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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

Community on and off line

On Monday Tom and I participated in the Program for the Future Conference. He was onsite at the Tech. I was at home working, and watching the event in Second Life.

I’m not a fan of online only conferences, I think they’re aims (stated) are good, but the experience is bad. Conferences are as much networking, hallway conversations, as much as learning, sit in chair experiences. Let’s be honest, sitting in a chair, at work or at home for 8 hours watching online video of a presenter, is not exactly a great user experience. Sure it appeals to some folks, that’s fine, but I think until we’re all wearing helmets and truly interacting, it’s more a gimmick than a serious endeavor. Case in point, I couldn’t get anyone at my office interested in Aral’s conference. Sitting at home on a weekend, to watch a breeze preso, was not at all appealling to them, and since the local hubs were in NY, London, and a few other places, the RL (Real Life) networking wasn’t.

So this event, took a different approach, which I think makes more sense. Tom registered for the RL event, paid his fee (not much either, which was nice) and was in the room. I paid nothing (it was free to attend virtually), and sat in 1 of three Second Life gathering places.

The one I was at, “Tech 2″ had a good turn out, I’d say 50ish avatars. Not bad at all. The other benefit was that Second Life provided an awesome back channel for the event, a few people that were physically present, were also in SL. As were “moderators” so to speak.

The RL to SL interaction actually left a bit to be desired. The mural in the screen shot, had SL post its that we could use, and in RL there were post its, but no inter relation. Obviouslya touch problem, but still made it a little isolated feeling.

Also to ask questions, SL users had to visit a website to submit a question. It would have been a much more interactive experience if, say there was a screen at the event with SL on it, or that the in world moderator folks could pass on our questions, it made for a kind of disjointed experience.

Overall the attempt was awesome. They did a really good (as much as can be done I think) job of merging SL and RL into a single event. I have to give kudo’s to SL or whomever does the tech behind the video, that video and audio seemed very well in sync, which was nice. Tom and I were chatting a bit, and I wasn’t like “What? that hasn’t happened yet”

Are events like this the future? No I don’t think so. Maybe the distant future, but not any time soon. There’s too much signal loss. I was sitting watching my SL screen, it was very hard to do my work (since I wasn’t ‘at’ the conference I still had work to do) since leaving SL I miss the chat, which is the backchannel of the event.

I do think however this type of Rl and SL offering helps expand and encourage community. There was hundreds more people talking, sharing ideas, etc, that wouldn’t have been able to, since they weren’t phyisically present. The networking is nil, which is why these virtual events are not a replacement, but still as a way to augment an event, they’re awesome!

A note to the organizers, for 8 people, the event was not very smooth. If it’s going to be an annual event, I suggest hiring pros to do the organizing, or put a little more into the little things. Just my thoughts.

Tags: community, Conferences, Second Life

A lesson in 2008, Don’t F with Community

So last night I saw a very powerful example of not doing business like it’s 1980.

I remember as a kid, and even as a young adult, saying, “Wow, I had no idea a Wal-Mart/Starbucks/McDonalds/You name it, was going in there.”

Those days are no more. The internet has changed that, forever. Builders and land barons can no longer simply build something and slap a sign on it, and move on, not caring whether the community approved or not. It was easy, once built it’s hard for the community to stop something that’s already built.

Last night, hopefully taught Focus development that very lesson. They’ve signed a lease with 7-11 to put up a store at Broadway and Larimer, where the old auto repair shop building is. They did this without ever mentioning it to the Ballpark Neighborhood (where I live). Normally that’d be fine, I’m all for business, especially business coming to my neighborhood.

Unfortunately my neighborhood is a bit teetery. We’ve got 2 homeless shelters a block apart, and about 1.5 blocks from the proposed location of the 7-11. The concern isn’t just bringing the homeless further into our neighborhood; they’re already here, lots of them near my house. It’s the crime, the traffic, the impact on the residents of the lofts immediately next to the 7-11. It’s a lot of things, that Focus Development seems to have chosen to ignore.

The alleyway behind the lofts, apparently is frequented (nightly from the sounds of it) by homeless, drug dealers and takers, and apparently prostitutes. Currently a call to police allows the police to take the offenders, or at least drive them away. However with the 7-11 there, the offenders simply have to say they’re on their way inside or have just left, keeping the police from making that area safer.

