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.

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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!

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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

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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!  :)

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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!

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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.

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Three people we have served have taken the time to write up a blog post on their first 360|Flex. These are attendees turned speakers, a path which seems common at our shows. This is because of the type of show we try to put on. John and I grew with each show, so it only made sense that attendees did as well. We didn’t think we could do a conference, but we did. Now, attendees don’t think they can become speakers but they do. 360|Flex has always been and will always be about growth. Growth, not just in Flex skills (because those do grow at the shows), but of also personal growth. Again though, you don’t have to believe us. You can go read these posts yourselves.

The three created this time around are:
Dan Florio, aka Polygeek
Doug McCune
Randy Troppmann

(If you have your own “First 360|Flex” story to tell, write it up and drop us a comment. We’ll add you to the list.)

The point of this post though is to show you one thing: The show is not about 360|Conferences at all really. It’s about the community that comes together to create a magic like no other. Again, don’t take our word for it. Read the accounts. Then, if you’ve never been or haven’t been back in awhile, head on over to the registration page and join us. Without you there, the magic just won’t be the same.

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Why an official hotel that’s not connected to the conference center? For one, the conference center is on eBay’s HQ. They are trying to run a business, not make your beds or pick up your mess. Aside from that obvious reason, we want to keep having fun after we leave eBay. We’re still gonna party at Ebay after the last sessions; However, instead of taking the post functs to someone’s room, we want to take the party to downtown San Jose!

One thing that’s always nice at a conference is bumping into the “superstars”. While it happens a lot at the conference, it’s tough to pull someone aside to buy ‘em a drink to say thanks for contributing to the community. While we (the organizers) may not be the superstars you’re looking for, we will be at the hotel with all the speakers (who are the superstars). If you’re flying all the way to the show to meet and learn from these people, why would you bother staying anywhere else? Yes, it would be silly, especially after you read up on the deal we have for you!

We have a room block of Sunday night thru Tuesday night. We lined up an amazing rate of $99, for you all because we love you so. :) You don’t think we love you? How about this? In addition to the low rate of $99 for a Mariott (read: Not Sleazy 8 or Motel 6, or the Holiday Inn down the street, close but gross), we’ve also negotiated free wi-fi access for everyone’s guest rooms. That alone will save you some additional coin.

Assuming you’re arriving Saturday to take advantage of our awesome Sunday Hands-On training, and staying until Wednesday to make sure you don’t miss the final 4 sessions, which will rock and be worth your staying ’til the end we promise! You’re still only paying about $125 a night when you average the prices. Compared to other hotels in the area, that’s a damn good deal. Saturday night and Wednesday night are a bit beefier on the price because the majority of people just stay Sunday to Wednesday, so that’s what our block is for.

I’m sure you have all been to conferences where there’s the, “Which hotel are you at dialogue?” Then there’s time and effort spent on who will go where and when to meetup, etc. Make it easier on yourselves and sure to be newfound friends. Just stay at the Mariott so you’re all in the same place and will be easy to find each other. We’ll be there, the speakers will be there, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t be.

You can book online, easy peasy :) Just click here. Check out the Hotel and Travel tab for information on the hotel and getting around San Jose

While you’re booking your room, you have registered for the conference right? We have so much awesome lined up it’s hard to contain ourselves when talking about it :) Register now!

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You know, the one pictured in the image. It’s a time where the gym population magically balloons.  The times when streets fill with walkers and joggers (at least out west).  It’s a new year and, thus, resolution time.

Aside from the health one, there are two resolutions that are pretty popular.

1. Learn something new
2. Get a better job/position

Now, let’s see how it is that 360|Flex can help you fulfill those resolutions.

Learn something new

This one should be fairly obvious, but just in case let us reiterate some points.

• There are over 40 sessions at the next 360|Flex, lead by industry leaders and devs in the trenches just like you
• 2 Keynotes – Adobe always delivers a great keynote, often with big news for the Flex community.  The community portion of the other keynote is always an amazing glimpse into projects that blow your mind and inspire
• Free Hands-On Sunday Workshops – That’s right, a lot of shows make you pay for your conference pass then extra for hands-on workshops.  At 360|Flex, you’re regular admission ticket lets you into the Flex 101, Mate and Flex/Hardware workshops.  Just bring your laptop
• Panels – New to 360|Flex this year are panels.  This will be your chance to hear from many experts at once and pick their brains
• Meet the Flex Team – We usually have a Birds of a Feather where you can pick the brains of various members of the Flex team

Get a better job/position

Whether you’re tired of your current job or just want to move from Junior Flex Dev to Senior Flex Dev at the same company, we can help:

• Highly technical sessions got finally get you over that hump from Junior to Senior
• The parties offer an opportunity to meet and interact with many Senior Developers as well as those from contracting or full-time realm.  Meet your peers, ask for advice and learn from them.
• Hallway chatter is always amazing at conferences and 360|Flex is no different.  Many people come simply for the hallway chatter, where very heavy discussions happen on the fly.
• People who are looking for Flex developers know that they can find developers at 360|Flex.  Learn about opportunities and the market to better help you decide to stay with your current job or to possibly seek out another

As you can see, 360|Flex can help avoid the “Nothing’s changed” feeling that usually accompanies resolutions.  Registers now and make that first step in achieving your goals.  ”Help us, help you.”  :)

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I’ve been pondering it though and I think there is something that I would ask for. In this new economy, one can really only depend on oneself for professional success. Gone, it seems, are the days where you could spend 30 years at a company, dedicating your life to help it succeed and where it would reward that dedication with retirement. My dad caught the tail end of that bus and had to retire “early” for fears of the company pulling those benefits altogether.

I know that there will likely not be Social Security for me. 401Ks just seem crazy to me because I don’t see how it differs from gambling in Vegas (at least Vegas has buffets!). No, the only thing that will pay for me to live it up in old age will be my hard work. I’ll need to create the future that I want to live in financially and professionally.

That’s why I think I’d ask for a conference pass as my gift. Yeah, I can hear all you naysayers out there, touting this as a gimmick to sell tickets. I’ll admit, it’s true. However, you have to remember, I helped start this conference for one reason: to help people better themselves by increasing their skillset in Flex and ActionScript. That’s still the reason why I work on this show. It may be my final 360|Flex as an organizer, but it won’t be my last 360|Flex ever. The vibe is too magical to miss. The community is too full of friends that I *must* see to keep my spirits high. The speakers are too amazing to miss from a learning perspective.

Therefore, if you find yourself wondering what to ask for (or give) that would be meaningful this holiday season, I’d suggest a pass to 360|Flex. While a new gadget gets boring after a few hours, a 360|Flex conference creates bonds and memories that last a lifetime. Don’t believe me? Check out what past attendees have to say. Here’s the registration site: http://360flex.eventbrite.com I hope to see you there in March.

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