Flash on the beach: Wrap up

All good things must come to an end and unfortunately, so does this years best Flash conference. Flash on The Beach in Brighton is the event that the community will talk about for the next year and maybe years to come.

by Jens C. Brynildsen So what makes this such a better conference than others? Here are some of the reasons:

Brighton
Despite the stormy winds and rainy winter weather, Brighton is chock full of charm. People living here are open, curious and very friendly. As opposed to the typical politeness and chatter at american conferences, people here really want to get in touch with strangers. The days before the conference really let us get a taste for the city with great pubs, funny and small shops, giant waves pounding the pebble beach (Hoss Gifford supposedly went bathing after one of the parties!) - this is a perfect, small town with a really small town centre where every place is just a walk away.

A couple times when we went from one place to another, it was literally just next door. This again meant that you kept bumping into people from the conference and that often led to new friends as somebody knew of this and this nice place to go for lunch and others would tag along. The selection of restaurants is amazing, though we must admit that what they say about british cooking is often quite true. Nothing fancy or extremely good, but rather just "good".

Venue and size
The size of the town and the size of the venue goes hand in hand. I don't think that Flash on The Beach could have more than a thousand attendees at the Brighton Dome, and they probably should try to keep the event this small. With a smaller event, networking is much easier and meeting people is often the most important part of a conference.

Only one of the presentations I went to was fully packed (Keith Peters session on AS3), so there could certainly have been more than the 550 attendees, but it proved a very nice sized crowd. For a relatively small conference, John Davey and his crew of 15-20 volunteers have done an amazing job. There has been no technical glitches, several sponsored goodies such as free coffee and beer, a nice attendee goodie bag (with a FOTB sweater, FOTB beanie, magazines, demos, Adobe swag and general info from vendors), a nice exhibition area with only relevant exhibitors and a great lineup of speakers.

The only thing we could wish for was more electrical outlets and WiFi inside the conference rooms themselves. Having internet access only in the lounge made the 15 minute breaks chaotic for many as we are all professionals that need to check email and follow up on work even while attending a conference. Many had to choose between either getting coffee (there was quite a line for this), networking or checking email.

Speakers and Parties
Most of the speakers were friends of John Davey and I have to say he knows a lot of talented people. The schedule was a nice mix of british and foreign speakers, new and old talent and a nice spread between technical and inspirational sessions. Very well put together! I know there were organizers from other conferences present and I am sure they were impressed with FOTB.

At other conferences, there is often special speakers dinners and speaker only events. At FOTB, Aral Balkan tested the party-capabilities of his new flat downtown Brighton the day before the conference. Most of the speakers were here, but this was a private party. At the official parties (one by Craig Swan at the KooKlub and the other with Adobe at the Honey Club) were filled with "Flash celebrities" and this made it so much easier to get in touch with both speakers and other attendees.

A note to the party organizers: clubs are great, but at a Flash conference where there is 530 guys to 20 girls, it's probably not the best suited venue? You only get that far with a Flash Ten Years birthday cake from ChockieWockieDoDah and DJs. The Adobe party ended early, primarily due to the lack of a lounge area where people could talk. The conference attendees solved this by opening the bar at The Old Ship Hotel, across the street from the Honey Club, a more suited place. During the late hours, there must have been more than 150 attendees here and the bartender had to wake up his colleagues to handle the pressure. The noise level was quite high here as well, but that was because of everybody chatting and having a good time. It was not because a DJ pumped music for a mostly empty dance floor.

Sometimes, speakers will do their presentation and then head back home. At FOTB, the speakers were very much part of the crowd and they all went to each others presentations and took part in discussions in the conference halls.

I also noticed that at least one speaker even brought a kid along. This is a very interesting point - not only has Flash grown, the community has grown as well. Several of my own friends in the scene has one or two kids and most are married. There was a bunch of younger folks attending as well, but it's interesting to see that the community grows with the software and yourself. Brendan Dawes highlighted this in his presentation when he showed us the first Flash site he made in Flash 2 with zooming text, blinking rings, pointless intros and next to no content. Flash has come a long way during the ten years with Macromedia and Adobe (it's actually twelve if you count the Futuresplash years as well) and so has the ever growing Flash community.

The feel at this event was just the same as the one on the early FlashForward conferences. No other event has had that many nice people and sessions in years. Kudos to John Davey and his team for making the best Flash conference of 2006!

About John Dalziel

John Dalziel is a founding member of FlashMagazine and regularly reports from community events in the UK. He has also written for Macromedia, New Riders, Actionscript.com and Ultrashock.com.

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