The other day my wife IM'ed me, "Your blog is broken or something." turns out, when you don't post in like 2 months, it has nothing to show.

It's been a busy few months; Tom and I wrapped up 360|Flex Europe, and immediately dove into 360|Flex San Jose 2008. After Milan, my wife and I spent an extra week in Italy, hitting Venice, Florence and Rome.

I got home, started a project with Esria, attended Software 2008, and now am finally enjoying being home.

My project is one challenge after another, but I'm learning a great deal, so it's almost worth it :)

Software 2008 was an experiment to see how I worked with a potential client (free trip to Vegas, can't complain) so that might bear fruit.

I was also in San Jose for a day last week, get this. Denver -> Vegas, vegas -> San Jose in the AM,  San Jose ->Vegas in the afternoon, Vegas -> Denver in the evening. That's some seriously frakked up travel. On top of that, i worked all night the night before on my project, so I didn't go to bed at all. w00t!

Aside of a trip to Japan, followed by another trip to San Jose (friend's wedding) my traveling is mostly done for a bit, I love to travel, but these past few months have been killer!

Tom and I have some interesting things on the horizon too, interesting enough for me to want to accelerate time a smidge to see what happens. I'm not jynxing anything by saying what's up, but I'll say this, we'll be at MAX in a bigger way than "attendee" or even "speaker" Should be really cool.

The other thing, well I don't even know how to make a hint about so you'll just have to wait, the same as me to find out. To quote that not very good Jim Carry movie, "How will it end?"

MAX is always fun. DevCon under Macromedia was fun too.

Sessions: Too many. There's having choice, then there's having choice paralysis. Particularly when said choices might be across the entire McCormick from each other. Some one said that on Tuesday, the 1:30pm had 51 sessions. 50! I'm thinking it may be time to split out some of the tools into their own events, make MAX longer, or be more selective of speakers. Something's gotta change it's just too hard to learn something when you're sitting in a session, debating internally whether you should stick it out and see if it's worth your time, or bail and walk somewhere else to try another session. Which of course could mean a 10 minute walk, to a session that's full. BTW this time, there was no wall sitting allowed, what's up with that?

Parties: Of course the parties were great and fun, and free beer and wine, and yummy food, it's hard to go wrong. I was a little surprised that the keynotes had no "big name" talent to talk or entertain, that was kind of a let down, I've come to expect that sort of thing. The "Adobe Event", but also not what I was expecting. It was fun, but it was onsite, and just a party. I've also become accustomed to the parties of the past, typically offsite (I know 4,000 people, but hey, you get what you want. the 4,000 attendees was a goal) and typically pretty swank. This year it was neither.

People: 4,000 people is a lot. Like a crazy a lot. Thankfully the McCormick was so spacious that it never felt too crowded, even at meal times. It was often tough to find people you knew, but in a sea of 4,000 developers and designers, only Doug McCune stands out. Few sessions I attended were too crowded, though I was a little bummed that the full ones, i couldn't just sit against the back wall (Where the Electrical power was) and enjoy, I had to squeeze into a seat in the middle somewhere... weak.

Internet: I noticed on the first day that the access points in the 170-180 blocks weren't that great, handing out local IPs, with no internet. I had hoped that by the 2nd or 3rd day, that would be fixed, it didn't seem to be. Also the hotel rooms.... WEAK (At least at the Hyatt attached to the McCormick). 9.99 a day.... oh wait 4 day pricing.... 9.99 * 4. No discount! I know that's not something Adobe had direct control over, but come on, pay a bulk rate or something... and no WiFi..? WTF isn't the McCormick supposed to be new? or at least newly renovated? wired internet with a 3 ft cord.... That's craptastic.

Vibe: huge. impersonal. With so many sessions, so many people, such a huge space. I'm not sure what "community" aspect was being hyped, but I didn't feel it. I know the "Community" helped schill registrations, maybe that's it. With such an enormous affair, the only community that came to mind for me was an ant hill. I think it's hard to have a community vibe with such a huge event. That's like saying downtown Denver is a "Community" I suppose it depends on the definition, but I wasn't feelin' it.

This all said, will I be in San Francisco in 2008 for MAX? Yeah probably. The networking opportunity (when you can find the people to network with) is great. The sessions are for the most part good. Jun's on Optimizing AS3 was super swell! If nothing else, MAX is fun to reconnect with friends, party, maybe see a session or two, party some more...

See ya in San Francisco!

Flex and Evangelism?

Yup, that's right. My time at XylemCCI has come to end. Don't worry we're still friends, and won't be telling our friends they have to chose one of us over the other... (I'd win, but whatever, we're still friends)

So what am I looking for? It's pretty straight forward, really.

I'm a Flex Developer, I love building Flex apps, that's important and fun. However I also run a conference company, you might have heard of it. Community is important to me; building it, supporting it, doing what I can. Evangelism is important too. Supporting an API with examples, etc. That's a blast.

I'm looking for an organization that might want to get into supporting and building community, or already does, be that within Flex, around a product or API, etc, that also is looking for a Flex Developer.

I'm also looking for Consulting opportunities, but first preference is to Full Time opportunities. I think both sides get the most out of that arrangement.

Any questions? I'm at MAX until tomorrow night if you want to meet, and talk, otherwise leave a comment or fire off an email.

john DOT Wilker AT gmail DOT com (I hate having to do that, but jeez spammers suck).

Thanks to Lola for being my spell checker :)

Unlike CFUnited which seems to raise it's price every year, this years MAX is the same price as last year, no "alumni" discount needed.

I'm glad about that. Not that MAX Is cheap, but at least it's not getting MORE expensive. Directly from the MAX Site.

