I was prompted to start looking at conference prices for 2009 when I heard that Flash On The Beach Miami's Super Early Bird pricing has been extended through Christmas. John Davey, the conference organizer, sent me a short email stating, "I think everyone is worried about the economy, and although it is worrying me too, I think a show of 'giving back' will be appreciated." I agree, John. And, thanks!

So, without further delay, here is a breakdown of pricing comparing some of the 'major' Flash/Flex conferences:

When looking at the table, you'll no doubt notice a few things right off. First, FlashForward continues to be the most expensive conference of the bunch at about a whopping 50% more expensive than FOTB or 306|Flex for the standard ticket price. I should mention that FlashForward has not posted their prices for 2009 and the table includes their 2008 pricing. Since the conference just changed hands last year (it was purchased by Beau Ambur of Metaliq) and they dropped the prices at that time, it is most likely safe to assume that they will keep the prices as-is this year.

Another item to consider is that with a new edition to be held in Miami, Flash on the Beach no longer requires international travel. My prior comparisons all had to take into account a flight to London and the very lopsided exchange rate for US Dollar to British Pound. With that no longer being necessary, FOTB is now even a better bargin for those of us in the States. Especially when you realize that all of the headlining speakers from the Brighton edition have also committed to speaking in Miami.

360|Flex has always had some of the lowest prices for a conference. They started out with all tickets priced at $360, but had since risen the price to $480. For their next conference they are taking a new approach of tiered pricing. As you can see above, the first 100 tickets are at the old $360 rate, the next 200 are at the standard $480 rate, and the last are at a premium rate of $550 (which is still about half of the cost of FlashForward).

Of course there is always the extra costs that go along with conferences like flight and hotel. Those certainly add to the cost, but for the most part are the same across the board (except in the case of international travel and/or exchange rates as mentioned previously), so I don't take those into consideration here.

What are your thoughts on the price of conferences in 2009? Am I missing any conferences that you would like to see added?

This is a great example of how to use various services, such as Flickr, to fit your simple mashup needs -- just like David and Shaun spoke about at FITC Hollywood a few months ago. Great idea, fellas!

- - -

"It's a Mad, Mad, Mashup World" - David Lowe-Rogstad, Shaun Tinney (Substance)

Mashups! This term gets thrown around a lot these days, with companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all putting together tools that make creating simple mashups a five minute affair. If David and Shaun had one clear message, it was that a provocative mashup certainly takes a lot more thought than five minutes can provide.

Topics covered included pirates (and why it is good to be one), how a mashup should segment a market (speak to a small group), why map mashups are overplayed (20:1 versus all other mashups), how mashups can actually make money, and where to promote your mashup. Oh yes, and start with a solution then work backwards on how to make it happen. Chances are that there are services you can use that will handle bits and pieces of the major functionality.

Overall, a great session from some fellow PDX'ers.

- - -

"Reducing Complexity: The Making of Saffron" - Samuel Agesilas

I had missed this session at 360|Flex a few months back, so I was glad to see Sam was going to be presenting it again at FITC. I'm glad I made it a priority -- Sam has done some amazing work on one of the best AIR apps I have seen in awhile. If you haven't heard of Saffron before, it is an UML modeling application for AS3 and other programming languages.

Sam's attention to detail in Saffron in terms of design and functionality are astounding. But even better is what Sam has done for the greater community: created Elemental, an AIR application framework. Sam kept the description fairly high level, but this is the first AIR framework I have heard of and by the code samples he shared, it looks to have made his life much better while programming Saffron.

Some features of Saffron include AS3 modeling, translating, a plugin model, stub-code generation, round-trip editing, and progressive saving using SQLite (non-destructive editing).

- - -

"Branding Experiences: An Architecture of Play" - Tali Krakowsky

I attended this session because I had seen some work from Imaginary Forces before, but never spent the time taking a deep dive. I'm glad I did -- it was a great inspirational session that helped set the tone for the rest of the afternoon.

Tali spent the hour walking us through the work of Imaginary Forces and providing some details on their inspiration. She broke the work down into three categories: prescribed (always the same), responsive (responds to environment), and interactive (real-time, user input/interaction).

The work was impressive, but I have to say that how they get their clients to allow the projects they dream up is even more impressive.

