johnwilker.com

360Flex Indy, done

I’m back home in Denver after 360|Flex Indy, and finally able to get my thoughts down on ‘paper’

The conference itself was a huge success, we had about 289 people with us in Indy, which you have to admit ain’t bad for “this economy”.

The hotel and conference center was awesome, i mean, an old train station? awesome! I’m not a huge fan of the layout we ended up with, but i kinda knew that going in. I just hate conferences that span floors, and we did that. Lesson learned.

The sessions, well what’s there to say but that we had 45+ sessions from some of the best minds in the community. Open source projects were launching like kites in a tornado. It was awesome, to be able to be the place where that kind of cool stuff was happening.

Oh and then there was Doug

Tags: 360Flex, Books, Business, Conferences, Kindle, Writing

Telemarketing is NOT something you have to do!

I’ve been stewing on this for a while now, and I can’t hold it in any more. Cold Calling, and in general telemarketing, SUCK!

I’m going to pick on conferences for two reasons. 1. it’s my business, and 2. Conferences most definitely should be be telemarketing, other businesses shouldn’t either, but conferences?!

My irritation started with Robo Ted calling about MAX. LAME! Not only was it not really Ted, it wasn’t a real person, it was a recorded message. Whatever that cost, should have been taken off of the price of registration, I’m sure it woulda had a better result on registrations.

Then there was CFUnited just the other day. The worst part (Actually there’s two) was that it was an Indian guy with such a thick accent I barely understood why he was calling and asking me to register. The other worst part, I was already registered! According to Liz

lizign @jwilker telemarketing is just something we gotta do. sucks i know.  don’t know what else to do except make the calls myself?

I call Bull Shit. Not only is it not something you gotta do, but if you took whatever you paid thick accent Indian guy, off the rpice of admission, you wouldn’t need to call and bug people to register.

And that’s the problem with this kind of crap marketing. I went to CFUnited a few years ago. I’m going this year on behalf of the Flex Show, different email address. I can only assume that’s why I got a “Please come to CFUnited” call, when I already was.

Weak Sauce. Tom and I would never in a million years call our attendees. We don’t even like having to send emails, since we feel spammy. Calling, hellz no!

Tags: marketing, sleeze

I build community, organize events, and rock!

Yesterday, April 13th was my last day at EUI.

It wasn’t a bad break up at all, or anything like that. Anthony and I had several conversations about my role at the company and how best I fit with the company’s needs and goals.

We agreed, that right now, it wasn’t the right fit. Not for a lack of interest in community on EUI’s part or anything like that, it just wasn’t the right time.

So now what?

Well for a limited window of time I’m putting all my effort into 360|Conferences. Tom and I alternate on who has the bandwidth and time to put a full time effort into the conferences, it’s my turn again.

I’m also working on the next Ignite Denver, so that’s a pleasant distraction, but pretty much, for as long as I can, I’m back to being totally dedicated to 360|Conferences, Corp.

After that?

Well I dunno. If I can’t get 360|Conferences to a FT gig level in short order I’ll be looking for companies that want help organizing kick ass community driven events, and interacting with their communities. I’ll be looking to consult, share what I know, etc. Got a question, project, etc? Reach out, I’ll see what I can do to help :)

Tags: community, Conferences, EffectiveUI, Ignite Denver, Work

I helped Adobe quash bugs

ok well actually I didn’t as I didn’t even have Flex builder open. I did however act as host for a few other folks to get together at the EUI office to help Adobe Quash Bugs.

This past weekend, a few folks who’d never met got together at the EUI office for some good ol’ fashioned nerd fun. Adobe Seattle held a bug quash, and allowed developers all over the world to help out.

I freely admit I’m not a bug quash level developer, but I am good at hanging out with people I don’t know and (i hope) creating a fun non-sucky environment.

We hung out from 11a – 5p drinking soda, eating pizza (Ordered with Dominoes really cool pizza RIA).

We actually did cause two bugs to be closed, though not through actual code writing. But hey, there’s two less bugs in the bug base because of the efforts of the Denver Bug Quash crew, and me (I mean I bought the pizza and soda)

over all it was fun. I hope Adobe does more of these events. It’s funny to me to see events now from the frame of mind of someone who does events, cuz the bug quash was an example of barely controlled chaos most of the first 3-4 hours. That should be smoother by bug quash 2, assuming there is one, but still, its funny to see non event people do events.

Tags: Adobe Flex, community

Denver Come quash Flex SDK Bugs!

EffectiveUI is hosting a group of people to get together and quash bugs with Adobe. Adobe is hosting the official effort in Seattle, and opening a connect room for developers all over to participate!

When you register make sure to sign up on the Bug Quash site to get the instructions on setting your computer up for SDK Development.

