360Flex San Jose – Recap
It’s been a while since our last 360|Flex. Almost a year in fact. Indianapolis in May.
Since getting back from 360|Flex, I’ve been full tilt forward on 360|iDev (rest? Decompress time, weak sauce!!), but wanted to take a few minutes to write down my thoughts on this latest 360|Flex.
For one thing it was a huge success. We made money. Not a metric buttload, and it would have been more if we hadn’t carried a ton of debt with us out of 2009. BUt still, we made money, and that’s a good sign for the event and the company.
We did a few things (as usual) differently.
We had volunteers to help out. We had I think 8 folks, that got a free pass in exchange for helping out. w had them help assemble SWAG bags, work the reg desk (This was THE first 360|Event where the keynote wasn’t delayed, and where I was able to actually hop up on stage, vs have some one go start the keynote.) work our video cameras (more on that), and in general be around to do whatever we needed.
We had Nicole on board officially. As Tom leaves, Nicole joins. It’s pretty cool to be working with my wife to make the events even better!
Video. We’ve wanted to do video since Seattle ’07. In fact we had video in Seattle, but marketed them poorly. We had Video in San Jose ’09, but it was Adobe TV. This time we decided to go lo-fi to start and see how it works. We used 8 SD Flip Cams, and Camtasia Relay. Volunteers swapped cams out for each session, and set up Relay on speaker laptops. Now that hard part. I’ve got 40+ sessions to process into usable video. We’re not sure what to do yet as far as distribution. Attendees will get the video for free, but I’d love to try and sell access to the video (un-DRM’ed of course) files. I think there’s value in the videos, and think it’d be nice if we could support the company between events with video sales.
Panels. Panels are another thing we toyed with for a while, thinking it’d be cool to do, but never really executing. We decided to pull the trigger. 360|Flex had 3 panels, and they all rocked! Panels are here to stay. We also put a panel as the last session on the last day, to bring everyone together at the end of the conference. The panels are a great way to have all attendees in the same place, and get great discussions started! I’m really excited about the Panels, and can’t wait to do more.
Official hotel while using Ebay. Normally when we do the SJ event, we don’t have an official hotel, or if we do it’s just a room block at the Holiday Inn. This time we went downtown San Jose to the Marriott. Who offered a shuttle bus each day. That worked out awesome! Each day the bus brought everyone to Ebay and took them back to the hotel at night. After the evening receptions, folks bussed back to the Marriott, and partied at the bar, out in downtown, etc. it was awesome.
Over all I couldn’t be happier with 360|Flex San Jose. We had an almost sell out crowd, at about 365 registrations, not to mention the “I had to register?” Crowd that we printed badges for on the fly.
Now on to 360|iDev, San Jose! I can’t wait to see my Apple crew! We’ll all be fresh off iPad euphoria, and ready to talk iPad apps!
iApp Review – Procamera
I got an email a few weeks ago, asking me to take a look at ProCamera. Sure why not, I’d love something that was better than the built in app, and GorillaCam came just shy of the mark for me. ProCamera (iTunes Link) might be it. Procamera has an impressive list of features. Steady Cam [...]
Why I won’t be buying ebooks for a while
When I finished my last ebook the other day, i went to my bookshelf. Mainly it was to save a little money, I read fast when I read fiction, so I was consuming about 2-3 books a month, not a cheap hobby.
So I picked up a trusty paperback I’ve read 3 times previous but not recently (the last 4 years or s0).
I had forgotten how nice a book feels. No I’m not suddenly an anti paper luddite, but real books are nice, the feel of paper (in this books case) the degrading spine (mass market paperbacks sadly aren’t designed to last) requiring kid gloves to read it, etc.
But that nostalgia aside, i’m still a big proponent of eBooks, but I’m reconsidering my opinion that they’ve ‘arrived’
Not only does Amazon cow towing to McMillan bother me, but in general the trend of Amazon and the publishers.
I had hoped after what? 2 years of Kindle sales, stats like every Kindle owner on average buys 2.7 or something more books than non Kindle owning Amazon users, etc. That the publishers would get onboard the clue train.