- - -

"Adaptable Interfaces" - John Ruppel

About a year ago I had come across John's work just randomly browsing the interwebs, and going into the session I had no clue who John was (I was more intrigued by the session title and description). I was pleasantly surprised with an amazing session on one of my favorite topics by someone whose, as it turns out, work I have seen all over the place and enjoy.

John covered several topics centered around the renaissance of interface design, and while he couldn't show any of his work from Schematic, he did show us some generic interfaces he had created.

Be sure to check out http://www.artmusheen.com for one of his more recent projects: an image creation application built in AIR.

- - -

"Deploying Video - FLVPlayback Component" - Robert Reinhardt

Robert is another PDX'er, but besides attending his session to show my support, I am also working on a site that is using Flash video extensively and was hoping to pick up some tips. Robert walked us through an overview of Flash video use cases, and how he works with his clients to ensure the best deployment method and user experience.

Robert also shared a bit-rate calculator for FLV files he created for his new book:
http://www.flashsupport.com/books/fvst/files/tools/flv_bitrate.html

- - -

"GMUNKICKDOWN07" - GMUNK (Bradley Grosh)

This was the last session I was able to attend since I had to catch a flight at LAX on the other side of Los Angeles (in rush hour nonetheless), but it was tons of fun. If you ever get the chance to see GMUNK speak, I highly suggest you attend.

Bradley comes across as slightly crazy, tons of fun, and extremely talented. His session consisted of a show-and-tell of his work over the past few years, ranging from Hummer TV commercials to a video of wind-up toys in sexual positions for MTV (I believe). Bradley kept it humorous the entire time, engaging the audience -- this was probably one of the more packed sessions I attended.

- - -

Overall, this was a great conference. I would also suggest checking out Lee Brimelow's video recap, as he attended a few different sessions than I chose.

That said, I was by no means expecting anything big to come from Adobe at FITC, mainly because they just held MAX where they previewed dozens of new applications and technologies. But, we were blessed with one new sneak:

The next version of the Flash IDE, Flash 10 "Diesel", will feature a brand new timeline animation model. What's the difference? There will no longer be a need for keyframes. Yes, it sounds drastic, but based on the demo, this is going to make timeline animations _much_ easier to work with and make Flash much easier for beginners.

In short you will be able to select an object on the stage, right-click and choose "Add Motion/Shape Tween", and the timeline layer with the object will turn red to signify that it now contains a tween. Then you move the object (if you want to animate its motion) to create the end state. Want to extend the length of the tween? Just drag the timeline layer out over additional frames. Basically, this model completely fixes broken tweens -- you can no longer have a tween that is "broken" because it is missing a keyframe because tweens are no longer tied to keyframes.

An additional cool feature with this is that when you move the object to the end state, a dotted line shows up along the path of the tween, showing you exactly where the object is going to move to. Want to change the path? Just move the object and the line automatically updates. Not good enough? Adjust the line just like any other curved line in Flash/Illustrator making it more rounded, or increase the length by adjusting the end point to your liking. You can also choose the Transform tool and use it to squish/expand or otherwise transform your tween path.

Maybe I missed something and this had been announced at MAX as well, but if not, I am really surprised that I haven't seen this up on MXNA yet!

- - -

"AS2 to AS3 Migration" - Stacey Mulcahy

I kicked off the first day of sessions at FITC by attending Stacey's session, which was informative, but mainly aimed at developers who have yet to program in AS3. Stacey started off her very entertaining session speaking about the differences between AS2 and AS3, why developers should make the move to AS3, and touched on the new features in AS3. She continued by noting the IDE changes brought on by AS3 (linkage, document class, etc).

Although I knew much of what Stacey discussed, it was still a great way to start the morning. Stacey's presentation was every bit as entertaining as I had hoped. Hilarious videos spaced throughout the presentation took on a theme of AS2 vs AS3... can you guess which one won?

Stacey's code samples should be posted on her site soon:
http://www.bitchwhocodes.com/fitc_hollywood

She also maintains a del.icio.us list at:
http://del.icio.us/bitchwhocodes/as3/

- - -

"Let's Talk About SWX, Baby!" - Aral Balkan

Aral is a standard at a good number of conferences, but for some reason I hadn't had the chance to see him speak before. So even though I've used SWX extensively on a couple of recent projects and knew I probably wouldn't learn too much from Aral's talk, I decided to attend. And am I glad I did!

