Steven Diomampo

I just want to say a few big thanks to some important people.

• John, Tom, Nicole for the free ticket and for hosting the best conferences!
• Paul Taylor for letting me room with you. I enjoyed our morning walks to Starbucks and catching the VTA around town.
• Amy and Steve for lunch and laughs.
• Ben, Jacob and Tyler for Reflex.
• Ryan for the free sushi. (Or should I thank Adobe?)
• Doug for being the “Conference Crasher”.
• Greg for the heads up.
• Mike for getting me to the airport.
• Jon for chillin at the airport.
• and everyone else that showed up to the conference!!!

360 Conferences offer everyone the opportunity to sit with the big dogs, learn a ton, get free stuff and meet tons of people in the industry. I highly recommend going to a 360 Conference for anyone who is passionate about their work. See you at the next conference!!

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Jeff Tapper – Ouch, it hurts when I do that.

I only got to stay for the first half of the day, so that’s the only session I went to. Which means I also missed Nate’s revenge…ugh.

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Paul Robertson – Building iPhone apps using the Flash Platform

Jacob and Tyler Wright – Reflex: Rethinking Component Design

Elad Elrom – Building Applications using Test Driven Development (TDD)

Anthony Franco – Panel – How to Speak To Executives To Get What You Want

Pics below:

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Keynote

Deepa announces that all Flex Data Viz components are now packed within the Flex open source SDK. Meaning, no more watermark for open sourcers.

Michael Labriola – Apocalypse Soon? The remaking of Flex Components

Drew McClean & RJ Owen – Obey: Building a Rules Engine with AS3 and the Hamcrest API

Huyen Tue Dao – Greenthreading in Flex

Pics below

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Fortunately enough I sat down to eat dinner next to Justin Mclean the night before. So I also got the inside scoop on what he was going to discuss (Flex + Hardware), as well as an open seat to join in since I wasn’t signed up. During the break I jumped into the Robotlegs session with Joel Hooks. Both sessions were great, but because Justin was giving away free Arduino kits, I felt indebted to him and spent most of the day in there.

Here are some photos from the sessions. To say the least, it was awesome, I also got a free Arduino kit, enough said…and thanks Justin!

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I intend on repurposing this title “At This Moment I Am…” as a series of mile markers about myself. I’ll be breaking it down into two different sections: Working On, and Moving Towards. Both categories are pretty self explanatory, Working On will list what I am doing now in order to get to what I am Moving Towards.

Working On

• An Android application
• A modular Flex application
• Optimizing as3 code
• Meeting new people

Moving Towards

Mobility

The future is mobile, and at least two of the items I am Working On will get me there. In the world of Mobile Phones, for me it’s all about Android, and if you haven’t heard of Android, something is wrong. Check out this market share prediction. At any rate, the signs are there, and Google as well as the community is really pushing the Android Platform.

How about developing for Android? As a Flex Developer, I’d like to think the learning curve for Android development is slightly reduced. When you start your first project in eclipse, you’ll notice that the xml layout files(located in res/layout/) give two tab options, Layout and someFile.xml. You’ll find these in the bottom left corner in the image below.

Think of the Layout tab as the Design tab in Flex Builder. In this case it is giving you the visual representation of the xml file (registration.xml) versus MXML in Flex, which would be like seeing the Source tab.

On the surface I was able to pick up on some of the similarities, but I was fortunate enough to have some good discussions with Faisal Abid about everything under the hood. He has a strong Flex background and has been working on some heavy Android apps. At some point I will put together a good post on bridging the gaps of Flex and Android.

Another item I’m working on that falls under Mobility for me is, meeting new people. For me to be more mobile in 2010 it will require breaking out of the shell and meeting more people in more places. It’s amazing how much seven days on a cruise ship with complete strangers can really change your perspective on things. See my Stop Encapsulating Yourself!!! post for more on this. At any rate, traveling is a top priority for me this coming year, so meeting people around the world is a big deal. I’ve compiled a list of where I will be traveling in 2010:

• San Jose, CA (early March) – It’s conference time! This time I get to meet back up with the gang and a couple hundred other members for 360|Flex.
• Breckenridge, CO (mid-late March) – Snowboarding and friends!!!
• _____, LA –  Wedding, Congrats @ogreen32!
• Las Vegas, NV (summer time) – WSOP! I’m looking to get into one of the smaller events like the $1k, we’ll see.
• _____, VT (October) – Yet another wedding, Congrats Gonzo!
• Japan (65% chance) – Meet new people, be in a different country.
• NY and Canada (80% chance) – Visit friends

Be sure to stop by http://www.nowandthere.com/ for some great travel/lifestyle resources (thanks Sam).

To start, I’ll explain the inspiration behind this post. I recently had the pleasure of being onboard the RIAdventure conference cruise. Being that it was my first Flash/Flex conference, I could tell after day one that I had been missing a really, really big piece of my life as a developer. I feel ashamed to say it, but my time prior to this was spent hacking away from the sidelines. Here is a small Q/A I came up with…

• Do I browse every forum and blog searching for an answer, but don’t find one, then when I finally solve it, do I submit the solution?

  • Express your gratitude with a simple response. It’ll go further you think.

• Is there a limited history of my work available to the public?

  • So you write top secret code, but still find time to update your twitter status with useless information. The top dogs in our industry gain a following, because they have something to follow. If you have nothing, recycle, and try throwing a link to a good article every once in awhile.

• Have I ever been to a conference?

  • For super introverts, find your local user group, and get involved. For curious introverts to total extroverts, book the next conference possible!

Meet Some Of My New Developer Besties (in no particular order)

• Lee Fernandes

• John Wilker

• Tom Ortega

• Sam Rivello

• Doug McCune

• Joshua Cyr

• Greg Burch

• Paul Taylor

• Ryan Stewart

• Faisal Abid

• Ash K.

• Nate Beck

• Amy Blankenship

• Minnesota Scott

• Steve Howard

If you’re not jealous, Stop Encapsulating Yourself!!!