FotB 07 Day 1 - Let the show begin...
Picking up my badge at the early registration yesterday left me enough time to enjoy breakfast at the hotel and still arrive at the Dome in time. Everything looks familiar, except for the coffee: this time it's for free! :)
The keynote started a little late, but after a short introduction by John Davey, Richard Galvan and the other Adobe guys managed to keep the schedule. As far as I know, they didn't show anything that hadn't been seen at Adobe Max or other earlier conferences (some Flash Player 10 "Astro" demos, Hydra, Flex profiler, some Thermo screenshots, a little Flash CS4 codenamed "Diesel") except for the demonstration of how to animate inverse kinematics. That's ok with me - I didn't expect anything more - and they kept it short and sweet. What Andrew Shorten did announce, is that Adobe will extend their "On Air" tour throughout Europe - via train.
I stayed in the Dome to see Grant Skinner's 50 reasons AS3 kicks ass. A solid refresher of the innovations in AS3 from a developer's point of view.
In the Corn Exchange I watched Mike Chambers give an introduction to Adobe AIR - and saw him create "a robust HTML WYSIWYG editor" in 30 minutes... :) I have to admit that, I haven't touched AIR since his 2006 presentation on Apollo - also a welcome refresher. You can tell that AIR is close to its 1.0 release date.
I missed Keith Peters last year and heard many good things about his session, so after lunch I eagerly awaited his early-retirement plan "Make Flash games!" - a presentation on how he made some money out of games he created just for fun.
I knew what to expect from Hoss Gifford after seeing him last year and I wasn't disappointed. Can't say much more - you have to see him yourself... :)
Joshua Davis ended the regular sessions of the first day with an energetic and inspiring presentation of his work.
Conclusion: not a single letdown for me today. Today's sessions confirmed the expression I got last year. Flash on the Beach is not just a developer or designer conference. It's not even exclusively about Flash. It's about the work, the people and inspiration. Wow, sounds more dramatic than I wanted... :)
I'm going to grab some food now and return to the Dome for the "Inspired Session", this year's new concept for a relaxing evening session, with Brendan Dawes and after that the Ocean's-Eleven-style party in the casino.
