360Flex Ran into Tony Hillerson on the 16th St Mall

I finally managed to get Tom to come out to Denver for a "retreat" so we could so some planning, and taking a break at the Paramount, we ran into Tony Hillerson, All around great guy and frequent speaker at 360|Flex.


"hey you guys! Tom, good to see you again!" Tony was walking down the 16th St Mall. 


"Hey Tony! Come have a seat, watch the weirdos with us for a minute." Tom waves him into the patio area, moving his backpack off the seat.


Tony sits down just as a troop of skinny goth kids walk past, smoking and trying their hardest to look like scary bad ass zombies, while clutching their Frapaccinos.


The waitress takes Tony's drink order, and heads back into the restaraunt, Tom asks, "Who should come to your session?"


Tony points out what must be a group of tourists from Wyoming... they just have that look :) "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, free from heavyweight Java app servers and constricting languages. Come and hear the good news of how to use Flex with a back-end framework that makes programming fun! (Err, you know, people that want to learn how to use Rails the Flex way, with RubyAMF)"


The waitress brings out our food, I went with chicken strips, Tom went with a buffalo burger, a side of the big stack onion rings, and a milkshake. Tom's swishing his shake around, wishing I had ordered one I asked, "Why should folks come?"

Tony takes a sip of his drink, thinks a bit, points at a street vendor arguing with a customer, then says, "Because Rails is awesome, and RubyAMF hooks up Rails with Flex, and this "they" you speak of will want to know how and why."

Tom grabs an onion ring, "What's the goal of your session?"

Tony, replies without a seconds pause, "To try and go for 80 minutes on stage without dropping a 'Mom joke'"

I'm thinking Tony's set himself a pretty lofty goal, but more power to him. I glance past Tony to some one walking up the sidewalk, what looks like a prom dress, except it's gray, and covered in rhinestones. The wearer, a 'she' I think, has bright orange hair, done in spikes. "What two sessions are you looking forward to most?"

Tony sees Orange hair, tries not to stare, gotta give him credit for not watching her. "Gotta love 16th Street.
That's a hard call, John and Tom, a real hard call. I'm looking forward to Mate and Swiz, but I also want to see how fun Brad and RJ are going to make their talk. Brad is a professional comedian, you know! Ben Stucki's "How to build a framework" is probably a must see too, and I owe Ben a beer from WebManiacs, so I'll be there too. You like how I talked about more than two? How I just ignored your limits and dove right in? Here's another one - I want to see Renaun's testing talk too. And probably Adam's Merapi talk. Reflection in Actionscript sounds fun too. In fact I'm going to skip my talk altogether and see someone else's. Other people are encouraged to do the same."
 
Putting down his buffalo burger, Tom says, "Huh, so that's what buffalo tastes like. What would you like to tell people about 360|Flex if they're on the fence about attending?"

Tony ponders that for a bit, stealing some of Tom's onion rings, "Look, this is not some heartless, automated, de-humanizing sheep-fest. This is 360|Flex! Where the logo is actually only 180 degrees! It's a much more intimate (but not *too* intimate) and fun conference than any of the others you've attended."

Even if Tony won't be there, his session is still gonna rock! Don't miss out! Register now!