360Flex bumped into Brian Weisenthal at Trader Joe's

Tom and were picking up some snacks for the BOF sessions at 360|Flex San Jose at Trader Joe's. Guess was was in the fresh fruit and veggies section? Brian Weisenthal, our pal and 360|Flex speaker.

While I grabbed some apples and a package or cherries, Tom asked, "So Brian, who're you hoping comes to your session?"

Brian puts down a cantaloupe with a disgusted look on his face, "Too ripe. Everyone...no really, anyone considering chat, collaboration or anything that updates LIVE in their applications. I really sense this as the next 'release' in the mythical 'versions' of the web we all like to talk about." He starts picking through the cantaloupes some more.

I look up from some truly sad looking grapples (that's an apple and a grape combo. I'm not sure how they make them, and frankly it scares me) in a bin off to the side, "Why should they come?"

Finally settling on a cantaloupe, Brian moves on to some sort of squash. Tom seems to know what they are, I keep a safe distance. "There are many challenges in architecting applications. With social networks, enterprise apps and communication apps, scalability and availability is already a huge challenge. Adding in real time data only makes things harder. I'm not going to tackle scalability too much head on, but I will cover a lot of the options and foundations you need to know."

"Cool." Tom says as they both agree that the squash in Tom's hand is the best one.

We wander down the snack aisle, more to my liking than greenery and such. I put a few packages of Lacies in the cart. "What's the goal of your session, overall?"

Brian grabs some chocolate truffles, "To get some good discussion going on about collaborative software and the impact it has on front end and back end architecture. Also want to show what good and bad decisions you can make with these complex apps. I have had some experience with this leading 9mmedia and would like to share my knowledge with everyone to help move the technologies and our field of RIAs and Flex forward."

Tom picks up some dried banana chips and walks towards the cart. "What two sessions are you most looking forward to?" He gets closer to the cart and I bash him in the shins so he'll drop the banana chips. "None of that hippy." I tell him.

Brian puts the coffee truffles back on the shelf and looks at the chocolate bark, "Building Red 5 apps, Chris Allen. I used red 5 once before Flex 2 was born, I'm curious to see what it looks like these days. Eric Ko, implementing reflection. Always liked reflection, never had a reason to use it in real life. Hoping for a lightbulb to go off."

Heading for the check-out, Tom and I pick a line with a small asian woman with only a few things, Brian opts for the business-guy who looks like he's doing the weeks shopping. From our lane, I ask, "What would tell people who've never been to a 360|Flex conference before?"

Business-guy is surprisingly quick with his cart unloading. Brian might beat us out of the store. "It's hands down the most you will ever learn at a conference. Oh, and I just remembered In-N-Out is in Cali, if you are from the east coast like me this should be your number one reason for making the trip!!!!!"

"Oh hellz yeah!" I second. I'm getting my In-N-Out on for sure!!!

Brian was with us in Atlanta, so when he says you shouldn't miss it, I'd listen... Or he might beat you up!

Hang with Brian and us and get your In-N-Out on, Register now!

360Flex Ribbit Spawn event Sunday!

How cool is it this: the Sunday before 360|Flex San Jose 2008, during our free pre-conference training, there's gonna be a Ribbit Spawn!

The last Ribbit Spawn was a smash hit. We're thrilled to have Chuckstar and company as part of our pre-conference event! You'll have a full day of Ribbit goodness: learning how to build your own Flex apps with voice integration; learning about Flex, AIR, and the PureMVC framework; learn pretty much everything Ribbit uses and/or offers to earn them the name "Silicon Valley's Phone Company".

As always, our preconference training sessions are free for registered attendees. Ribbit Spawn is no different. The nice thing this time around is that you know the people you're hanging with in the session will be around for the duration of the conference. Make friends in the training and hang out during the conference. Ribbit will also have 8 employees attending the show that you can pester with questions about their product and APIs.

Ribbit are the great folks and forward thinkers. They realize that at $480 for the show and preconference training tickets may disappear before you can sign up (Register for 360|Flex now to avoid that though). Therefore, they are making the spawn available via a live broadcast to those who can't make it to 360|Flex San Jose. Head on over here to register for the free live broadcast.

If you're interested in being a part of the Spawn on Sunday and have already registered, send an email to info@360flex.com and let us know. Haven't registered yet and want to be in on the Spawn in person? Not to mention partake in the world famous 360|Flex San Jose that comes right after it. :) Register now!

