sakri rosenstrom blog

May 18-19th in Kortrijk Belgium Europe’s biggest free multimedia event, Koen was kind enough to invite me to present alongside a cool list of speakers. This will be my second performance at the conference.

I’ll be doing an upgraded version of my FITC presentation : “Text Addiction”. I’ve renamed it to “Hot tips to improve your Text life”. The “Text Addiction” presentation was almost “too well organized” and focused on one “avenue”. This time I’ll be covering a broader range of text related topics relating to Flashplayer10. This includes the “vectorizing” I’ve been doing lately, text-effects with 3d and the drawing api, and aspects of the Text Engine and the Text Layout Framework.

Hope to see you there!

The inaugural edition of the Flash Bar mini-conference was a raging success! After months of planning, we were treated to a stellar list of speakers:

• Bartek from http://www.everydayflash.com/
• David from http://www.derschmale.com/
• and myself

Amongst the many highlights was this demonstration of liquid dynamics, a collaborated effort between David and Bartek:

The resident DJ treated us to a solid set, spinning a vast selection of styles ranging from Abba to Britney Spears. Unlike some of the sausage fests in previous conferences I’ve attended, the sound system was kept at an ideal volume, enabling a steady flow of conversation, and just enough backdrop for potential moments of silence.

During the award ceremony and closing raffle, we even managed to get a group shot in front of the main podium with all the organizers, sponsors, speakers and attendees:

I feel honored to have participated in this pioneering event, and look forward to a rich and colorful agenda of future dates!

Thursday morning, just as I was about to press “publish”, my swisscom *cough*RIPOFF*cough* connection CUT OFF. So, one day late, my highlights:

Sunday

• Step off the plane, get immediately ripped off by some dodgy taxi, good start! (When I say ripped off, I mean an expensive, yet scenic drive through Milan instead of the 5 minutes it took me on my way back )
• Arrive at hotel just after dinner was finished, but in time to meet the organizers and some of the guys. I think the ‘open mood’ for discussion (which prevailed the entire conference) kicked off here.
• Played a game of pool at the hotel bar… The Finnish/French alliance (Cyril and I) pretty much pwned and humiliated the Flemish/Italian one (Koen and Marco ) Good Times

Monday

• After the keynote I saw Michael Labriolas “Dense and Hot: An Introduction to your applications start up”. I had read some rave reviews about his presentation in Atlanta, and the session (to be honest) did get me quite Dense and HOTT . I’d say it was the most entertaining presentation of the entire conference, but also amongst the most informative. Michael put some fairly complex ideas into easily digestible slides… thumbsup!
• I also saw Marco and his Colleague Mattia give a talk about the combination of Flex and Ajax. Ajax isn’t really my cup of tea, but connecting to the html/js side of things is necessary from time to time. I found this a useful and well prepared session.
• Following the sessions, I spent the rest of the day in my hotel room, polishing up my own presentation. And when I say polishing up my own presentation I mean working on one ridiculous example…

Tuesday

• My own presentation. I was quite happy with what I had prepared, I had already test driven it once at nascom. What I wasn’t ready for was the 600×400 resolution on the beamer With awaiting eyes on me, live, I actually edited y positions of display objects to make my examples somewhat intelligible. This kind of screwed my flow, but I got some positive feedback later on so I guess I managed… like I said, anyone can deliver slides, it takes a REAL MAN to jump back and forth from Powerpoint to Flexbuilder, and actually do some coding in between :D. Thanks cyril for the photo (above)
• If I felt bad about my troubles, such feelings quickly vanished while enjoying Neil Webbs Cairngorm presentation. Neil had no technical difficulties. As a matter of fact his presentation was quite brilliant, and very very funny, only, it seemed I was the only one laughing at his jokes Truly, I’ve never seen such good humor fall on deaf ears… cultural differences I suppose
• Tuesday night was well spent at the hotel lobby. They stopped serving drinks, but the conversation flowed… I don’t think I’ll ever forget Tomislav Pokrajcic and his “Croatian Saying”

Wednesday

• I was disappointed by the cancellation of Ivan “the Mars Spider” Zambanellos presentation. With a name like “Mars Spider”, who wouldn’t be disappointed? This was easily made up for by Rostislav Hristovs presentation about SWFAddress. I will certainly be looking at SWFAddress and his examples again, particularly the wordpress example. And, thanks for the T-Shirt!!!
• In the afternoon I checked out Christo Jolif talking about the ILOG Elixir components. It was very nice to see him do some live coding. The products are rock solid. A little expensive. But rock solid.
• Dan Thomas was The final speaker of the conference… This turned out to be a fantastic presentation. It started off with Dan just listing “best practices”. I’m not sure if it was 100% intentional, but the presentation turned into a kind of an open forum, lead and moderated by Dan. Lots of great input from Neil, Robin, Michael and Sam

As promised, my slides and examples can be downloaded from here (warning, 16 megs, apologies for not optimizing my ppt images).

HUUUUUUUUGE thanks to both John and Tom, you guys ROCK!!!

All in all, I learned a lot, made a lot of new contacts and I hope to see all of you again at random occasions at random locations

I’ve been listed on the homepage for a while now, I finally penned the “blurb” to my presentation which is :

Invalidation Routines, Pounded into your cranium once and for all!

The Flex Framework Invalidation Routines are a core tool in a visual component authors kit. This is a relatively small topic, yet, one often skimmed through, frequently misunderstood, or worse, entirely ignored. This presentation will go through the basics in a comprehensive manner, then dig deeper into the details and follow up with several real world examples, with an underlying emphasis on the common battles between designers and developers. The goals are to appreciate the mechanism, how and when to use it, and furthermore to understand where things can go wrong. “Invalidation Routines, Pounded into your cranium once and for all!” is targeted at developers dealing with visual components, from entry to mid level, but will hopefully also contain some gems for the seasoned veteran.

I have to say I’m really looking forwards to this! The topic might sound a little dry (what flex topics don’t? ), but I’ve already got a bunch of ideas to liven it up and hopefully produce a memorable presentation. The reason I picked the topic is simple: Flex has people coming from the developer world and from the flash world, the invalidation routines are alien to both It’s not rocket science, but a ‘must know’.

See you there