Flash Forward has announced that their next event will be in Austin. Friggin AWESOME! Although, this does suck, because I enjoyed going to NY around that time every year, but I am sure Austin will more than make up for it. This is only 3 hours from me, so you can definitely count on me being there. They have already opened the call for speakers, so head on over and throw your name in the hat.
Last week, for the first time ever, my boss here at Yahoo came up to me and TOLD me I was going to MAX. This is the first time ever, that I haven’t had to ask to go to a Flash conference. So, as you can tell, I am REALLY liking it here at Yahoo.
Who all is going to MAX? If you are, leave a comment here, and lemme know how to reach you, maybe we will get together for dinner or at one of the parties. Don’t forget to sign up on introNetworks as well. As of now, I dont recognize a single name in my “social circle”.
This conference is looking to be one of the best of the year. From Zorn, to Flash 8, there will be PLENTY of sessions to drop in on. I can’t forget to mention all of the parties, etc. that there will be, so that should keep me busy as well. You can count on me blogging the event, so even if you aren’t going, you will know what happens.
Let me start off by saying this… FiTC is the conference to beat. If you are planning a conference, talk to the FiTC guys, they know how to get it done. From the speakers, to the parties, to the helpful volunteers, this conference was put together perfectly. I truthfully can’t think of one complaint…. Congrats to Shawn Pucknell, and the entire FiTC team on a job well done. Now onto my thoughts…
To start off, you can see all the pictures I took at FiTC here.
With the Speaker lineup sounding as good as it did, I was expecting it to be extremely impressing. Rarely does this ever happen, but this time it did. Every speaker gave a very good presentation, and most of it wasn’t the typical “Here’s my work, what do you think” type presentation. Some presentors did this, but gave explanations behind the project more so than usual, which made it a lot easier to comprehend the process behind the project.
I am very interested in diving into a couple of projects, inspired by sessions here. One being processing.org. I never realized how easy it actually was to use until I went to Ben Fry and Casey Reas sessions. So expect to see some processing experiments here in the near future (hint: redesign = new opensource area). Another thing I realized I need to improve on, is my planning before projects. I never realized how much developers actually plan before projects, but Chafic Kazoun’s session, and Robert Penner’s session helped me get started in the right direction. If you have any tips, lemme know in the comments.
I went to the Microsoft Avalon session, but truthfully wasn’t all that impressed. The code used, looked extremely difficult and unreadable, not to mention the fact that it took a ton of code just to do simple things like skin or attach a button. I don’t know if this was just due to the way the examples were being used, but the examples seemed to bog the computer down very noticeably. Apparently though, I left the presenation at the wrong time, because the video stuff was amazing.
So, the first night I was at the conference, really wasn’t all too exciting, as we couldn’t get the Xbox working, due to tv connector problems. So we all just sat up in Mike Chambers room. Mike discovered wikipedia.org about halfway through the night, and no one knows exactly how long he stayed up that night editing the Flash, Flash Player, etc entries. Eventually, the entire room caught on, as everyone was searching for mistakes in the page.
The second night was a little more interesting. We started off by playing some Xbox (thanks to Colin for finding a coax connector for us). For 99% of the trip, Halo 2 was played. I played all of 2 games, with a combined score of 2. The speakers all went to a speakers dinner, while sam and I took a trip to the local toronto hooters. Could someone tell me why they serve Vinegar packets with their wings? And beware, Canadian Ranch dressing is a bit different than American Ranch. After dinner, everyone headed back to Mikes room for another 3-4 hours of Halo.
The third DAY Sam Robbins, Scott Janousek, and myself attended Sunday afternoon’s Blue Jays/Red Sox game. The Blue Jays ended up winning 4-3 on the final out, after the Red Sox had come back from 2 down in the top of the 9th (see thoroughly depressed Sam here).
The third night, everyone started out at the local sports bar to play pool, eat, drink, etc… FYI – never challenge Darron Schall, Guy Watson, or Peter Hall at pool… They WILL thouroughly kick your ass. After that was the awards show. I only stayed for about 10 minutes, then Sam and I decided to head over to Craig Swann’s party, Flux. As usual, Craig put on an amazing event, with speakers/sessions, music, and a TON of plasmas.
So in closing, I was very impressed with FiTC, and will definitely be going back next year, and many years to come. I encourage everyone to make an effort to attend, as it is THE place to be :)
