360Flex – InsideRIA Winner – Why you should be at 360Flex

We selected a winner from our “Tell InsideRIA why you should be at 360|Flex” contest!

Congrat to David Jumeau for making the case why he deserves to join us in DC!

Special thanks to the InsideRIA team for spreading the word, and to Deril, Jack, Vitor, Lionel, Curtis,  and Josh Grauer for submitting entries! They each get a special discount code to 360|Flex, hopefully we’ll see them there!!

Don’t miss out! 360|Flex DC is 2 weeks away! Register now!


360Flex – Tell InsideRIA Why you should be at 360Flex DC

We’re doing a little contest with InsideRIA. It’s simple really.

Just leave a comment telling us why you want to go to 360|Flex, and why InsideRIA is the best source of RIA information out there, and we’ll select 1 person to get a free pass to 360|Flex DC

That’s it, it’s that easy!

See you in DC!!

360Flex Raffle winners – Session Surveys

Wanted to put a post out so that everyone knows who won our session survey raffles. The Raffles are really important, not just to Tom and I, but (way more so) to our speakers. We pass on survey feedback (anon of course) so that the speakers can learn and make changes to their topics, get better, etc.

We didn’t do a super great job making sure everyone knew that the survey tool , which is our bad for sure, we’ll do better about that, sorry.

For those who did take the time to fill out surveys, we appreciate it, the speakers appreciate it, and we’re glad to be able to try to make it worth your while.

During lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday we did a raffle of survey results submitted so far. Their were 10 copies of Flex Builder which went to;

Dave Matchack, Mark Doberenz, Bryce Barrand, Sam Singer, Sherry Parisi, Joel Spriggs, Jay Hagenow, Arnold K. Young, Kris Arnold, and JD Schrock

Congrats to you guys, you should be hearing from Adobe very soon. The awesome gal that handles this was putting on FlashCamp last week, so it’ll probably be this week.

We also announced that one lucky attendee would win a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection. The lucky winner of that bad boy of software was David Ortinau. Congrats David! We’re getting the media and figuring out how to deliver it (it’s not a small download!)

We also had a copy of Fusion Reactor to give away and that went to Thomas Wilson

We also had a license of Flextras to give out, and two copies of Snagit and Camtasia.

Into Mobile? Looking at other RIA technologies? Check out InsideMobile and InsideRIA!

360Flex – wrapping it up

I wrote some thoughts down on my site, but wanted to post a more official wrap up as well.

What went right

  • Bug quash: They didn’t have the turn out they had hoped for, but I know some bugs got quashed, so that’s a plus.
  • Pre-Conference training: It’s always a pleasure to have Matt Boles with us, this time he took his own time and travel to come and deliver an awesome Flex 101 hands on. What was cool is that while it was “Flex 101″ Matt upped the Anti with some Blaze DS action, so it was a good class for even experienced developers.
  • Welcome Reception and Speaker Sponsor reception: The Rock Bottom Brewery was an awesome location. I really liked it. The food was tasty, the beer yummy, the people nice. The parties are fun and challenging. Tom and I want to make sure they don’t suck but also want to make sure to meet as many people as we can and thank them for coming. That meant being “Gatekeepers” of the drink tickets, keeping the Rock Band action going, making sure if we ran out of food, that more was ordered, etc. AND walking around saying hi to people.
  • Monday’s Keynote: Matt Chotin is awesome. He’s a great speaker and makes the keynotes funny and informative.  It’s always a pleasure to have him at 360|Flex!
  • Charity Code Jam: It almost didn’t happen. Like literally the week before 360|Flex Indy, we were helping Ali and Shannon lock down the details, etc. While we wish we could actually support it fully, we can’t, so we’re really glad someone (webapper) stepped up to help out! The Charity Code jam is just one of those things that feels good. After so many hours of coding non stop, missing sessions, missing the sun, etc. to stand in front of the entire conference to show off what you’ve accomplished, is just awesome. Hats off to everyone who participated, and Ali for organizing it. I really truly hope a company (Adobe! Are you listening! This is HUGE) hires Ali to organize jams at every confernce.
  • Monday night party: We did all our evening events at Rock Bottom, which made it easier for folks to know where to be and when. Same awesome time as Sunday, Rock Band going nuts, folks grabbing a booth to chat, and meet.
  • Wednesday keynote: I love the Wednesday keynote. Sunday and Monday Tom and I work the reg booth, so we meet everyone that comes in, but it’s only for a few seconds usually. We see everyone at lunch, and the parties too, but inevitably there’s people we just never get to connect with. I see the Wednesday keynote as the time to connect with everyone (everyone that is awake that is, LOL). We talk about numbers (something I frankly challenge all other conferences to do), we talk about the code jam, we let community members present their projects, it’s just a great time for Tom and I too look ou at the crowd and see our customers/friends/drinking buddies and really appreciate why we do it. Without sounding corny, the Wednesday keynote really helps refocus Tom and I on why we’re in this business.
  • Our Sponsors! They’re awesome and each one deserves your business. Check them out, see what they have to offer. Without Sponsors 360|Flex would be impossible to offer.
  • Our Speakers! 40+ of the biggest names in the Flex development community. People who are launching open source projects, offering consulting services, and just sharing what they know and what they’ve learned to help everyone else. Our speakers are awesome!

What went less than right

  • Pre-Conference training: We only had one offering this time. I wish more companies would get involved in this. It’s a great way to educate a huge group of possible users of your tool, and get your name out there in front of a ton of people who might not otherwise investigate your offering.
  • Monday Keynote: One of these days I hope to have the check in process so under control that we’re either done by the time the keynote is supposed to start, or able to leave the desk for a bit. My wife Nicole rocks for helping, she’s invaluable, but I wouldn’t leave alone with you monsters :) I think the only keynote I’ve done on a Monday might have been Seattle maybe? Or San Jose ’07? I want to do more of those.
  • Monday Keynote content: We forgot to address “House keeping” items, like the OPEN slots being filled, the session survey being ready by Monday afternoon, etc.
  • Tuesday night party: Officially it was the “Adobe Party” but that was name only. I don’t know if it’s a curse or what, but when it’s an “Adobe Party” it’s kinda weak. Usually it’s our fault, not Adobes. This time was no exception, I selected the food I thought would be a nice fit, and would last. Unfortunately it didn’t last, and unlike previous nights, there was no food to be ordered since the restaurant was packed because of a concert, there was not extra food to be had. Party Fail :(
  • Session Surveys: the app rocks, but it wasn’t ready in time, and we had a hard time conveying it’s importance and how to use it.

Overall 360|Flex Indy was a huge success! Tom and I are very proud of the event, and extremely happy to have had everyone with us, we appreciate that there’s several options out there for technical conferences, and appreciate the faith, and hope we delivered, and we’ll see you next time. Please make sure if you haven’t already, tell us what we did wrong, and right, and spread the word. Word of mouth is more valuable to us, than anything else.

If you’re in the Mobile space, check out our InsideMobile event. If you’re looking at the RIA space (uh yeah, Flex developers, hello) check out our InsideRIA event. Both events are partnerships with O’Reilly, and we’re really excited about them!

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

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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

Email

Blog/twitter

Bio (with pic)

Title

Description

Track

Level (100 – 300)