Monthly Archives: March 2010

Renaun Joining the Evangelism Team

Posted on by
Reply

One of my favorite guys at Adobe, Renaun Erickson, is joining our little band of misfits on the Platform Evangelism team. He’s seriously one of the smartest guys I know and he’s going to be focusing on the deep, dark parts of the Flex framework.

For those keeping track at home it’s myself, Lee Brimelow, Terry Ryan, and the boss man is Kevin Hoyt.

Picnik and Flash

Posted on by
1

John Cook managed to snag the original email that started Picnik and there was one quote about what technology they were going to use that struck a chord:

Our timing is right. We’re at the intersection of demand (mass use of online photos) and capability (Flash 8 supports the first level of functionality we need). Flash 8.5/9 will take us to the next level. If Canvas becomes widespread and is hardware accelerated we can move to that. If WPF becomes widespread we can move to that and boost our functionality/performance even further.

Part of it is the initial investment, but one of the things I think is telling is that the Picnik guys never switched away from Flash. They had the basic start in Flash Player 8, built it on (I believe) Flash Player 9 which gave them the performance improvements they wanted, and they even moved to Flash Player 10 pretty quickly to get better file upload support as well as make heavy use of Pixel Bender.

Flash may be a lot of things, but it moves forward and tries to provide functionality its customers want. Picnik is a great real-world example of that at work.

My 360Flex Schedule

Posted on by
Reply

360Flex is right around the corner and based on the topics (and what’s coming on the horizon) I think this is going to be one of the more interesting 360s in a while. I’m speaking on creating Collaborative Applications with Flex and PHP and since I’m the only LiveCycle Collaboration Service talk, I’ll probably do a lot of generic LCCS stuff as part of the talk. But the most exciting part is getting to see what other people do. Here’s a breakdown of where I’m hoping to be for each time slot.

  • Monday 10:00 – 11:20: 300 – Michael Labriola – Apocalypse Soon? the remaking of ‘Flex Components’ – I always like hearing Michael speak and since he knows almost as much as anyone about Flex components, I think this is going to be a great talk.
  • Monday 1:00 – 2:20 – My session.
  • Monday 2:30 – 3:50: 200 – Kevin Hoyt – Flex + Phidgets = Beer – Tough time slot with both Garth Braithwaite and Jesse Warden. I know Kevin has been cooking up some unique demos for this, and with those three catch words, it can’t be a bad session.
  • Monday 4:00 – 5:20: 300 – Yakov Fain – Boring presentation on Flex libraries and modules – I think that Matt Guest’s typography session will be great but I want to spend some time geeking out on modules in Yakov’s session.
  • Tuesday 10:00 – 11:20: 300 – Aaron Pederson, James Polanco – Flex 4 Component LifeCycle Best Practices – I think both Deepa’s and Paul’s sessions are going to be great, but I think the Flex 4 component lifecycle is something worth checking out and James and Aaron always present very well.
  • Tuesday 1:00 – 2:20 – I’m really torn on this one between Jeffrey Houser’s session on Halo versus Spark and Gary Rogers’ automated build and deployment process. I know a lot less about automated building and deployment so I think I may step into that one and see how it goes.
  • Tuesday 2:30 – 3:50 – Elad Elrom – Building Applications using Test Driven Development (TDD) I am really shitty when it comes to test driven development because a lot of what I build are demos, so I want to check this out. But the GPS/Flex session by Randy Troppmann and Andrew Westberg looks really slick.
  • Wednesday 10:00 – 11:20 – by FAR the toughest slot at the conference. Renaun, Jeff Tapper, Dan Florio, and Simeon Bateman all going head to head. I’ll either flip a coin or run back and forth.
  • Wednesday 1:00 – 2:20 – 200 – Nate Beck – Flexible Games… game development with stuff you already know – I’ve seen Nate do a couple of bits on game development so I think this will be a cool and useful session.
  • Wednesday 2:30 – 3:50 – 250 – Andrew Powell – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love UX – Andy got really rave reviews at RIAUnleashed and I missed his session. I’m hoping this is more of the same and it’s a good way to end the conference.

It’s going to be a jam packed 3 days. If you haven’t registered yet, you can register with this URL and get a chance to win the next version of Creative Suite. Plus you’ll get a chance to talk to the engineers and product managers, you can check out Flash Player 10.1 on mobile devices (I think we’ll all have demos to show) and generally kick back with fellow Flex developers.