusion, and hasn't looked back.  Brian still does a lot of web design these days, and his grasp of Dreamweaver, CSS, JavaScript, Fireworks and Photoshop has helped him develop user interfaces with an AJAX front end and a ColdFusion back end.  His ability to function as both a web designer and developer has served him well, though he spends most of his time these days on the developer side of the fence.

A Windsor, Ontario, Canada native, Brian moved to the U.S. in 2000 late in the dot-com boom, and survived the dot-com bomb, working as a consultant at various companies throughout the mid-west and Southern U.S.  Since 2004, Brian has worked at a successful wholesaler in Cleveland, where he was recently promoted to the position of Senior Technical Analyst.  Brian has been involved in several large enterprise web projects using ColdFusion.  Brian lives in Cleveland with his wife, Julie, as well as several dogs and cats they have rescued.

Recently, Brian went public with his struggles with his weight. He had gastric bypass surgery in February, 2009, and since starting the endeavor back in June, 2008, Brian has managed to lose almost 120 pounds, and counting! Brian's now in the gym several days per week, and will make 2009 be the year he permanently gets the weight off, once and for all!