Once again 360|Flex is packed with great presenters and a wide range of topics. Enough that it makes it hard to pick which sessions to attend during just about every session block.

I’m screwed right off the bat. I would love to attend Jonathan Campos‘ half day training on Sunday about AIR for Android and after that  Ben Garney is doing a PBE ( Push Button Engine ) 101 half day session but I’ll be doing my own all day session on Flex 101. Hopefully I’ll have time to pester Jonathan and Ben into going over their material with me before the conference is over.

The keynote is certainly not to be missed. Doug McCune is talking and Nate Beck will be in the audience. ‘Nuff said. Plus some lucky attendee will be winning $599 – cost of conference admission – sometime that morning.

It’s a little tough sometimes figuring out what a session is all about by the short title given in the schedule PDF. Once at the conference we’ll have better descriptions to go by. But solely based on titles I’ll start off after lunch by catching Jesse Warden talk about How to Launch a Small Software Project. Jesse always puts on a good show even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about  . . . I kid. :)

In the 1:30 block I’ll catch Jeff Tapper talking about What’s getting under your skin. I’ve been to a few of Jeff’s sessions before and he’s always well prepared. Plus Flex 4 skinning is full of nuances and I’m sure I’ll pick up something new from him.

I have my first coin toss in the 2:50 block. I’m not sure what Inversion of Control is but it’s a 100 level session being delivered by Jeff Roberts so maybe I’ll understand it. But I also want to catch Antonio Holguin talking about Your AIR App is Boring.

The day ends with a general session from Ben Stucki about The Art of Computer Science. Ben is a wildly intelligent and creative guy. I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say.

On day two I’m super excited about the general session that kicks the day off. Antonio Holguin on Mobile UX: It’s About The User.

During the 10:50 block I’ll catch David Ortinau on The Invaluable Freelance Flasher. I’m not sure the subject matter applies to my career much anymore but if nothing else I need to be there to lend David support since this is his first time speaking at 360Flex.

I have another coin toss to make for the 1:30 block. I’m going to be working a lot with GPS soon so it would be useful to catch Ryan freaking Stewart on Geolocation and mapping with the Flash Platform. But Nate Beck is also giving a  PBE ( Push Button Engine ) talk at the same time.

I’m speaking myself during the 2:50 block about SWFAddress and Google Analytics. Otherwise I’d be stuck with another coin toss between Eric Fickes Screw HTML5, make cool shit with AIR and Jeremy Saenz Building Tools for Push Button Engine – Flex Gangsta Style.

Looks like it well be an early day for me because the General Session – The Great Framework Debate – is of no use to me. I have my own framework. Not much interested in any others. Besides, I wouldn’t understand anyways with everyone tossing words around like Interfaces, mediators, singletons, blah, blah, blah. It’s all Greek to me.

Closing out the conference on Wednesday I’ll probably start the day off in Michael Labriola’s Flex 4 Components from the Firehose or Andrew Trice Letting The Data Tell It’s Own Story.

Someone – John Wilker – needs to be smacked for putting two framework sessions in the same block at 1:30. Not that I’m going to use either Mate or Swiz but I might glean something from them that I can use to beef up my personal framework. Probably doesn’t matter. I’ll end up in Garth’s Decrapping Your Flex App before the block is up anyway.

I’ll probably end the conference in Huyen Tue Dao’s Typography + Text Editing in the Text Layout Framework.

So that’s the plan for now. Hope to see you there.

If you use use the 360Flex ad on the left to register for 360Flex in DC then you will automatically be registered in a drawing to get a full refund for your ticket. During the keynote on the first day of the conference I will randomly pick a name from those who registered via the ad and give that person a check for $599. ( Must be present to win – duhhh. )

Addendum: If I don’t get less than 12 people to sign up through this ad this then there won’t be a drawing. I’ll just give each person who did register through this ad the $50 that I make from the sales.

How it works
I get $50 for each person who signs up using the ad. So I only need to get 12 people to register in order to break even. So your incentive would be to use the link but not tell anyone. Because the more people who sign up the less your chances of winning. However, my hope is that I’ll make enough money to start a scholarship fund for the next 360Flex conference. I would like to be able to pay for a young person, who is just getting into the software development, to attend 360Flex. You know, someone less fortunate than ourselves. Like maybe an HTML5 developer – I kid. :)

Seriously, let everyone know about this contest and help me introduce someone to the Flex community at the 360Flex conference after DC. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll work this out – because I don’t know what my budget will be – but I’m not looking to make money with this contest. I promise I will find some way to give it back to the community. And I’ll report back here exactly what is done with all the money.

Join the list below
I would like to list the people who have registered so send me an email if you would like me to include your name below – after you register please. And yes, I will double check with John Wilker on the registrations. :)

Lets say you won an all expenses paid trip to one conference in 2010. Which would it be? There’s certainly a great lineup to consider.

• 360Flex, March 7-10 in San Jose ( passed )
• Adobe MAX, October 24-27, Los Angeles
• CFUnited, August 12-15 in the DC Metro area
• FlashAndTheCity, May 14-16 in NY City
• Flash on the Beach, probably sometime in the Fall, Brighton UK
• RIAdventure, probably in the Fall, somewhere on a cruise ship
• FITC, April 25-27, Toronto
• RIAUnleashed 2010, Boston ( sometime in November )

I’m sure there are others but that seems to hit the highlights.

