360|Apollo is 360|Flex, we just didn't seperate them

Apollo is important to everyone, including us. With the product still "under construction" and features being created when people yell loud enough for 'em, there's no way for there to be a full on 360|Apollo conference...yet. =) Therefore, we'll be mixing the Apollo sessions in with the regular Flex sessions like last time. The biggest difference is that you'll be able to build an Apollo application onsite.

Since the Apollo bits are out in the wild though, you'll want to be sure to take advantage of our "Building Apollo Applications" 101 session. (The 101 Track is changing, but that's a different post.) It'll be a full 1-day, hands on track, getting down and dirty with Apollo.

If you're looking at Apollo (who in the Flex World isn't?), make sure you take advantage of all the Apollo sessions.

I want my FlexTV

And no, I'm not talking about some exercise show, which we geeks have no use or time for. I'm talking about Channel 48 on every TV set at the Red Lion. Sunday through Wednesday, i.e. during our conference, this little stop along channel surfing alley will be ours.

Ours?

Yes, ours as in we'll be controlling it all day and all night. We'll be running sponsor information, the daily schedule, and best of all showing the day's presentations. You read right, we'll be replaying presentations from the day all night long*. If you find yourself with the tough choice of two sessions, rest assured you'll have a back up. Or if you need that little something to set the mood, just say, "Don't worry, honey. I got just the thing: Channel 48."

This is just one of exciting things we have prepared for those staying at the Red Lion. Be there or be... Channel 48-less.

* The nightly telecast of that day's sessions is an ambitious task to be certain. If it's a little rough this first time, please don't kill us. Maybe just maim...and even then, maybe just Ryan? He doesn't need his legs to blog. =)

Team Discount and Free Room Raffle

We just released Team Pricing on the registration site. As the "more info" says, "This is the team discount rate. We're offering this to help get teams here. 4 tickets at $250 for $1000. You must buy in groups of 4."

We're bummed that we needed to bump up the price, but we decided to take one for the team...literally. This means that for the price of 3 tickets, you get one free. Plus, it sounds a bit easier when you tell the boss, "The four of us get in for $1000. That's equal to or less then the price of one ticket at other conferences."

To add even more spice to the offer to your boss and to ease the burden on the self-paying developers, we're announcing a room raffle. This means that if you stay at the Red Lion Hotel, one lucky room will get the cost of their stay reimbursed. This covers just the straight room costs. All other fees such as late night flick fees, mini bar and room service are still on your dime.

Is this a ploy to get you to sign up for the hotel? Yes, but for good cause. There is a ton of cool stuff we have planned for those staying at the hotel. Plus, as conference providers, we're on the hook for a certain number of rooms at the hotel for 3 nights. The things we have planned though are so cool that everyone should stay there regardless.

For Red Lion Reservations, call 800-733-5466. If you want to register online, feel free. Use group code, 0707360CON_002 for both phone and internet orders. If you do, you'll get the $186 + tax rate per night and we'll get the room credit.

Wanna know how Virtual Ubiquity created Buzzword? Come to 360|Flex Seattle

We're still working out all the details on the speakers and their sessions. This one though is something a lot of us wonder about. I know when I saw Buzzword for the first time, I thought, "How did they do that?" Well, Virtual Ubiquity is going to come and explain it to us (see description below).

These are the kinds of sessions we have in the works. If you're serious about Apollo and Flex, you need to get yourself to 360|Flex Seattle.

Here's a rough description from the Buzzword team:

Topic: How the Heck Did They Do That in Flex?

Our team has built a full-featured, fun-to-use, word processor built
from the ground up in Flex. In this talk, one of the developers takes
you on a whirlwind tour through the internals of this application,
including at least some of the following topics:

- custom components and programmatic skins we built for our
formatting bar, ruler, comments, input controls, and document organizer

- our high-performance page layout engine that reflows the document
in real-time on every keystroke

- an ActionScript-based automated test harness, built as a separate
module that loads into the application, that can put the word
processor through its paces programmatically to verify document
content, layout, and functionality

- the mysteries of the Flash TextField, and how we built a fast
scrolling rich text display with microspacing and pixel grid-fitting
to ensure full fidelity between the on-screen and printed versions

- interfacing with JavaScript and DHTML to permit Flash to read and
write rich text to and from the system clipboard, work around control
key and mousewheel handling problems, read and write local files in
IE and Netscape (for testing and debugging only)

- how we used the recently-introduced support for Modules to segment
the application into separate SWFs that can be loaded on demand,
providing not only a more responsive user experience, but also faster
build times during development

Cancellation and Refund Policy

Cancellation Policy

In the unfortunate event that we cancel the conference, only the registration fee will be reimbursed. Hotel and airfare are the responsibility of the attendees.

Refund policy

Full refunds are available up until noon (12:00pm PST) the Thursday prior to the show. That is when we have to commit to the Hotel our total attendance figures. After that point, refunds will no longer be available.

Welcome Ryan Stewart

After much begging and pleading, John and Tom finally allowed me into the 360|Club. I'll be joining them to help put on both the 360|Flex Seattle conference as well as other conferences down the road. For me, it's really exciting. I got to feel the vibe of 360|Flex in San Jose as an attendee, and spend some time with Tom and John which made me really want to be a part of what they're doing. I think the roaring success of the first 360 Flex was due to the work those guys put in and the general excitement of Flex developers at the conference. After seeing it, becoming part of the team sounded great.

