Flash On The Beach 2008 - Day 3 (updated)

How do you empty 2 bars in a night? Put on a Flash conference in a beautiful location, give attendees inspiring sessions and then throw a party where they can network until early morning. Up until now, FOTB08 has been a blast and day 3 was no exception. It also featured the most discussed session in the entire conference.

What happens when you fill a club with more than a thousand Flash and Flex users? They ask you to lower the volume, discuss a lot and then go on to empty the place of beer. When the Honey Club was out of brew, the party continued at the Old Ship Hotel. A few hours later they were also empty and had to serve beer by the bottle. The morning after, Double Click had people in the door handing out "hangover kits" that many found good use for.

Back at the Old Ship, the bar that never closes...

Due to how long the party lasted, the start of day 3 was rough on many of the attendees as well as the Flashmagazine team. We failed to be at the first session and since we've focused a lot on Away3D lately, we're sad that we missed out on Rob Bateman's session. We heard from other attendees that he amazed quite a few with what Away3D is capable of.

Seb Lee-Delisle

Papervision3D Simplified

Seb is this really nice, calm and super-british guy that you just love as soon as he starts talking. The audience really enjoyed this session where he showed the basics of 3D with the aid of Cows. Cows you say? Well, check out the video from the session that Peter Elst did and you'll understand. Seb started off showing some early work that he and his company PlugIn Media did before the advent of Open Source 3D engines. Blasting the PlugIn Media website to pieces is still fun and he also showed several examples of early work that I had not seen before.

He then took us for a ride of Papervision3D and in a brilliant way, he demystified 3D to most of the attendees. From the very basics to more advanced examples, the attendees got to see a lot of code without it being scary. Seb is a showman and this session was no exception!

Andre Michelle

Adobe made some noise!

Andre Michelle and Joa Ebert work for the company Hobnox where they create online music tools using Flash. At last years conference, I talked to Andre a lot and he described to me all the problems they had with sound and events in Flash Player 9. A little later, they kicked off a campaign called "Adobe, make some noise". Featuring a website, a petition, t-shirts as well as a lot of mention in the Flash community. Adobe listened. They solved the timing problems and even added a method to the Flash Player that removes the need for running a custom Java Server with the Hobnox Audio Tool, making it a brilliant showcase for what Flash is capable of.

Andre has a DJ background and he not only shared how to use the new sound methods in Flash Player 10, but he also did a live music session on stage using the Hobnox Audio Tool. I've seen Andre present several times, but this was by far his best session ever! It was in fact so good that even though I had decided to go check out Doug McCune's session on decompiling SWFs, I had to go back to Andre's presentation to see the rest

Doug McCune decompiling at FOTB

Neil Webb

Cairngorm for beginners: Making a molehill out of a mountain

Neil has had a bad week. Not only did they move his session so it clashed with Doug McCune's, but as of Tuesday he was made redundant, so if you need a great Flex coder drop him a line.

Cairngorm is Adobe's official framework and is the work of ex FlashMagazine columnists Steven Webster and Ali McCloud. This session was a high level introduction to the framework presented in a light-hearted and approachable style. He used characters like Command(o) and the Phat Controller to explain the key concepts behind the design patterns. Unfortunately things got a bit muddier once he delved into the code. I think the problem with MVC and patterns is that they require a series of epiphanies to properly grasp the concepts, and if you miss one idea you will struggle with the next.

Carlo Blatz

How to be a webinnovator - Experience matters?

Carlo gave an upbeat presentation about what inspires him and the techniques and philosophy behind the production of innovative work. To demonstrate the premise that limitation breeds innovation he showed some early PowerFlasher 3D work built in Flash MX. He illustrated the themes of the talk with a mixture of examples of his own work (a great product finder for Converse Germany) and that of people who have inspired him.

After discussion the influence of emotion and nature on innovation he showed a number of interesting brainstorming techniques. I particularly liked the Walt Disney method which involves a series of sessions in a dream room, spoiler room and neutral room, and the 6-5-3 rule where 6 people have 5 mins to create 3 ideas.

Carlo and crew pitching FDT to Branden Hall and Richard Galvan?

Rob Chiu

"Intentionally left blank"

Rob Chiu is a British motion graphics artist that really push Adobe After Effects to the limits. Among the projects showcased was Leeds Film Festival, the OFFF title sequences, the Webbys, interactive movies for Leica and more. Rob shared the stage with Benny Boysen, the musician for much of Rob's work.

The videos contained not only eye candy, but also really powerful both narrative and visuals. The OFFF intro done with dead fish and seafood was beautiful in a bizarre way and the refugee project was especially strong. Rob also did the intro sequence for the FOTB conference. Click the image below to check it out:

Paul Betlem and Richard Galvan

The Ying and Yang of Flash

The Ying was the Flash IDE /Richard) and the Yang was the Flash Player (Paul) and both parts was filled with nuggets. After the previous days Town Hall meeting, this was a session we really looked forward to. Would we get to know more about Flash on the iPhone? It turns out that we didn't, but this was such a cool session that we did a full writeup as a separate article.

Jonathan Harris

The Art of Surveillance and Self-Exposure

The last inspire-session of this years conference was to be the evenings big topic at the bars around Brighton. The first part of Jonathan Harris presentation was really good. He talked a lot about the value of sketchbooks and showed samples from his own books while he talked about how he approaches projects. Jonathan has done several really "clever" projects such as We feel fine, 10 x 10, Word Count and the follow up project Query Count. The "I want you to love me" project was especially stellar, an interactive installation commissioned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art that allows visitors to interact and play with with other peoples deepest desires.

By looking up online dating profiles, the installation creates balloons for each user. The color and intensity displays gender and age and each ballon floats around with a small, random video silhouette adding personality to it. The viewer can interact with the balloons in several ways on a 56 inch touch screen and sort balloons by 5 movements: who people are (what I am), what people want (what I want), matchmaker (where you can play around matching people), snippets (grouping of content) and breakdowns (statistics). A playful exploration well worth checking out if you're in New York and go to MOMA.

After showing another project, Jonathan announced that he had something to say to "The Flash Community". This is where I think he FAIL'ed miserably. He presented two screens of what could have been seen as good advice, but he did so in a condescending tone that made people just roll their eyes. He really sounded like that annoying school teacher that thinks he knows it all and always knows better. Apparently he did not mean it this way but the damage has certainly been done already.

By addressing the entire crowd, he really missed his target when saying things like "When I look at the Flash community today, I see too many of us who are stuck like that schoolboy" and "When I look at the Flash community, I see an incredible amount of output, a ton of production, but not a lot being said". While the general idea here was good, it just did not come off right. When you talk to this crowd and say that "experimentation" and "tinkering" is just distractions and of little value, you're really trashing those that love doing this - not for art, but for the pure joy of it. This is also one of the things that push Flash forward as a Platform for advertising, fun, learning as well as art. Without the "experiments" and "tinkering", Flash would not be what it is today.

Peter Elst summed it up nicely: "The next time I’m building a Flex based configurator tool or scripting a transition I’ll think of Jonathan Harris and keep in mind if the code I’m writing is going to be relevant in 25 years or if it feels special like a love letter". One thing is sure - Jonathan sure got some "Self-Exposure" out of this, but I'm unsure it was how he wanted it. After all, everyone I talked to agreed with his "bullet-points"...