The FlashCanon

Well, I just made it back home to Dallas after my first Flashforward and it was everything I’d hoped it would be (and more). I learned more on several fronts than I could try to write about in one sitting. Everything from great tools to use to be more productive to different ways that different people approach the same problems. I’m even more impressed with Flex than I was just last week and I can’t wait to get my hands on Apollo. As for today, I was blown away by Seb Lee-Delisle’s session titled “Particles for the Non-Physicist”. Seb established Plug-in media and you should really go check out some of his work. Also, I think Grant Skinner and Aral Balkan convinced me that I (and you) need to be using gProject and several OSFlash projects like LuminicBox Logger and AsUnit.

All in all it was an awesome trip and conference. I hope I can do it again another time and maybe some day I’ll even be able to speak at Flashforward. A man can dream, right?

Just got out of the film festival a while ago and it was great! While all of the finalists were awesome displays of talent and imagination, someone had to win. So here’s a run down:

Art: 15×15
Cartoon: The YuYu
Commerce: Reisenthel Accessories
Experience: Design Your Own Radio
Game: Death in Sakkara
Instructional: GeeGuides
Motion Graphics: M5
Narrative: The Ball of Bastards
Navigation: Big Ideas Come out of Big Pencils
Online Application: Orange Phone Wizard
Original Sound: Samorost2
Technical Merit: Flash Commodore 64 Emulator
3D: CuberXtreme
Typography: iriver - Heart to Heart
Video: Nike Women Rockstar Workout — Hip Hop

And for the Peoples’ Choice Award: The Fan

Congratulations to the winners and to all of the finalists! Maybe one year I’ll have something in there.

Well, we drove down from Dallas last night and finished up todays sessions about 2 hours ago. Here’s a quick run down of the sessions I attended:

Adobe Keynot with Kevin Lynch:
Kevin, Mark Anders, Mike Downey and Justin Everett-Church all took their turns talking about a few different topics like Flex builder 2, Apollo, and what’s “In The Works” for Flash 9 (like the PSD importer that Lee blogged earlier today). Also, when you get a chance, check out the Apollo wiki.

Branden Hall told us all about Flow in “Prototyping (and deploying) Visual Brain Storms”. You’ll be seeing Flow in the coming months and personally, I think it’s pretty awesome.

The biggest thing I can say about the “Component Development in the Flex World” session with Chafic Kazoun is, “WOW! I REALLY need to spend more time learning/working with Flex!” By the way, great job on the presentation Chafic.

Another good one was “Best Practices: Flash Detection and Embedding with SWFObject” by Geoff Stearns. I’ve already used Geoff’s SWFObject on many occasions, but I still learned a few things. For example, I didn’t know that he had integrated the ExpressInstall. Also a great job on this presentation.

So that pretty much covers my sessions for today. Other than that, I’ve gotten a couple of nice t-shirts and the sweet bottle of Flash cider you see in the picture. More to come tomorrow…

As Flashforward Austin draws closer, I’m getting more and more excited about going for the first time and thought I’d sit down and plan out a tenative schedule (which you can see below). I left out the parties and stuff because I figure it’s a given that I’ll be going to those.

Day 2:
9:00-10:15 -> Adobe Keynote with Kevin Lynch

10:45-12:00 -> Designing the Obvious: Creating Great Software for the Web
Robert Hoekman, Jr., Go Daddy Software, Inc.

1:30-2:45 -> Prototyping (And Deploying!) Visual Brain Storms
Branden Hall, Automata Studios

3:00-4:15 -> Component Development in the Flex World
Chafic Kazoun, Atellis

4:30-5:45 -> Best Practices: Flash Detection and Embedding with SWFObject
Geoff Stearns, Schematic

Day 3:
9:00-10:15 -> Beyond the Browser
Jeremy Clark, Adobe Systems
Josh Ulm, Adobe Systems

10:45-12:00 -> Browser Power for Flash
Robert Taylor, Flash Extensions, LLC
Tyler Wright, mediaRAIN, LLC

1:30-2:45 -> Migrating to ActionScript 3 from ActionScript 2
Caleb Haye, Yahoo!

3:00-4:15 -> Flex Builder 2 for Flash Programmers
Phil Heinz, InteliSea, LLC

4:30-5:45 -> Resource Management for AS3, Flash 9, and Flex 2
Grant Skinner, gskinner.com

Day 4:
9:00-10:15 -> Flex 2 in Real Time Applications
Phil Heinz, InteliSea, LLC

10:45-12:00 -> Speed Up Your Workflow With The JSAPI
Julian Dolce, Fuel Industries

1:30-2:45 -> Flash Video Playback Component Development
David Hassoun, RealEyes Media, LLC

3:00-4:15 -> Particles for the Non-Physicist
Seb Lee-Delisle, Plug-in Media UK

4:30-5:45 -> Supercharging Flash 8
Aral Balkan, Ariaware

So how’s your Flashforward schedule look?
Can’t wait to see you all there!

A coworker and I have officially been registered to attend Flashforward 2006 Austin! I’m really excited as this will be my first time to go and I’m about to get started putting my schedule together. Before I do, I’d like to give a quick thanks to the folks at lynda.com for holding the conference a good deal closer to my home this time around and another thanks to my employers for sending us.

By the way, this has also spawned a Flashforward category for my blog because I plan on blogging anything I can while I attend.