Home

FlashForward 2001 Amsterdam

Getting up early is a drag. Especially when you're staying with family, one hour away from the conference. Somehow I managed to get to Amsterdam on time all of the 3 days...

For this years conference, the FlashForward team wanted to try something new. The whole first day was now devoted to six different 3 hr workshops. The first part of the day was covered by Colin Moock on actionscripting, Samuel Wan on XML and Josh Levine on basic Flash. For the second part, Colin continued his dive into ActionScripting while Simon Allardice did a workshop on using Macromedia UltraDev with Flash. In the room next to Simon, Joe Sparks was entertaining the non-techies talking about his cartoon creations.

All in all, this part of the program was probably interesting to those that are new to Flash, but for seasoned flash users, the level is MUCH too low. Nothing new to pick up here, but Sam's different visuations of XML documents was excellent!
After the FlashFilmFestival, Stewart McBride informed about the upcoming party later that evening and said "you don't want to miss out on tomorrows keynote!". Everyone in the room started chatting at once. Will Macromedia talk about Flash 6 tomorrow? No... They'll save that for the US conference...

At earlier conferences there used to be one party each night. The only sponsored party during this festival was a joint venture between Macromedia and the FF2K1 with a Halloween theme. Times are changing and FlashForward reflects this too. 3 free drinks and a O.K. show - no big party, but still a nice evening.

Second day
Day 2 started beyond everyones expectations. Those missing the Macromedia keynote did really miss out! Not only did they show off much of the new features to be included, in the Q&A after the keynote, Kevin Lynch and Jeremy Allaire willingly talked about every feature the audience had questions for. During their speach they pulled off an awesome demo with Jeremy Clark (Flash Product Manager) using a Flash based remote control for ShareAmp on a Nokia 9210 mobile phone. Read more from these sessions in the article on Flash X in this issue.

A really inspirational session was Robert Hodgin from Flight404.com. Having classic education as a sculpter, these experiments are definetly worth taking a look at. Some of the sessions seemed like a repeat of earlier conferences, though it's always cool to see Andries Oldendal in action. His game for HP is the best Flash game I've seen to date.

Repeats
It's not unnatural that some of the best sessions are repeated in Europe after being showed in the US, but some were even repeats from the previous conference in London the year before. The worst example was maybe Hoss from Flammable Jam, repeating almost the whole of his previous presentation from previous conferences. Could be allright, but not when the session is about the unexpected and suspense in storytelling... When presenters are paid and flown across the atlantic, one would expect them to deliver something new.

My favorite - The Pogo
As with many previous Flash Forwards' some of the most exciting stuff was happening off stage. Flashmagazine reporter John Dalziel has been working with Pogo Technology on a new mobile web browser called 'Pogo' . The prototype we saw was a unified email/SMS messenger, PIM, mobile phone, web browser (full web, not WAP!) and MP3 player! Due to some sneaky proxy technology the Pogo can emulate the download times of a 56K modem over GSM. What's more the whole interface for this sexy little thing is totally done in Flash! I totally want one! The Pogo is due for release in the UK in January and should be available through Carphone Warehouse for under 300 UK pounds.
Vector Lounge
The evening closed off with the Vector Lounge party, showcasing maybe the coolest stuff during the whole conference. With cool presentations and a DJ on the stage, this could have been an excellent evening if it wasn't for the fact that the bar (sponsored by FriendsOfEd) was empty even before the show started... There were many excellent entries, but Andries walking skeleton had people falling off chairs.

Third day
Day 3 was less repeats than the day before and kicked off with Adobe's Keynote talking about the future of Adobe and SWF / SVG. Michael Ninness showed off the current Beta for LiveMotion 2 and I tell you - the whole Flashmagazine team was impressed! This time, Macromedia will get some real competition! The program is totally rebuildt but still uses the After Effects timeline. Hopefully, they will add After Effect-like rendering quality with real subframes too. Not only does is support Flash 5 style ActionScript, but the whole program structure is exposed (DOM) so that you can actually re-write any part of the program and add new features! Fully scaleble timeline and loads of new features that should give Macromedia something to chew on...

August Los Del Reyes did a low key but interesting speach on designing for small formats and "The Golden Mean". Kerb gave away some valuable tips and tricks on TV production with Flash and showed off their latest work. (Later, during this last evening I even learned what a "Dirty Sanches" means ;) Amit Pitaru and James Paterson 'kicked butt' as usual with their session on Scripting Flash Art.

Many of the sessions at the conference was focused on XML and Object Oriented Programming (OOP). Technically, this and other server interaction like WDDX and ColdFusion. Branden J. Hall and Samuel Wan did a excellent presentation on ACK! and Prototypes while Eric Natzke was a pure pleasure to experience. Patrick Thiel's games presentation was also nice.

Wrapup
In total, the conference was good as always, but the producers really should update their concept. The FlashFilm Festival really needs an overhaul and there should be less repeats. The Vector Lounge show seemed so much more in sync with what is happening in the Flash scene than the conference itself.