To get an idea what you can expect to see. This is Doug giving a crazy inspiring talk at our RIAdventure event last year. The video is free this week. Enjoy!

Once it’s in your cart, it’ll take the price to 0.

Doug is always entertaining, I’ve known him for almost 4 years now, and am constantly impressed. This video captures why he’s keynoting. Whether data visualization is your bag or not, this video is worth watching.

While you’re at it, check out the rest of the videos from RIAdventure and 360|Flex San Jose.

Then go register for 360|Flex DC, so you don’t miss what will likely be our best keynote ever!

Now, before I hurt the feelings of other speakers, let me give a little background before I get to explaining that title.

Doug and I live very different lives. He drops the f-bomb to make a point, while I use “silly” cuz “stupid” is too harsh a word to say around my boys. He drinks like a fish, while root beer is the strongest stuff I drink (with vanilla ice cream, preferably). We don’t sit and chat about life; In fact, we sorta rarely chat at all. However, neither do my real-life brother and I, but there’s an understanding and a bond.

With my real life brother, the bond is familial. We share a mom and dad. With Doug, it’s a common goal. We want to get people thinking and excited about learning. Of course, we do it in our own way. Doug does this by creating amazing projects that leverage other people’s work, which makes you think, “Dang, why didn’t I think to do that?” Then he throws down the gauntlet and challenges you to take what he’s done and make something even cooler. Doug leads by example and doesn’t hold back the truth when you’re not performing at your peak. This is evident by his rants about the Flex Framework. My favorite quote of his is “The Flex Team is good, but not god.” I, on the other hand, am more of a hand holder. I’ll, literally, spend weeks writing up a post or article that explains how to use the Flex Component Kit for Flash or how to graduate your code hackery to an architected system. I began Silvafug and 360|Flex (the latter with John) with one singular goal: to teach people the skillsets they need to better themselves and better serve the Flex community.

That said, while I am a McCune fanboy like everyone in the community, you can see there’s something deeper.

When we first started the concept of the RIAdventure 360 cruise, the concept I tried to explain to Josh and John was this: “We need to create a conference of forward thinking talks. We need to have the presenters not just talk about what tools exist and what’s been done, but also present ideas and concepts that force the attendees to think fresh and spurs them into action. Psychologists say that being in a new, unfamiliar surround spurs learning.  Therefore, what better place to learn than in a classroom that’s sailing atop the Caribbean Sea.” We knew the two at sea days were going to be the conference days. These luckily fell on the first and last full days, thus sandwiching the four at port days in the middle. My original idea had presenters kickstarting the concepts to get people thinking and throwing out “calls to action” to the attendees. The group would reorganize five days later on the second day of the conference to explain how they were going to make things happen when they got back home. John wanted more bang for the back on the other days and Josh mentioned the loose dinner discussions that took play on the first RIAdventure. That great idea of theirs would hopefully provide a way to carry on the discussion.

When I lined Doug up to be a speaker it was over IM.  At first, he declined, then I explained the concept of the conference. He quickly got it and agreed to do the show.

To say that Doug’s talk was inspirational would be an understatement. Over the past few months, Doug has told me that he was bringing his “A game” to the show. While many thought this conference was an excuse to take a cruise, Doug realized it was just as serious as any other presentation he’d give on land.

Doug presented us with a history of Data Visualization. Humbling us by proving things we’re doing now in Flex are not new, but have existed for hundred and sometimes thousands of years. He then moved on to the idea that Data Viz came about because of the need to process huge amounts of data. He explained how cities and governments are putting all their data live and accessible. With more and more data, we’ll need new ways to present that data in meaningful ways. This provides us an opportunity to create something new. Much like someone at some point in time created the bar chart, we too can create something new to help the world process this massive amount of data. Doug is embarking on his own self-created Data Vizualization Degree. If you want to be a member of the graduating class with him, here are the areas of study:

Historical Data Visualization
Contemporary Infographics
Basic Statistics
Computer Algorithms
Statistical Programming
Distributed Programming
Color Theory
Cartography
Artistic Composition

An interesting sidepoint to Doug’s presentation was the “Your data/Your Life” concept. This basically means that it’s now possible to capture every detail of your life in data. In Doug’s case, it was his location every 5 minutes (tracked via his cell phone). This created a heat map that highlighted most of his life was spent at his house and his girlfriend’s home. He turned that into an engraving that he gave his girlfriend. Soon after, they were engaged and living together at her place. He used that example to show that while we can collect all that data, no one will really care about it except ourselves and maybe those close to us. For me, that was sorta the driving force behind Poemsformywife.com. While technically, it is a website of poetry for my wife that she or anyone can view, it’s become apparent that it’s a site only I care about. By that, I mean I read the old poems more often than my wife because I like to relive the moments that I spent writing them. While to her and others, they’re not great poetry and thus would never warrant a reread.

