Last Friday (May 7th) I took the day off from work and did what I am sure a lot of you do, went to a day long technology conference. Yes, I know how to party. But not just any tech conference, this was Flash Camp… put on by the good people over at Universal Mind.
When I signed up for Flash Camp, I had no idea what to expect. Mostly for some reason, I pictured a day long session of going through various tutorials in a classroom type setting. This was not the case. Rather, the entire day was listening to a series of speakers on a dizzying variety of topics. In fact, I and every other person in attendance (60-ish) could have made it through the entire day without our precious Mac’s (& I think I saw a few PC’s too, this is Seattle).
Nerds
The event was held at Adobe’s Seattle office complex and the parts of the complex I saw were awesome… outstanding venue! And that’s saying a lot… my day job is in the Starbucks HQ building and it’s pretty freakin’ sweet too.
From there, the speakers came, one after the next. Some were good, some were not so good and if you are interested in the specifics, here is a list of speakers and topics. A strange thing happened though… the speakers and topics that were the most interesting and engaging had mostly nothing to do with Flash at all. In fact, the guys who talked about User Experience & Design were probably the best of the day. Two stood out, Carl Smith & Christian Saylor. The most valuable pieces of information I got out of this day long session came from these two guys and their approach and advice to design, website usability, and how to properly engage both your customers (as a designer / developer) and your site visitors.
I’ll end the post with this. I am not sure if Flash Camp was actually worth my $150-ish entry fee + day of vacation time (I only get 5 weeks per year). However, they did offer a little piece of compensation in return. Door prizes. There were 5 or 6 door prizes to be had. The catch… you had to stay until the very last minute to be eligible to get one of these door prizes, and well, I happened to be one of the lucky winners. And just what were the door prizes you ask… well, there was some cool stuff…
#1 – Adobe CS5 Master Collection (value = $2600)
#2 – Adobe Flash Builder (value = $700)
and some not so cool stuff…
#3 – #6 A Universal Mind Hat (value = the pain and misery of having come so close to winning one of the 1st two prizes). Below is the outcome.
My New Hat
Gregg – http://richterwebdesign.com