It’s that time again for our call for volunteers!
Why do we want volunteers?

• Obviously having free workers is a bonus, but one of our main reasons for having volunteers is to provide a way for those that absolutely cannot afford the conference to be able to have a way to join us!
• Give us your new graduates, those that were laid off, and those without 2 nickels to rub together!
• The point behind 360 conferences is to have an affordable event that the majority of people can come to! Being unemployed doesn’t need to be the barrier.

Please note, that if you just want to save a few bucks you don’t necessarily fit the bill. Think of those less fortunate than you! We’re always throwing out discount codes, visit your local user group, they’ll have one, etc. The volunteer program is really for those that won’t otherwise be able to make the conference.

What do I need to do if I’m a volunteer?

• We need you to be available Saturday thru Wednesday.  (Saturday can be waived, but the more hands the faster the work is completed)
• We need people the Saturday prior to the conference for lanyard/badge assembly, and swag bag assembly, and to get familiar with the location.
• We need people Sunday to run the Registration desk. This is your training for monday when the masses invade! There are 3 shifts, 7am-noon, noon-5, and 5-8.
• Monday thru Wednesday we need people to run the Registration desk as well as the cameras in each session. You will be assigned to either the desk or recording sessions.
• If you are assigned to record a session you need to remain in that session for the duration. You will need to confirm the camera continues to function and get the slides from the speaker at the end (via flash drive)
• Sunday and Monday you will need to arrive between 7 and 7:30.
• Tuesday and Wednesday you will need to arrive between 8 and 8:30.

What’s in it for you?

• When you are not assigned to a session or the reg desk – you are free to see the sessions.
• You get to enjoy lunch.
• You get to mingle at all the parties (unless you are working the desk on sunday)
• You get to meet a ton of people during registration!
• You get a cool badge that says “Volunteer” :)
• You get to say you know the folks that run 360|Conferences.

We really want you to get something out of the conference! We want you to have fun and learn a ton! You’re there to help us, but also get as much as you can out of sessions.

If you think you can hack it – apply!

• Name:
• Email:
• Local:  Y/N
• Phone Number:
• Current application of technology:
• Reason for wanting to be a volunteer:
• Availability Sat?
• Availability Sun?

Just email us at INFO at 360flex DOT com with the above details. We’ll let those selected know ASAP.

Make sure you’re in Washington DC this fall, for what surely will go down in the Flash Platform annuls as the most awesome head to head discussion EVER.

The Jesse’s will be going head to head talking about the merits of Flex and ActionScript, and why they think one is better than the other. This talk was born on twitter, quite literally! This is why the Flex community is so damn awesome!

Don’t miss this epic battle of wills, and possible water bottles! Register now, before it’s too late.

Keynotes

Obviously monday’s keynote will be something to not miss. Not only will Adobe be giving us a peak at what’s new/hot/coming soon, but we’re handing over the mic, and the room to Doug McCune.

Sure we all know Doug from “Cool Shit” at Indianapolis, and plenty of other awesome, if not always child friendly sessions, but he’s also ridiculously smart, and a great speaker (Check out his RIAdventure talk, and tell me it’s not motivating). 360|Flex since the beginning has opened with more staid keynotes. Adobe (Ebay when we’re there) giving more state of the union style talks, previews, etc. I’d like to change that.

While we don’t want to completely move away from that, we do want to start raising the bar in the community, for events. Deepa is awesome, and I hope she come to DC to wow us (Check out her keynote from 360|Flex San Jose, it’s free just put it in the cart), but I think it’d be cool to get the community jazzed about what we do. We’re not stodgy old programmers building dashboards, and Web service front ends. We’re doing cool things! Let’s talk about that! Let’s talk about what isn’t done but is possible. Let’s talk about what isn’t possible and how that’s not stopping us!

360|Flex is first and foremost a community event. Organized by members of the community, supported by the community, and aimed at increasing the size of the Flex developer community. Adobe wants 1mil. Flex Developers, we want to help. We also want 360|Flex (and this I think we’ve succeeded at) to be the place where developers come to get knowledge, experience and face time, with things and people they wouldn’t otherwise. Every tried to find someone you didn’t know personally at MAX, not easy. We want everyone leaving 360|Flex on Wednesday to be so energized, they go back to work Thursday or Friday ready to “Crush It!” Ready to go to their bosses, co-workers, etc and show them the things they learned, the new ways of debugging, the new way to compile large apps faster, etc.

