360Flex 2011 – Thank You

April 21, 2011 By

The last day, and the day after 360|Flex are bittersweet. Everyone is signing the welcome banner on wednesday, stopping by to say goodbye as they leave to catch flights, congratulating us on making a profit (w00t!!), etc. It’s great to be able to say goodbye to everyone. The day after is lots of packing up, seeing the stragglers around the lobby, driving home.

It also means it’s gonna be a year until we do it again. It was sad when it was only 6 months, now it’s a year and so… well THANK YOU FLEX COMMUNITY.

The awesome vibe and spirit of 360|Flex 2011 will keep us energized for the rest of the year.

I wanted to take a minute to post this and make sure there was no doubt in anyone’s mind why we do this. If you left Denver last week, ready to do cool shit, conquer the world, and in general be awesome, then we did our job, and so did the speakers and sponsors.

If you didn’t let me know why! We’ll do better!

I know for some it’s hard to think of a conference as a “mom and pop operation” they’re usually huge and faceless, and it’s easy to think of them in terms of a big business. Funny story, I was sitting at the reg table (my spot is the one by the printer, my stickered out laptop and many tablets are always there. If I’m not walking around helping out, I’m there reading tweets to make sure the temp in Salon A is ok, or the internet in Salon C works, etc) and NJ from Adobe was talking to an attendee. The funny part of this is that I’ve met NJ exactly twice. Once a long long time ago at MAX when he was demo’ing a Surface Table built with AS, and then again in Denver last week, he didn’t remember the first time, and I probably didn’t even really introduce myself. I’ve met the Attendee at least 2x also, last time in DC for 360|Flex East and again last week in Denver. The attendee was complaining to NJ “Who ever runs this conference should….” I wasn’t really paying attention to their conversation, but that got my attention so I looked up. NJ looked to me, then the attendee, then to me, then back and pointed at me and said “That guy. He runs it”

The point of that story, is that there is no “who ever” it’s John and Nicole Wilker. One of us is always at the front desk. We welcome every attendee Sunday and Monday, and we say goodbye all day Wednesday. I give a short morning keynote about the conference and life in general. There’s not hired hands doing the grunt work, there’s no group “back home at

the office”. There’s no private office where the staff hides out. Our office last week was a dining room full of boxes where we stored things.

 

360|Flex is awesome because of the community. Not me, not Tom when he was on board, not Nicole. We’re stewards, nothing more. This year’s 360|Flex rekindled why I started doing these events. It made me remember that the community is so incredible and sharing, and no matter how much they make as an indie dev or corporate dev, they need and want a place to come together, that they can afford to get to. To sit with a beer and plate of snacks and talk about code, how excited they are for Spoon, which is better; robotlegs or swiz. Take a short field trip to Denver one day, etc.

 

Tom and I started 360|Flex because it was the event we wanted to attend, I continue it because it’s the event folks like, and I love being able to see them come in and leave with all sorts of new knowledge and skills. Nicole and I never set out to be conference organizers, but we love providing a place for the community to show up in person, and grow and get stronger.

 

So long blog post short… Thank you to every single attendee, speaker, and sponsor who helped make 360|Flex 2011 so awesome. You placed your trust in us to deliver a good event, and I hope we lived up to that trust and will see you next year! (Or at MAX, keep an eye out for 360|MAX)

If you missed 360|Flex 2011, try not to next year :) But don’t worry you can watch the session recordings.

Filed Under: 360flex, Announcements, Business, Community, Reasons to Attend, Sessions, Sponsors, The Speakers, why Tagged With: , , , , , ,

360Flex 2011 – Speaker Chat Recordings

April 4, 2011 By

We’re just 1 week away from 360|Flex 2011. If you’re not excited, maybe you’re not paying attention ;) Just Sayin’

 

If you’ve been following along, we’ve been doing Speaker Chats the last few weeks, and most (sorry, some you had to be there for) were recorded. For posterity, here’s links to all the recorded chats. Enjoy!

 

Brent Arnold

James Ward & Michael Labriola

Garth Braithwaite

RJ Owen

Jeffry Houser (No recording)

 

It’s not too late to register for 360|Flex 2011. Speaker Michael Labriola said it best. Go register!

