Community conference update

Want to learn more about Flash? A community conference is the place to go. There you'll meet new people and techniques, get inspired and meet both potential clients and employers. Right now, the German Flashforum conference is in progress, FlashBelt in Minneapolis is just two weeks off, WebDu is right after that and FlashForward just opened registration.

As Flash has gotten more popular, the amount of conferences for Flash users have increased as well. For some, putting on conferences is now a fulltime job and this shows in the quality of the events. Here is an overview of what'll happen in the months to come.

FlashForum Conference, Cologne, Germany May 21-24th

We really would have loved to be in Cologne, Germany for FlashForum Konferenz 2008 right now. The German Flash scene is among the most vibrant ones with people like André Michelle, Joa Ebert, Mario Klingemann, Thomas Wagner, Saban Ünlü, Jens Franke and many more. We attended last years event and it was a blast. If you're around Cologne, try to get the for the last day if you can!

FlashBelt, Minneapolis, USA, June 8-11th

For the last four years, Dave Scroeder has put on the FlashBelt conference in Minneapolis, USA. It's a small but very charming conference with a limit of 400 attendees. There's not many tickets left, so you want to to go you better hurry up. This years program has been extended not to only include Flash, but also inspirational sessions on related topics such as processing, physical computing and usability. Dave's been working hard on the speaker rooster and there's little overlap from other conferences this year.

WebDU, Sydney, Australia June 12-13th

Austraila in the summer ... is a cold experience. It's still THE place to be for everyone in the asian region and Sydney is a great town to be in! With a stellar line up of local and international talent as well as Adobe evangelists such as Mike Downey, Ted Patrick, Greg Rewis and Tim Buntel (has he ever missed out on WebDU?), the event is bound to be good. We're really looking forward to seeing Peter Hall, Rob Bateman (Away3D) as well as all the others. The Birds of a Feather sessions are also a highlight. Here you get to ask any question you want to the Adobe Engineers and evangelists. They won't answer them all, but you can always ask...

FITC Chicago, USA June 22-23rd

This is a mini-conference according to FITC standards given that it's only one day conference in addition to the workshop day. It's the second time FITC goes to Chicago and despite compact there's some good speakers as well. We would have loved to see Avi Muchnick present his sneak peek of the Aviary tools and Samuel Agesilas present on Orchid (and maybe show a peek at the long awaited Saffron?)

360|Flex, San Jose (CA), USA August 10-20th

If Flex is your primary tool, this is the conference to attend. The pricing is very decent (and even somewhat public), the speaker list huge and the event runs four tracks for three full days! For beginners, there's a Flex 101 run by Lynda.com the day before the conference. The team behind the conference now has solid experience and we really like how they focus on important things.

FlashForward, San Francisco, USA August 20-22nd

Also coming up - the mother of all Flash conferences - that we've attended and reported from since the start back in 2000. This will be the first FlashForward conference since Lynda sold the conference to Beau Ambur of Metaliq. FlashForward is an institution and it's by far the biggest community conference (only Adobe MAX can compete in numbers). Registrations just opened and you can also nominate sites to this years FlashForward Film Festival.

Flash on The Beach, Brighton, UK, September 28th - Oct 1st

Last but not least, in late September, the third FOTB conference kicks off in Brighton. No other event has this athmosphere and we know many are afraid of not getting tickets. The first 250 early bird tickets sold within just 3 days, so you might want to hurry so you don't miss out on this years biggest Flash party. It's now only 18 weeks and one day left...

With so many great events, we can only attend a few. This year, Flashmagazine will cover WebDU, Flash on the Beach as well as the currently ongoing Adobe OnAIR Tour (Stockholm June 2nd).

Written by Jens C Brynildsen (May 22nd 2008)