The wonderful eyeo festival
I think I'd be putting it lightly if I said that eyeo festival was inspiring. It was easily the best gathering of talented minds that I've been to over the years. I'd only be echoing the words of nearly every attendee if I was to go into any detail about what made the event so great, so I'll spare your time. The biggest thing in my mind is that eyeo must be an indicator of where our minds should be headed.
You can so easily forget about what artists, designers, and developers are doing outside the stereotypical agency world of microsites, Facebook apps, Twitter mashups, and the like. Much of this work isn't rooted in the web, and as a developer I am more inspired to look beyond the laptop and mobile screen. I know I have the skills and know-how, I just need to get my mind out the rut its been in and into the area that the speakers and attendees of eyeo have carved out.
SXSW Interactive 2009
So I failed to mention that I would be heading down to Austin, Texas for SXSW Interactive. Overall, it was a great experience. My only complaint is how exhausting it was. Getting up at 9AM to go to sessions and panels, then party into the wee hours of the night can really take its toll on the old legs and liver. Regardless of how I feel now I would certainly recommend anyone in the internet industry to attend this event. Attending the sessions and panels is a great way to stay abreast to trends and whats new or popular in the business. And if you care, the parties are a great way to do some networking or just meet some new people and share ideas.
FlashForward & Books
We've been wickedly busy over the past couple of months. Outside of rocking our day jobs ( at Schematic & Rokkan ), we've been co-authoring a book on Adobe AIR with Todd Anderson ( of Schematic ).
On top of this, we're presenting at FlashForward, Boston in September. Our presentation is entitled, "Designers vs. Developers: How to Avoid Fights on the Playground." As the name implies, it's going to be focusing on how Designers and Developers can work together better by understanding some helpful tips and tricks of each of the disciplines. Matt & I are originally from a design education, but as it turns out, we've both weaseled our ways into programming/development roles in our respective companies. As such, we constantly rack our brains on how the two different sides of the office can work together better, or how designers could learn the basics of programming easier.
We'll hopefully talk more about these things in the upcoming months, as we get closer to launch dates.
But It Looks Too Much Like Flex
First, I must digress. I have to admit, I've been really reluctant to get into Flex and MXML and all that jazz. Although, I do think Actionscript 3 is a huge improvement over the previous version. But Flex just doesn't feel like Flash to me. Maybe I'm ignorant, or maybe its because of my design schooling, or maybe its because I don't really build applications but rather consumer "experience" websites. However, the more and more Actionscript I write and the more I get into OOP concepts, the more it is starting to appeal to me. So recently I started familiarizing myself with Flex and what not just so I know what I'm missing out on.
Now to get on with the point of my post. I've checked out a few Flex applications online and some of the functionality displayed in these apps is awesome. My only gripe is that everything looks like Flex! Granted, I'm a total n00b when it comes to Flex and I'm sure there are ways to skin stuff, but right now it seems like a total pain in the ass. BUT! I did do some searching around today and just happened to stumble across what seems to be the start of a really awesome website: scalenine.com.
ScaleNine is a collection of themes created for Flex. It also serves as a source for interface options that expand beyond Flex's default theme. Some involve graphical skinning and others are purely CSS.
So this is starting to get me a little more interested, which is a good thing, because I certainly can't make consumer sites my whole life. Now its time to dive deeper into all of this and maybe have Marc teach me a few things.