So where did Focus go wrong? They never told the community, the community that is directly impacted by this 7-11. They seemed to have thought that they could simply set up this 7-11 regardless of the community’s opinions. Sure that’s how business would like it to be, but that’s simply not the case. Not these days. Business owners and residents alike all vowed to do whatever they could to stop the 7-11, and even more so, every future endeavor Focus Development undertakes in the Ballpark Neighborhood. That can’t be good. And How did this all go wrong for Focus? The Internet. Skabber twittered a blog link, that was an Email from someone else. I twittered the event, and blogged it. Word spread fast. In the ‘old days’ word didn’t spread, fast or if at all. Business should keep that in mind. I suspect there won’t be a 7-11 at Broadway and Larimer, just a hunch, but I’m guessing it’s not gonna happen.

Side note. the only two people “for” the 7-11, 1 that lives in Cherry Creek where the 7-11 there is completely nice and there’s no problems. DUH. And the President of our Association (will have to see how long that tenure is) who lives in Congress Park.

Tags: community, neighborhood

Just say no to 7-11

Skabber twittered this, and now I know where I’m gonna be tonight after work. The next block up from the office, at the Premiere Lofts. There will be the Ballpark Neighborhood Meeting and on the Agenda, a 7-11 where the Monkey Bean used to be.

Normally I’m not opposed to 7-11s, their quite nice, sell frozen Coke, and all that. BUT I’m opposed to 7-11s where they might; 1. detract from my neighborhood, and 2. make my neighborhood suck.

The ‘hood has enough hobo’s and drug dealers. Hell I’ve watched people do crack from my deck in the space where my pool is supposed to be. We don’t need someplace that’s likely attract even more nastiness, and crime. If I need ho-ho’s I can go to the quicky mart in the Ballpark Lofts or the slightly scarrier mart on Larimer. There’s options, we don’t need more.

So, mark your calendars, tonight, 5:30pm, Premiere Lofts.

Tags: neighborhood

MAX 2008 Day 2!

Day to of MAX, is well, kinda like Empire Strikes Back, without the Luke screaming like a girl part. I’d say the General Session today however was very Revenge of the Jedi (yeah I’m old skool, look it up).

General Session

Adobe’s guys advertised day 2 as a must attend general session, which frankly, it usually ain’t. Not the case this time ’round. They really brought their A game, showing off the (finally) cool designer developer work flow that CS4 brings to the table. I was impressed, and had less of a vaporware feeling.

They also gave us a bunch of eye candy to drool over in our sleep for the next year; Alchemy, Bolt, Flash Catalyst, etc.. Very cool stuff!

I was especially keen to see Adobe finally giving the CF crowd an IDE. CFEclipse is great and all but, not fully tied in. Seeing what Bolt is capable of, WOW.

Alchemy, mmmm I dunno. Am I the only one who thinks that “Alchemy” is the old days term for the science of turning lead into gold? I mean really, is that the mental image we really want for a product? We’ll see. I’m not a gamer, and not a C head, so it didn’t do much for me.

Ryan will be able to try is ‘flexmagically’ contest again, I think it might be a bit more successful.

For the first time I was actually pretty jazzed about searchable SWF, that’s pretty cool, and might finally solve the niggling problem of SEO and Flash RIAs.

The last few minutes of the general session, were given to Ted Patrick to pimp the new groups.adobe.com, I’m not sold yet on the idea, since the previous incarnations weren’t that great, and I’m not sure how this effort will go, but we’ll see :)

The Day

When Tom and I do an event, day 3 tends to be box lunch, and only so so, since so many people fly home at various times through the day, usually starting just before lunch. The box lunch affords people to grab a meal and go. It’s weird that the Tuesday lunch, was box lunch. That certainly doesn’t bode well for the Wednesday lunch. Fingers crossed.

360|MAX had a great day! The crowds were way better, as word spread. Jun’s prank app is absoultely, positively hilarious.

Tags: Adobe Flex, Adobe MAX, Conferences

MAX ‘08 Day 1 Recap

Looooooooong day.

I’m about to pass out, but wanted to get my thoughts on MAX ‘08 day one down on paper.

For Tom and I, MAX San Francisco, started on Sunday. We ran some errands, put stickers on our fliers for 360|Flex Indy, and then headed over to Moscone for some socializing. We hit up the community leader mixer thing, which was awesome. Congrats to the team that organized it.

Monday morning we hit up MAX bright and early, setting up our 360|MAX Unconference area, which is a cool area.

