Decade first:

in 2000 I worked for a company that was basically an IT Staffing firm that decided to get into software. I worked internally on a web app that would (in their terms) revolutionize staffing. I bailed, they failed, it was 2000, that happened a lot to a lot of people and companies.

I spent most of the 2000’s as a programmer, first doing ColdFusion, then moving to Flex. It never occurred to me to try out M$ tools, or any other. I liked Macromedia (Now Adobe) offerings and stuck with them.

I was my own boss several times as an Indie contractor, and was a cube monkey several times. Each (except one) was a good experience, a ton of fun, and formed lasting personal and business friendships.

I bought my first house in Perris CA, and my second in Riverside CA. Both were awesome in their own ways, despite being an hour or more from where I worked.

Most importantly, I met my wife Nicole.

We met thru a mutual friend whom I used to work with years past, and she was currently working with (Props to Scott Dunn for the intr0)

We moved to Denver. We were supposed to move a few months after meeting. Before I proposed, even. She had an opportunity to come out to Denver, and I had no major ties to CA. That opportunity dried up, and re-emerged 6 months later, and here we are.

We bought a house in Highlands Ranch, before we realized what Highlands Ranch was. 2 years after that, we moved to downtown Denver.

I started a conference that was supposed to be a one off, just for kicks event. It’s grown to be 3 distinct events, a few one off events around the world here and there, and my full time job (more in 2009)

2009

I’ve gone full time, totally dependent on 360|Conferences for income, lost a business partner, brought Nicole into the business, learned how to use Quickbooks, stopped writing code, just to name the big ones.

Going full time with the conference business wasn’t part of the plan, not in 2009 anyway. I was at EffectiveUI as the Community Evangelist, sadly a position, not enough of the company was on board with. When i left, I decided, well if the conferences are going to support me ever, they might as well start now. Since taking the job at EUI, i had stopped writing code, well I wrote a little, building small apps for internal/sales use, but by and large, i had stopped being a full time developer.

So I jumped. Eyes wide open.

All in all it’s been what I expected, stressful, awesome, a struggle, the best decision (Next to marrying Nicole) I’ve ever made.

Tom leaving was a shock in many ways, though I suspected we wouldn’t stay partners thru 2010, I just wasn’t sure how it would come down.

Our approaches to business are too different. When we’re “on”, we’re “ON” a totally creative innovative powerhouse. When we’re “off”, we’re “OFF” sadly we were off more than on.

After dealing with the shock and other feelings associated with going from partnership to “just me” basically, i had to learn to use quickbooks. That ain’t fun. I’m fairly comfortable with book keeping but quickbooks is a kludge IMHO. But oh well it’s what we’ve got. I’ve paid a book keeper to clean the books up, then I’ll take 100% ownership of that.

What am I looking at for 2010?

360|iDev will over take 360|Flex as my biggest event. Short of Adobe being more supportive of it’s third party developer eco system that is. If they figure out how to make third party developers thrive on their platforms, 360|Flex will grow. 360|Flex will and does rock, but there’s a distinct lack of love for third party tools built on and around Flex. That will be HUGE.

Apple may not give them love, but they at least don’t hinder their third parties.

360|Mobile, which was the ill-fated InsideMobile will grow and become it’s own thing. I’ll keep it small, but the non apple mobile space is hot, and quite frankly exciting, I can’t wait to see what’s going on there.

360|Whisperings will reach critical mass. Of the small amount of content on the site right now, it all sells monthly. A few purchased only, but something. The day I write checks to the authors, will be a huge day for me!

I’ll have a reliable, livable income coming from conferences/events. The business will reach an as yet unattained level of stability.

I’ll spend more time with Nicole, we’ll do more fun things, travel more, and enjoy life and each other’s company even more than we already do.

I really want to see The Flex Show grow. jeff and I love doing the show, and I want to see more the Flex Community get involved.

i’d like to do some more Denver community stuff. Ignite Denver is going strong, and I hope 2010 sees it grow and become a staple of the community. I really want to see something eventwise around literacy. A Festival of Books, something.

