FlashIsrael Event

package.inspired.flash.events
{
     I recently went to my first Israeli Flash Conference.  It was aptly named FlashIsrael.  I was surprised by how good it was.  We had some great speakers; Grant Skinner, Ben Forta, Lee Brimlow, Kevin Schmidt  just to name the most famous of them.  Back in October I had gone to Adobe MAX so I was really expecting to be underwhelmed in comparison.



My favorite presentation by far, was the one by Grant Skinner which for the Israeli audience he entitled "Being Distracted (Successfully)".  It was my favorite because it was very inspiring to me, and had the most practical take away lessons... Atleast I thought it did.   Grant explained how he does micro tasks, and how he uses his easily distracted personality to help him work on cool experiments and side projects, keeping him on the cutting edge of technology.  (For example his most recent adventure in EasleJs, a conversion of the ActionScript display list into JavaScript.)  He also spoke about micro deadlines and the importance of knowing oneself's work habbits, behavior, and method of learning.  It was really very inspiring.

However, it turned out not to be the session with the most practical take away lessons.  That session award goes to Kevin Schmidt who did a very simple explanation of the Flex LifeCycle comparing 3.5 and Flex 4.. or Halo vs Spark.  Though I thought nothing about it at the time, when I got back to work I found the refresher handy. I was also able to tell co-workers things that they may not have realized they did not know.  After the session, the different stages of the Flex lifecycle really became clear.  As an added bonus, (from Adobe's perspective) I think I also gained a new appreciation for ColdFusion, which before was something I just brushed off as another Adobe Fireworks.  A nice program, but nothing worth spending extra money on. It seems to me though, that coldfusion might actually be a good introduction to Server technologies and Java.. I will have to see as time goes on and I actually have time to try Coldfusion out.

*links to be provided after Shabbat if I remember or someone reminds me.
}