Flex Camp
December 12, 2008
8am-5pm
Bentley College, Waltham

Flex

Sponsors

Adobe Systems

Universal Mind

Flex Camp Boston is a full-day event featuring some top industry experts on Adobe Flex and AIR from both inside and outside Adobe. Come advance your Flex skills, meet members of the Adobe Flex team and network with local companies and fellow developers. Sessions will be geared towards developers with moderate to advanced level of experience with Flex and/or ActionScript. There will be plenty of giveaways, raffles and swag (and lunch).

Thanks for Another Great Year! Looking Forward to 2009!

Thanks to everyone for attending Flex Camp Boston 2008 despite the horrible weather. The turnout was excellent and we had another great event! I am looking forward to hopefully hosting a Flex Camp Boston 2009 late next year. Stay tuned to this site for updates.

If you didn't attend, here are some testimonials from our attendees to consider for next year's event:

Just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know that FlexCampBoston 2008 was AWESOME!!!

Last year was incredible and I figured that it could not be outdone.  I was wrong.  I cannot think of a better use of $30 or the day!  Last year I drove out to Boston at 3:30am (I live in Upstate NY) and there was a snowstorm that hit late in the day – My drive home was 6 hours.  People ask me if it was worth it and I responded “oh yes”.  Last year’s FlexCampBoston2007 presentations by Joe Berkovitz and Tim Walling were outstanding.  Some of the coolest stuff I have ever seen.  BUT… in 2008 I was stunned again.

I drove out to Boston in the middle of the “big ice storm”, once again to people calling me crazy.  Well, FlexCampBoston2008 was worth the time and money and treacherous travel.  The sneak peek at Flex 4 by Christophe Coenraets  and the merapi presentation by Andrew Powell were excellent.  I think everyone in the room was wowed by the material presented.  I know I came away completely energized and raring to go!  The quality of the presenters, the excellent subject matter, and the interesting and accomplished attendees make FlexCampBoston a “Must Attend” event.  I cannot wait for FlexCampBoston2009!

Congratulations on yet another great job!

Rich Bark
www.1webguru.com

This year's Flex Camp was great!  I was surprised by the attendance during the snow storm.  It was also a great way to meet up with some friends while learning the latest happenings with Flex.  I particularly enjoyed Christophe's session about sneak peek of Flex 4.

Ashish Patel

Flex Camp Boston gave me an opportunity to network with the growing Flex community around Boston while getting up to date information on the future of Flex from Adobe. While most sessions were focused on business applications, the Mashup and Merapi talks reminded me that you can have fun with Flex.

Daniel Rinehart
http://danielr.neophi.com/

FlexCamp is a great excuse to spend a day away from the office in Boston and geek out - especially if Flex is not something that you work with as part of your day job.  With a variety of topics discussed at different skill levels, there's sure to be something to peek your interest. And at less than $50 - how can you beat it?  Where else are you going to see something like an AIR application remote controlling a robot!?

Nichole Smith

I was amazed by the power and easy in which Live Cycle synchronizes data across the application and multiple clients.  My thoughts were racing with ideas on how we could use this technology to build better applications in a fraction of the time.

Devin Nial

Flex Camp Boston 2008 was great: we heard about upcoming changes in the Flex world as well as best practices for today from Adobe engineers and expert practitioners in the field. Christophe Coenraets’ (Adobe) talk on Flex 4 and model driven development in the next version of LCDS was one example of what’s new on the horizon. And Brian O’Connor’s (Universal Mind) talk dealt with tips and best practices for today on using Flex and Cairngorm with LCDS. The other talks were equally valuable, providing insights into Gumbo, unit testing, Flex and Cold Fusion, Merapi, AIR, and creating mashups!

Danton Chin

The most interesting session for me was the MERAPI session. We are considering putting a Flex/AIR frontend on our java API and we wondering how this could be done. MERAPI might be the solution. The keynote was also interesting, especially the description of Catalyst. We have a similar problem - many of our users are not programmers, but they do need to add simple event processing to the GUIs we create. I really want to see what UI Adobe came up with in Catalyst to enable event programming by non-programmers. Too bad Catalyst is still in the "We can show you but we'd then have to shoot you" stage of development.

Denis Hanson

With the understanding that Flex Camp Boston is quickly becoming Mecca for experts in RIA's that leverage Adobe technologies like Flex and AIR, it was clear to me that I had to be there. I am an entrepreneur in the process of bringing together a team to drive development of an exciting new enterprise application. Flex Camp gave me the perfect opportunity to connect with the kinds of highly-skilled people I need on my team. I made new connections with several developers who are interested in joing the new venture. Flex Camp Boston was awesome.

Jim Idelson

Flex Camp was a great experience for me. Rubbing shoulders with so many different people helped me to find out that the answers to questions I didn’t even know I had! I found out how to use the debugger in FlexBuilder from one of the people at my table, and also found out about the Flex Show and various other Flex sites. I’m also going to start using Fluint, as I found Jeff’s presentation very helpful. Flex Camp, combined with the work I have done in the last week, has taken my skills to a new level.

