Flashbelt Wrap-up
I attended the Flashbelt conference in Minneapolis, MN a couple of weeks ago, and left fully inspired, energized and a little overwhelmed by the experience. I had the same feeling last year when I left, and wanted to regain the feeling. It basically comes down to spending three 8 hour days getting bombarded with information from the people who are creating genius level work, and the after parties, where you get to talk shop and BS with the best in the industry. I left feeling mentally fatigued, but with a ton of notes from the brain-dump.
I wrote up a summary of the Flashbelt conference and thought I’d share it here. If you have any interest in Flash, internet technology, or similar geeky things, you may enjoy it. I’ve got many, many links to amazing stuff at the end.
Flashbelt 2009
Wrap up notes
If I had to condense everything I was exposed to at Flashbelt into 3 main topics they would be:
1. Convergence
2. Open-Source
3. Simplicity
more after the jump…
1. Convergence - the topic of convergence was talked about both explicitly and implicitly in at least half of the sessions I attended. Convergence topics ranged from internet entertainment, to news, to government, to social media and Television. The broad scope of convergence and the internet means that more and more people are using the internet more and more, and that the rapid adoption of internet enabled devices means that this number is growing nearly exponentially. People who use the internet do so in more ways all the time, for banking, for communication, for entertainment, etc… and it is an integrated part of modern life, not just a gimmick anymore.
Mark Anders (Senior Principal Scientist at Adobe) said in his keynote address that it is expected that around 1 Billion people will be exposed to the internet for the first time in their lives next year, on a mobile device. That number is staggering, and it kind of shows that we (everyone who designs for web) really needs to keep the mobile internet users in mind when designing UI and sites in general.
2. Open-Source – the movement toward Open-Source was talked about a lot, by a wide range of speakers. There were a lot of different takes on it, but one that stuck with me was recession based economics- why spend money to do something that has already been done? The main reasons that people are into Open-Source are :
- there’s no reason to re-invent the wheel if a solution already exists, this leads to faster development and production
- the Open-Source communities are driven by internal love for what they do, that means good products, rapid development
- Open-Source systems tend to be created in way which allow them to communicate with outside systems, which enables faster expansion of scope
- Reasons to develop Open-Source ranged from morals “sharing is better for everyone”, to business plan “use as a recruitment tool” / vetting “serious people create open-source”, to proof “one way to prove your capabilities is to release as Open-Source”.
Another topic related to the Open-Source movement is Open-Data, which is that more and more public, government, social media, and private entities are opening up their data for public research and use: the Government is pushing for more transparency, libraries and Google books are opening up millions of documents, newspapers like the New York Times and the Guardian have opened their article databases, and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have open data, allowing for real-time data harvesting.
3. Simplicity – many speakers talked about changing the way we think about the User Interface, to focus more on the User Experience than the way it looks. Many comments were made like “to improve the user experience, simplify the user interface” and “design is less important that making the information immediately accessible.” The point was not to Sacrifice good design to achieve simplicity, just that an intuitive and simple design and user experience make for a more lasting impression and user satisfaction.
A fourth topic which is probably equally important as the others, but was mentioned less frequently was ROI – how to prove to clients that using this technology is important and actually works. Google Analytics was the #1 thing talked about here. Main reasons are: to provide tangible results, measure user interaction, integrate campaign strategies, and focus on user retention and satisfaction.
Adobe:
The Adobe team presented several sessions, and hit on a bunch of topics, but perhaps 2 or 3 of the most exciting are about how they are moving toward getting more convergence between all aspects of content. Flash is always in development for improvements on the internet, and they are working on getting Flash onto more mobile devices, and work is being done to get Flash into set-top devices like DVRs and TiVo and the gaming platforms like Playstation, and Flash is coming to the desktop via Adobe Air. Basically they are working to create a seamless way to publish content to all of these different devices using one technology (basically) Flash and Flex – “an ActionScript-based framework for building applications.”
The Adobe team also talked a lot about CS4 obviously, mainly about improvements in the authoring environment and ways that the different programs of the CS4 Creative Suite works in harmony together to create quicker workflows. One of the main improvements that they have been working with is the ability of Flash to import Photoshop and Illustrator files, in layers, and that those layers can still be edited in their respective programs and updated, it’s a non-destructive editing hand-off. If the designer and Flash developer are working closely, this can speed up development quite a bit! They also talked a bit about how you can use native 3D objects in Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator to create exciting graphics and mockups. Also – that Photoshop now has a timeline which allows for all kinds of effects, and that Photoshop can also import and edit video clips. They talked about specific Flash CS4 tools like the 3D tools, the bones tools for use with inverse kinematics, and the advanced drawing tools.