The bug quash is the 28th of this month! Starting at 10a and going to 5pm. You can RSVP here (it’s free)

Tom and I are buying pizza and soda to keep everyone caffenated and fueled up.

It’s gonna be fun, if you’re in Denver this coming Saturday, come hang out with some incredibly talented developers and help make the Flex SDK even better for all of us. Even if you don’t think you’re a bug quasher, come and hang out with us, and absorb some awesome info. You never know what you can contribute!

Tags: Adobe Flex

360Coldfusion, very interesting

Tom and I thought about doing a CF conference, after I think 360|Flex Seattle. The reason we never went forward with the ideas was CFUnited and CF.Objective().

I’ve thougt CFUnited was over priced and didn’t really offer enough to be worth the price, since I attended in 2005. I’ve never attended CF.Objective(), since by the time it got started up, I was moving into Flex development, but since it bills itself as the Enterprise CF Conference, I found it odd that it was dribbling extra technologies, moving away from CF.

All that said, we thought the CF Community was happy with it’s options. I think we might have been wrong. We got a DM the other day, “any chance we can see 360|ColdFusion?  the existing conferences are a big bag of suck”

To make sure that wasn’t a single sentiment we through out a simple survey, which is still open, but as of the writing of this 86% those who’ve responded would like to see a 360|CF event.

I think a 360|CF would be hella fun! I love CF, and when the need arises for back end stuff for 360Conferences, it’s CF. Tom and I met each other as CF Developers at Ameriquest Mortgage, and we definitely still love the technology.

We’re not rushing into anything, ‘09 has seen us add 360|iDev, to our line up, but if the community is interested in a 360|CF, we’d love to get involved!

I wonder if the CF Community would know what to do with a conference that was 3-4 days, and cost drastically less than the alternatives… mmmm.

Tags: 360|CF, Conferences

You’re authentic voice, it’s important

Chris brogan has a good post, with his thoughts captured on video

I agree completely! I hate self censorship for the sake of simply not offending the thin skinned, Sure I don’t think it’s cool to curse like a drunken sailor for particular reason, but I’m not opposed to the “colorful metaphor” when it applies.

At 360|Flex Atlanta, Doug (who else) said ‘cool shit’ a few times over and over to watch the ASL interpreter sign it. I wish I had seen it, truth be told.

Next time Doug speaks for us, will we say anything? Nope. That’s Doug, that’s Doug’s authentic voice (Doug, you DO NOT get to just swear left and right now!) and we wouldn’t ask him to change it for the world, and I hope he never does.

Chris is right, why self censor or change who you are? Doug says ‘cool shit’, we all know him, and know that.

I think that’s what sets 360|Flex apart from MAX and other events. We don’t sanitize session titles, we don’t tell speakers what to present on, and we certainly don’t try to censor them in their session, we let them present their topic, how they like, in their own voices.

It seems to work.

Do something that matters

I’m not by any means a Tm O’Reilly fan boy, half his posts I don’t agree with, but when I do, I seem to really agree. This is one of those.

My only gripe is that it’s easy for people with funds, to talk about doing things for reasons other than money, unfortunately, “changing the world” isn’t a check the mortgage company can cash, so it’s not so cut ant dry. So point 1 only does so much for me, although I do agree with Kathy, that if you focus too much on the competition, and not enough on your customers, you’ve already lost.

Point 2 however I really agree with and it really speaks to what Tom and I trying to do. One of our chief philosopthies is that we don’t pay speakers, we try to raise them up from the community. We certainly don’t take credit for their successes but we’re very proud that a great many of our attendees, have become our speakers. I see that as creating more value than we take away.

It doesn’t always work, some times a speaker from the community doesn’t receive the feedback we’d hope, but we still think it’s better for the community to have a larger pool of people willing to speak and share, than a smaller one that charges for their time, rather than give freely.

I think 360Conferences, has several goals, many of them larger than us, and that makes it something that drives me to be successful at it.

Tags: O'Reilly, Startup

It happens to the best of us from time to time

First: I suck at time zones. Plain out suck at them.

Second: I sometimes have trouble with plane flights, mostly keeping track of when they leave, if I’m in a different time zone (see above).

So,Tom and I were at Macworld last week. We were pounding the pavement talking to iPhone developers and development companies, about 360|iDev.

I landed at 11:10 on Wednesday night, we had a late meal, and planned for our day.

We spent the day hoofin’ it around, then I had to head back to SFO to fly home. My flight was at 9:15pm (Denver time)

Unfortunately, since I didn’t update the calendar on my macbook, since I wasn’t in town long enough, when I checked my calendar, it was still 9:15pm.

