San Jose

360Flex – Flex vs HTML5: Flex work pays today

February 16, 2010 By Tom

With all the hub-bub about the future of Flash and HTML5 flying around the intertubes, we wanted to point out one obvious fact. While HTML5 or Flash may one day be the end all solution to all the world’s woes, there’s only one woe we at 360|Flex are concerned about: Getting people paid.

Because of the rebranding of Flash and the associated technologies, the term Flex is now a bit watered down. However, we still wanted to use it to point out something that should be obvious to all, but may be lost in the debate. Flex work pays now, as in today, and will for the foreseeable future. A lot of enterprises have invested heavily in Flex. They’re not going to give up that investment anytime soon, particularly since the Flash Player on the desktop isn’t going anywhere.

To prove this, I did a quick little search on the monster.com website. This is not a debate about this particular job site’s ability or merit. Monster is big enough to represent the world at large, i.e. outside the Silicon Valley bubble where this Flash vs HTML5 debate is going down most vigorously. Therefore, it’s good enough for my non-scientific experiments.

First off, I did a search for HTML5 jobs nationwide. Let’s take a look at the results:

The results of my nationwide HTML5 job search

Next, I did a search for Flex jobs nationwide. Let’s take a look at this results there:

The results for the nationwide Flex job search

Now, some people will argue, what if you did a search for “HTML 5″ vs “HTML5″. That brings the number up to 1700, but a quick glance shows that the majority are NOT HTML5 jobs. Rather, they’re HTML jobs with the number 5 somewhere in the job listing. Also, “Flex hours” must also boost up the “Flex” search, right? I found 1 “flex hour” posting in the first 100 jobs, so I don’t think the argument is valid

Now, what happens to the numbers if you search for “Flash” or “ActionScript”? I don’t know, because I didn’t . Why not? Well, because Flex’s 1300 is close enough to the results of “HTML 5″ and blows way past the results for “HTML5″ to illustrate the main point:

Today, you can get hired by roughly 1300 companies to do Flex work or you can get hired by 18 companies to do HTML5 work.

If there’s one thing we’re very aware of at 360|Flex, it’s getting paid to do work. We think getting paid is good. We also started the conference to help you better your pay (if your working with Flex) or to help you find a new job (if you’re not working with Flex). Therefore, we just wanted to point out that attending 360|Flex for the foreseeable future is a worthwhile investment. Register now and participate in the greatest gathering of Flex developers anywhere.

Filed Under: 360flex, Business, Reasons to Attend, San Jose, why Tagged With: Flex, Getting Paid, HTML5, Work

360Flex – In pictures

February 10, 2010 By John

I posted about what you do and don’t get, and we’ve done more posts than I can count on the overall vibe, and the parties etc. So I wanted to take a minute to just post some pictures. I grabbed these off of flickr.

That’s just a few. Some 1200 pics are on flickr right now for 360|Flex. We’ll get that number higher :)

Hopefully that shows you a little bit of what we’re talking about when we talk about the people, the parties, and everything else that makes people say “Here’s what I love about the 360Flex conferences: even if you didn’t attend a single session it’s worth the time and money to attend. The conversations with other developers in the hallways, at lunch/dinner, at the bars in the evenings is just as educational and of course more fun” Dan Florio

Imagine if you attended some sessions ;)

Filed Under: 360flex, Announcements, Community, Groups, Hands-On, Reasons to Attend, San Jose, Sessions Tagged With: 360flex, Community, Countdown, Flash Platform, Hands-On, Reasons to Come, San Jose, Sessions, speakers

360Flex – Get your party on!

February 9, 2010 By John

One of the great things about 360|Flex are the parties.

That’s not to say the content isn’t top notch, it’s way more than top notch.

But, the parties are just fun! We don’t have several parties a night, we have one. Sponsored by an awesome company who wants to show the Flex community some love. (See below)

The parties are onsite, right at Ebay. We bust out the Rock Band, the beer, the appetizers, and just geek out.

The parties are a a great place to unwind after having insane amounts of knowledge pushing into your head all day. You can enjoy a beer, chat up an Adobe engineer, get your Beastie Boys on, whatever.

Monday’s Party is sponsored by Universal Mind!

Tuesday we’re partying with Digital Primates!

After we’re done partying at Ebay, the party moves downtown San Jose!

Filed Under: 360flex, Community, Reasons to Attend, San Jose Tagged With: 360flex, Community, Party, Reasons to Come, San Jose

360Flex – Speaker Chat – Eric Fickes and Jun Heider

February 9, 2010 By John

We’re doing a double whammy chat this week on the 360|Flex Speaker Chat! Jun heider and Eric Fickes, who are doing a 2 part talk on RIA, Backend support and even Silverlight, are together for the chat. Between the two of them there’s nothing you can’t ask about RIA, ColdFusion, Flash development, heck ask what developing in Silverlight is like if you’re curious :)

This weeks speaker chat is Thursday Feb 11th, 11:30am MST. Don’t miss it!

Bookmark this link

These chats are great ways to see what our speakers are up to and get a glimpse of how awesome our sessions are. Think of it as a teaser for the real deal in San Jose. It’s not too late to ensure you don’t miss out on the best Flex/AS/AIR content available.