Archive for March, 2008
My Thoughts on the Flex 360 Conference in Atlanta
This was the first time I had ever attended a Flex conference. Come to think of it this is only the second conference I have attended in the eight years that I have been with my current employer (that is kind of pitiful)! Regardless, I am ecstatic that I was able to attend and start to meet many of the friendly yet a bit eccentric members of the Flex community.
Prior to this particular rant, I read other blogs from many of the other noted personalities in the Flex community about their experience during Flex 360. I must say that I believe you can teach an old dog new tricks. Old is a relative term. However, I found that the demographics at the conference seemed to place me at the high end of the scale in terms of age. I have no problems with that, just ask my wife, I am a big kid at heart and can physically outperform those 20 years my age on the mountain bike trails. But I digress.
So what were my highlights of the conference? First, I attended Doug McCune’s session on building your own personal brand. Although Doug and I have drastically different presentation styles and physical appearances, he made me realize that times have changed. No longer is it acceptable for a geek like myself to simply be a geek amongst his peers within his small workgroup. Now, in the new age of the Internet, if you don’t blog you are nothing! Well I’m too feisty and stubborn to be nothing, so it’s my turn to start offering the world my thoughts and opinions. Time will tell if anyone thinks they’re worth a hoot. I must say though, that all of my life I have benefited from the open source community and have always looked for ways to give back. Blogging, and including useful information in your blog is a great way to give back…duh. That is what I intend on doing and perhaps begin to build my “personal” brand.
So what was my favorite presentation during the conference? I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed Simon Hill’s discussion of the Future and Usability and RIA. I know the presentation wasn’t filled with cool ActionScript code. But what it was filled with was futuristic and thought provoking ideas on how us humans are currently and will in the future be interacting with computers. After all, our Flex applications are simply a means of communicating information and ideas with users. Although it’s cool to add nice transition effects to your app, and design all some eye popping skins, it is also refreshing to take a step back and think about the purpose of the app to begin with. Thank you Simon for your highly intellectual presentation! It kind of reminded me of college and I really liked those days!
I also enjoyed Jeff Houser’s presentation. I guess I’m biased because I have been listening to Jeff’s podcast for a while and it was kind of cool to actually see and meet Jeff. He reminds me of a genius I used to work with who had a ponytail and soft demeanor like Jeff (although Jeff doesn’t “vibrate” like my old friend Jeff Doubleday). What I liked about Jeff’s presentation is that he was interactive asking the audience their ideas and input on the subject he was speaking about in real time. Maybe he just thought he was interviewing us all. Way to go Jeff, you kept us all engaged so we could forget about the butt numbing experience of sitting 80 minutes on hard chairs!
Finally, I would like to thank the sponsors of Flex 360. I can’t remember the last time I went to parties three nights in a row! It was probably before I had a wife, two kids, two dogs and a cat. I really enjoyed interacting with members of the Flex community. I actually met two of the three authors whose book taught me about Flex. I showed my son the Adobe Flex 2 book with the pictures of Rich Tretola and Renaun Erickson on it and he said you really met those guys? Absolutely I did and what I learned was, you two are just nice guys and as long as you are a smart guy as well, you too can write a book. I have always pondered writing and now thanks to my new friends that I met at the Flex 360 conference in