This past week I attended Flash Forward 2008 in San Francisco. Unlike most conferences, I didn’t have to travel for this one as I live only about 30 minutes outside of the city. This Flash Forward was also the first under the new ownership of Beau Amber from Metalliq. The format for this conference was very different from past Flash Forwards and this was met with mixed reactions. There was only one track, which meant that there weren’t any options as to which session you wanted to attend.
The crowd at this conference seemed to be very design-centric which was right in line with most of the session content. The theme of the conference was passion and thus most of the content was geared more towards inspiration rather than actual Flash techniques. Again, the reaction to this was mixed based on my conversations with attendees. Unlike most conferences I’ve been to, I actually got to see almost all of the sessions, which was nice. Below are some of the things that stood out during the three days:
Keith and Grant Love Flash
Over the last few years Adobe has been making a concerted effort to appeal to the developer crowd with technologies like Flex. While this is a good thing, the interactive design side of the platform (i.e. Flash) has kind of taken a back seat. Keith Peters and Grant Skinner both gave sessions where they professed their love for the flashier side of Flash. Both talked about how the early days of Flash experimentation were the main catalyst in getting them started out in their careers. I think this resonated really well with the crowd, as most were Flash designers rather than developers. Both had only 20 minutes to present so there really wasn’t any discussion of actual techniques which was kind of a let down. Grant did show some cool experiments he’s doing with swarming behavior. His company is also doing Flash work that will find its way onto game consoles thanks to the ScaleForm technology.
Too Many Flashless Presentations
Generally I really like it when Flash conferences add some sessions that are designed solely to inspire the audience. But this conference had far too many of them and this was particularly bad because of the single-track format. Miha Pogacnik, who is the Cultural Ambassador of Slovenia, started out the conference playing violin and talking about his creative process. Jamy Ian Swiss is a magician who performed card tricks for the audience and then discussed some of the techniques he used to pull them off. Karen Kimsey-House spoke about relationships and how we need to just be ourselves. Lynda Weinman spoke about the trouble with the current educational system in this increasingly techno-centric society. If these had been part of an Inspire track then it would have been great. But I heard many attendees say something along the lines of “I’m already inspired. I came here to learn more about Flash”.
Tinic Rocks!
For those that don’t know Tinic Uro, he is one of the masterminds behind the Flash Player. His blog is a must-read for anyone developing in Flash as it is chock-full of inside information directly from the Flash team. Tinic actually fixed a Flash Player bug live on stage. He started out in Visual Studio and showed the actual C++ source code for Flash Player 10. This was very cool to all the developers in the audience. He then proceeded to show Flash Player 10 running on FreeBSD and also a 64-bit version running on Linux. I can’t say anything more on this so please don’t ask when they will be released 
. After his session was done he took questions from the audience for a little while.
Some Hilarious Sessions
There were several presenters who I thought were really funny. Stacey Mulcahy, aka BitchWhoCodes, gave her thoughts on project management from a developer’s perspective. She had lots of funny slides and I thought the presentation was very entertaining and also had a good message. Craig Swann showed a series of FAIL photos from failblog.org which I hadn’t seen before. Hoss Gifford showed some hilarious photos of Jakob Neilson, who was a recurring target of many of the presenters. David Carson, who is a famous graphic designer, gave a really inspiring and entertaining talk that had some really funny moments. Philip Kerman gave a session describing how he makes his crazy YoutTube rant videos. He even performed one of them live on stage. Very funny stuff.
Can You Be Too Green?
This conference made an effort to be green which is of course a respectable thing. Personally I think it was a little over-the-top though. They wanted people to re-use their paper cups by writing their names on them and leaving them on the beverage table. If you were done with a drink you had to pour the remaining liquid into a big bucket. This was all a little much in my opinion and was a little nasty as well.