Resources / Speaker links:
I am in the process of collecting the lecture notes from each of the presenters (those that are available) and I will try to have that ASAP for you to look at. The speakers themselves are the upper echelon of online media development. They have interests from User Experience to AS3 coding, from video players, to cross-platform gaming. These are the people who are on the front lines of what canbe done today and what will be done in the future.
Here is a collection of links to the various speaker’s sites, projects, and things they mentioned for your pleasure/research:
http://labs.adobe.com – this is where Adobe basically shows off new technologies and things that are in Beta testing. Things to check out: Flash Catalyst, and Flash/Flex
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/ – “is a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding.”
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/ (new name of Flex)
http://adobe.com/go/fund – money for Flash cross media development
http://armstrong-white.com/ – invented the idea of using DATA to create media- took data from car companies (engineering models) and created 3d models from that, and used them in advertising. Changed the face of automotive marketing and dropped the cost of creating ads by over 50%
http://www.nikebauerid.com/ – using 3d information, created user POV hockey stick customization ap.
http://www.fordvehicles.com/2009f150/ – site which merges entertainment with marketing to reinforce brand identity and create a memorable experience – something you want to share with a friend. Convergence of data, advertising, video to create experience.
http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/ – really nice example of using all resources together on a site
http://www.bitchwhocodes.com – Stacy Mulcahy is a great speaker about Flash development and process. Advocate of certain development principles as Agile (somewhat) and the thought “the last 20% of a project takes 80% of the effort”. Also an advocate of defining the word “Done” as it can mean different things to different people / in different context.
http://blog.drwoohoo.com/ – Drew Trujillo creates art using openFrameworks & ExtendScript (basically javascript for doing things in Creative Suite programs in code – really strange amazing stuff)
http://theflashblog.com/ – Lee Brimelow is a genius. Seriously. And he’s a very nice guy. He has a couple of things on his site about Flash Catalyst and Flex, which are pretty bleeding edge.
www.digitalcoleman.com – Chris Coleman is a great animator and is an advocate of good things. Talked about Bruce Mau and the Denver Biennial- going to be huge in the movement toward Good.
http://www.brucemaudesign.com/
http://www.ingoodwetrust2010.com/
http://www.newmovieclip.com/ – Koen is an amazing user of Flash and has written a couple of books.
http://blogs.adobe.com/rgalvan/ – Adobe’s technical product manager for Flash. A nice guy, really nice.
http://www.joelgethinlewis.com/ – amazing work using large scale light arrays
http://www.yesyesno.com
http://www.flamjam.com/ , http://hossgifford.com/ – Hoss is big into Simplifying the user experience. His moto is RTFM – “remove the f’ing manual”.
http://www.bmoreinteractive.com/ – site seems to be messed up- but Michael gave a presentation on the quick and dirty beginning of iPhone development, basically how it relates to ActionScript development. Interesting stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/phillipk – Phillip Kerman – one of the “wackier” speakers- is an AS3 developer, but talks mostly about video production, and how to make it more efficient and affordable, from creating scripts and ideas, through production and publishing
http://gskinner.com – Grant Skinner – another ActionScript genius-
http://gskinner.com/talks/things/ – his lecture slides
http://gskinner.com/talks/as3workshop/ – as3 bootcamp notes
http://www.quasimondo.com/ – mad scientist
http://jadehopper.com/ – http://niquimerret.com/ – Flash accessibility expert
http://www.presstube.com/ – James Paterson is an artist, animator, AS3 guru- talked about power of OOP to control elements of Flash for any type of situation
http://www.sebleedelisle.com – Seb is an awesome mind and runs PluginMedia:
http://www.pluginmedia.net/
this game/site they created for a BBC kids show is amazing use of Flash and Papervision 3D:
http://www.pluginmedia.net/clients/bigandsmall/phase1c_release/game/
There are about 25 other speakers that you can find out about and find lisks to on :
http://flashbelt.com/#/speakers/