Doug McCune, for all his zaniness, is a true intellectual at heart. He gets it. He gets how to inspire. He gets how to teach. He gets that we live only one life and it’s not to live it in solitude, but instead to try our hardest to help and teach our fellow man. For that we love him…well, that and his two thumbed faced logo. :)

[Update: Doug's publicly declared his switch from Flex Programmer to full fledged Data Visualization Engineer. Read up on it here. ]

First the inspiring. Doug McCune and Sam Rivello rocked the house. Doug spoke about data visualization, but not in the typical, here’s how to create the latest, hottest chart/graph/heatmap but in terms of what data viz is, where it came from “The Bar Chart was Invented”

I’ve never been a data viz guy, but his talk was great. I think the group really got a lot out of it. I think enrollment in the McCune school of DataViz is open too, there’s a suggested reading list :)

Sam Talked about life… building life in code, and how the concepts of life (the 7 requirements for something to be “alive”) can be expressed in code. We’re not talking AI, more a comparitive discussion, with cute smiley faced amoeba’s to back up the talk. (You can check out his project here) It was a great talk, and another where you’re left with that “hhmmmm” look on your face.

Of course we talked tech too, and got into code!

Ryan Stewart, Greg Burch, Faisal Abid, and even Nate Beck (Not a speaker, but jumped in to present) rocked the mic and the flat screen with awesome tech talks.

Ryan and Greg rep’ed Adobe awesomely, talking about Catalyst, mobile (Slider and iPhone), Flash platform, you name it we talked about it, including some sweet stuff we had to turn the camera’s off for :)

Faisal showed us Android and talked about Android and CF playing together. He also showed us Chrome OS, which (not surprisingly) doesn’t work if you’re not online. Seeing Android truly in action, was pretty dope, I’m more impressed now than I was.

Nate stepped up on the last day to talk about the Push Button Engine, and building Flash games. Very cool stuff!

I’m working on the videos now (Waiting for more HDD space in my drobo, UPS man is on his way), we’re going to post as much of the session video as possible.

Ad of course it was a cruise!

During the time inbetween sea days, everyone spent the day hanging out, doing excursions, whatever they wanted. Most nights we all got together for drinks, sometimes dinner, and whenever possible, karaoke.

You’ll have to ask Sam about the stair case the next time you see him :)

I have to admit, the entire experience of a cruise, with awesome tech talks, great networking, and cool people, and of course, sweet destinations, and beautiful ocean, is a great way to conference. It’s certainly not gonna replace 360|Flex, but we were on the boat with a group of almost 700. That’s a lot of people in one place for the same reason, on a cruise!

Of course everyone who joined us on the boat is coming to 360|Flex San Jose Free of charge too, so it’ll be a cruise reunion :)

Don’t miss 360|Flex, you’ll regret it, I promise :) Register now!

I always wondered what they meant or how it was that ours was the best show already. Now, I know. Usually, when John and I arrive for a show, there’s so much to do: check facilities, meet with catering, etc. This “preflight” checklist sorta takes away the magic for us. Not that we don’t enjoy the show, but just the few days before is a lot of work.

With RIAdventure being on a boat, there’s none of that for us to do. The ship handles everything for us. This allows us to soak in the anticipation and excitement. I’ve already bumped into many of the RIAdvenuters throughout New Orleans (though I totally didn’t recognize Doug with his new “intelligent” look – I’ll take a picture so you can see what I mean). We meet up with the rest of the speakers and attendees today. After the boat sets sail, the ship has provided a welcome reception for us.

I haven’t seen the speakers presentations yet. I haven’t had a RIA discussion yet either. However, you can just feel the magic in the air. Some amazing things are going to happen this week and I feel bad for those of you who won’t be here to catch it all. We’ll be taking lots of photos, notes and some Flip videos, but it won’t be the same. It’s like why I watch baseball and love it in the stadiums, but could care less to watch it on TV. There’s something magical about just being there to witness it (and participate) as it happens.

You may not be able to join us on the boat, but definitely come out to 360Flex this march in San Jose. With over 40 amazing speakers, it’s gonna be great too. There just won’t be 2000 staff waiting on you like on the boat. :) Register now and save $100.

We’ve got 2 sessions we’re working on with Greg;

1. Top Ten things you should know about developing for the iPhone
2. Flex Mobile (Slider)

Both discussions are gonna be kick ass. Greg is gonna be talking about awesome Adobe mobile stuff, which being so close to MAX, you’re not gonna see around anywhere else to this level yet.