Natzke Always Inspires
Erik has given this same presentation at a few conferences that I’ve been to this year but I always seem to miss it. His presentation years ago at another Flash Forward is what got me hooked on Flash to begin with. This session focused on the techniques he uses to create computational art. His presentations are always great as they incorporate music and video very nicely. The best part about it is that he released the full source code for everything that he showed! This was great especially since there was so little code shown during the conference.
Cool Sound Sessions
My old colleague from frog design, Jared Ficklin, gave a very entertaining session on sound visualizations. It wasn’t limited to just computers though as he showed various physical visualizations like the flaming Rubens Tube. Jared’s presentation style is great and is always entertaining. Robert Hodgin showed some really nice visualizations and actually performed one live with a musician. The only problem was that he never talked about what technologies were actually used to make them.
So to wrap up, I applaud Beau on trying to do something different, but I think it was a let down on a number of levels. First you can’t expect to satisfy both designers and developers with a single track. People need options so that they can customize there schedule to match their interests. The 20-minute presentations also didn’t work as they simply didn’t allow any of the presenters to go into detail on anything. I had many people tell me that they came to learn about the latest and greatest Flash techniques and for the most part, there were none to be found. For us speakers that attend most all of the Flash conferences, this was actually fun because it was something different. But for people who only get to go to one conference a year, this was seriously lacking in content. But Beau was open about the fact that this was an experiment and that he is open to suggestions on how to make next year better.
Lee
I attended the conference this year and it was my first Flash conference. Unfortunately my experience was pretty much on par with yours and I was highly disappointed. I may or may not be attending this conference again next year. As I was reading your review though I was thinking wow I didn’t think anyone else felt the same way I did but now it’s obvious that I wasn’t the only one.
I totally agree… I didn’t really feel like I learned anything at all; the speakers I wanted to hear only had enough time to say “hey check out my blog,” which isn’t really worth the time and money spent. And I cannot believe how many flash-less presentations there were; I got the feeling that they had trouble getting speakers or something. The only sessions that were worth much of anything took place in that tiny, hot, cramped room in the basement, which I totally did not understand, especially considering the number of wide open spaces that no one was using. Unless this takes place in my town next year, I can’t say I plan on attending again.
I have mixed feelings about this year’s conference as well. I took away a ton of inspiration and motivation, even from the non-flash-specific presenters. I assume this is due to the fact of myself going out on my own and simply wanting to take a break from the code side of it all. More than just technique and code snippets, I was really hoping for some true influence on passion, motivation, and insight as to where flash is going and what people have done with it – I received a good deal of this. A good portion of my daily time is already spent digging up code/examples online – much more than I could remember from several twenty minute presentations. With all that said, the sessions definitely need to be longer – 20 minutes doesn’t allow for us to really settle into to something inspiring or learn-able. More how-to sessions are a must. As said above, many already have the passion, but we’re all lacking the tech side of things due to headaches just trying to figure a few small things out – so a mixture would be the best bet.
I’ve really always wanted to attend one of these conferences. Unfortunately, I just can’t afford the high cost of travel these days. It’s not something that I think I’d go to alot (if I had the means) but it would be a good experience I think.
My blog is all about AS3.0, making games, selling games, and cool tutorials in AS3.0. Check it out!
http://flashdevz.wordpress.com
P.S. I’ve added your blog to my blogroll, it’d be sweet if you did the same!
Hey at least I learned how to do some cool magic tricks!
I agree with you Lee. The single-track was very disappointing and left me really wanting. While I really enjoyed the “passion” theme as it is definitely on par with how those in our community succeed, there was far too little “FLASH” talk.
The little bit that was discussed about “flash” was also a little disappointing. People come to these conference to learn and the only sessions that even offered info about code were in a tiny room and were rather disappointing…
In addition, the extreme focus on flash in the “ad” world makes it less about flash and more about advertising, which I find to be a shame since I have focused on using flash in the museum/news industry as a means to educate/inform/etc. I think seeing more variety in how flash is being used would be a very positive addition to conferences.
