The Summer of Flash Page on My Site
I just wanted to point folks to the Summer of Flash Podcast page on my blog. I thought it might be good to have a place on my site where the podcast that features Garth Braithwaite, Stacy Mulcahy, Zach Stepek, and myself droning on and on about the Flash Platform. The "info" links are to the InsideRIA site pages that Garth put together for us, but I wanted to put all the information in one place so that I can refer people to it.
I totally enjoy recording this podcast. It is so much fun and honestly it's almost therapeutic for me. I don't work in a work site environment where there are a lot of Flash and Flex developers. In fact, I am the only one in the office who does that type of work, so getting to "hang out" online with the Summer of Flash crew is pretty healthy.
I want to thank the people at O'Reilly who have been so supportive. This was their idea and I feel lucky to have been asked to come along.
Oh, boy. Did I just say that hanging out with Stacy was healthy? What was I thinking?
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360Flex Asks for My Opinion, Well Here It Is (like it or not)
360Flex's Tom Ortega wants our opinions about what we want or don't want when it comes to attending a 360Flex.
First off, what the hell is wrong with you, Tom? You're asking your customers what they want?
No conference I've ever attended has asked directly (well, kind of directly) what I wanted before the conference. I was overjoyed when Ted Patrick announced that this year's MAX was going to be better and more focused on the developers, and I was equally happy when he said that the event would be more like I had wanted it to be for years. But no one ever asked me for my opinion about my expectations. I remember sitting painfully through a session at the MAX 2004 in New Orleans where the presenter was obviously distressed about being a presenter. At the end of the session he confessed "This is the first time I've ever presented." WTF?!? That was not what I wanted from my MAX experience. This year's MAX was awesome.
Now, back to the questions from the 360Flex team. It seems that Tom and John are running a balancing act between a) food, b) paid speakers, and c) location. Let's take each of these one at a time.
Food: I hear what Tom is saying about food. Organizing a conference and dealing with conference center's food services, a requirement of most if not all conference centers, is a pain. And, yes, it is a racket. I thought that the food at the first 360Flex in San Jose, CA was great. Conference food is expensive and if you can't bring in your own caterer then I guess we're stuck. Get us the best deal you can and remember that no matter how good the food is, people are going to complain. Don't let people's ignorance get you down, Tom. They didn't come to the event to eat. At least they shouldn't have.
Paid Speakers: Do it. I'll pay more to attend a conference if I know that the conference is compensating the presenters. But I will also tell you this: if that presenter puts his presentation together "on the train on my way to the conference," I reserve the right to ask for a percentage of my money back. Not that I'll get it back, but it won't stop me from asking. And, yes, that happened at the first 360Flex conference, but I know that Tom and John have learned a lot of lessons since then.
Location: Chances are that any conference will eventually be held in Atlanta. If ever a 360Flex is held in Atlanta (or, God forbid, a MAX) then, yes, I will care what location it will be held at as I will either drive or take mass transit every day to that event. But if I am attending a 360Flex conference in San Jose or Seattle, then as long as I can get to and from the conference hotel and the airport, and to and from the conference hotel and conference floor easily then I don't really care where the conference is held. Of course, finding that balance is tough. MAX 2007 isn't exactly a showcase for location; I spent my fair share of $10.00 bills on taxis to avoid the crowded or late conference buses — but I am just seriously impatient.
Bottom line for me: if you have to raise prices to obtain the best speakers, then do it. But since you asked about the other things, I'll happily not complain if the speakers are awesome, but I don't like the food or am tired from moving my fat ass down the street. Tom and John, keep on keeping on.
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Post-MAX Exhaustion: A Short Review
Post-MAX Exhaustion: A Short Review
I hope that I am not the only one still exhausted by this past week's visit to Chicago and Adobe's Max conference. Let me try to express the good and the not so good of the conference and hopefully give you a good idea of what you missed if you weren't there.
The Good
To get a lot out of a conference you have to have priorities. Seeing new products, connecting with Adobe employees and friends and having a bit of fun are my general requirements for a successful MAX.
"Thermo": Adobe showed off a new design tool, code named "Thermo", which is in the works and everyone was talking about it (bump). This tool will be an awesome addition to the Rich Internet Application workflow allowing graphic designers, interaction designers and information architects to become part of the process as opposed to dropping off documents, graphics and wire frames to the developers. Now, I am projecting this as a Nirvana of RIA development while still feverish from seeing presenters convert a Photoshop document into working MXML code with dummy data, so I will have to cool down toward a wait-and-see attitude until the product becomes available. An audible gasp was heard when the presenters said that "Thermo" would be available "sometime in 2008", which I took to mean "not any time soon" — frustrating, since I feel we could have used this tool for quite some time. I'll have more thoughts about "Thermo" later.