Louise Rains

Flex Camp Boston 2008 was really good. The meeting room was beautiful, and the speakers and lunch were good. The best presentation for me was the second one, on the FLUINT Flex testing framework. As a result of learning about what FLUINT can do, our company is going to try downloading FLUINT and setting up some automated tests.

Mitch Gart

Mike Nimer's presentation about unit testing got me thinking about unit testing and other software development habits and patterns that I keep hearing about and haven't really explored yet. I went to the library on Sunday to look up Unit Testing and brush up on other good practices.

Brendan Kidwell

Overall, Flex Camp Boston 2008 was a priceless experience. Sure, driving 450 miles over 9 hours in the pouring rain/sleet from Maryland to Massachusetts was no fun, but the speakers and information made available made it all worth it. My favorite topic by far was Andrew Powell’s presentation on Merapi. I can see some of the things he is doing being of great benefit to some of the projects I’m working on. His AIR controlled robot was certainly a crowd pleaser as well. The Flex 4 preview was nothing to sneeze at either.  I can’t wait for Flex 4 to hit the shelves so I can make use of the new features it offers. I really hope he finds his funding needed for the project. I also did some great networking while I was in Waltham. I met up with Blaine Bradbury from Dallas, TX at my hotel and we had a great time with Brian Rinaldi, Chris Diller and the entire Universal Mind crew at the Watch Street Brewery after the conference. They truly made us feel welcome and I look forward to seeing them again at future conferences. Thanks again guys!

Jim Leether

I attended the camp and have the black T-shirt with fire on it and white T-shirt from Universal Mind to show for it.  The pizza was good. My favorite sessions were Andrew Powel discussing flex-java bridges (i.e. the robot demo) and the presentation from Tim Buntel talking about future releases.

Yanjun Lou

Flex Camp Boston 2008 Information for attendees

Thank you for registering for Flex Camp Boston 2008. We are very excited that the event is nearly here. This post contains a link to the parking permit PDF and some important registration information, so please read on. First, I wanted to take a moment and thank both Adobe and Universal Mind for their sponsorship; without them this event would not have been possible.

Also, if you know anyone who was still hesitating on attending, there are still seats available, so direct them to register today!

  1. Check-in begins tomorrow at 8am and the event officially begins at 8:30.
  2. For those of you who purchased multiple tickets, please forward this email to the other attendees. They should check in under the name of the person who purchased the tickets.
  3. Please print out the parking permit PDF and place this on your dashboard when you park at Bentley in the morning.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to email me. I look forward to meeting as many of you as I can tomorrow!

Download the parking permit PDF: http://www.flexcampboston.com/assets/content/Parking.pdf

Event: Flex Camp Boston 2008

Date: Friday, December 12, 2008 from 8:00 AM - 5:00 AM (ET)

Location:
Bentley College
175 Forest Street
Waltham, MA 02452

Flex Camp Boston is This Friday - Tickets Still Available!

If you are a Flex and AIR programmer in the Northeast, you don't want to miss this event! Tickets are still available, so register today!

Win Great Prizes at Flex Camp

Here is a list of just some of the prizes we will be giving away at Flex Camp Boston:

Last Day for 25% off Flex Camp Boston

Today is the last day of the early bird registration price of $30 for Flex Camp Boston (as of midnight tonight the price goes to $40), so register now! Some highlights of Flex Camp Boston 2008 include:

For more on our sessions, see the full agenda. O'Reilly has also generously donated a bunch of books to giveaway including copies of the brand new AIR 1.5 Cookbook signed by the author. I am currently working with the Flex team and our speakers to get more details of upcoming sessions and lots more giveaways (including, *hopefully*, some Gumbo / Catalyst preview discs). Lunch and parking are free with registration.

Register today!

Win Tickets to 360|Flex Indy at Flex Camp Boston

Tom and John just announced their next 360|Flex event will be held in Indianapolis on May 18 - 20th, 2009. They have also generously offered a ticket to this event for two lucky attendees of Flex Camp Boston 2008! Flex Camp Boston already has great speakers lined up and we are continuing to fill out our agenda with more details about each session. We are also continuing to get exciting giveaways like this one, so look for more to come. Flex Camp Boston is a full day event for only $30, but hurry because the price will go up to $40 on December 1st and we still expect to sell out again! So, register now!

If you can't wait to see if you are a lucky winner of the 360|Flex event ticket, they plan to open registration following MAX. If I were you, I would keep my eye out as the first set of 100 tickets goes for the low, low price of $199!

Registration is open!

As of this afternoon, we have opened up early bird registration for Flex Camp Boston 2008! You can now purchase tickets at the early bird rate of $30. This price includes all speakers, lunch and free parking as well as the various swag and giveaways we plan on having. After December 1st, the registration price will go up to $40. Keep in mind that this event sold out in under a month last year, so don't hesitate and buy your tickets now!

We have already lined up a list of some of the top speakers from the top companies in Flex and AIR development. We are still working on supplying more details for our agenda but you can see it is going to be a "can't miss" event for Flex and AIR developers from beginners to advanced.

Special thanks to our sponsors, Adobe and Universal Mind, without whose support this event would not be possible.

Registration is via EventBrite at http://flexcampboston2008.eventbrite.com/.