Category Archives: EffectiveUI

Packing can be so stressful. I always worry I’ll run out of underwear!

I’m getting read to head to SFO for Adobe’s Industry Leader and Creative Media Summit. I’m not entirely sure what it means, but sounds fun nonetheless.

It should be exciting, maybe rubbing elbows whomever Adobe thinks is an industry leader :)

My main hope is that it will afford Tom and I a chance to get 360Conferences‘ name out there a bit more, we’re more than 360|Flex (big news on that coming soon, I hope), so we want people to know who we are.

If you’re gonna be in attendance, drop a comment or an email and let me know, we can get drinks or something!

I’m really enjoying working on this thing, I really hope other conference organizers can take it and 1. make it better, and 2. make use of it for their events. If for no other reason, than to stop using so much paper.

I’ve been working on it a lot this week, while I figure out what I want to do next. I’ve incorporated Rich’s UpdateManager so that deploying new versions of the session Survey will be WAY easier!

I’ve also updated the DB to support multiple events, so now in the configuration file you can specify the ID of the event (among other things) so reusing the app is much easier, with much less coding.

Speaking of config files, I’ve beefed it up a bit. It started out just holding the location of the backend server, and such. Now you can give your app a title, point to a specific DSN name in your backend, and tell the app where to look for updates.

You can also tell when you’re online or off now. There’s a little icon that changes from green to red depending on network connection. Network status really confused a lot of people who submitted several not realizing they were offline, and the app not providing proper feedback about saving online. It does that now too.

I’m pretty happy with it and am working with Sim to get it hosted, trac’ed, etc so folks can start submitting bugs, enhancements, etc I’m really hopeful that this app can help Greenify conferences, and improve the feedback we can provide to speakers. Using this tool, Tom and I gave our 360|Flex Atlanta speakers feedback in just about a week of the conference ending, w00t!

Stay tuned for the official announcement.

The news this week is that Lynda.com, long time organizer of Flash Forward, has handed over (sold? How much?) ownership to Metalliq, a design shop big in Flash, Flex, Silverlight, etc. (I’ll admit I know very little beyond what the site says and what I’ve heard about Metalliq)

I’m not really that surprised, Flash Forward probably needed some new blood, and after DX3′s implosion, I’m thinking Lynda lost some cred, which probably had an impact on Flash Forward. Will the price change? Will FF ever go back to Boston? Or leave San Francisco in general, now that it’s in its owners’ back yard?

While everyone praises Lynda for giving up the reigns, and sings Metalliq’s praises for breathing new life into Flash Forward, I wonder…

Will Flash Forward have a different feel being owned and run by a design firm? Will other design firms want to participate now that one of their competitors runs the show? Will the event be heavily branded as "A Metalliq" event?

I know Tom and I have seen issues arise when one firm is a higher level sponsor than their competitors, when one firm gets an email blast to all attendees, to effectively solicit new hires… I can only image how Metalliq’s competitors will see Flash Forward from now on.

Time will tell, and I’m very curious to see how things will play out.

I’m still working on cleaning up the Survey app to release to the Open Source Community. I’m putting in a few more features I think it should have as a minimum set, but I’m curious. What’s the best way to release?

SQL scripts? Dummy data?

I’m leaning towards just SQL scripts. The Dummy data I would provide would be Conference days, Time slots, things like that.

This being my first time putting something out into Open Source, I’m curious what the best approach is.

Any help would rock, I’m hoping that I’ll be able to upload it to RIAforge next week sometime. Fingers crossed!