360Flex – Speaker Leonard Souza

Leonard Souza has spoken at several 360|Flex about several things, and we’re really happy to have him back in DC speaking about “Flexerific Visual effects” on Tuesday.

Whether you’re a developer at a company with designers or not, this session is a great place to get an idea of how to build out visual effects in Flex, and exactly what is and isn’t possible to do.

Q: How long have you been working with Flex?

A: Since the early days of Flex 2, which was about 4 years ago. I had been a heavy user of flash for years and really needed a stronger development platform.

That seems fairly common, those in the community that were more developer than designer, flocked to Flex from the Flash IDE.

Q: What do you like most about Flex?

A: Its ability to integrate extremely rich visual interactions with enterprise conventions. I have never seen a better tool for this. It has been engineered from the ground up to empower developers and designers in any vertical.

My first experiences with Flex were building rich front ends to enterprise (very NOT rich) systems. Flex really is in a class of it’s own in that space!

Q: What 1 session are you most excited about seeing at 360|Flex DC?

A: Doug McCune’s keynote, which will be worth the price of admission alone (no pressure Doug, just sayin’). Ben Stucki never disappoints as well.

I’m actually really excited to watch Doug keynote! His presentation at RIAdventure really inspired me, and I knew then that he’d be an awesome keynoter, and just what 360|Flex needed to galvanize the crowd and send them out into sessions ready to kick ass and take names.

Q: What about 360|Flex DC are you most excited about?

A: The people. I have so much fun at this event it’s practically a vacation. The D.C. area is one of my favorites as well.

Awesome! I think so too! Once the planning is done, and we’re all together, it’s time to relax, learn and enjoy the best of the community!

Q: Do you prefer ninjas or robots?

A: Well that all depends on the context. Am I in command them? Or battling them? If there are pirates involved, then I have no comment.

Pirates are a major wildcard, more so if they’re ICE PIRATES!

Q: What is one thing you’d like to see improved in the Flex Framework?

A: Hardware acceleration and multi-threading (couldn’t keep it to one). This angers me so that I dare say I cannot speak further of it. It makes me want to unleash a legion of ninjas and robots.

HA HA

Q: Is there someone you’re hoping to see at 360|Flex DC?

A: Honestly, if my liver lasts long enough to have a conversation with one or two people all of my hopes will be met.

When it comes to 360|Flex and Livers, it’s like Robots and Ninjas!

Q: Lastly, what would you tell someone who was on the fence or hadn’t heard (I know, they’re out there though) of 360|Flex to get them to come?

A: This is a great conference for those who want to take their programming/interaction skills to the next level. You also get to hang with amazing people. It is frustrating when you have no one around to talk to about what you do (which may be the case for those in more remote positions, etc.). This is a conference where everyone is dying to talk all night about it. It is very inspiring and rejuvenates those creative urges that have been forcibly shoved aside from God knows what.

For a lot of people 360|Flex is their chance to meet folks they’ve only met online, and re-connect with friends from around the globe! It’s a great time and the chance to learn from the best in the community… well sometimes we think we charge too little :) Go register before we change our minds!!