360Flex Speakers make their own standards

360|Flex speakers love to start crazy projects like degrafa and openflux. They start their own application frameworks like Mate and Swiz. However, none have ever tried to incite riots. Well, okay, so maybe a few have (i.e. Doug McCune, Sim Batemen, Ryan Friggin' Stewart), but none have so boldly stated it as Sam Rivello.

In an email to John and I, he actually says:

I'm hoping to get mad feedback and insight riots.

I come from Los Angeles, so I love a riot just as much as the next guy. (I ain't a looter though, DESPITE what that video camera shows!) Therefore, I refer you all to Sam's blog to read up on his Coding Standards doc. His post is a month old, but I still think very relevant. I'm just slow in writing blog posts. (Ask John about just how slow I am). Go read it and getcha riot on! :)

The Flex team has released their Coding Standards as well. Tariq Ahmed did one too awhile back, but I can't seem to find the link. (Someone post it in the comments if you know it.)

I personally wouldn't have the patience to write my own conventions, but I love to use them. Gimme an example to follow, and I'll follow. It's sad how many people let their preference get in the way of clean, coherent code. I worked a Y2K project at Bank of America once. I asked the Project Manager for their Coding Conventions doc. As he handed me the 300 page printout doc (It was all languages and styles; I just used/read a sliver of it), he said, "You know, in all the time I've been here, you're the only one who has ever asked for this." Sad.

So if you and your team aren't cohesive yet, go get cohesive. When you see Sam in San Jose, be sure to thank him for taking the time to help out lazy coders like me. :) Buy your ticket soon though, I'm sure many will come to see the hopeful riot Sam wants to start!

360Flex We bumped into Mary McDonald at Kinko's

Tom and I went to Kinkos the other day to pick up some signs for 360|Flex San Jose, and guess who was there? Mary McDonald, our pal from 360|Flex San Jose '07! It looked like she was picking up some fliers, some sort of bake sale for the Junior Foreign Legion or something.

"Hey Mary, long time no see! How've you been?" I shout across the Kinko's, lots of people look up from whatever weird things they were doing in a Kinko's in the middle of the day. I pointed at Tom real quick with a "He did it" look. As we get closer, I switch to my inside voice. "Hope you're excited about your session in San Jose. Who should come?"

She looks up from the stack of fliers. "Anyone interested in using Item Renderers in Flex."She thumbs through the stack, pulling out one that look a little askew.

"Why should they come?"

"To discuss the Item Renderer examples and things to avoid when writing Item Renderers."
The Kinko's guy takes the crooked sheet, looks it over, starts to ask who the junior Foreign Legion is, but stops, when Tom jumps in and asks, "What's the goal of your session?"

"I will explain what Item Renderers are and how they can be used to in Flex applications. I will also discuss things to avoid when incorporating Item Renderers into your Flex application. I will demonstrate how to apply In line and Custom Item Renderers to Datagrids."

Picking up a pack of 3 hole dividers that come in neon colors, I look over and ask, "What two sessions are you looking forward to most?"

"How to make money with Flex! With David Bigelow And Versioning Support for Large Applications and Portals with Alex Hanui." She grabs a few packages of envelopes, looks like the Junior Foreign Legion fliers are hitting the postal service too.

Wann see what Mary has to say about Item Renderers? Join her in Alex or Dave's sessions? Register now, waiting is for losers!

360Flex Advanced Flex topics FTW

This was pointed out to me, and I think it's a good thing to bring up. Tom and I will be at MAX this year, and I'm sure it's gonna be a great event. However, what was pointed out was that MAX is pretty light on Adv Flex topics: 11 to be exact.

To get the whole Adobe experience, there's no other conference to attend than MAX. You'll be exposed to the developer/designer workflow, the LiveCycle workflow, Acrobat goodness, Flex and Flash awesomeness, ColdFusion coolness, etc. If they can, whole teams should attend MAX, Managers and CxOs should attend MAX. There's no place to get "the whole picture" more clearly than the sessions at MAX.

But what if you've never opened Photoshop or Illustrator in your life and never plan to? What if the only thing you care about is Flex? What if you bring home the bacon by living in Flex Builder 12 hours a day? What if you're a small dev shop wanting four developers to get some conference love, but only have a $2000 budget?

If any of that is you, then 360|Flex is your show to learn new tricks, new ways of thinking, new approaches, etc. When you and the team need to progress to the next level, come to 360|Flex. If you're coming from Java/AJAX/CF and want to break into Flex, our Lynda.com sponsorsed Flex 101 Sunday training and 100 level sessions are the best place to learn. When your ready to progress more, coming back to 360|Flex for our unsurpassed advanced topics is the only thing that makes sense. Tom constantly pushes our speakers to dig harder and deeper to come up with more and more advanced topics. (Workday has an advanced code base for their app, so I think Tom just wants to make his life easier!) There's no better bang for your buck on Flex goodness, than 360|Flex.