Sadly, I also think that they need to improve on the “film festival” as I’ve seen work that is better than some of the finalists…perhaps they just need to get the word out a bit more…
I don’t want to complain too much, and I appreciate Beau putting the conference together…I know it is no small task. But, I truly hope that they consider going back to the multi-track and offering a variety of sessions on code/design/etc/etc. With the way flash is evolving, some discussion of design patterns would definitely have been welcomed. At least this community puts up samples online to make up for that.
Thanks for sharing with all of us…and Im sorry I didn’t actually get to meet you this time around. Hopefully next time.
I was pretty disappointed with FlashForward this year. I’m seriously sick of hearing about passion, it’s overused. Nearly every job listing says must have passion, I even found one for a janitorial job that said must have a passion for cleaning.
I didn’t care for the chats with Beau after each session. He didn’t really have anything useful to say. Erik Natzke is still doing good work and I was glad to see him there.
I thought the presentation on Ribbit was cool, but with so many presentations and so little actual content I think I’ll be skipping over FlashForward next year.
Did anyone else think that Ruby Sky smelled terrible? The bucket of liquids was pretty nasty too. I’m glad no one bumped into it.
It was an awesome experience. But, frankly, I learned more new stuff about Flash during my conversations with you, Lee.
I’ll be back next year though!
I agree with everything you said. I think this conference was trying to be like Flashbelt (probably the best Flash conference in my opinion). I did enjoy some of the sessions but FlashForward was seriously lacking in content and sadly, I probably won’t ever want to go back to it.
This was my third Flash Forward. Previous attendances were in 2000 (NYC) and 2003 (SF). It seems as the tool grows and becomes more complex, the community shrinks. Did anyone attend the three-table job fair? The back-end organizational part of the conference seemed just fine to me. I knew where things were and when things happened. Announcements were clear. But, some of the content was plain weak. Maybe they should have sold twice as many passes so they could afford more appropriate presentations. I was one of the 10 CS-degree programmers out there. I can’t say I learned much.
I think the organizers should take a look at past conferences for inspiration. Here are a few sessions from my Flash Forward 2000 booklet:
Scripting in Flash – Phillip Kerman (scripting for novices)
Advanced ActionScripting – Communicating Inside of Flash, Debugging and Optimization – Josh Ulm
Flash Fundamentals – Lynda Weinman
Flash Animation and Humor – Joe Shields (frog in blender guy)
Animation Deconstruction – Nick Cogan, Joe Sparks
Creative and Inspirational – Hillman Curtis
Database and Backend Integration – Napoleon Cole, John Cuyle, Mick Herres and Dave Huseby
3D Flash – Manuel Clement, Brett Gassaway, Georges Bernard, Vincent Suriani
Gaming with Flash – James Baker, Erik Bianchi
Character Development – Todd Purgason, Marina Zurkow
Advanced Flash Production – Colin Moock, Amit Pitaru
Animation Techniques – Chris Casady
Chaos Theory – Joshua Davis
High-End Applied ActionScripting – Brandon Hall (remember Fig Leaf Smackdown?)
The Flash Canvas – Yugo Nakamura (flew in from Japan w/ a translator)
This was our 3rd Flash Forward and I’m really wondering if we’ll be back next year. In the past my guys have come back from the conference totally charged up and psyched about all the groundbreaking things they have seen. Based on that, we sent our top 6 designer/developers this year. I can’t tell you how bummed I was to hear their responses. Top 2 complaints:
1) Way to many talks that had little to do with flash. It doesn’t normally bother me when there are several inspirational talks because there are other tracks going at the same time on that you can attend if you are there to learn. But with the format this year, we were a captive audience…it was frustrating. With the single track format, the most you can get away with is ONE talk about passion – any more and you should think about changing the name of the conference.
2) Not enough time spent with the people that are really doing the mind-blowing work. Giving my guys exposure to this is what I’ve come to expect from Flash Forward. All the technical talks were during lunch in a hot, cramped room…that seems a bit backward. The magic show should have been in that room, then we could have seen the tricks better.
