I mentioned it in my earlier post about Flash on the Beach, but the speakers and sessions this year were top notch. As I mentioned, I probably attended more sessions at this conference than all the other conferences I’ve been to this year, combined. And I noticed Grant Skinner said almost exactly the same thing.
Some of the highlights, for me:
Hoss Gifford – I’ll aways go see Hoss’s sessions. It’s like artistic, inspirational standup comedy.
Ted Patrick, Flex and ActionScript 3 Worst Practices – This was really interesting, especially since I’m still just starting to drink the Flex koolaid. A lot of things I thought I should be doing, are actually things that should be approached with caution.
Mario Klingemann, 2D or not 2D that is the question – Outrageous. Inspiring, more tech and math than I could handle, followed by Mario dancing in white gloves. I hope someone got that on video.
Tink, Flashing Flex – Another great one for upgrading my knowledge on what I should be doing in Flex.
Robert Hodgin – Um…. jaw dropping. I’ve been following Robert’s work since the early days of Flight 404. And a lot of the stuff he showed has been on his blog or site in some form or another. But still… un-freaking-believable. Probably the highpoint of the conference for me in terms of presentations.
Carlo Blatz, Optimizing Workflows with Eclipse and FDT 3.0 – This was a tough choice, because I also really wanted to see Andre Michelle. But it was great to see one of the creators of FDT put it through its paces. Got a feel for what is possible with it and am trying to … optimize my workflows now. 🙂 Groovy!
Rob Chiu, Cinematic Motion Design – I met Rob a few years ago at a conference called Media Elements in Holland. He’s an incredible photographer and cinematographer. Another jaw dropping experience.
Jared Tarbell, Algorithms to Fill Space – What can I say? Again, Jared is someone I’ve known since the early days of my Flash career. He was one of my first major inspirations in Flash. I’ve followed his work since the beginning and we’ve tossed ideas back and forth. I’ve seen him speak a few times. After all that, there wasn’t much he showed that I wasn’t already very familiar with, which isn’t to say that his presentation wasn’t totally awesome (I’m jaded on Jared). I think I heard at least a couple dozen people remark that his session was the best of show.
There were a bunch more I went to, which were also great, but the above were all just REALLY great. If I saw just one or two of these at a conference, I’d walk away happy. And I know I missed out on some other fantastic ones. I gotta dig around, as I know Peter Elst and others filmed a bunch of stuff. Can’t wait to see what’s in store next year.