A little about Greg: Greg has both pioneered and lead the engineering effort on many mobile initiatives, inside and out of Adobe. Most recently he has founded the Slider project which is bringing the Flex framework to mobile. Greg has over a decade of experience developing for mobile devices and consumer electronics. You can see examples of his work on devices across the world from cellphones to cameras to kiosks to point of sale systems ..and more. Greg will be giving a session outlining Slider and a session on iPhone development using Flash.

Don’t miss out, times running out! Register now!

BUT

we’ve got an incredible replacement! Greg Burch, from the Adobe Mobile team. You know the guys working on cool things like the Flex Mobile framework, Flash and iPhone stuff.

Yeah the mobile aspect of Adobe RIA on the cruise just went through the roof!! Don’t worry, we won’t be neglecting the rest of the RIA space. How could we with the likes and Ryan Stewart! Doug McCune, Sam Rivello, and Faisal Abid

Oh and in case you haven’t checked the tentative schedule, Faisal’s gonna be talking mobile too :)

This cruise will be something you’re gonna regret missing. If the conversations in hallways at conferences like 360|Flex, CFUnited, MAX, etc are something you enjoy and geek out on, well this will be almost two weeks of 100% hallways, conversation, geeking out, with a tropical paradise as the backdrop!

Register now, time’s running out, and boat is filling up.

It just so happened Ali Daniali, Charity Code Jam Master, was in need of just such a ticket.

Digital Primates is a great company, and long time supporter of ours, and it’s cool to see companies like them and Simplified Logic give back to the community in these ways. In case you’re curious Simplified Logic gave all their extra 360|Flex passes for ATL, away to the community, rather than not use them.

Make sure you stop by and say hi to the Digital Primates crew!!

Also if you’re interested in Ali’s Charity Code Jam efforts, find him, there will be a Jam at 360|Flex San Jose 2010, so don’t miss out, the Karma points are two for one!!

It’s not too late to register for the RIAdventure Cruise! Remember everyone that joins us on the boat, gets into 360|Flex SJ 2010 for free! 2 events, 1 boat, all awesome! Don’t miss out! Register now!

In the meantime, here’s what we’ve got right now. If it looks like a ton of awesome discussions, sitting around a table having a drink/meal, you’d be right, that’s exactly what it is.

RIAdventure isn’t a conference in the ‘sit around in sessions’ sense (we’ve got some sessions, don’t get me wrong) it’s more of what is typically the best part of conferences, the conversations in the hallways.

We’ve got a great group of speakers (is that even the right term?) that will be engaging in incredible conversations every night of the cruise. We’re not limited to the topics on the schedule, those are merely starting points.

Download the schedule see what you think! The cruise is gonna rock!!

Remember, registering for RIAdventure, also includes a ticket to 360|Flex San Jose (March 7-10, 2010), which always sells out!

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Not only will you get some awesome new stuff to drool over at MAX, but you can then spend a week sailing the Caribbean with Ted Patrick, Ryan Stewart, Doug McCune, Faisal Abid, and Sam Rivello this December.

AND

get a free pass to the next 360|Flex in San Jose, the end of February!

Register for MAX now! and Register for the RIAdventure cruise We promise it’ll be the most awesome time you’ll have with nerds on a boat!!

It’s a cruise though.  While it’s a perk for some, we realize that it’s a detriment to others, particularly those with anal bosses.  (Don’t tell them we said that, okay?)  Therefore we’ve been noodling on, “How can we make it more attractive for people to come?  What can we give them?”

A t-shirt didn’t really seem to cut it.  A Doug McCune beer koozie, probably not gonna push you over the edge.  What’s the most valuable thing 360|Conferences has to offer?  A ticket to what will likely be a sold out show, that’s a pretty cool item, no?

We sure hope so, because today we’re announcing that those who join us at RIAdventure will also get a ticket to 360|Flex next, included in their registration.  ”A 360|Flex ticket for $300 bucks, plus I get to go to RIAdventure! Sign me up!”  While we haven’t formally announced it yet, the next 360Flex will be the last weekend of February, 2010 in San Jose.  We’re just awaiting confirmation from eBay on the space and we’ll be good to announce.  (Unlike other shows, we just can’t bring it on ourselves to announce without a firm date and location, as tempting as it is.)

Now, all you west coasters, this deal is for you.  Fly out to join us on the boat and then drive over to get into 360|Flex for free.  Register now and we’ll see you aboard, matey!  :)

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