I also think their approach, the smaller, low cost conferences is great. The number of Flex developers gets bigger every day, and with technologies like Apollo on the horizon we can do a lot with 360|Flex and help developers get to know the technology. The Flash/Flex community is a great one to be in, and the speakers we had for San Jose were phenomenal. I'm hoping I can help bring in the same level of speakers for other conferences down the road.

360|Flex Seattle is still a few months away, but I can't wait to jump in and get people excited about it. I get to show off Seattle to a bunch of developers and help host a fun conference in the process. I'll still be blogging regularly, and I still have my day job, but 360|Flex is going to be a big focus of my energy. You guys deserve the best, and I'm hoping I can keep up with John and Tom to keep giving that to you. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line or ping me on IM. Viva la 360!

360|Flex Seattle badge

Hopefully not already passe, we figured we'd whip up a little badge for those that are so inclined to share the 360|Flex love.


Here's the code to add to your blog or site.

< id="360FlexBadge">
< href="http://www.360conferences.com/360flex/" target="_blank">< src="http://www.360conferences.com/360flex/images/360Flex-Seattle-Badge.gif" border="0" height="150" width="150">< / div>

If you don't like our badge (we're not designers!) make your own and let us know!

Presentation downloads 360|Flex San Jose

Better late than never, here's the presentations we were able to collect. Most are links to the speaker's own sites, some are on this site. If your favorite speaker doesn't have a link, send them a nasty email :)

AS3 Design Patterns : Danny Patterson

AS3 Performance Tuning : Ted Patrick

BuildingApollo Apps : Mike Chambers

Cairngorm Framework : Non-CGVersion : CGVersion : Tom Ortega

Enterprise Apps : Anatole Tartakovsky

FlexBuilder Secrets : David Zuckerman

Flex Builder Debugger : Mike Morearty

Flex Framework : Deepa Subramaniam

Automating Flex with ANT : Joe Berkovitz

Apollo APIs : Christian Cantrell

Flexloves Flash? Embed and Beyond! : Grant Skinner

Flashand Flex Together : Jesse Warden

Making Components slides : source : FlexBook Examples : Ely Greenfield

MappingComponents : Mansour Raad

Modules : Alex Harui

MXML vs. AS3 : Ted Patrick

Skinning Flex Components : Clint Modien

Component Based Development in the Flex : Chafic Kazoun

Yahoo! AS3 and Flex 2 Libraries - Part 1 : Yahoo API Team

Yahoo! AS3 and Flex 2 Libraries - Part 2 : Yahoo API Team

Components and Containers : John Wilker

Data Exchange : John Wilker, Tom Ortega

Effects,States, CSS, Skinning : Ben Lucyk

Flex ABC123 : Ted Patrick

5 Minute CRUD with FDS : Kevin Hoyt : ByteArray101

Ben Stucki : E4X

Danny Patterson : Flex

Apps Faster with WebOrb : Mark Piller

FlexData Services : Jason Williams

Flex with .NET : Harris Reynolds

Flex with ColdFusion : Ben Forta

Flex with Java : Christophe Coenraets

Flex with PHP : Renaun Erickson

Model Driven Integration : Joe Berkovitz

Remoting vs. Flex Data Services : Kevin Schmidt

iPod winners, Next Conference, and more!

It's that time folks!

We've got a quite a few things to share, so without further ado!

First Item: Winners!

The winners of our engraved iPod nano's are:
1. Scott Morgan (entry #47)
2. Dave Held (entry #103)

We'll be contacting both of you by email to get your shipping address. enjoy!

We want to thank everyone who filled out an end of conference survey! We only got surveys from about a third of the attendees; We're hoping for more, next time. Those surveys are the best way for us to make each subsequent event better.

Second Item: Next 360|Flex

We also want to announce 360|Flex Seattle. Sorry, Boston. We tried, but it didn't work out. =(

Early details are:
Dates - August 13-15, 2007
City - Seattle, Washington
Location/Hotel - The Red Lion on Fifth Avenue
Conference Registration Fee - $360.00

There was A LOT of stuff we wanted to do at our first event that we couldn't because everyone was so decentralized. This will not be the case this time. You've been warned...stay in the hotel or one close by, otherwise you'll miss out on the fun. For Red Lion Reservations, call 800-733-5466. If you want to register online, feel free. Use group code, 0707360CON_002 for both phone and internet orders. If you do, you'll get the $186 + tax rate per night.

The registration fee increase is because our last conference was HEAVILY subsidized by our sponsors. We still think $360 is a reasonable price and plus it matches the conference name. =) Speaking of sponsors, we're nailing down the final price points and levels but if you're interested, drop us a mail at info@360flex.com and we'll hook you up.

Another thing we'll do is send out invites to presenters, but if you get anxious and know you want to present, then please email us at info@360flex.com with your ideas.

Over, but not

The conference is over, we're all back home, working, cleaning the
garage, etc. But it's not over, not by a long shot! If you missed the
Wednesday keynote, we mentioned Boston in August, more to come on
that. We also wanted to make sure everyone knew that our speaker
presos are being collected. Some have posted to their own sites/blogs,
but we're also going to provide a link or direct download for as much
of the materials we're given, so that you have a central place to find
them all.

We're inputting the session surveys as I type this, and will be going
over all of that data shortly. We're also looking over our
"end-of-conference" surveys. If you haven't yet gone to the survey
site, do so. We'll be drawing a response at random to win an engraved
iPod Nano! All attendees got the link in email via our registration
company. If you didn't see it, check the spam folder or send us an
email at info@360flex.com and request another copy.

If you weren't one of the lucky ones to attend, make sure to sign up
for our newsletter/updates service. We'll keep you posted on all
future activity (attendees are automatically on the list). In the