Ryan Stewart

RIAdventure 360 White Christmas? Sure, White Sand Christmas!

August 19, 2009 By Tom

RIAdventure 360 is gonna rock. With Ted Patrick, Ryan Stewart, Doug McCune, Faisal Abid and Sam Rivello speaking, it’s obviously gonna rock. (Don’t know these people somehow, go check out the speaker page to get their bios.) The question is more: Are you going to be there?

One thing that is obvious is that the conference is in between to major U.S. holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas. There’s no point in trying to avoid the subject since it’s fact. However, instead of avoiding it, we’d like to do the opposite and bring it into focus.

For many parts of the US, this summer plain sucked. Sunshine was rare and the thought of Fall and Winter fast approaching isn’t a pleasant thought for some. Early December isn’t going to be filled with a surprise burst of 75 F temperatures, with blue skies and waters of about the same temperature. It’s gonna be dark and it’ll likely be cold.

We know that people work out their holiday schedules years in advance. Alternating between one set of parents to the other is the norm. Or always going to Aunt Bess is the way Christmas/Turkey Day is spent. If that’s the case, by all means, go. Don’t let us disrupt a time honored tradition.

However, what if there’s flexibility in your plans? If you can spend some time with your significant other and maybe the kids alone, while learning about stuff that’ll make you a more valueable employee (or indie developer), why not? The cruise when all costs are said and done is not much more costly than many other conferences. Though, how many shows let you spend quality time with your family, enjoy an early Christmas in paradise and still learn about the nitty-gritty of the RIA space?

Only one show does: RIAdventure 360. Therefore, we’re making the case for you to head on home and chat it over with the family. We did. You can even do what we did, which is ask the extended family to join us. Send them this link so they can learn all about the cruise. No sense in not making it a party. This way, there’s no reason to feel bad if Aunt Bess decides not to come. She had her chance to make up her mind.

The RIAdventure Cruise conference is gonna be like no even ever before. It’s a concept that will evolve over the years and only get better. The thing you have to ask yourself is do you want to be there at the start? Or do you want to be a latecomer and hop on the bandwagon after it’s been through a few rounds?

We’re all trailblazers and we’re willing to bet you are too. In that case, work out the plans. Get things in order and we’ll see ya aboard, matey! Head on over and buy your tickets now!

Filed Under: Community, RIAdventure360, Ryan Stewart Tagged With: Christmas in Paradise, Convince the Family, Reasons to Come, RIAdventure 360 Cruise

RIAdventure360 – More Speakers!

August 4, 2009 By John

Josh, Tom and I have been working over time to get the Cruise locked down. Namely, selecting and notifying speakers!

We’ve added three more names to the list of speakers for the cruise. ‘Speakers’ is a bit of a misnomer in this case though. Sure each will have a session slot to present to the group, but really these are the heavy weights that attendees of the cruise will be spending 7 days with, talking about Adobe and RIAs, and even a little non Adobe awesomeness (Android anyone? and I’m sure Tom and I can weigh in on iDevice stuff if it goes there).

Alongside Ryan and Doug, we’re happy to have Sam Rivello (360|Flex alum), Faisal Abid, and …. drum roll…. Ted Patrick!

Yeah that’s right! Not only has Ted risen from the platform evangelist ashes like the phoenix, but he’ll be joining us on the cruise to talk all things, Adobe RIA. He and Ryan will be kicking the cruise off with an awesome keynote.

Check out the speaker bios over on the RIAdventure site’s speaker page!

Make sure to register early and secure your place on the boat! Register Now!

Filed Under: 360flex, Announcements, RIAdventure360, Ryan Stewart Tagged With: 360flex, RIAdventure360, Speaker Announcement, speakers

Interested in Mobile? RIA? Two new events now open.

May 16, 2009 By John

Tom and I are super happy to finally announce that we’ve teamed up with O’Reilly to bring two new events into the world!

InsideRIA and InsideMobile!

The goal of each event is twofold:

We want to give developers an opportunity to get down and dirty with each platform. This way an attendee can walk away knowing which technology feels better for them.
We want to bring together developers in those spaces for more open ended conversations that are technology agnostic. This way you can talk about the general problems and frustrations of the space vs the indidividual technology.

For InsideMobile, there could be a “How do I update a table view in WebOS vs Android?” session, but there will also be generic sessions, such as “How to lay out your app for a small screen size”.

InsideRIA will leverage the awesome community of the InsideRIA blog. The conference purpose is to provide a real world connecting point for Silverlight, JavaFX, Flex, etc developers. There will be opportunities to explore the different techs, but also to discuss generic topics such as “What does Rich mean?” or “How do I design a RIA?”

Both events will be at our famous stomping ground, eBay Town Hall, birthplace of 360|Flex and 360|iDev. Each event will be 2 days: One day of pre-conference training day to get hands-on with the various techs. The second day is a multi-track event, filled with traditional speaker led sessions.

You know Tom and I, so this won’t be some weak sauce marketing event showing off “Roadmaps, future features, etc” that’s for the birds. This will be hands on and/or deep dive nitty gritty details from developers actually building in these platforms.

This is also the Call for papers! Have a mobile or RIA topic you’d like to propose? We’re very open to topic ideas! Send us an email!

If you’ve worked with us, the format is the same:

Name

Blog/twitter

Bio (with pic)

Title

Description

Track

Level (100 – 300)

Filed Under: Announcements, Hands-On, O'Reilly, Ryan Stewart, Schedule Tagged With: insideMobile, insideRIA

360|Flexy Tour: “I gotcha custom component right ‘ere!”

April 1, 2009 By Tom

John and I are totally stoked to announce another first in the conference world. We’ve noticed that too many conferences are the same these days. You gotta speaker, you got an audience, but there’s very little interaction. One thing we’re always trying to do is figure out ways for the speakers to share in the spoils. We think we’ve finally figured out a way!

Today we’re announcing the all new, 360|Flexy Tour. The tagline that finally won was “I gotcha custom component right ‘ere!” Some of the other forerunners were: “PurePYT” and “360|Flexy: An Open Shirt Project”.

John and I knew that not every speaker would be prepared to go on this tour. Therefore, after much deliberation we settled on someone who shall remain nameless. When we approached this speaker about the tour, he had 2 things to say:

1) $#!^ yeah! When does it start?

2) There’s gonna be drinking involved, right?

Loving this person’s enthusiasm, we wanted to get started right away. Therefore, like all new Flex projects, we did a couple of private Beta shows. We managed to snap a few pictures. We’ve blurred out the innocent attendees (some of whom are still traumatized, errr…I mean are satisfied customers), but we left the speaker loud and clear. He’s so outta his element that it’s pretty tough to recognize him. If you want to be added to the notification list of the show or want to be a “speaker”, drop a note in the comments.

We’re looking at support from Adobe on this. Rumor has it we may land Ryan Friggin’ Stewart as a co-headline for the tour. And yes, he’s confirmed that the pink polo will indeed be making an appearance!

Filed Under: 360flex, Announcements, Hands-On, Ryan Stewart