So with plenty of time to spare, Tom and I hit up Round Table Pizza in Millbrae, talking about the day, celebrating a job well done and day well spent.

Tom drops me off at SFO, i got to the Frontier counter, and no one is there, weird. Swipe my credit card, “can’t check you in, you’re flight as boarded”, lady comes out. The message on the screen doesn’t really register. She tries to check me in, can’t. Calls the gate on speaker and they open the list for me, and tell her to tell security to rush me through.

By this point I’m beginning to realize something’s amiss. I ask her when my flight is, “8:15″ she replies.

“uh oh, I musta messed up my calendar. I’m sorry”

“you’re lucky, the flight was delayed, otherwise it’d be gone. But they made up some time so they’re about to be boarding.”

She get’s me in a seat and walks me to the security checkpoint.

Here’s where Kharma comes in to the picture. Late and slightly frazzled at the realization of my dumbness, I’m still a pretty goo flier, by the time she was sliding me into the next spot in line before the xray. I was shoes off, laptop out, coat off, ziplock bag out.

Old guy behind me, “so what’s the reason for cutting in line?”

Nice Frontier lady, “Sir, this gentlemen is running late, his flight is boarding, I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t miss his flight.”

“And who’s fault is that?”

Me, “Mine, I’m very sorry, I messed up my iternary and fell terrible. I’m very sorry, thank you though.”

I collect my things on the otherside of the x-Ray machine, easy peasy, having caused almost zero disruption in the line, which by the way was only like 4 people long, I probly coulda made it.

An incredibly nice TSA agent leans over, “Don’t worry about mr. Bad attitude. I hate that!”

I look back at Mr. Cranky, as the TSA agent says, “Bag check”

I almost told him not to do anything to Mr. Cranky, but was in such a hurry to get to my boarding flight, that I didn’t. Plus while I know I’d be silently cursing the person that had to cut my line, I also know “siht happens”, and there’s no point in punishing someone for it. I can only hope that when he’s in a similar position some one is kinder to him than he was to me.

I made my flight. I got to the gate (the first one out of security) with 5 minutes to spare before boarding began.

Tags: kharma, macworld

Happy Festivus to one and all!

I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2008. It’s been a great year with lots of twists and turns.

2008 was the first full year of 360|Conferences, and saw us visit; Atlanta, Milan Italy, and return to San Jose CA, where it all started for 360|Flex. It also saw us start to make some money, enough that we paid ourselves a little money, not a salary, but we’re able to show a bit of income for our efforts, which in a start up never hurts! Lastly, 2008 saw us announce our first non Flex event, 360|iDev, the first and largest iPhone developer conference.

I moved from being a Flex  developer consultant, working for some really great companies like Universal Mind, and Esria, to being the Community Evangelist/Solution Engineer for EffectiveUI. I love writing code, and still do, albeit not daily, and I’m trying to learn to write some iPhoneSDK code as well, but there’s something about helping EUI get more out of social media and community. I’ve learned a lot in a short period, and can’t wait to see how ‘09 treats me.

2008 was also the year we lost Terrance :( He was 10, I’ve lost a few animals over the course of my life; Chip, Mandy, Hamster Little Tike, Turtle Duke, Rat Eon. The dogs were family pets, and the others I was pretty young, I guess it never sunk in back then.  Terrance hit really hard, I had had him and his brother Philip since they were about 8 weeks old. Losing him so suddenly really hurt.

2008 was our first year in our new house in downtown Denver, w00t! We left Highlands Ranch in December ‘07 leaving behind moms in SUVs with nothing to do all day, starbucks on every corner, and more kids than I’ve ever seen in my life! We love it in Denver, if you can’t tell! We’ve enjoyed meeting our neighbors, and exploring our new neighborhood.

I also joined Jeff as co-host of The Flex Show, in 2008, and we just recorded my 1 year anniversary episode. I can’t believe it’s been a year! It’s been awesome, and I can’t wait to spend another year, helping Jeff to deliver the best source of news and interviews in the Flex Community!

Thanks to 360|Conferences, 2008 is also my first year in any type of frequent flier program. I’m finally Ascent level on Frontier Airlines. Granted they’ve been sucking more and more as an airline, and may not exist for all of ‘09, but hey, for the time being, I get on the plane first, and get my bags faster, can’t beat that.

2008 also (in December, but still) saw Tom and I launch OurStartupStory, where we’ll be talking about our views and experiences with 360|Conferences. We’ve got some great guys writing with us, so it should be a wealth of view points, definitely something to keep an eye on. (as if I need a new blog to write for, but oh well!)

Here’s to 2008, and an awesome 2009! Can’t wait to see what the new year has in store for all of us!

Tags: 2008, life