Flash and the City 2010 (NYC) – May 13th-16th, 2010

Last week, was the 1st ever Flash and the City conference. \m/ \m/

I’ve got to say this event was much more successful than I thought it would be. The organizers did a very good job at pulling a lot of things together to make it happen.

Sure things didn’t go as smoothly as planned, but it’s important to remember that those guys aren’t professional conference organizers, nor did they have a particularly enormous budget to outsource a lot of the logistics.

I’ll take what I can get, and FATC was pretty cool for the very 1st one. I’ll leave the post conference survey to give them all the nitty gritty details to make next year even more of a success.

BTW: Thanks to the Sponsors as well (Adobe, litl, universal minds and others), for making it happen.

Rather than focus on what would could have been better in this “1.0″ conference, I’m going to spend some time describing what I can remember of the event and how it impacts me as a professional using Adobe and other interactive and media tooling.

Since the majority of of my time was either spent speaking with attendees, or attending sessions, I figure I might as well give some thoughts about some of what I learned, and some of what inspired me.

Here go some rough thoughts, off the top of my head, from what I recall:

Day 0 – Workshops

Mobile and Devices

My “day” started with waking up at 4am to catch a 6am flight to NYC. From there it was a cab ride through Brooklyn to Downtown Financial … during Rush hour. Great thing I figured out is that a 6am flight can get me into Downtown NYC at 9:00 am no problem.

We had a good attendance # for mobile and devices track. Anywhere from 25 to eventually 50 or so people perhaps.

We talked about Flash on Mobile and Devices and the landscape, as well as Flash CS5 and Device APIs and testing in Device Central.

We also covered AIR on Devices (e.g. Android). litl gave their preso as well on their new 10.1 SDK for Flash and Flex developers.

Overall it was very cool to see the whole workshop come together!

Thanks to all who attended and the speakers for giving their time and energy for this 1st FATC.

AS 3 Workshop
Also, Rich gave his AS 3 workshop concurrently, so I’m sure that was fun for folks.

AIR, Flex, and FDT
Later, there were AIR and Flex workshops. I think also Powerflasher/FDT had a workshop sometime during the conference. I missed all these, due to crashing from a 3:30am wakeup call.

[Speaker Meetup] – apparently there was a speaker rooftop thing. I didn’t make it. Apparently there was some talk of a fire due to cigars, but I’m not sure exactly what happened there. Sounds like a story for someone to tell on a blog (FYI: I don’t think anyone was hurt).

DAY 1 – SESSIONS

Geolocation/Mapping with the Flash Platform – this was with Ryan Stewart (Adobe). He gave an awesome presentation on a lot of the basics of location based services and how to tap into various APIs using Flash. He also demoed a sample app running on the Google Nexus One. Although I’ve done some LBS before on mobile, his preso wanted me to do more investigation on some of the other tools he mentioned.

Development on Multiple Devices
Weyert gave this preso. I think the preso was changed sometime after schedule printing, though, since his presentation was more about how to use a mobile device to control museum kiosk systems.

This session reminded me of the FITC Large Physical Flash session I had just seen a couple weeks back. I’m not sure if I learned anything new, but it was interesting to hear, and since I have 3 years previous experience working with Kiosks, I’m always curious to learn how Flash is being utilized in physical installations.

Yes, you can do that with AIR 2.0!
I think I saw Peter Elst, next. As always it was a nice presentation on AIR 2.0 features.

FMS: Streaming and Beyond!
I think this was Lisa Larson’s session where she talked about the AS framework from Influxis: SYNX. Very good preso.

[Bar Hop] – Didn’t go. Headed out to an Italian restaurant with a bunch of folks, and also for some desert near Times Square. Also got to try Lee’s 3M $1600 multitouch display along with some other folks. Branden had a pretty much uneventful subway ride back to Hotel. Crash.

DAY 2 – SESSIONS

Touch Me Baby – Lee Brimelow brought into 3M multitouch display to demo. We got that thing to do up to 60 touch points at one time (even though the OEM says it support 30). Lee gave an overview of touch based displays, and talked about the various touch and gesture events, as well as demoing an early Natazke “ribbon creator” using multitouch and hand manipulation.

Flex + Phidgets = Beer – I only caught 5 minutes of Kevin’s hardware session, but I’m curious the whole thing at some point.

HYPE: Combining Creativity and Code Branden gave an excellent talk about what HYPE is all about … it’s beginnings, and evolution to where it’s at now. He also demoed a neat example. I must agree with him, HYPE is an easy and fun way to learn AS3 (if you haven’t already). great for experimentation and learning.

Hacking Robots for Fun and Profit
Chad gave a preso on a cool robotic installation his company made. He talked about how to control the robot, as well as rudamentary computer vision, etc. This was one of my favorite presentations … perhaps for the sole fact that he actual made money off hacking robots.

