Sessions & Workshops

Day 1	Day 2
Thursday Oct 15th Workshops Four half-day workshops	Friday Oct 16th Conference Full day of sessions running in two tracks

Thursday Oct 15th

Conference

Full day of sessions running in
two tracks

Thursday October 15th - Workshops

Morning Workshops: 9am - 12:30pm

Workshop 1: Beginning ActionScript 3.0: Wayne Lincoln; Want to learn ActionScript 3.0 from the ground up? This session is for you. It will start at the beginning answering questions like what is ActionScript, how do I use it, and where does it go again? We'll walk through some of the tools and best practices for getting started and progress to ActionScript basics like variables and functions, basic events and interaction, and working all the way to loops, objects, and arrays.

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Workshop 2: Flash Video and Flash Media Server

Michael Jovel

Deploying streaming video with Flash Media Server (FMS) has many advantages from more efficient bandwidth usage, faster start to playing video and enhanced digital right management. With the release of Flash Media server 3.5 have come new powerful capabilities including live DVR functionality, Dynamic Streaming, H.264 support and many others.

In this workshop you will be walked through the development process of creating a streaming video application from installation of FMS to project deployment. Additionally, participants will be guided through both client side and sever side APIs as well as the process of using FMS 3.5’s new capabilities like creating DVR like functionality with the ability to pause and rewind live video and multiple bitrate and bandwidth detection via dynamic streaming. Attendees will leave this session with an understanding of FMS works and how to implement in a project.

A laptop that can run windows -- either as the main OS or as a virtual machine -- is reccomended for this workshop.

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Afternoon Workshops: 1:30pm - 5:00pm

Workshop 3: iPhone Development for Flash Developers

Julian Dolce

Learning a new programming language, authoring environment and platform can be a scary thing, but it doesn't have to be if you have something to relate it back to. In this workshop Julian will demonstrate the process of creating iPhone applications using the IPhone SDK. We'll take a tour through the new tools used to create application, as well as, learn the basics of Objective-C. With each feature shown we'll try to relate or compare it back to things familiar to all of us in Flash and ActionScript.

By the end of the workshop attendees should feel confident to go and start learning how to create iPhone applications on their own.

Requirements:
In order to properly follow along please have a Intel based Mac laptop with the Apple Developer tools and Iphone SDK installed. (More details on where to get these tools will be sent out to workshop attendees prior to the workshop.)

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Workshop 4: Intermediate ActionScript 3.0: Josh Sager; Building on the Beginning ActionScript 3.0 session, we will continue our journey with ActionScript. The goal from this session is to approach development with thoughts of saving time, reusing code, and being more efficient. We'll do this by looking at basic Object Oriented Programming (OOP), writing classes, custom events, programatic animation, loading external content, and usage of debugging tools.

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No computers will be provided by Flashpitt for the workshops above. All attendees will need to provide their own laptop. Any laptop is okay, except for the iPhone workshop which requires an intel-based mac to install the needed tools.

Friday October 16th - Sessions

Flash and Web Standards: Getting Along on the Playground: Dan Mall; HTML and CSS have always been cordial. Over the past few years, you’ve even been comfortable enough to ask your parents if JavaScript could stay for dinner. But how you do play nicely with Flash without getting beat up after school? Often the black sheep, Flash has adopted a bad rap with standardistas. This presentation will show you how to harness appropriate and inventive uses of Flash’s power, but beware: it may soon become your new BFF.

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Creative Interactions: Flash Experiments

Josh Sager

This session will explore using everyday ActionScript differently. Using common interaction metaphors and applying them to alternative interaction techniques through the use of an external device and media server technologies. The session will focus on sharing the demos, experiments, tidbits, pitfalls, and source code of these creative solutions. It's intent is to inspire participants to start experimenting with their own creative interactions

Josh will cover using Red 5 Server, basic MIDI interaction, the Color Management System they've developed, and more. Along the way sharing pitfalls, source code, side experiments, etc.

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Hacking the Newsroom

Jer Thorp

In February, the New York Times announced that it was giving away the keys to 28 years of data - news stories, movie reviews, obituaries, and political statistics - all for free. Wether the dying gasp of an legendary institution, or the beginnings of an extraordinary rebirth, the release of this vast and historically significant information is a boon to data visualizers, entrepreneurs, social scientists and artists around the world. In this session, Jer will show a variety of work that he has produced using data from The New York Times and The Guardian newspapers.