General Sessions

If you were in San jose, you got a taste of this, we had some awesome panels! This time around we’re not doing panels (Not for lack of interest, a lack of submissions, LOL) but rather are doing more themed general sessions. Ben Stucki, will be talking about “The Art of Computer Science”, Chuck Freedman is holding “The Great Framework Debate”, and Antonio Holguin is talking about User Experience and mobile. Mobile is growing! I expect the next 360|Flex to have a much higher AIR for mobile showing, and can’t wait!

We’re more than just coders and designers!

And no, i don’t mean some bastard love child of the two! Devigners, desoders, whatever. I mean, we’re interesting people! To highlight that we’re gonna have more than just Rock Band during the evening one night. Jun, Eric, and Scott AKA the compilers will be performing one night (Still TBD). They’ll also be doing a lunch session, talking about how their band incorporates technology into the sets. It’s rumored (Nothing solid yet) that 22nd Century, band of Adobe Evangelist Duane Nickull will be on site as well, and maybe even a little live DJ action from an old friend :)

I don’t want 360|Flex to turn into a “Festival” there’s enough of those out there, but I do think there’s room for more interesting stuff than what we’ve offered before.

Go register… right now! Do it, click this link, register, and secure your spot. Then go book your hotel, it’ll be THE place to be. Why cab/walk/whatever to another hotel, when you can be in the event hotel. I can’t stress enough how much better an experience it is to be in hotel of the conference.

Go on! Register! See you in DC!

I imagine our process is somewhere in the middle on the “formality” scale for events. We’re not like larger events that require full outlines, supporting docs, etc. We just need a few sentences and a title, few other tidbits like track and level. But we’re also more formal than simply emailing us an idea and leaving it at that.

Why does emailing us an idea not work? Mainly because I’m forgetful (It could have something to do with multiple ongoing events, and on average 150 or so emails a day about events). During the call for papers we typically get over 100 submissions, and have 30-40 spots to fill. When it comes time to make selections I review my spreadsheet, and work from that. The idea emails, while I love the ideas and like the topics, etc, if they’re not on the list, I forget about them completely. I hate that it happens, and I’m working on training myself to put a stub in the spreadsheet. But even then, if when selection time comes around, i’m likely to skip the topic stub, because it’s not completed. One email is all it takes to ensure I don’t forget.

Unlike many events, we don’t get involved in the topic submission process. We don’t tell you to change your topic title. We don’t suggest you talk about X when you want to talk about Y. We don’t even help narrow down what you should submit on, beyond “Yeah we don’t have much of that, that’d probably be cool”. We let you submit the topic(s) that you’re most excited and passionate about. That’s what 360|Flex is all about.

Selection and review is a one man job for us. I look at each submission myself and then start plugging into spaces on the schedule. 99% are totally awesome and a complete fit, which sucks because I don’t have room for close to 100 sessions, LOL. I try to balance level and track across each time slot so there’s (as little as possible) no “well crap, nothing I care about right now” going on. It’s a battle I never fully win.

The other part of why we don’t get involved, is we can’t, it’s that simple. With over 100 submissions, I can’t possibly help guide each one to be “just right”, I don’t believe in track chairs, etc. We want potential speakers to talk to their friends, coworkers, family, etc about the idea, make it “perfect for you” then submit it. You can always adjust once you submit, and even once you’re selected. We get “can I change the title?” requests at least once a week between selection, and the conference. It’s no biggy. How crappy would you (not to mention me) feel if we went back and forth on your topic, making it “just right” only to then have it not make it? That would seriously bum me out! Plus I’d feel like there was a betrayal or breach of trust.

We don’t want to be the event that sanitizes topics, there’s plenty of those already. You want to talk about “Cool shit” that’s fine. Obviously there’s a line but still, we’re not governing what can and can’t be said.

Don’t get me wrong. I may invite someone to speak about X topic, or do a keynote. But if you submit a topic, that’s your topic, not mine. You “own it” as far as such things go, and I’d never dream of making you change it.

So without further ado, you can download the PDF schedule HERE.

We’re probably gonna skip the gCal unless a lot of people really cry out for it. We’ll have the iPhone app, and hopefully android app (Sorry blackberry folks)

Until then, the PDF is what you get.

Oh yeah, take a look at the sponsors page. We’re still getting some pics, and bios, but it’s more or less complete!