360|iDev

This was our second iPhone developer conference and it was a HUGE hit! We saw a 30% increase in attendance, which was awesome! 6 months, 30%, that’s just great! Denver didn’t let us down at all! this city is a treasure trove of iPhone developers. I’m seriously thinking 360|iDev might have a perm home here.

We had a great time! Got lots of incredible feedback, met tons of interesting people. One of the most awesome blog posts (Of the many, many) written about the event, was from David Whatley, who volunteered to speak at the conference at the last minute, completely on his own dime. We also wrangled him into hosting a panel, which was mind blowing!

“To be blunt, the conference was not dominated by stuffed suits, not dominated by nonsense, not dominated by people hawking stuff… there wasn’t even a single prima donna in sight!  People were there to learn from each other, help each other, and band together to achieve their ambitions.  The sense of community, which I feel the whole game industry lost so long ago, was a constant at this conference.  It was, I realized by the second day, home.“

He captures, why I do events. David wasn’t the only person to say something along those lines.

I’m really excited to already be working on the next 360|iDev, in San Jose! Not to mention the next 360|Flex! I can’t wait to see all my new friends, as well as the new people who have heard about the conference and will attend next time.

360|MAX

Adobe MAX is the annual “geek out” for those of us doing anything with Adobe technologies. It’s a huge event, costs a metric buttload, and is usually pretty over the top. It’s also hugely fun, and a great way to see folks who don’t come out for other events typically. It’s also nice to attend an event that I’m not organizing, or at least not organizing much of.

360|Conferences does an unconference at MAX, to bring some community to the event. It’s always a good time, we get some great speakers to give us some time and share what they know. It was really cool this time that we had some more interesting topics; Arduino/Flex interaction, How a rock band uses Flex/AIR and even iPhone in their performances, etc.

It was a good time.

Next time, we’ll limit talks to 30 minutes. It’s about double the sessions, but I think 30 minutes is a good time slot, we can get more great topics going.

The funnest part of my job (If I can call it that) is doing different types of events. They’re not just always the same event over and over. Even 360|Flex and 360|iDev, while super similar, and based on the same ideals, are vastly different. Then throw in Ignite, 360|FlexPress, and hopefully a Festival of Books, and it’s just a great time bringing people together!

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.

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!

Look at Fedex and their purchase of Kinkos. Which they’re apparently planning to rename to Fedex Office. This bloomberg article talks about the change, I haven’t seen the change yet, hopefully Fedex realized the gigantic mistake it would be to kill the enormously recognizable Kinkos name. I think they’d fair better ditching the Fedex Name. If they’re looking to capture mindshare in the kinko’s crowd.

On a smaller scale but equally disastrous, Adobe is extending their brand confusion to their community. A little history: Adobe created Flex Camps a while back, as one day events for Flex developers to come together to learn and network. Topics ranged from beginner to advanced, and were generally well received. There have been Flex Camps all over the world.

At MAX adobe decided that the community was confused about Flash, Flex, the platform and everything.

I think the confusion is Adobe’s. No one I’ve met is confused about what Flex is or what Flash is.

It’s unclear where Adobe is going, but the first victim of this internal name changing, confusion, mayhem is the Flex Camps, now called Flash Camps, lame. No matter what Adobe thinks or wants. Flash is not Flex is not Flash.

Flash is the swf movie. Flash is the IDE Flash devs and designers use.

Lee has a post rationalizing why we’re all Flash Developers, but taking his arguments to their more natural conclusion, aren’t we all web developers? I mean our code is run on the web (except AIR, but hey), so why not be web developers? Of course that doesn’t work Adobe wise, since “web” isn’t an Adobe product.

Flex has a name though. So does Flash. Why waste all that Brand? Flash is known for things, things that make sense to Flash, and fit well. Flex has a similar following and brand recognition, and most Flex developers, don’t want to be Flash developers, any more than a Flash Developer would want to be called a Flex developer.