 

Filed Under: 360flex, Announcements, Community, Reasons to Attend, Sessions, The Speakers, why Tagged With: , , , , ,

You’re in Good Hands: Adios from Tom

April 16, 2010 By

About 3.5 years ago, 360Flex was begun with a simple statement: “We should start our own Flex conference.” John and I didn’t have any idea on how to run a conference. When John pointed that out, I responded with, “How hard could it be? You get some people, put ‘em in a room and feed ‘em. Done.” For our first 360|Flex, that’s quite literally what we did. Luckily, Ted Patrick was there to help drive awareness of our new event. Without Ted, I have to say that we’d still be trying to get word out about the event! (I know this is the case, because 360iDev still struggles getting the word out.)

At the time, John and I were both full time developers. We used that knowledge to help us figure out what the event needed to succeed. I’d like to think those instincts proved to be more right than wrong. Much like any true hacker, we consistently compile/debug and rework the show over the years. The frustration for me was the slow pace of that reworking. I like to see results quickly and not have the following kind of moments: “That didn’t work. Oh well, we’ll tweak it in 6 months and hope it works better.”

John will still constantly improve the show. Of that, I have no doubt. I think it’s good that I’m leaving because the show needs one leader. Up until now, a lot of the internal fighting was on how to get us profitable. We’ve reached that point now, and barring another global financial meltdown, the show should remain profitable. Now, it needs one leader to sorta take the show to the next level. A singular vision from someone who’s passionate about the act of building a conference and bring the community together. Without a doubt, that’s John. Like the title says, you’re in good hands.

For those of you wondering what I’ll be doing now. It’s two-fold. My day job is still Flex development. (I’m an indie contractor, so feel free to let me know about projects you have coming up.)  I’ll start blogging Flex tutorials again. You can follow my blog (which has been collecting dust for months) where I’ll post my new take on tutorials. First up will be a tutorial on how to create your own special type of column chart. Exciting, I know! ;) I’ll also start helping out with community projects: First one is FlexUnit, since I’ve discovered the greatness that is unit testing. I’ll probably drop a note to the Reflex guys too, since the Reflex team is a fun group of guys. In other words, I’ll be returning to my roots that got me into 360Flex in the first place: directly helping people learn how to do cool things with the marvelous tech that is Flex.

Because my head is broken and I can’t just do one thing at a time, I’ll also be doing something else I’ve always dreamed of: making video games. My new company is going to be called Area 161. My partner there is my best friend from high school, so it’s gonna be a blast to work with him on this new enterprise.

I’d like to thank all of you who ever went to one of our 360Flex shows. You were (and always will be) the driving reason for the shows. I thank you deeply for spending your hard earned money (or your boss’s) and traveling out to spend time with us. Your faith in me (and John) was scary at first, since we had never ran our own business before. We never took your faith in us for granted and always try to not just live up to, but surpass expectations. I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to be my first customers.

For those of you who’d like to stay in contact with me, here is my various contact info below. Please keep in contact with me and I’ll see you at 360Flex, only now I’ll never have to run off mid-conversation to go fix something. :)

Personal Info:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lordbron
Facebook: http://facebook.com/lordbron
Blog: http://lordbron.wordpress.com
Email: tom.ortega@gmail.com

Area-161 Info:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/area161
Website: http://area-161.com

Filed Under: Announcements, Business, why

360Flex Road Trip!

February 26, 2010 By

We’re in the final stretch for 360|Flex San Jose 2010.  Everything is coming together just nicely as this proves to be another amazing show.  If you’re on the fence about coming, it’s a bit late to get cheap flights.  However, it’s never too late to plan a road trip.

Thinking back to our very first 360|Flex, I remember the “Man Funk” road trippers.  They weren’t soul brothas with skills like James Brown.  No, they were the other kinda funk.  The one that fills a car after a few days with unshowered men. :) I won’t embarrass them by calling them out by name, alright maybe I will.  I’ll call out Rance Patterson because we’re now good friends.  He, his brother and another innocent soul braved a road trip from Boise, Idaho all the way down to San Jose.  I’m sure glad they did too, because Rance is a hoot and one of the many gems I’ve met during my tenure with 360|Flex.

Road trips are fun.  I’ve taken a few in my life and I love them all.  Even the ones where kids in the car endlessly loop, “Are we there yet?”  There’s nothing like the open road to open up your mind.  Steven Spielberg knows this to be true. He has stated that when he’s stuck on a problem or needs to work out a new idea, he goes for a drive. (Which I can verify is true, because he almost ran me over in the cross walk once but that’s a different story.)

