I had the great opportunity yesterday to attend FlashCamp Orlando and wanted to share my thoughts about the event.  For those that know me, I have been strictly a ColdFusion developer for the last year and a half.  I’ve heard a lot of talk recently about Flex and Air and I was very curious to see how and if these technologies could enhance or help my current development strategies.  I heard about this event through a contact on Twitter, which is one of the main reasons I have a twitter account.  I quickly got authorization from my boss to attend (thanks Lenny!) and registered.  My expectations of the event were solely to get a basic understanding of the Flex framework to once again see how I might integrate it into my current development environment.  The event featured guest speaker Greg Wilson of Adobe evangelism fame, whom presented on Tour de Flex, which features great examples on what is possible with Flex development.  Among those examples was a heatmap demonstration.  The heatmap plots points in real time of users around the world as they access the Tour de Flex app.  In fact, right before our eyes we saw hits on the map for Orlando, Florida as Greg accessed the app.  We were also informed of an upcoming contest scheduled to begin next Monday or Tuesday (June 1st or 2nd), where the data stream for the heatmap will be made available with the goal to execute the best use of the data via a Flex app.  Next we heard from Jason Madsen with a session on making the jump to Flex.  This was my favorite presentation as it was aimed at beginners to Flex.  Jason gave a great introduction to the framework and how easy it can be to begin Flex development.  We also heard from various members of the Universal Mind team, whom helped organize the event.  Among these included David Tucker on "Working with Data in Air, Christian Saylor on "The Art of Storytelling", and Andy Powell on "Implementing BlazeDS".  All of these gentleman are extremely talented, and in fact most of their material went straight over my head as I am but a beginner to this platform.  Nonetheless, the information provided was exciting and inspiring.  It’s developers like these that encourage me to continue working towards my goals at becoming the best devloper I can be.  Probably the coolest part of the event was the end when the giveaways took place.  We had approximately 80 attendees and their were four prizes to give away.  I was fortunate enough to have my name called for the giveaway of an ILOG Elixir software package.  I will definitely begin Flex devlopment now, as I am already thinking of the some of the incredile things I will be able to achieve. 

 

To sum up, I had a fantastic time at this event and am very glad to have it come to Orlando.  I will be looking forward to future events.  And if you are a devloper of Adobe technologies, I encourage you to check out your local user group.  Here in Orlando we are proud to have the Adobe Developers of Greater Orlando.  Check ’em out today!

 

Happy Camping!