Session Panel : Devices with Flash
This was a blast. It was myself, Thomas, Elad, Lee, with Chuck Freedman moderating the whole discussion. Although we didn’t cover anything, I do think we covered a few important points about Flash and it’s future on mobile and devices. One thing we didn’t really cover is monetization of Flash content. If you take a look, Adobe isn’t really taking about that a whole lot. It’s actually a sad fact. Seems like they are always one step behind, even with this newer runtime that’s turning out to be 10x better than Flash Lite.

[City Track] – the only city track I managed to get to was the Statue of Liberty. Headed over with Max Antinori to see it. Didn’t get to the top, but it was cool to finally see it in person.

[Cruise]
This was a fun time cruising around the harbor a few times while everyone was meeting and greeting on the boat. litl was there showing off there devices, and there was the awards ceremony going on.

[NYC Rooftop Party]
I won’t say much about this since it was outside of the scope of FATC. However, what happens in NYC, stays in NYC (forget Vegas). [bunch of stuff]. Crash.

DAY 3 – SESSIONS

Space Invaders – I don’t remember much of @seb_ly’s session. Probably because I was hung-over. I do remember him showing his 3-D Lunar Lander and trying to get it to work on my Google Nexus One. I think I was able to crash the space ship, but not control it very effectively. I do hope he creates a mobile version, or a perhaps use the N1 as a controller for it. I also got to see some of his Big and Small project. Looks like some nice improvements to some new areas of it.

Thinking in ActionScript
This was Phillip Kerman’s session. It was really a how to explain AS to a layman. I enjoyed it regardless, because sometimes you need to do that. You especially need to do it if you’re instructor. Some valuable tips and analogies in it, plus some jokes.

Developing for the Social Media Douchebag – SM APIs – I’m bad. I only caught the last 2 minutes of Stacey’s preso. Someday soon I’ll see the whole thing.

Pitch Yourself in a New York Minute – some good discussions and reinforcement of ideas, but nothing new for me. Regardless, a good session to hear other people’s perception of freelancing and running small companies.

Brass Monkey, Seriously Fun Control – “Mr.” Chris Allen showed off some of his Brass Monkey endeavors. He demoed the iPhone controlling one of IR5′s web-based (Unity-based, I think) 3-D Starwars genre games. He also had an early multi-person Flash ectosketch controller on Android, I believe. He also spoke a bit about the early days of web and its evolution before heading into what controllers could mean going forward. He also showed some of the Flash SDK they are working on for Brass Monkey. People had a chance to demo some of the wares.

Predictive Movement in Multiplayer Games – This was Jobe’s session where he talked about his experiences with multi-player Flash games and gave a ton of helpful hints and thoughts from his experiences with multiplayer gaming. He also talked about Electroserver. A fun tank game was demoed where people could login and try to blow each other up. Unfortunately my Nexus One battery had died so I couldn’t join in remotely via device.

WRAP/SUMMARY

There was a post wrap-up from Elad speaking about the success of the conference after the last session. Overall I was in agreement, and though FATC 2.0 would be a much refined event if it happens next year. Version 1.0 of FATC was blast nevertheless. The conference is still in its infancy, but I see a lot of potential for this one sticking around in the future.

I wish I had seen more of the city (via that city track), but it was probably for the best that I networked and otherwise attended some of the great sessions at FATC. You can only do so much at conferences!

I have some videos and pics which I’ll be posting on various social sites, maybe even this blog. Look for them, but don’t wait for them, someone else has already probably uploaded their assets.

Always great seeing familiar faces and new ones at conferences. Also got to hang out with Adobe, litl, Influxis, talk with Friends of ED, FDT, and many more. I even had some words with some MSFTies that were there taking notes.

Can’t wait for FATC 2010 (aka FATC version 2.0)!

SOME THINGS I LEARNED AT FATC

1. Never attend a 9am session with a hangover (unless you’re giving the actual session)
2. I now know how to win a free copy of Master CS5 attending Lee’s session. Ha ha, Just kidding (I get it free anyways).
3. Always book the Statue of Liberty tour early, that way you can go to the very top, and not do the lame “on the ground” thing.
4. Some people like to talk way more than I do. I like to listen more. Neither is a bad thing.
5. NYC can be a fun place, if you look in the right places.
6. I can make it to NYC from Boston by 9am if I wake up at 4am, fly at 6am.
7. Lee Brimelow is not a bad guy, cool to hang out with, and apparently likes “Vortex”, 3M multitouch displays, and yes, even the iPhone (but not Apple’s policies ).
8. Microsoft guys love to come to Flash conferences, both to spy and have fun (I’d like to get to MIX to compare, myself).
9. There’s a lot I still need to learn in and about our industry.
10. There’s a lot I still need to learn, period.

OTHER BLOG POSTINGS ABOUT FATC (Last updated: 5/19/2010)
Here are some other bloggers thoughts on FATC (will update as I see posts):

• Jesse Warden

MEDIA ASSETS & SOCIAL (Last updated: 5/19/2010)

• Flick group (FATC)

I’ll open it open for comments, questions and feedback from my readers now.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Flash, Flash Lite. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.