Enter the Keynote. So, oddly enough the keynote didn’t start until 9:30 am, yet the doors opened at 7am. I found it a bit weird since breakfast was just sandwiches.

The keynote was good, I gotta admit, The pre show dude was AWESOME! (video above). Shantanu and Kevin are both great presenters I have to say. Kevin more so, he’s very casual, and seems to be pretty unflappable, even when things don’t go the right way.

The information in general was pretty much what you’d expect, “State of Flash” type stuff, blah blah. One cool thing was some future tech they demo’ed as strictly early labs internal, but really sweet! Screens that know what’s going on around them, even where they’re pointed. I’d post a video, but then it occured to me, it might not be fully “open to the public” I can’t imagine why, but ya never know. It was cool though!

OK, the rest of the day.

Tom and I were pretty much tethered to our unconference area, which went really well. Slow start, but I think we’ll start seeing more people as the word gets out more.

Our sessions were all kick ass, especially Mate and Degrafa, which really pulled folks in. Tuesday has a bunch more killer sessions!

The bummer is not being able to wander around as much as I’d like. MAX for me is walking around the halls, finding people to chat with. This time around, I gotta chat with those who come to us.

The general session for TUesday is supposed to be Gumbo, Thermo, and future goodness. We’ll see. I’ve got my Thermo and gumbo installed to play with.

360|Flex Indianapolis MAX discount!

Also for MAX attendees, make sure to swing by and see Tom or I. We’ve got 100 tickets to 360|Flex Indy, for only $100 each. That’s $150 or so off our lowest possible price. Available only during MAX, so there’s only two days left to get this price!

Tags: Adobe Flex, Adobe MAX, Conferences

iPhone app - get your music on! Ocarina

I probably played a total of 6 hours of any Legend of Zelda game, evar. But Ocarina for the iPhone is damn fun! Fun isn’t really the right word, since Ocarina isn’t a game, it’s a social music…. experiment? App? Experience?

You’ll just have to try it out.

The app has two modes. musical instrument mode (play the Ocarina) and listen mode, (listen to others play their Ocarina).

Both modes are absolutely incredible. In make music mode, you blow into the mic of your iPhone, you hear the music out the speaker. The UI is 4 buttuns, pressing any combination of them, is the same as covering the holes on a flute.

The music is rather eerie, to me at least, almost like a durge, but also kinda mesmorizing, I could probably just sit it on my desk an listen while I work.

The visual representation of listening to the music is simply awesome. Rather than just a stic indicator of where the person you’re listening to is, you actually ’see’ their music. These cool green rings, and blue spirals, leave the location of the person playing, and shoot off past you into space.

Don’t like what the person is playing, jump to another person.

What amazes me, is that this is one of those apps that you think, “How many people will be using it, when i want to listen?” thinking there’ll be one dot at

any given time. That couldn’t be farther from the reality, I fired it up right before writing this post to screen shot it, and just look at how many people were playing their Ocarina on a Sunday around noon MST.  Each dot is an Ocarina being played, truly a world symphony.

Apps like Ocarina really reveal the social power of the iPhone. Sure we can calculate our split of the bill at a dinner party, we can tweet, we can manage our netflix queue, etc, but how cool is it that we can make AND share music with no infrastructure requirements beyond the internet. Hearing the music someone on the opposite side of the planet is making, while sitting at their desk or on their couch.

I don’t know who Pacman186 is, but their music was nice, and I enjoyed being able to listen.

Tags: Apple, iPhone

A conversation on the state of music

I mentioned earlier my cool lunch conversation with Jonathan Yarmis, at Defrag on Tuesday. We got to talking about Music and movies, and how the RIAA has (as we all know) completely missed the boat.

Jonathan pointed out that he subscribes to Rhapsody, spending about $200 a month year on music, he doesn’t get to own, and when he wants to own it he buys it outright. above and beyond his Rhapsody spend. I admitted that I hadn’t pirated a single song since getting my first iPod. Spending hundreds, probably over a thousand, on music, and devices to play it on. I calculate I’ve spent more on music in the last 3-4 years than in the previous 27 of my life.

Yet as far as the RIAA is concerned, we’re the enemy. We can’t use the music we pay for how we’d like, we can’t have it on too many devices, can’t put it on CDs, we can use it in only the prescribed way, or else face prosecution.

We likened it to the RIAA being more concerned with the $1 they could get today over the $2 they could get tomorrow. By restricting use, suing customers, in general treating us like crap, the industry forces us to find alternatives; indie musicians, streaming services (while they exist), outright piracy of music, etc.