He'll show how to access this information easily in Flash and Processing, and will share code samples to get you started in explorations of your own. Along the way, he'll attempt to examine how a new era of open data is affecting science, art, and design.

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Brewing Non-PC Flash Experiences

Scott Janousek

Flash now runs across over one billion devices. Scott Janousek, Adobe Community Expert for Mobile and Devices and co-author of "Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices", will cover what's new in the exciting world of Flash on the Non-PC realm. This session will include an overview of the latest tools, products, and services from Adobe that designers and developers can leverage to create compelling experiences across Non-PC device platforms (e.g. mobile phones, Mobile Internet Devices, and other Consumer Electronic Devices).

This Session Is For (Flash) Developers looking to hear about what's new in Flash Mobile and Devices What Attendees Will Walk Away With: A comprehensive overview of the Flash Mobile Platform, as well as discussion about real world projects.

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Plays Well with Others: Stacey Mulcahy; Learn to just get along in this session as we explore tips and tricks to help improve Designer/Developer workflow. Tools and techniques for both the developer and designer, along with workflow principles will be discussed to improve workflow efficiency. Designers and developers don't always speak the same language - ideally attendees will learn some approaches to ensure less is lost in translation between a concept and its execution.

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Developing MMOs on the ActionScript Platform

Max Kaufmann

Massively Multiplayer games are at the bleeding edge of Flash development. The paradigm is shifting away from Flash animators scripting lightweight minigames, and towards big development teams building large-scale MMOs.

Projects of this scale introduce a new set of challenges -- managing network latency, negotiating scalability problems, breaking up components for large teams, optimizing downloads and frame-rates, and identifying hard constraints for designers. "Developing MMOs on the ActionScript Platform" draws from our experience with PixieHollow and OMGPOP, and serves as a primer for developers interested in making everything from live multiplayer games to full-blown persistent worlds.

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Video Production on the Cheap

Phillip Kerman

If you want broadcast-quality HD videos so pure it's like drinking water then don't attend this session! But do attend if you're experienced in other media tools and still want to learn how to produce videos that powerfully communicate any idea you have. This session focuses on Premiere and AfterEffects and covers masking/compositing, motion tracking, keying, as well as offline production tricks and dubbing. I'll also discuss how detailed writing and efficient production planning help to deliver videos on time. While there's a great quality range between youtube and HDTV, there's a lot of room in between for creative folks (but not quite video pros) to produce effective videos. This session empowers non-video professionals.

This session draws from Phillip Kerman's experience producing one comedy video nearly every day over the past several months to become the hardest working user on youtube. (see youtube.com/phillipk)

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Odopod: Innovation and Storytelling: Odopod; Odopod is a digital agency in San Francisco with a thirst for innovation and storytelling that leads us to new places, where brands entertain, inform and engage. In this session, we will take a closer look behind the scenes of Odopod and how we built some of our most successful immersive projects. We'll also discuss ways in which Odopod approaches technical hurdles, how we operate in a collaborative team structure and uncover the process behind some of our biggest digital productions.

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iPhone Development for Flash Developers: Julian Dolce; Learning a new programming language, authoring environment and platform can be a scary thing, but it doesn't have to be if you have something to relate it back to. In this session Julian will demonstrate the process of creating iPhone applications using the IPhone SDK. We'll take a tour through the new tools used to create application, as well as, learn the basics of Objective-C. With each feature shown we'll try to relate or compare it back to things familiar to all of us in Flash and ActionScript.

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Work/Play: Seb Lee-Delisle; Seb share's his experience on the Papervision3D team and as Technical Director at Plug-in Media putting the fun back into digital, whether through Flash games, projects that involve the wider digital community, or public art installations (see Pyrotechnics for the People). For more information about Seb and his work see pluginmedia.net and sebleedelisle.com.

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Design, The Importance Of

Ian Coyle

We are now interaction designers, not web designers. Creating truly unique experiences involves a complex system of aesthetics, interaction, and a fundamental change in approach: design leads user experience and the designer is at the forefront of all strategic decisions.

To design better, we need to think better. This session discusses a new model for interaction, design thinking, process, and inspiration.

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Inspiration Ligthning Round: Whether it's something they've worked on recently that they're totally excited about and can't wait to do more of; something completely unrelated to their day-to-day work that has them inspired; or something else in between... It's all fair game for this session. Six speakers will each have 10 minutes to have their say on our theme of Inspiration.

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