Autumn Conference Roundup 2009

Autumn is conference season and a great time to go pick up some inspiration. With the days getting colder, shorter and darker, how about a trip to Singapore, Brighton, Cairo, Wellington, Bangkok or Los Angeles?

September 14th - 15th

TAC (The Actionscript Conference)

Last year was the first for TAC and it was a great success according to those attending both as speakers and participants. This years conference has the subtitle Flash Camp, but with maybe 500 attendees, this is no small community event. As last year, the speaker lineup impress us for a community event: Andre Michelle, Marco Casario, Ryan Stewart, Leif Wells, Mark Barcinski, Mohammed Khan and local talents such as Alvin Zhang and conference organizer Hu Shunjie

September 20th - 23rd

FOTB09 (Flash On The Beach)

This is where the international Flash community meets! Even if they're not speaking this year, former presenters will still attend so they don't miss the parties and community buzz. We simply haven't seen that for any other conference? FOTB is by far our favorite conference and as we anticipated it's sold out this year as well. Yup - that's right. If you didn't get your ticket yet, you're out of luck to see this years best conference lineup.

What other conference has it's very own iPhone app that allows you to build your schedule, locate your friends, free wifi and places to go? If you haven't already, check out our extensive reports from FOTB08, FOTB07 and FOTB06 to read why you should have been there this year as well. John and Jens from Flash Magazine will of course be there this year as well to cover the event in full.

October 4th-7th

Adobe MAX

Adobe's own conference Behemoth kicks off this year as well, but with the economy tightening up, it'll only be in the states this year. To compensate for this, all the 280 sessions and keynotes will be posted online within 3 hours of recording so we can't even imagine the logistics of this one. If pulled off successfully, this'll be a great showcase for Flash video! More than 5000 attendees are expected, so this should be the biggest Adobe event ever. MAX is based on multiple tracks running at once and very often in small rooms with limited seating, so remember that you'll have to register for every session or you won't get in. Adobe's evangelists from all over the world have been drummed together to deliver presentations on all Adobe products and with with separate tracks for Design, Development and Inspiration the 280 sessions will offer quite a selection!

The tight economy has also produced some interesting twists to this years MAX site such as the Convince your Boss section as well as a very american lineup of speakers. Browsing through the session list, it's very hard to find speakers that are not American or non-Adobe employees, but there's some of the 'usual suspects' like Peter Elst (Belgium), Dale Rankine (AU), Sven Claar (Germany) and Koen De Weggheleire (Belgium). To compensate for this skewed focus, Flash video streaming providers Influxis and conference organizers FITC puts on an Unconference within MAX with the subtitle EuroInvasion featuring some of the best European speakers so the americans won't miss out on what's happening in the rest of the world (Joa's TAAS project is just amazing!). Flashmagazine writer Elad Elrom will also present there so be sure to stop by his session!

PS: FITC also puts on the free event LAFlashapaloozastock IV at Venice Beach, the day before the MAX event - well worth checking out!

October 17th 2009

Flash Camp Egypt

This is the first Egyptian conference we've heard of and it's organized by the AUG called Imagine - Egypts Creative User Group. On the speaker list you'll find Adobe evangelist Mihai Pricope, Microsofts Mohamed El-Sayad, Omar Fouad as well as organizer Ahmed Hussam. Ahmed expects up to 800 attendees and they'll have plenty of room for more. The venue is a 1280 seat theatre so spread the word all your Egyptian friends! If they're unsure if they can come - have the check out the Raffle prizes - an amazing collection of software and books!

October 17th - 18th

FITC Edmonton

FITC comes to Edmonton Canada at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT). The location is the Shaw Theater on the NAIT campus and the speaker list features many of the big names from Adobe MAX, so we're guessing there will be many skilled people spending a week or two in the states in between the events? Lee Brimelow and Mike Chambers from Adobe will be there and so will Ralph Hauwert, Mario Klingemann, Chuck Freedman, Erik Natzke as well as solid locals such as Grant Skinner, Stacey Mulcahy, Phil Chung, James Paterson, Erik Johnson and others.

Other events

There's also upcoming Flash Camps in Philadelphia (November 7th), St. Louis (Sept 11th - Tomorrow!) and Bangkok (12th september). In Wellington, New Zealand there's a new kind of event - Flash Platform Code Camp Wellington.

About Jens C Brynildsen

Jens has been working with Flash since version 3 came out. Since then, he's been an active member of the Flash community. He's created more than a hundred Flash games (thus the name of his blog) but he also creates web/standalone applications, does workshops and other consulting. He loves playing with new technology and he is convinced that the moment you stop learning you die (creatively speaking). Jens is also the Editor of this website.

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