Sneak Peeks: If you've never attended an Adobe MAX, the one single session you should never miss is the Sneak Peeks — I don't care how tired you might be. Made a tradition a long time ago by Macromedia before the buy out, Sneak Peeks is a general session where Product Managers and Team Leaders get to show off for prizes, although I am pretty sure that bragging rights inside Adobe provide far more mileage to these people than this year's prize of an iPod Touch. I had speculated that this year's sneaks would not be very impressive since CS3 had recently shipped which encompasses almost all of Adobe's product line. To my surprise, most of the sneaks were incredible looks at what is on its way from Adobe: Image Seam Carving, C/C++ libraries converted to ActionScript (along with a conversion of Quake that ran in the Flash Player), future looks at Flash and Fireworks, Flex Builder for Linux (which went straight to Public Alpha)... each of the twelve sneak peeks were illuminating.
Adobe Employees: Over the past few years I have had the privilege to get to know some of Adobe's employees, people like John Dowdell, who really are great. I can always tell that Adobe is a good place to work hard by spending time with the employees.
User Group Managers: People who give back to the community do not tend to be bitter or little. And they are more than capable to have fun. The members of the user group program are no different. I love you guys! And I can't wait to see you at next year's Community Summit.
Richard Cheese: I love it. You haven't heard lounge unless you've heard Richard Cheese live. I am so glad that I got to see him before he retired! Thanks, Adobe!
The Bad
These items could be considered minor, at best, which is indicative of how good this conference was.
Getting Locked Out: There was a particular session that I placed on my schedule and cited as a great reason to attend MAX that I did not get to go to because the room, which was fairly large and probably held 100 people, was already full when I got there. Some sessions like this get repeated, but I wish that Adobe (and the people organizing the conference) would take a look at which sessions attendees have signed up for and make allowances for sessions that too many people sign up for so people are not disappointed like myself. I am sure that it isn't easy as that, but still; why the heck am I bothering to schedule for a session if no one looks at everyone's schedule to see if sessions may be larger than expected. Then, again, maybe they do.
Conference Layout: What I really loved about MAX 2006 in Las Vegas was how the show floor, community area and dining area were all in the same place and the sessions were on separate floors which made getting from one session to another fairly easy, although sometimes it required some patience since everyone had to use the same escalator. Chicago's McCormick Place West's layout had sessions stretched down a long hall. It seemed to take forever to get from the buses to the dining area, from the dining area to the show floor, or from the show floor to a session. Or maybe it was just a poor choice of shoes on my part?
Connectivity: Connectivity, both for computers and cell phones, was poor. I realize that providing wireless service for more that 4000 people is not an easy thing to do, but most of these people aren't at the conference to swing from chandeliers — they are tethered to their businesses. This problem is not necessarily an Adobe issue, but it needed to be mentioned.
Beer and Wine Selections: Well, let's just say that the beer selection had me drinking the wine at the evening events.
Wrap Up
So overall, I'd say that the conference, rated lower than the New Orleans or Las Vegas MAX conferences, but it wasn't bad at all — if I had given up booze, gotten in shape, given up the Internet and got to sessions early it could have been perfect. See you all at MAX 2008 San Francisco.
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Congrats to Local Award Winners Kenny Bunch and Alan Queen
I think that Kenny Bunch is an amazing guy. But, let me just say that somebody needs to promote him more because he is too damn shy to do it himself.
I was quite pleased to hear that Adult Swim received an Honorable Mention in this year's MAX Awards for their Adult Swim Interactive Video Commentary. What struck me as odd was that I know who did a lot of that work: Kenny Bunch and his company, Dreamsocket. And although the winner of the video category, HBO Voyeur, was great, I hope that Adobe, the MAX Awards Judges and the industry at large is paying attention: in my opinion, the interactive video experience that Kenny Bunch put together for Adult Swim is the future. Keep up the good work, Kenny.
Meanwhile, Alan Queen won the Wild Card category in the the Adobe AIR Derby with his entry Digimix, an AIR application that allows you to create and mix audio files. When Alan first showed this application at the Atlanta stop of the onAIR Bus Tour back in August he made the entire Adobe team speechless. Well done, Alan.
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Upcoming Flex Online Seminars
Leif's Note: Repeating what I've posted on the Adobe Flash Platform User Group of Atlanta site earlier today, as more people read my blog than the user group's blog.
There are some new Flex online seminars coming up that you should know about.
The titles are:
- Flex and .NET: Anatomy of a Data Driven Application
- Flex 3 Beta--See What's New!
- Basic Application Architecture for Flex Newcomers
All three of these hour long seminars look very interesting and should be enough to get anyone started with their respective topics. I highly recommend that anyone who has not had a chance to play with the current Flex 3 Public Beta and who can't attend MAX next month consider attending the Flex 3 session.
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My Selected Sessions for Adobe MAX 2007
These are the Adobe MAX 2007 sessions I am chomping at the bit to see in no particular order.