Check out the keynoter. In addition to someone from Adobe telling us awesome stuff, Doug is gonna rock our socks off.

Oh and as a small teaser, we’re working on getting the Charity Code Jam back :) More to follow on that, but just wanted to throw it out there :)

I’ve created a badge for the conference, grab it here.

It’s a smaller version of what you see on the left there.

Make money you say? Yeah I had this idea the other day, and figured, you know it doesn’t hurt to give a little something back to those that help me out.

I ask a lot of the community, I realize that. I can’t ever stop expressing my gratitude to the Flash/Flex/AIR community, ya’ll are truly awesome. So this experiment is my attempt to give something back.

This link is to an eventbrite affiliate program. You do need to sign up for an eventbrite account, sorry but how else will they be able to pay you?

It’s easy, just

1. get the badge
2. sign up (if you don’t want some coin, skip this step)
3. put the badge up on your site (with the link or without).
4. Done. If folks click the badge, and register, you get $25. Each time.

That’s it. See you in Washington DC

The Call for papers is now OPEN. Don’t delay, it’s not gonna be open long. We don’t have time for months long submission windows this time. The window closes July 2nd. Speakers will be announced the following week.

That’s right, just 2 weeks to submit your talk. I know you can do it, I know you can bust out your best stuff and show the Flex community what you got!

Here’s how it works!

You send an email to info AT 360flex DOT com with all the following

Name

Email

Blog or twitter (Whatever you want on the speakers page)

Session Title

Session Description

Session level (100 = beginner, 300+ = uber advanced)

track (App Dev, Integration (ie. CF, PHP, etc with Flex Frontend), Custom Components, Business of Flex)

Speaker BIO

Speaker headshot

That’s it! Easy peasy! Now get on it!! You don’t have a lot of time!!!

Not interested in speaking? Not to worry! Go get a ticket now before the ‘first 100′ sell out! 4 days of mind blowing awesome, for just $450. Really? You haven’t clicked the link yet? Go go go :)

We’re keeping that promise, finally, but it sure ain’t easy! The east coast is expensive, for an event like 360|Flex. We don’t charge a lot to get in, and most hotels costs more than the price of a ticket to 360|Flex. That’s hard to think about, staying at the hotel for the event is more than the event. At least bigger events, it’s even, which makes it less noticable :)

THAT SAID. We’re really close to locking in a hotel that should do nicely for 360|Flex, and still keep to our not breaking the bank mentality. I sure can’t wait to see how an east coast 360|Flex is responded to, it will certainly dictate whether there’s any more… no pressure :)

Stay tuned, the next day or two will see the announcement of time, location, and call for papers. Don’t miss out!

In the meantime, make sure to check out the session videos from 360|Flex San Jose and RIAdvanture. Some truly great stuff there!

BUT.

As of right now, all videos that have been processed are available for sale here. Each video is $4.99

They’re direct downloads, so when you purchase them you get the file. No DRM bullshit or anything like that.

As always, feel free to share with the guy in the next cube, but don’t be a dick and put these up on bitTorrent!

I’m still working as fast as possible to get the videos processed into something that’s purchasable. Some sessions, may never get released I’m afraid, as the video just wasn’t there, I want to make sure that if the video is up for sale, i’d buy it myself. Maybe those’ll be free, I dunno.

At any rate, book mark the page. It’s going to be the main repo for all events moving forward.

I’m really glad we finally got this system figured out, and moving forward, it’ll be much easier!

Remember attendees get access to the videos for free! Not only do you see this awesome stuff live, but you get the videos to watch later completely free.

Last year in Indianapolis, Doug McCune got pelted with bouncy balls during his preso, he was also half naked, but the two things aren’t related, LOL.

Almost a year later in San Jose, Doug got his revenge. Nate Beck was presenting on Wednesday (his birthday) and Doug arranged for a special visit during his session.

We actually have better video of that, but it’s being processed. This was captured by my iPhone.

There’s a lot that makes 360|Flex special, but I have to say, this type of thing, really is icing on the cake. That our speakers and attendees, are capable to having so much fun, WHILE learning a ton, is incredible.

Despite the interruption, Nate’s session got lots of love on twitter, as mind blowing. No one complained afterward, no one bitched on twitter, etc.

It was said shortly after “You won’t see that at MAX” I completely agree!

MAX is great, but this kind of camaraderie, doesn’t happen there, or at any other event that I’m aware of, certainly not at any I’ve been to.