ScaleNine

I just realized I haven’t posted anything on my blog for 7 months. Either time is flying by way too fast or I’ve got way too much going on. I think it’s probably a combination of the two. That and I’ve been using Twitter and Posterous as my preferred means of dispensing my ramblings.

Hard to believe it’s been nearly a year since the last one, but I’ll be heading out to Adobe MAX in Los Angeles. In fact, I’m already here in Orange County visiting family, but gearing up for MAX to get started for me at 8am tomorrow with the Adobe Agency Summit. I’ll be joining 10+ other EffectiveUI friends, some of which will be speaking. If you’re interested in hearing about or seeing some of our latest work, swing by our booth.

I’ve got the majority of my sessions picked out and I’m super excited to learn what Adobe has been cooking up since last MAX. In addition, it’s always a good time catching up with friends, meeting new ones and seeing what everyone has been up to. See you at Adobe MAX!

Here’s my Flash Catalyst presentation slides and source files from this weekend’s Flex Camp Orange County. Along with the slides (which I partly borrowed from Ryan Stewart), I walked through the “next-gen” workflow of creating a design, bringing the design into Flash Catalyst, then taking that into Flex Builder 4 to add some data.

The app I walked through was kind of a social address book. Along with some basic interactions I added in some 3D flip action and a expandable drawer. It was a pretty simple example, but it was plenty to go through in the 40 minute time slot. You can view the final app here.

If you’re interested in walking through the workflow yourself, you can download the Illustrator CS4 file, Flash Catalyst FXP file, final Flex Builder source and slides in a single zip file: Get the Flash Catalyst Source files.

The turn out for Flex Camp Orange County was great! And who can resist Flex and AIR cupcakes from Two Parts Sugar. Thanks to Nahuel, Laura and Jeremy from ASFusion for putting things together, as well as Tom and John of 360|Conferences.

If you’re looking for the Degrafa presentation Tom Gonzalez and I gave, I’ll be posting it to the Degrafa blog, or you can see the slides here.

If you live in Southern California and are interested in Flex, you should make your way Flex Camp being held in Orange County on January 31st. There’s a nice range of topics that should be of interest to developers and designers alike.

A number of fellow developers from Denver will be going to speak. I’ll be heading down there with Tony Hillerson to present on Degrafa, while Tony is speaking on Flex Frameworks.

To learn more about Flex Camp Orange County, you can check out the website.

Here are the presentation slides and source files for the presentation I gave at MAX Europe titled, “Prototyping Adobe AIR Applications with Fireworks CS4″. The slides give a brief overview of prototyping, using Fireworks, why AIR and set the stage for the application that was prototyped during my session.

Download the Slides

Download the Source

This is my first MAX I’ve spoken at and the first MAX Europe I’ve attended. Overall I think the presentation went well and I look forward to the opportunity to speak at future MAX events. Tomorrow I’ll be speaking with Jason Hawryluk about Degrafa during lunch in the Community Lounge.

I’m heading out to MAX Europe in Milan, so if you’re out there be sure to say hello. I’ll be there (along with others) representing EffectiveUI and giving a talk on Monday on “Prototyping AIR Applications using Fireworks CS4″. I’m excited to be giving this talk because I use Fireworks everyday and Fireworks CS4 has a lot of great productivity features.

I’m also looking forward to giving a talk on Degrafa with Jason Hawryluk on Tuesday in the Community Lounge. I think the presentation will probably be the best one ever considering it will be given by the 2 guys who founded Degrafa.

You can learn more about the Degrafa presentation here.

Tony Hillerson and I did a presentation on exploring the world of data visualization while at 360|Flex San Jose. We were late getting our stuff together, so the presentation and source code wasn’t on the thumb drive handed out at the conference. Thanks for everyone who showed up, and all great feedback we got.

Tony has more information regarding the source code on his blog. We’re thinking about evolving these samples as we have the time, so you may want to continually check back (no promises).

The video is now available here or through the 360|Flex feed for AMP.

I’m getting ready to take off for Webmaniacs to present during the FlexManiacs portion which starts on Wednesday. I’ll be presenting on Degrafa, its features and what the next release will bring. Of course, you can always check out the dev branch to get a hint.

