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.