I’m out on the East Coast, and I’m attending
Flash Forward 2007 in Boston. It’s been a great trip so far, meeting new people and seeing new places (my first time in Boston, can you believe it?). The conference is good, but, as usual, the most rewarding parts of any conference are the in-between and afterwards where you get to geek-out face-to-face over lunch, dinner and drinks. Some personal highlights to date:
Before the Event
In my hotel room, I fight the urge to shut my eyes and make it out. While at an informal geek-together at
Bukowski’s (organized by
Stephane Richer), I bump into none other than my old bud,
Marty Shaunessy. While we’ve emailed occasionally, we haven’t actually seen each other in over ten years(!). Additional note: Bukowski’s makes a wicked non-Guinness
Black Velvet (Crown Float for you Canadians and Brits).
Finding a Starbucks before the opening keynote
Though I’m quite sick of Starbucks coffee lately, it sure was critical to information retention that I get that morning injection of coffee after a late night and jet-lag. Also, there was entirely too much applause going on at this keynote. Ok, some AIR apps are cool, but c’mon…
OOP for N00bs
Peter Elst is a pleasant chap from Belgium who finally straightened out some ActionScript 3 OOP concepts. Well, at least for me anyway, judging by some of the blank stares around me.
Grabbing some quick snaps of Boston during lunch
Boston is a beautiful–and pretty clean–city. I was amazed by how small it is, relatively. And the fact that most of the major traffic arteries seem to go underneath the city. Boston is a beautiful–and pretty clean–city.
Reconnecting with old mod7 Alumni, Jeff Weir
Jeff came out to FF2007 because his amazing
Viscosity project was a finalist in the Festival. We eat fresh lobsters after the awards show. Sweet.
project was a finalist in the Festival. We eat fresh lobsters after the awards show. Sweet.
“Receiving” an award
My friend,
Loc Dao, couldn’t make it to the festival so he asked me to collect the award for him, should his
project win. It won. I collected. I acceptance-speeched. The award and I celebrated on the town. I just hope it isn’t
too sticky…
Craig Swann’s Session
Craig Swann dazzled the audience at FF2007 with creative experiments using webcams, onboard mics, time, and alternative interfaces like the Wii remote. Neat, even if lacking described application beyond "VJ-ing".
Mario Klingeman
Mario presented his project to quantify the essence of Art into n-dimensional space using genetic algorithms and Flash, thus allowing a program to generate “art”. Very cool. Very German. Very Berlin. Oh, and he gave out pins! Awesome touch.
It’s strange being in place where you can talk to a group of strangers about properties, event handlers, and document classes, and they know exactly what you are talking about.
More to come…
Tags: ActionScript, Flash, Web Design by wil
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