One thing I noticed is that Degrafa session is listed under the “Advanced Development” category of session topics. However, working with Degrafa is anything but that. Sure, you can do some really advanced stuff, but it is super easy to work with at an MXML level. In fact, that’s one of our primary focuses. I’d say that if you know how to add a Button to a Canvas you can easily jump into Degrafa and do some really cool stuff. Working with the Drawing API is advanced, not Degrafa.

There’s also a session that was put together surrounding some of the current open-source projects going on. I’ll be sitting in with Adam Flater, Ben Stucki, Tony Hillerson and other open-source contributors to talk about the different aspects of open-source. Should be a good one.

I depart on Tuesday with fellow EffectiveUIers Tony Hillerson and Jim Cheng. It’s pretty cool seeing how many of the presenters are flying out of Denver. Anyhow, I’m looking forward to meeting up with people, so feel free to say “hi”.

See you in D.C.

The Webmaniacs Conference is coming up in May and I’ll be speaking during the FlexManiacs portion of it, which is May 21-23. My topic will be on Degrafa and the advancements we have made (or will have made). We’ve made a lot of progress for a group of devs working on it as a side project. Degrafa has been well received and we want to make sure we keep progressing as much as possible. There’s a lot of things we’ve talked about that we want to do with the framework and we hope to have as much of those to show in May as possible.

Looking at the schedule it looks like there may be enough speakers coming from Denver to have a conference on the plane (Maybe the inAIR Conference ). Some of my buddies from EffectiveUI will also be speaking, including:

Tony Hillerson: Flex w/Ruby on Rails
Jim Cheng: Understanding Flex Automation

It’s my first time at Webmaniacs, but the range of topics looks very promising. I’ve got my eye on a bunch I want to check out, so maybe I’ll see you there.

What a week! 360|Flex was a blast and it seems to get better at each conference. I saw a lot of familiar faces and it was a huge mix of people all interested in Flex. It’s really cool to see the way the community is progressing. It was also a great experience being an employee of EffectiveUI rather than flying solo. I was able to hang out at the EffectiveUI booth to talk about our current projects and help some trouble-shoot issues with their own projects, as well as hand out some Degrafa shirts.

The 360|Flex conference definitely had an open-source tone to it. With talk of projects like Open Flux, Merapi, FlexLib and Degrafa, it was exciting to hear how developers are grouping together to push Flex in the direction they’d like to see it go. I sat in on a session surrounding the topic of open-source projects to talk about Degrafa, as well as listen in on what others are working on.

Doug McCune and I were also able to fill in for Jesse Warden to discuss “Making it big as an independent Flex developer.” This was a great session where Doug and I just shared our experiences and thoughts on the Flex market, branding yourself, etc. I’ve never been without a full-time job, but I have done consulting work simultaneously. I think it was helpful for people to hear that you don’t have to quit your full-time job to make it. Jeffry Houser also offered up his insights, as did others. It pretty much boils down to working your ass off.

For me, Wednesday was the most exciting day of the conference. Probably because I got to attend the most sessions on that day. The day kicked off with some time where members of the community got to share what they were working on. Again, there was a few open-source projects mentioned, I got to plug my session on Degrafa, and we all got a sneak peek at what other’s were working on.

By my session, on the last day and time, I was pretty fried, but I was excited to share Degrafa with those who hadn’t heard of it and discuss some of the new features in the new beta release. Ben Stucki and Pavan Podila were there to field technical questions and comment on some of the new features. I was able to hang out a bit after my session to answer more questions, but then headed to the airport in a hurry.

So, 360|Flex rocked! The very next day I left in a car for Colorado and am now officially in downtown Denver, a couple miles from the EffectiveUI offices. Needless to say, it’s been a hectic and exciting week.

Here’s the slides from my session. The examples I showed will be available soon as samples on the Degrafa site.

What are you doing February 25-27th? You should definitely make the trip to Atlanta for the upcoming 360|Flex Conference. The news of what’s in store keeps getting better and it’s definitely a conference you should check out if your interested in Flex. It’s got a community feel where you can meet fellow developers and get your questions answered by some of the Flex team.

I’ve been following the updated schedule and the sessions look awesome. With free pre-conference training and everything else you just can’t beat the price of $480. I’m sure there will a few surprises as well.

This is my second time attending 360|Flex and I’ll be speaking about Degrafa, a declarative graphics framework for Flex. I’ll be discussing the features of the framework, how it may work in your development environment, where we’re thinking of taking the framework in the next versions, and showcasing the winning entry of the Degrafa Derby.

If you can make it, I’ll see you in Atlanta!