Personally, I like to fill the iPod with great music. “Friends of Dean Martinez” makes for great driving music, since there’s no lyrics to distract your mind from thinking.  I used to make the trip from the Bay Area of Northern California to the Los Angeles Area of Southern California on a regular basis. My mind was always clear and my soul was at ease after each trip.

Therefore, I suggest a road trip regardless if you’re coming to 360|Flex.  BUT if you need a good reason to take a road trip, 360|Flex is the best reason around.  You’ll learn so much stuff to ponder on the drive home.  Possibilities that will fill your mind and make the miles/hours whiz on by.  Therefore, if you live in Portland, Boise, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City or even Phoenix, it’s not too late to decide to come.  It’s going to be blast for sure.  The only question is, are you going to be there or reading the tweets from home.  You’re choice, but for a few hundred folks, the choice is obvious.  Register now and join us.  See you there and don’t forget to buy a car charger for your iPod!  :)

Filed Under: 360flex, Announcements, Reasons to Attend, San Jose, why Tagged With: , , , , ,

360Flex – Why choose the Flex platform?

February 18, 2010 By

It occurred to me that while we tend to hype the show, there’s always an understood sentiment: Flex is the way to go. However, it dawned on me that some companies and/or developers are just now jumping on the Rich Internet Application bandwagon. They may think that Flex is an option, but they’re not going to commit to 360|Flex until they know for sure. Therefore, I’d like to point out a few reasons why we chose to do 360|Flex vs 360|AJAX or something like that.

1) Flex is fun: First and foremost, Flex is fun. If you ever tried to build a RIA in the Flash Authoring IDE, you know it was an exercise in futility. Sure, sure, it could be done, much like surgery can be done with a machete, but it was far too painful for the masses. Flex, especially with Flex/Flash Builder, makes the experience so much better.

2) Flex saves time: The framework does so much for you, right out of the proverbial box. One of my favorite things when teaching Flex to new people is to start a new project and add this single line of code:

<mx:Button label=”Main Button”/>

Then I run the application and show them how it’s a fully functional program.  I show them how there is already built in a hover state, down state and normal state.  All of this built-in to Flex, with no extra effort on your part.

3) Flex is easy: By this, I don’t mean you’ll be a Flex Superstar within a week.  Instead, what I mean is that Flex is a language that’s easy to come to from other scripting or programming languages.  For instance, that line above looks like HTML, because MXML is a markup language too.  ActionScript, the scripting language of Flex, is based on ECMAScript, which makes it instantly familiar to JavaScripters.  Flex is also Object-Oriented base, lending to itself design patterns that are familiar to others from the Java and other programming languages.

4) Flex doesn’t limit you: Most programming languages don’t limit you per se, but some make it tough to go beyond what the language and/or framework was meant to do. This is not the case with Flex.  I’ve seen some pretty amazing edge cases that push the envelope of what the Flex framework was meant to do.    That’s the great thing about Flex.  It was made to be used right out of the box, which is good for some apps.  However, the framework is also one big lesson on how to do anything your heart (or realistically, your Product Manager’s heart) can desire.

These are just a few reasons we became Flex developers back in the day.  It was also one of the reasons we created this conference.  We realized the potential that Flex had, and imagined the great things that would come of bringing everyone in the Flex community together.  The outcome of the shows have been greater than anything we could’ve imagined.  Frameworks, books, companies, businesses, friendships, etc. have all been born at 360|Flex. It’s a testament to the power of a unique community around an amazing product.

While 360|Flex does have some of the most advanced sessions on Flex, we haven’t forgotten about the newcomers. We always have a (free to paid attendees) Flex 101 session on Sunday before the show.  This is a full day of beginning training for those new to Flex or those needing a refresher before the conference.  You bring your own laptop and we have amazing instructors like Garth Braithwaite that teach you the basics of Flex.

If this all sounds great, then definitely come out and join us.  Register here for what’s sure to be a great time in San Jose.  Because if the framework is fun, you can imagine how much more fun the community is!

Filed Under: Business, Community, Hands-On, Reasons to Attend, San Jose, why Tagged With: ,
« Older Posts