360Flex We saw Kevin Fauth at the grocery store

Tom and I had to make a quick trip to the grocery store (Ralphs if you must know, we're snobby like that and only like the Kroger stuff), and as we turned down the greeting card aisle (my sister's birthday is the 4th) we bumped into Kevin Fauth, one of our first time speakers, repeat attendees. Kevin has been to all but the first 360|Flex, and San Jose 2008 is his first time speaking.

"Hey Kevin, how's it going?" Tom and I ask in unison. Kevin is looking at some of the humurous birthday cards, the kind that have some one half naked of the opposite sex, or a dog in a tutu, or that creepy old lady from Hallmark. We shake hands, and while I'm looking at a card with some kind of frog on it, wishing the receiver a birthday with a prince at the end, or something, Tom asks, "So Kevin,  Who should come to your session in San Jose?"

Kevin puts a card with three pugs on it back on the shelf, "Anyone who is building a large application and is curious where and how to even start building/architecting the application.  It will be good for anyone who is building a “living, breathing” application, that changes its behavior based on other parameters."

"Why should they come?" I ask as I pick up another card, this one has a guy in a tutu with an ice cream cone on his head, on the front.

"The Kiosk presents a lot of interesting design challenges, from breaking OOP practices to little quirky memory items and optimization techniques.  I’ll be going over some of those tricks, some headaches I ran into in dealing with SSL, crossdomain and even building a demo application.  I’ll be showing how custom components are built, skinned and used in the application."

"That's cool, kiosk apps are definitely a great use case for RIAs." Tom says, picking up one of the shoebox type cards with the old lady on it. He opens it, blushes, and quickly puts it back.

I see a card with those cute Anne Geddes babies on it, they're dressed up like rutabagas (I figure you all don't know what one looks like). "What’s the goal of your session?"

Kevin walks over to the 'congratulations' section and picks up a card that says 'Congratulations, it's a good thing there's a cure for that!' on the front, and has a cartoon cat on it. "The goal of showing this application off is to give other people an insight into what a massive Flex application and what it can do.  While it might look straight forward, it became very complex as different product requirements asked for various features which don’t meld well with the asynchronous nature of Flex."

Tom gives up on cards and is just waiting for me to pick one, "I know what I'm looking forward to in San Jose, what're you looking forward to, Kevin?"

Kevin settles on the "At least you have all your hair" card with some kind of disturbing hairless dog on the front, and answers, "I’m always a big fan of seeing what people do with data visualizations, so I’m looking forward to seeing what Tom has to say about Data Visualization and Dashboards.  I’m also looking forward to Renaun’s talk about testing and QA, something that I think all developers forget about until that last moment."

I finally see, just the right card, it's got eight featherless canaries wearing top hats, and the inside says, 'Be glad these aren't your present'. Since I didn't get her a present, it's perfect! "So Kevin, what should Tom and I tell people that might be on the fence about attending 360|Flex?"

"This is the single greatest gathering of die hard, hard headed Flex Coders in the world.  There is no better place to toss ideas around in an open community and get that boost of excitement a gathering like this offers.  Even if you get one huge question answered, it’s more then worth the conference fee."

Wanna see the card, Kevin picked? You'll have to go to his session, or hang with him in Renaun or Tom's sessions. Better register now! we're filling up fast!