Flash Camp Birmingham (UK) organised by the Flash Midlands user group. After a very good Flash Camp London it was always going to be interesting to see how the format would work outside of London. The answer very well!
For those of you who are not familiar with a Flash Camp it's basically a free event run by the community for people working with or interested in the Adobe Flash Platform. It's not a marketing event, although Adobe help with sponsorship, where prominent members of the community forego their time to come and give presentations and demos on the latest happenings with the Flash platform. And it costs nothing, how fantastic is that.
The sessions were 45 mins in length so long enough to give an insight into a particular topic kind of whetting you appetite for your own further study, yet short enough that it's not too long until the next session.
So Birmingham it was at the Central Library theatre which was surprisingly good. A large screen and an auditorium that seated 250, the only thing that was lacking was a decent sized breakout area for mingling. There were some great sponsors, usability experts Bunnyfoot were showing off their eye tracking system and it was great to see ex colleagues Jon and Mark again. In fact it was like a mini reunion for quite a few people who I used to work with plus a good friend of mine Richard from the Birmingham Conservatoire made the event a really sociable affair.
So after a few network niggles the day started off with Adobe's Enrique Duvos EMEA Evangelist manager introducing the latest product updates like Flash Builder, Flex 4, Catalyst and Flash player penetration rates. Enrique did a great job of setting the scene for later presentations.
The sessions
Simon Bailey was the first of us Community Experts to hit the stage on PureMVC. Great delivery but possibly a bit over the heads of some of the audience! It was a great introduction and I certainly picked up a few tips and will be heading across to his blog for more PureMVC stuff in the future.
A short break ensued before the infamous Mike Jones aka Flashgen hit the stage with a session on Flex components and a comparison between the new Spark components in Flex 4 and the old Halo components from Flex 2 & 3. Really informative session on some of the core differences between Spark and Halo right down to how the component and skinning lifecycles differ.
Adobe have really gone down the correct path on the new Spark model. It addresses many of the concerns and limitations of the old Halo model by separating out the behaviour, layout and skin of components. Mike also takes the prize of phrase of the day for "datagrids are the Marmite of the component family..." thanks to Elsa for making this public on Twitter!
Mikes session was a good precursor to my session on skinning Flex.
So I was up next with my session entitled "Skinning Flex". I wanted introduce declarative graphics and take a look at what people can use today in their Flex 3 projects using Degrafa, then introduce FXG that arrives in Flex 4, the Creative Suite and of course Flash Catalyst. After an introduction to the basics I demoed an example using a sample from my Palm Pre esque skin. One version was done in Flex 3 and Degrafa the other Flex 4 and FXG the results were virtually indistinguishable and showed how easy both are to work with. I didn't get to show any Flash Catalyst due to time but the later Adobe OnTour session from Adobe by Enrique showed a detailed CS > Catalyst > Flex 4 & Flash Builder demo.
Lunchtime followed and everyone was beginning to feel the heat inside the auditorium so the timing was perfect. Time for a chat and sandwich with old friends and we were back on again with Rob Bateman from Away3D up next.
I'm always very inspired and taken back by some of the Flash 3D demos I have seen (like Seb Lee-Delisle Papervision demos) and this was no exception. Many people don't know that Away3D started life as a Papervision branch back in the day. The speed and advancement of the features always amazes and Rob is always a step ahead of the game with the vision for Away3D. I'm not a 3D expert by any means and I wished I had the time to delve into it more. Some great demos were shown and I'm sure many were left very inspired.
I didn't catch the session on mobile and FLash Lite from Anthony and Jerome Ribot unfortunately although I heard it was an interesting session. Always good to get some mobile stuff to be shown.
After a short break the last session at Flash Camp Birmingham was a panel ready to answer questions on freelancing, contracting and how to break away from the company man. The entertaining panel consisted of Mike Jones (Flashgen.com), Stefan Richter (Muchos Media), Simon Bailey (Newtricks.com) and Ross Flemming from specialist recruitment company TEK Systems. Even the intros were great talking points hearing about how the panellists got into Flash Platform development. A few good questions were raised and answered. I personally think that having panels for open questions and discussion offer a interesting alternative to one way presentations and sessions that are usually delivered.
What followed was the prize giving and raffle. Jodie I think you have a new career if all of this Flash stuff collapses! Very reminiscent of the end of Flash on the Beach many attendees had left already to catch transport home or just to get a breath of fresh air. Of the O'Reilly books being raffled out it was obvious that the Web 2.0 book by Duane Nickull was going to be the last on on peoples wish list no offense Duane! My ex colleague Greg (part of the Away 3D team) won a copy of Flash Builder and a couple of other lucky attendees got full passes to this year Flash on the Beach courtesy of FOTB's John Davey.
So wrapping up another great Flash Camp for me again after London. I enjoyed my session on Degrafa and FXG and looking at some tweets afterwards the audience enjoyed it too. A bog thank you has to go to all the behind the scenes help from everyone involved that made this event flow smoothly and feel organised. Thanks also to the sponsors for making it happen and keeping free for the attendees. Until the next time happy coding.