Aral started off by handing out his SWX Moo cards, and giving a brief overview of SWX. He then went on to create a simple Flickr sample using both loadMovie and the more advanced AS API.

I have to say that the highlight of the session (and probably my day!) was to have Aral showcase one of my more recent projects (which uses SWX) and to have also gotten a thanks in one of Aral's slides for the case study I put together on the project. Here's hoping I can find Aral tomorrow to discuss a few soon to be released projects that also use SWX, and to thank him for his hard work on the project.

- - -

"The Nooks and Crannies of AS 3.0" - Branden Hall

Branden has been a huge name in ActionScript for a number of years, so I was excited to get the opportunity to see his session. I had assumed (and it was confirmed in the session today) that Branden had been working with AS3 probably longer than just about anyone else, so it makes sense that his session was all about issues he had encountered while diving into AS3 and sharing what he learned from his experience.

Branden admits to spending his spare time reading through the Adobe Live Docs for AS3, so it is no wonder he had some great tips to share, including using labels, opaqueBackround, mouseChildren, httpStatusEvent, ADDED_TO_STAGE event, and the ADDED event. Want to download the entire Live Docs site so you can do the same? Branden suggests a tool called SiteSucker for OS X.

Overall, I probably took the most notes in this session, as the quick tips format was very useful for someone like myself who has some AS3 knowledge, but does not yet consider themselves and expert.

- - -

"Adobe Keynote" - Richard Galvan, Adobe

I was by no means expecting anything big to come from Adobe at FITC, mainly because they just held MAX where they showed up dozens of new applications and technologies. But, we were blessed with one new sneak:

The next version of the Flash IDE, Flash 10 "Diesel", will feature a brand new timeline animation model. What's the difference? There will no longer be a need for keyframes. Yes, it sounds drastic, but based on the demo, this is going to make timeline animations _much_ easier to work with and make Flash much easier for beginners. I blogged more details about this sneak peek here.

- - -

"Papervision 3D Component" - John Grden

I have only played with Papervision 3D for a few minutes, so I attended this session to learn more about what it could do and find out how simple it is to work with 3D in Flash using the CS3 component the team created.

John did a great job of taking us through a simple example and showing us how easy it really is to work with a pre-made model in Papervision 3D. The component does nearly all the work for you, and it even has some simple interactivity tools built in for testing your model.

I was most impressed when John took a model, opened the library item and added animated text in all of two minutes. The best part: all that is required to update the model is one click on "Update Material" in the component.

I highly suggest you check out the component -- I still can't believe this is all free. Flash has _the best_ community of developers.

- - -

"Creativity Conducted - Wii Remote Interactive Video Wall" - Blitz Agency

This session took on a similar feel to the 360|Flex "How'd They Do That?" sessions -- the guys from Blitz basically gave us a run-down on how they built the Wiimote interactive video wall that was on display at MAX a few weeks ago.

As a developer I usually realize how much time and effort it takes to build something of this magnitude (Blitz said it took them 1500 hours), but it is still great to see the thinking and process behind something this cool. Cheers to the guys at Blitz for pushing the boundaries once again!

Just a quick post that I'll be attending FITC Hollywood on October 22 - 23. I have never gone to an FITC conference (even though they have always received rave reviews), so I'm excited to be participating in the Hollywood edition this year.

Some sessions I'm planning on attending, in no particular order:

+ Adobe AIR for Interactive Designers, Lee Brimelow
+ AS2 to AS3 Migration, Stacey Mulcahy
+ After Effects CS3 for Flash Designers, Tom Green
+ AS3 Events: The Whole Story, Jacob Bullock
+ Deploying Video - FLVPlayback Component, Robert Reinhardt (local Portland'er)
+ It’s a Mad Mad Mashup World, David Lowe-Rogstad (local Portland'er), Shaun Tinney
+ Let's Talk About SWX, Baby!, Aral Balkan
+ Making Flex Look Less Like Flex, Billy Shin
+ Papervision3D CS3 Component, John \m/ Grden
+ The Nooks and Crannies of AS 3.0, Branden Hall
+ Video Magic from EVB, Nick Mitrousis, Jeffrey Titus
+ Reducing Complexity: The Making of Saffron, Samuel Agesilas (I had missed this one at 360|Flex)

So many good sessions for only a two day conference -- it is going to be hard to choose. If you plan on attending as well, be sure to say hello!