XD: Prototyping Rich Internet Applications with Fireworks CS3
Best Practices for Developing with ActionScript 3.0
Building Accessible Applications with Flex
Building Stunning Flex Applications with Flex Builder and Creative Suite 3
Flash Player Cross-Domain Security
Introduction to LiveCycle Data Services for Flex Developers
Advanced LiveCycle Data Services for Flex Developers
Building Rich Internet Applications with Cairngorm and LiveCycle Data Services
Continuous Integration with Flex, FlexUnit, and Ant
Sneak Peak General Session (worth the price of admission)
Hope to see you there.
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MAX $400.00 Discount Ends September 10!
“What do you mean you didn't know about the discount code?!?”
That is what I said to the five procrastinators that contacted me about Ted Patrick's special discount code for Adobe MAX 2007 in my entry yesterday.Yes, it is true. If you register before September 10 — that is this coming Monday, people — and enter the discount code of BFF775, you will save yourself $400.00 off the full admission fee. For all of the procrastinators, that is like getting the early bird discount without all that stigma of doing things in a timely manner.
And don't forget. Before register, make sure you know the name of your user group manager. There is a contest going on for the user group managers right now that gets them free admission if they get a certain number of registrants to cite their name. It's a great oportunity to repay your user group manager for all their good work over the past year.
Go register today!
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My MAX Schedule
In an effort to promote the fact that MAX Early Registration ends today, I thought that I'd share my MAX Schedule with you all. Enjoy.
Session Schedule for Leif Wells
Tuesday, Oct 24
| 7:00 AM - 8:00 AM | Breakfast (BRKFST-1) |
| 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM | General Session (GS100A-1) |
| 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM | Using the File API in Apollo (file, preferences, storage) (RI301W-1) |
| 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM | Lunch (LUNCHA-1) |
| 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM | Accessible RIA Development with Adobe Flex (VS102W-1) |
| 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM | Developing Flash Lite Applications for BREW Handsets (MD102W-1) |
| 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM | AfterEffects for Flash Designers (CD106W-1) |
| 4:15 PM - 5:15 PM | Advanced Apollo Application Development (RI202W-1) |
Wednesday, Oct 25
| 7:00 AM - 8:00 AM | Breakfast (BRKFST-2) |
| 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM | General Session (GS100A-2) |
| 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM | Leveraging HTML/JavaScript and AJAX in Apollo Applications (RI213W-1) |
| 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM | Lunch (LUNCHA-2) |
| 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM | Delivering RIA Solutions with Cairngorm 2 (RI207W-2) |
| 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Integrating Flex Apps with Browsers and Ajax (RI209W-2) |
| 4:15 PM - 5:15 PM | Flex for Flash Designers--How Flex and Flash Work Together (CD208W-1) |
| 7:30 PM - 10:00 PM | Welcome Reception (RECPTN-2) |
| 10:00 PM - 11:00 PM | Test Session (Test002) |
Thursday, Oct 26
| 7:00 AM - 8:00 AM | Breakfast (BRKFST-3) |
| 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM | General Session (GS100A-3) |
| 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM | Moving from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3 (WD206W-2) |
| 10:45 AM - 12:30 PM | Partner General Session (GS200A-1) |
| 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM | Lunch (LUNCHA-3) |
| 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM | End-to-End Debugging of Flex Applications (RI205W-2) |
| 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM | Partnering with Adobe in Vertical Industries (PA002W-2) |
| 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Design Patterns in ActionScript 3 (WD306W-2) |
| 4:15 PM - 5:15 PM | Designing More Usable Applications with Flex UI Capabilities (RI206W-2) |
| 5:15 PM - 6:15 PM | Project Success Story (PA001W-1) |
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Topics and Speakers for MAX
So you were disappointed in that one topic that you wanted to hear about at that recent conference? Or was it that the topic you wanted to hear about wasn't even talked about? Or did you want to get your vote in on a future topic of interest that you'd like to see covered at MAX?
Better yet, do you have an idea for a presentation that you'd like to actually present? One that you recently presented to your local Macromedia User Group (gasp! You haven't presented to your local MMUG?!? What are you thinking?!?)
Well, the time is nigh! Put up or shut up. Make your voice heard.
The Call for Topics and Speakers for MAX 2005 form is here! You basically have one month to get this action item completed, so get to it!
Please Note: This is not an automated system. You will not receive any notification of receipt of your suggestion. Be patient, there is a person on the other end trying to deal with getting topics and speakers to the right people on the other end.
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Pain-free Knowledge from the Macromedia Knowledge Base
As seen at MAX:
The Macromedia Knowledge Base is a free, self-service customer information guided search tool that allows customers to access precise technical information, Macromedia Developer Center articles, and Macromedia customer service notes on policies and procedures. An intuitive guided search tool within the Knowledge Base allows users to fine-tune their queries based on established categories and "best bet" choices. Each search a customer performs automatically provides structured feedback on the technical quality of the Knowledge Base to Macromedia which allows us to continually contribute new technical information to make the Knowledge Base more effective.
Let me just say that I personally appreciate what the support team has done. Not that Macromedia's support site was ever as bad as Microsoft's (the worst ever), there is always room for improvement.
My favorite feature? Catagorized search results. No doubt.
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