I apologize for the rant…that’s really not my style. It wasn’t all bad and everyone still had a good time…they just didn’t learn much. I really hope to see some sort of notice about how they are bringing back the concurrent tracks and more technical talks for next year.
My first time at Flash Forward as well and I totally agree with you Lee. Luckily, I’m from the Bay Area and didn’t have to spend extra money.
In relation to the quality and quantity of previous flash forwards we’ve attended, I might feel better if we had only paid a 1/4th of what we paid for this years conference.
Or maybe less–We usually return to our offices and report our findings and experiences to the rest of the team. So far the only slide is:
“Drugs + Failure == Success”
Hola all,
I attended flash forward this year, and I agree with all of you that found the format to be dull on the technical side, and too heavy with people like Ian Swiss, the lady that was more suited for an oprah convention, and the slovakian violin player. No offense to those people, but they shouldn’t have been presenting at this presentation.
Really, the only presentations I found somewhat interesting was the disney group, the adobe keynote, Stacey Mulcahys presentation on Project Managers (wow, was that dead on), David Carson (which I felt was one of the better ones), and of course Natzke’s inspirational abstract art segment. The rest of it felt a little dull. I like to be wowed, as well as inspired, and I also want to come out of these presentations with a little bit more in my head in terms of the how-to side. I don’t feel any of that was achieved here. I personally, am not a big fan of Metalliq, and I kind of felt this format would be wrong going into this. When Lynda Weinman ran the presentation, it seemed more geared towards teaching the technical side behind creating great flash content and pieces.. With metalliq, I start to feel this might devolve into a sales pitch, and sideshow conference that will be great for Project Manager types (that don’t do any of the real work), but not great for designers or developers (both of which should be heavily represented at these conferences). bOracle conferences are renowkned for such nonsense, and i’d hate to see this conference devolve into the same sideshow act, that is extremely light on the technical side, but great sales pitch, with fun krusty the clown entertainment acts thrown in between.
I live in Idaho, so it’s a bit of a trek, but even still, I also attended the conference in San Fran in 2005, and the format in the 2005 show was much better, and I feel I got more out of that conference. Granted, i’ll still go again down the line when these pop up in San Fran or Seattle, but even still, i’d say the highlight for me was the small party at the Yerba Gardens, as I met and conversed with some really cool people.
Lee, I want to thank you, as well for keeping this site going. This forum, as well as these great tutorials, still keeps the old magic going, even if Flashforward can’t.
Watching boring PowerPoint presentations on how to be passionate about what you do is not why I came to this conference. The last 2 FlashForwards were much better than this one. Was anyone else extremely annoyed by the youtube guy?
At least the party was fun.
This was my first Flashforward conference. I’ve been using the software since 1999, and as a designer am flustered when trying to learn actionscript, as that part of my brain bounces rather than absorbs code. A session called “How I Learned Actionscript with a Designer’s Brain” would be helpful.
I had the most fun creating a claymation film at Yerba Buena, where few attended.
I felt that some of the speakers could have been friendlier during lunch break. How hard is it to introduce one more person sitting on the same couch?? My entry fee basically paid for the speakers to be there; the least they can do is engage in some basic etiquette with their less hip audience.
Right on Lee. I was super excited initially, as this was my first FF conference, but after the “passionate” and inspired first day, I was ready to learn. No offense but I definitely didn’t care one bit about card tricks or how to make crap videos that are kinda funny. I will be attending more flash conferences in the future but FlashForward will not be one of them. The single session format was really dissappointing and as everyone has already mentioned, being in the cramped room downstairs was terrible, but that’s the only place I learned anything. And of course from this one site I use all the time , hmmm what’s it called again….oh yeah. gotoandLearn.com ;} …
keep up the good work, it was cool to hang for bit, hope to catch you at another more enlightening conference…