Full Conference Pass
Access to the three-day MAX 2007 program, including access to all five session tracks, the Exhibit Pavilion, Birds of a Feather sessions, Welcome Reception, Conference Party, and the After Hours Lounges.
$1,095 - Early Bird discount, must be purchased on or before July 23, 2007
$1,295 - If purchased July 24, 2007 – Sept. 21, 2007
$1,495 - If purchased on-site Sept. 22, 2007 – Oct. 3, 2007

I'm torn on whether I'll be attending it depends on work, and work. I'm hoping to go, I think (I'd better) see all my friends at 360|Flex, but MAX is, well... MAX it's just fun. We'll see. In the meantime here's a neat little yourminis count down do-dad.

 

Well since for whatever reason, I got no wifi love from the free AP for MAX, here's my blow by blow... in one blow.

Day 1,2, and 3

Keynote: Great. Cool stuff. and holy hell, Blue Man Group! That's cool! The keynote touched on the typical cool things keynotes do. Cool new things in Flash, Photoshop, Fireworks, etc. All very cool. One funny thing. They fire up a mac to show some cool flex stuff. NO ONE made a peep when they fired up the MAC VERSION OF FLEX BUILDER. I looked around to see if any one registered it... If they did, they didn't make a peep. I was ready to dance in the aisle.

The welcome party on Monday night was cool. Found most of my old coworkers and friends, met some cool folks, like Terry (BTW, congrats on Wharton getting a MACX Award, very dope).  I didn't stay too long, wanted to go grab dinner with the wife... glad I didn't eat much, Dave ended up with food poisoning, no bueno

Day one sessions were good. had a really good time in all. Took a peek at MAXUP (thoughts on that below). Unfortunately since this isn't day by day. I can't recall what I saw, when I saw it. So here's what I liked over all three days.

Stephen Websters Cairngorm (cargram) preso. I've been using it for a project, but that preso really filled in the gaps for me. I just track down the slides.

The guys at Pattern Park did a good preso on design patterns in AS, but they wasted about 20 minutes on fluff. I know how to make a project in FB, I know what patterns are, i know what UML is. They walked (slowly) through a lot. Once they got to the meat, I was impressed.

The designing more usable apps in Flex, was great! I had to bail before they got to the Flex code, but just the content on design choices and such was worth it!!

The day two keynote was eh. my friends all bailed. Since I don't do Flash, especially flash game dev. Most of what was said was uninteresting, other than the "oh that's neat" factor.

Day three keynote, we all skipped to get a nice breakfast at the grand luxe. I like skunkworks stuff and all. But I don't need to see what is coming after what's almost here to be jazzed about Flex, CF and Adobe in general. I already am, and don't want to spend the next 18 months or more wishing X feature was out now.

So MAXUP...

Neat idea, bad idea

mini conference, short topics, barcamp style... cool
a mini conference that takes away from a conference I paid over 2 thousand dollars to attennd, not cool. Why ask people to choose between 15 minutes on a topic that they might like to miss an hour on a topic they paid for?
Maybe if it was just at lunch time..? THat's be cool. But I couldn't justify missing a session I paid for to see 15 minutes I wanted and maybe 45 I don't.

Cool idea, and as a one day affair for free locals would probably eat it up. Even a few unlocals probably.

So that's what's on the top of my head.. I may come up with more as I'm doanloading the PDFs of the presos and going over my notes.

we made it. Landed Friday night. It's been a while since either my wife or myself has been to vegas... Smoke Sucks!

Check in is easy the Venetian operates like a Fry's, the next person holds up a little sign and a traffic control suit sends you to the next open check in clerk/person. Neat.

We ended up in the Venezia tower.. Holy crabcakes! This place is swank. Fax machine in every suite! Nice stand up shower, seperate the tub (I love those).

We got in late and met our friend who was in town for the weekend and hit up the Grand Luxe Cafe. Think Cheesecake factory with a different color pallet. And think open 24/7! Good stuff.

Saturday we met some other friends who were in town for a conference, not MAX (she's a doctor). I should say we met them after we slept until freakin' noon! Jeebus!

We had lunch at the Noodle Asia (skip it), then headed over to the Mirage for Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden... NO! it was  not THAT secret Garden, don't go there.

The garden wasn't a well kept secret, lots of tourists found it before we did. But the ig cats are cool and you're really close to them. The dolphins are cool too, but just a word of advice. It's not a show, things are random and unscheduled.... they emphasize that point when you get in.

We did a little hanging out, then hit th indoor gondola rides... kinda cool. Worth 15 bones, once.

Dinner wasn't until 10:30 so we hit up Tao (swanky, trendt nightspot de jour) for drinks. Skip the watermelon martini-thing. No bueno.

Dinner was at the Mix at THE Hotel. Nice! Very nice! Pricy, but then again this is Vegas and this was at the top of THE Hotel at Mandalay bay.

Satrday night ended with some cruising around the hotels around Mandalay and checking out the Vegas Monorail, which isn't free FYI.

Today, Sunday brunch at the RIO, followed by finding the nearest 24 hour fitness.

I'm pretty sure "boredom" and "Vegas" go together about as well as "Secure" and "WIndows"

But in case you're worried that you'll have nothing to do when you're not absorbing the wisdom of the MAX presenters... Ben Forta has you covered. However since I'm a nice guy Here's the copy-paste from Ben's blog.

• Sunday: MiniMAX at "The Beach"
• Monday: Tao (at The Venetian) starting 8:30, cover is waived, no line with Max Badge
• Tuesday: V Bar (at The Venetian) starting 7:30, cover is waived, no line with Max Badge
• Wednesday: Max Special Event
• Thursday: V Bar (at The Venetian) starting 7:30, cover is waived, no line with Max Badge
• Friday: Las Vegas Dreamweaver Users Group event