FlexCamp in review

July 29, 2007

Last night was FlexCamp at the Adobe/Macromedia building. Due to an incredibly long freeway backup (gridlocked from West Sac all the way into Vacaville!) I missed the Flex 101 session, getting to the Adobe building just in time to register and get a good seat for the remainder of the night. Highlights for me included: * Free stuff! Almost immediately after walking into the building I'm presented with a copy of the O'Reilly book "Flex 2 Programming", and a full copy of Flex Builder 2! Perfect timing, as my 30 day trial will have expired before the weekend is over. :) * All of the intro/keynote speeches and presentations were very informative and inspiring. I was tempted to leave early and go start prototyping some Flex projects! * You can do some pretty slick stuff w/ Flex. We saw demos from MixBook.com and SlideRocket, both of which had impressive features. The Adobe guys also showed off bits of internal projects, and a partner-project with MTV. * The Flex support in CS3 is pretty slick too. It makes me wish I had more of a need for Fireworks on a day to day basis. * AIR looks to be coming along nicely! .NET has got a serious run for it's money in the integrated-runtime market! * Adobe's building is sweet, and from what I can tell, the culture is pretty great there too. There aren't many huge companies that I can see myself working for, but should life ever bring me to living in San Francisco (God forbid *g*), I would definitely hand in a resume there. Some not-so-great points from the evening: * Power outlets were at a premium. With the event being described as "very hands on, bring your laptops!", many of us were concerned we wouldn't be able to participate. Fortunately, some power strips appeared as the night moved on, and use of laptops didn't seem as necessary as I had initially expected. * While the first half of the night was well organized and helpful, I felt the second half of "camp sessions" could have been better. We were told to "use the wiki or a Twitter account to communicate and figure out what the sessions will be". Well, I'm not an avid Wiki guy, nor am I on Twitter (I've yet to see the point of making an account), so it was disconcerting to know that the topics and sessions were being sorted out in this way...especially after all the "show of hands" and "stand up if you do XYZ" interaction that was being done...just do one more "raise your hand if you want a session on ColdFusion and Flex integration". Simple enough, no? Which brings me to... * No session on ColdFusion integreation with Flex! In fact, aside from the one other attendee I overheard talking about it, there was no information on Flex and CF at all! How is that possible? We're at the Macromedia/Adobe building, there is talk of PHP, Ruby, AMF, and even a session in the back on ASP.NET has now formed...yet no ColdFusion integration info? I've never believed the rumous that "ColdFusion is dying", but now I'm starting to wonder. All in all, worth the experience. I'm mostly bummed I missed the Flex 101 session. But I'll happily take the free Flex Builder 2 and OReilly book to do some work myself.