I won’t lie, last week was obviously a blow to us :) I even wrote that I was still quite bullish on Flex, and that widespread freaking out was not a good idea. I still think widespread freaking out is not the right path for us as a developer community. Sure Adobe PR sucks, they’re not geared or (i suspect) aimed at speaking to developers, or even caring what developers reactions will be to their releases. That’s a shame.
I also won’t lie and say it was a surprise or that I hadn’t already started thinking about possible futures for 360|Flex.
I’ll also point out that none of us were Flex developers 10 years ago, most of us came from somewhere else, and likely would move on eventually, guess Adobe chose the when for us, which is never fun or ideal, but it is what it is. As an Adobe community we’re at least used to things changing and messing up our plans, usually directly at Adobe’s hands :)
So what does this mean for 360|Flex?
Well it means that our hopes of having a kick ass 10 year anniversary 360|Flex conference are probably not gonna happen :) I play to be doing conferences in another 5 years, but 360|Flex as a brand, well we’ll have to see.
But it DOES NOT mean 360|Flex 2012 won’t happen.
It DOES NOT mean 360|Flex 2012 won’t kick ass.
It DOES mean there’ll be some awesome new content around the Adobe Stack at 360|Flex 2012, which if you’ve been to any of the last 2-3 360|Flex’s that’s nothing new. Sim has presented some JS stuff before, and we’ve mixed in a few non Flex sessions from time to time to help present other options for developers. We’ll continue doing that.
It DOES NOT mean we’ll be having any Microsoft sessions, or sponsorship. That’s not what 360|Flex or myself are about. There’s plenty of events that will take anyone’s money for placement and speaking opportunities. We’re not one of those events.
It DOES mean that 360|Flex will (as all good programmers do) start looking at other aspects of delivering awesome experiences. We’re not running away from Flex, not in the least, but Adobe has a stack that’s interesting, and the community is likely to do really awesome things with Flex. Now that it’s in our hands.
Think about the timing of 360|Flex 2012… 5 months after this announcement, after the last official Adobe release of Flex. What do you think the Open Source team will have to share by April? I suspect quite a bit. If you’re at all curious/worried/interested in the post Adobe Flex roadmap, I think 360|Flex 2012 will be the place to be. Not just to hear what the future has in store for you, but to be a part of that future, which is in my opinion, the most important reason to attend.
We’ve always supported past abortive attempts at helping Adobe and the Opening of Flex. We think that was and is a positive direction… It’s great that maybe now, finally Flex will be in the hands of those who most want it to succeed. Some of the best (by survey response) sessions at 360|Flex have been ones pushing the envelope, showing what’s possible when you get creative and think outside the box, also those that talk about open options. Remember the Spoon general session?
All of this is to say that, 360|Flex is going to grow and evolve the same way Flex and the overall Adobe Stack are going to. I can’t wait for April to get here and see not just what the community has in store for Flex, but what Adobe has in store for the community with tools like Muse and Edge, and PhoneGap.
As a teaser, here’s a look at some of the session titles that we’re looking at having.
- It is in the details (CSS3 magic)
- Choosing the Right Mobile Development Platform
- Geolocation 201
- Introduction to Robotlegs
- Maven by example
- Advanced Mobile Q&A
- Lets write some unit tests.
- How not to suck as a Flex Developer
- And of course way more. But that’s some of that stuff we’re looking at.
Tickets were already moving fast, and that hasn’t stopped, I’d register now before we sell out. Yeah I still think we’re gonna sell out. If you’re doing Flex today, you’ll still get a ton out of 360|Flex, and likely you’ll be doing it in April too.