Most important aspect?
Realistically the determining decision for choosing a conference probably comes down to time and money. But if we ignore those then what? To me it’s hanging out with the other attendees. I work from home, alone, with Twitter my only connection to my peers. So getting to hang out with a bunch of people much like myself is better that Christmas.

The session topics are a distant second. That’s because I only attend a few sessions. Why bother? They are almost always going to be available online after the conference so I play hooky and hang out with people instead.

With that in mind I think I’m going to choose the RIAdventure. If that ship sails again I’ll be on it.

How about you? What is the deciding factor in attending a conference?

It wouldn’t be a 360Flex wrap if I didn’t give out my Lego Vagina award for the most Flextastic or Actionscripty new something-or-another.

The three nominees for this conference are:

The Flex 4 framework
Lets put it this way: The Flex 4 framework is still in beta and yet many people are already saying, “Remember back in the Flex 3 days how we …” The component/skinning of Flex 4 is just amazing. But that’s not all. We have all new effects and transitions and . . . wait for it . . . STATES that don’t suck ryno-ass.

The new Flash Text Engine
Matt Guest did a great job in his session showing off the power and simplicity of the FTE. The FP engineers deserve huge kudos for their efforts. The best I can describe FTE is that it’s like PixelBender for text. I think the only limitation with Flash and Text is now our imaginations.

Push Button Engine
PBE is a new open source modular gaming engine and framework. Nate Beck showed us the goods in his session and I think everyone would agree – WOW! Power and simplicity meet finger-tips. I can’t wait to get busy with it.

The winner is:

PBE!!!

All three are hugely deserving. The only problem is that I have come to expect wowing new things from the Flex framework team and Flash Player engineers. But PBE came out of nowhere. I can’t wait to finish up a few projects and get busy with PBE. I gots some ideas. gonna have some fun.

If you’re wondering lego vagina is an inside joke that goes back to the original 360Flex conference. Nuf’ said.

Dinner with legends
I’ve never had more fun and learned less at a 360Flex conference before. I had a great, GREAT, time because there were so many amazing people there. I had dinner with Jessy Warden, Ben Stucki, and Doug McCune. That alone is worth the price of admission. :) I know these guys are legends in the community but in person they are just like everyone else working their way through life. So more than hanging out and talking about code and frameworks it was great to talk about things like religion. ( What happens at 360Flex stays at 360Flex. )

I may be synthetic but I’m not stupid
I think the reason didn’t learn much – at the sessions anyway – is that I’m a much more mature developer now than I was at the first three 360Flex conferences that I attended. And I’ve been working with Flex 4 now for 5-6 months solid so there wasn’t anything there I didn’t already know. I didn’t even learn anything new in Deepa’s session which I didn’t think possible. I feel pretty good about myself in that respect.

Best sessions
There were two sessions that I learned a lot from. Matt Guest talked about the new Flash Text Engine for the Flash Player. I’ve messed with TextLayoutFormat ( TLF ) a bit but haven’t touched the FTE at all. I think the best way to describe FTE is that it is like PixelBender for text. We now have access and control of text on a resolution never drempt of before.

The other eye popping session was Nate Beck’s Push Button Engine presentation. I think PBE is going to be at least as important to the Flash Platform as PaperVision3D was/is. You better strap yourself in because Flash games are about to go off the charts.

Speaking virgin
I got to speak for the first time ever at a conference. There weren’t very many people in my session but I was very happy to make them all laugh more than once and I got a very resounding applause at the end. All the feedback was very positive. I think my speaking and presentation skills have lots of room for improvement but I’m happy with my first attempt.

Impressions
My best friend from high school – Tom Driggers/@EyeOfTheOwl – was there. One of the cool moments for me was in the lobby after the keynote address by Deepa. I walked past her in the lobby. She called me by name and said she wanted to talk to me later. Tom looked at me with a bit of amazement and said, “Wow, she knows who you are?” My response, “Well, Duh!” :)

By the way Deepa: Be thankful that I was late getting to your session. But you won’t be so lucky next time I promise . :)

( Getting lost )²
It was an adventure staying at the Marriott in downtown San Jose. On Monday morning me @DavidOrtinau and @EyeOfTheOwl got a little lost. Correction. My passengers were lost. I knew we were going in the wrong direction but they had GPS on their side so I mistakenly followed their directions. Seems that brilliant Mr. Ortinau didn’t realize that there was more than one eBay in town. Long story short we ended up at the wrong one. I was careful to point that out to my navigators on numerous occasions throughout the rest of our stay.

Then, to top it off, I got just slightly lost on the way to drop @DavidOrtinau @AllysonOrtiz and @Oztune off at the airport. I got off the interstate at the wrong exit and then they kept giving me directions on how to fix it. But no one was consulting their GPS. Again, here we are in the middle of SJ and there are three GPS devices in the car and no one is using them. Brilliance!

Kudos to Nick Kwiatkowski/@Quetwo. We never got lost with him working the GPS.

Summer Camp
As a speaker I get a free room so I shared it with @DavidOrtinau and @Quetwo. I normally like to sleep on the floor so it was no big deal. Then with less that a week before the conference we managed to swing a free ticked for my best friend Tom. So he got piled into the mix as well. Four geeks in one room. It was like summer camp.

Lets do it again
I don’t know when the next 360Flex will be but I plan on being there. It’s just too much fun to miss. Hanging out with old friends. Making new friends. Great times. Great conversations and getting to learn a few new things. Yeah, that’s worth the time and money. No question.

Lego Vagina
If you’re interested in what the most wowing new thing at 360Flex was then read about who gets the Lego Vagina award.