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.
Get yourself to NYC for Flash and the City
I had the pleasure of hanging out with Elad Elrom last night. He's one of the organizers of the upcoming Flash and the City conference here in NYC. I highly recommend attending this conference for the following reasons:
1. Its in F*ckin' New York City!
I know NYC isn't for everyone but there's everything you could imagine here. On top of learning and getting inspired about Flash you'll have everything NYC has to offer at your finger tips. The organizers of the conference know this and have created what they call the "City Track". They've organized a few "field trips" throughout the city that you can tag along with. Just think of all the cool stuff you'll be able to check out, eat, and do while you're here!
2. Its at the 3-Legged Dog Art & Technology Center
This place is just plain cool. Its entirely artist-run and have been supporting the arts in NYC since the center was built in 2006 just three blocks south of the WTC site. Personally, it feels good to be supporting such an organization.
3. The ridiculously good list of attending speakers
ZOMG! Srsly u guys! There hasn't been a large Flash conference in NYC...since...I don't know...2004? And that one pretty much sucked. But just look at the list of speakers! If you don't recognize the names, just trust me on this. They're are some really sharp people speaking about some great developments in the industry.
4. The Price is Right
Tickets right now are $299 (but lets just be real and say $300). In comparison to other conferences, this is CHEAP, especially for NYC standards. And if you keep your ear in the community (Twitter, blogs, etc), you might even be able to find a coupon code!
I'd say these are my main reasons for anyone to attend the conference right now. I'm sure I'll come up with more and if I do, I'll update this post. Naturally, I plan on attending seeing as I live here and I hope to see you along with my other friends and colleagues here as well! It's gonna be a blast.
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.
Whats up with all this squawking over OpenSocial?
Throughout the day I've been reading various blog posts and comments about Google's new OpenSocial effort. For the most part, it seems as if people are getting the wrong idea about how OpenSocial works, or simply, just what the hell it is. Particularly, I don't really understand posts like this, that just have it plain wrong. I mean, really, Google would never exercise that much control. Its going to be up to the social networks to implement the standard within their own application. Sure, it could "tie together" social networks, but that will largely be up to other application developers and their brilliant minds.
Perhaps its difficult for people who don't develop web applications (actually write code) to understand that this is just an effort to standardize public API's across social networking services. I'm rather excited about the possibility of being able to develop an Actionscript library that can perform the same exact method calls (getPerson, getFriends, addActivity, etc.) and just have to specify the service to use (LinkedIn, Orkut, etc. ). At least thats how I'm envisioning all this.
I also find it funny that a lot of people are getting all anxious over the possibility of Facebook refusing to implement the standard. Facebook is certainly in its own little world. While its a pretty good example of a web application that offers a public data API, it still has a bit of a "pet project" feel to it and I don't feel as if the owner/creator is that concerned with adopting an API standard. Developers are already happily using their API with good success. Perhaps it will hurt them in the long run, but even if they become late adopters, its going to be a standard API, thus making it easy for developers to add Facebook into their existing OpenSocial standard apps.
In the end, I'm pretty stoked about this, but probably only because I'm a developer.
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.