But that doesn’t seem to have happened.
My take on the iPad – Might as well join in
Despite what my more fervent fanboi friends think, I don’t hate the iPad.
As the organizer of a conference for iPhone developers, I can’t wait to see what they do with the iPad. I can’t wait for panels on the differences, etc.
This post isn’t about that. This post is about me as a techy, power user consumer. The exact person the iPad isn’t for.
Alex Payne captures my thoughts on this really well. From a Flex Developer standpoint (Yeah that’s right hater, Flash!) I think Doug sums it up well.
I’m not gonna lie I let the rumor mill wind my expectations up more than I should have.
How Dell can survive and truly compete
The topic turned to Apple of course, the Apple tax, and what it means, and Dell.
We all agreed that we pay more, but where Dell and HP, and windowz peeps use the term in a negative, we see it as paying for a more awesome product, that is the sum of it’s parts not the parts. The whole spec comparison has been done to death. Apple gear isn’t RAM, HDD, glossy screen, etc. It’s the whole package, the OS, the industrial design, the hardware, and the overall feeling of owning something that retains value, isn’t plastic, and does what you want.
We got to talking about Dell (not sure why we focused on Dell, we probably all owned a few so they’re familiar)
Free speech, so long as you don’t say anything
I read this article the other day about a dude getting arrested for a tweet. My first reaction was, What. The. Fuck. My second and third, after reading the article, the same. The most obvious sign of retardedness to me is, in all the terror attacks of late, dating back to 9/11. Have the terrorists [...]
Apps for Kindle coming soon. Meh
Maybe i’m the first to say it, but when it comes to apps on the Kindle,
M.E.H.
I totally understand it, Amazon is knee jerking because 1. the Nook has a touch screen that’s not eInk, so apps make sense (maybe?) and 2. we’re a week away from Apple’s “big announcement” that will surely be a Tablet, and surely not be a Kindle killer anymore than the iPhone or any netbook currently on the market is.
Here’s why I’m meh.
The Kindle has 1 screen, it’s eInk. For those that don’t know that means it’s digital paper. There’s no animation capability (well very very very little). EInk draws the screen, then stops, it doesn’t re-arrange the ink molecules/pixels until you tell it to, and when it does, there’s a flash of the screen as things shift. It’s not a blinding or anything, but it’s there and it pretty clearly means any app can’t be a fast screen drawing app.
iApp Review – GorillaPod gorillacam
I love my GorillaPod. So much so I bought Nicole an additional one. I used it during RIAdventure 2009 to hold my Flip cam while recording sessions, and we’ve used it at the end of a trekking pole when hiking.
When i saw that GorillaPod had an iphone app, and a camera app no less I was intrigued.
My thoughts on TUAWs iPhone Wishlist
Make sure to check out TUAWs, What we want to see in iPhone 4.0 post. It’s an interesting read. What struck me the most was that most people want things, they have to know Apple (Steve Jobs) will never, ever do,
1. Status light. Never gonna happen. Blackberries have them, iPhones won’t. I admit I’d love to know without waking my phone up that I’ve got new emails, SMSs or voicemails. What I think Apple MIGHT do is a lock screen that’s actually useful. The Jailbreak community has done it, and it’s very nice. I can see message counts, even weather, etc. All without unlocking my phone.
What makes the Kindle awesome, isn’t Amazon.
It’s funny I was reading Joe Wikert’s post on the death of the Kindle, when Amazon released it’s long, long, long awaited firmware update 2.3, adding a few, but not enough of the things Joe mentions being conspicuously missing from the Kindle.
Joe has some really good points, and sadly, 2.3 doesn’t negate many if any at all.
Then I got to thinking, what makes me still recommend my Kindle? It’s not the Kindle itself, it’s only a little bit Amazon itself, though I do almost all my buying on amazon, and really like the whispernet service.
it’s the incredible third party ecosystem that has grown around the Kindle to make it a truly kick ass device.
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