I dunno, just my .02, what do you think? How far will it go? Flash Builder? Tour De Flash? Flash Platform Data Services?

I’m working on a tool to view (hopefully) live survey data for when we have booths at conferences. We’ve come up with a simply iPhone survey, and want to be able to see the data in, more or less, real time.

I’ve been working on it, largely at the office, checking the code into SVN when I’m going to work from home. At some point in the last few days, I ended up with Flex Builder 3.0.2. Probably my best friend Adobe Updater.

The other night, I wrapped up at the office, checked in all my code, went home, fired up Flex Builder. When I went to test the app, ADL fired up, then immediately vanished. weird. Tried a few more times, still no joy. Restarted Flex builder, restarted my Macbook, nothing. Checked to make sure my Flex Builder was up to date, it was.

After finally giving up, I check back at work, app runs. Then I check to see if that Flex Builder was up to date. It wasn’t, 3.0.1, so I updated. Ran the app. ADL vanishedright after launching.

I decided to run the app in debug, see if that revealed anything. It did sorta. The message was just about useless, something to the effect of “The app crapped out before the debugger could connect”

I say just about useless, since it was enough to lead me to Cameron’s blog, where he mentioned an error he had gotten. It wasn’t the same error, but since I had just moved from 3.0.1 to 3.0.2 and AIR 1.5 had recently been released, I figured I’d check it out. Sure enough in my app descriptor it was set to 1.1 for AIR.

Now I certainly don’t need Adobe to hold my hand, but really, maybe just a few more descriptive error messages, shoot I’d take a message that gave me a few possible causes that I could run down on my own.

Why make things harder than necessary? What a frustrating waste of a night, just because Flex Builder and ADL couldn’t suggest I check my app descriptor.

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.

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!

Saw a few sites, we went to the Coit Tower one night. THe group from class was supposed to go out Salsa dancing with Rob, but I ended up having to work and Emily was tired. So Rob flew solo.

Nicole and I went up to Napa on Friday for some wine tasting. It was great. We picked up two cases from V.Sattui. Can’t wait for those to arrive.

We hit a few other places, Mumm was good, but not good enough. We did pick up a bottle of Brut from Chandon

We had sushi with one of Nicole’s friends and her husband. Great sushi place called Kirala in Berkeley.

Hung out with Ahmad one more time. Had a yummy dinner at Plouff, then walked to a champaigne bar for a drink. Had a good Port (Fonseca LBV 1999)

On our way to San Jose on Saturday we stopped at Mt. Tam, and walked around. Was incredible. very scenic.

Our last stop was the Winchester Mystery house. Highly recommend it! It’s very interesting. Lots of walking though, beware.

We flew in saturday morning, drove from San Jose to SF. Not overly impressed with the lands between the two cities. We arrived in SF and worked on finding the hotel. I hate renting cars, but Hertz and their Neverlost, GPS set up are absolutely a must. Worth the 9.95 a day extra. The hotel is quite odd. It’s called the “Club Quarters” I’m guessing it’s primary business is the business traveler, not tourists. For one thing, it’s members only (thankfully, Travelocity is a member so now, so are we.), and the rooms are perfect for a single business person. Nothing more. Small is an understatement, there’s a bed (queen thankfully), a small desk, a TV (on the wall so as not to waste floor space) and a small bathroom with stand up shower. I guess business people don’t luxuriate in bath tubs.

The niceties though are many. Wifi and LAN in the rooms. Wifi in a central lounge type place, with cushy couches and chairs, a TV and a few computer stations. The bar next door (and connected to) offers free wifi as well, and next door to that is a starbucks, with the aforementioned sucky Tmobile Hotspot. There’s also a small sundeck on the top floor.

We met up with my high school buddy, Ahmad on Saturday night. He proceeded to treat us to some damn fine sushi and get me completely shit faced on Saki bombs. Then we went to a bar and continued to do bad things.

Sadly Saturday night’s fun, ruined most of Sunday.