MAX and 360|Flex form the perfect compliment for expanding your knowledge and skills. Got to both if you can. If you can't, be sure to pick the one that is right for you. MAX just launched their new site, so be sure to go there and check out all the details.

If 360|Flex is the show for you, buy your tickets now. The small dev shops maybe be tiny in size, but we can tell you that they sure love the 4 tickets for $1500. "Tickets left" drops a lot quicker when the decrease in multiples of 4.

360Flex Jeffry Houser at the Movies

Tom and I decide to take a short break, hitting the theater to see the Incredible Hulk (Go see it, it's good!). Guess who we bump into at the concession stand? Jeffry Houser of DotComIt!

"Hey Jeff! Taking a break from prepping your 360|Flex presentation?" I ask as we get in line behind him. There's a line situation ahead of us; Traffic's backed up. The guy at the head of the line seems to be confused by the Jujubes and Whoppers. Oh great! "So who do you think you'll get in your session?"

"Anyone interested in learning how to build Flex Components for their applications." Jeff says, trying not to reach up and choke Mr. Now-what-about-Gobstoppers? "Adobe has spent a lot of time building components for the Flex Framework. But, for normal development you do not need to create components that are as flexible or bullet proof as the ones in the Flex Framework. Come to my presentation if you want to learn how to build Flex Components for real world applications. And if you want to bullet proof your stuff, I'll provide an introduction to that too."

Tom looks over at the line next to us. Of course, it's moving faster since there's now some guy going on about Sour Patch Kids in ours. Tom starts to get anxious as he really likes his previews. "What's the goal of your session?"

Jeff looks at the line next to us too, "To get people thinking about flexible and reusable code."

Mr. Sour Patch Kids has finally gotten out of line with nothing more than a nacho and large mega gulp of Mtn. Dew. Yeah, no Sour Patch Kids, go figure.

Jeff steps up and orders his Reese's Pieces. Tom asks, "What two sessions are you looking forward to most?"

Jeff hands the cashier his money and waits for change, "Chris Keeler's session on High Dev video. I hear he is gonna talk about lighting and production aspects. Samuel Asher Rivello's session on creating an MMO From scratch sure sounds like fun. I had no idea Blizzard only spent 59 minutes on WoW, but can't wait to start my own company doing that."

"Yeah really! I'm dying to know what that's all about." I say, ordering my large popcorn with extra butter. I know it's not really butter, or even really dairy for that matter, but it's so good!! "What would you like to tell people about 360|Flex if they're on the fence about attending?"

Heading towards the auditorium, Jeff says, "I hear you're gonna have root beer Floats on tap. I have no idea how that works, but can't wait to see it."

Looking at Tom with a I didn't know that look on my face, "Me too."

This will be Jeff's third time hanging with us, Seattle and Atlanta being the other two. We can't wait to chill with him again! Be sure to find Jeff and praise him for all his hard work on The Flex Show podcast. If you're lucky, he may interview you for the show!

Want to catch Jeff's session? Want to see The Flex Show being recorded live? Want to see how Root Beer floats on tap work? Register now before it's too late.

360Flex on the Switchboard, we'll connect you!

If you haven't heard about Switchboard, you should take a look. It's a cool little utility that let's your AIR apps become first class citizens to CS3 apps. Do you feel there is a piece of the Designer and/or Developer workflow that has been missing? Well, now you can build it. Tom and I are really happy to have Bernd Paradies with us in San Jose to talk about the cool stuff you can do with Patch Panel and Switchboard.

There's a forum for asking questions and posting your cool switchboards.

(This is from our eProgram Guide)
PatchPanel is a Flex library called cs3.swc, which allows Flex developers to access the ExtendScript DOM of the host application through ActionScript objects. SwitchBoard makes it possible for AIR stand-alone applications to work with Creative Suite applications. The SwitchBoard installer will install two services onto your machine: SwitchBoard Service forwards messages between AIR and CS applications; and the SwitchBoardLauncher launches target applications when necessary. AIR developers only need to include a Flex library called SwitchBoard.swc to their projects in order to send and receive scripts to/from other CS applications. SwitchBoard is available on labs now and PatchPanel will be posted on Adobe Labs this year.

Want to learn to make the most of Switchboard? Have you always to make that killer feature for a CS3 app? You won't want to miss out on what Bernd has to say. Register now!