Ford once said people had their choice of colors of Model T, black, black or black. That worked really well when there was only one choice, not just of color, but of car. You either wanted a black Model T, or you walked or rode a horse. Unfortunately, the music industry doesn’t realize, that they’re Model T ISN’T the only choice, it hasn’t been for a long time.

Just look at the music sales figures on the iTunes store, the proof is in the pudding, people are buying music, so why make it a painful process for us?

Tags: Defrag, Music

Defrag Conference ‘08 Day Two

Charlene Li’s preso, AWESOME. Slides here. Among the best guotes, and there’s a lot of them, “Open will be the new norm”. Charlene did a great job of describing what the next few years in web 2.0/social media are likely to entail. Talking about trusting Google was big for me. I put everything up there in the google cloud, for lack of a better option really. Google is ubiquitous now, sure I could roll my own, use Yahoo, etc, but no one else does. I really do worry that not only could google decide that doing evil is easier and more profitable than not doing evil. A few months ago we all saw what a gSlap would look like when gmail was down for what? 4, 6 hours? People, including me, were freaking out! We’ll see.

Neeraj Mathur from Sun, not so awesome. I think only Sun, could turn Social Media into a rather boring, over equationed, enterprise-ified concept. Not “friends” but contacts. Equity built by some formula, and displayed like a progress meter. Kudo’s to Sun for trying, but I think they’ve taken it too far and made it “too Much”.

Eric did the sponsor bingo card raffle, great prizes. I’ve never been a sponsor bingo’er, but the idea does appeal to me, especially if you have each sponsor pony up a prize valued at $250 or more, awesome idea Eric!

Eventvue was in the house, literally and metaphorically. Defrag used Eventvue’s cool community building site to let all of us defraggers connect, and talk. It was cool to follow the defrag08 twitter stream, and interact with people I’d never metn and never heard of, but who are clearly thought leaders! I do wish Eric had set up a twitter wall, I’ve found that those are hella fun to watch. People invariably end up standing there staring at the screen for a few minutes, seeing the tweets fly by.

So overall, Defrag = good times, great conversations! Thumbs up. Eric did a bang up job, keeping things moving along. An extra special hard task since there weren’t any breaks between sessions.

As is usual for conferences, the best part was the conversations in the hallway. I had a great conversation Jonathan Yarmis about the music industry and the future or lack there of for them. It was cool to sit and throw ideas back and forth, talking about all the ways the RIAA has completely screwed the pooch, by fighting tooth and nail for $1 now rather than work towards the $2 they’d get if they embraced the current technological environment.

I also had a great conversation with Rob, and Adam from Eventvue, and Fraser from Adaptive blue; talking about twitter, Facebook, and Glue over beers. That kind of conversation is just so great and can’t be replaced. I can’t imagine attending a conference and not having these types of conversations with people that I’ve just met.

Tags: Conferences, Defrag, Technology

Defrag Conference ‘08 day one thoughts.

I wrote this after lunch on Monday.

Another freakishly awesome day in Denver! I’m sitting in the main hang out area (long foyer along the two break out rooms) with the sun beating on my back, reflecting on my MB Air’s glossy screen right into my face. It’s like those metal tanning things from the 60’s and 70’s

So far Defrag has been an awesome event, as advertised for sure. A few of the sessions have been a bit too lofty for me, but some have really rocked. I’m looking forward to more! What I find interesting so far is I haven’t taken a single note, like I would at a tech conference. It seems for me it’s more about just absorbing information in more general terms, than scribbling notes frantically as a speaker rambles on. It’s quite refreshing. The short form factor (30 Minute sessions) makes it almost like an Ignite, minus the auto advancing slides. It’s weird to have no “passing” period between sessions, so it’s kinda like a race to get your crap together and get to the next room if you’re changing rooms.

Typical conference problems, are typically happening. Wifi is sketchy, though remarkably not crappy. Kudo’s to Eric. I believe it’s impossible to have 100% fail free wireless internet, though at it’s worst, I’ve only lost my connection a few times, for a very short period, and only had laggy-ness (technical term) a few times too.

The topics around social media are very interesting, it’s good to see so much attention being given to SM topics, especially in the enterprise. Those guys definitely need it for the most part. I’m very interested in reducing the barriers between people (community) and things (companies), so seeing Enterprise take more of an interest in social media, is very promising.

Tags: Conferences, Defrag, Social Media