Therefore, we decided to take a different approach.  Rather than have rehashed presos and talks about specific products, what if we took it to a higher level?  What if we talked about the future of RIA?  Who would we want leading that discussion?

Two people immediately jumped into my mind when I asked myself that question.  I quickly hit them up on instant messenger to get their initial thoughts.  They caught onto the concept gave a tentative yes.  Now, after checking their schedules, they’ve given the thumbs up to participating.

We’re happy to announce that Doug McCune and Ryan Stewart will be joining us as the first two speakers at the RIAdventure 360 conference.

Doug McCune is one of those amazing tinkerers.  Everyone and their grandma can hatch an idea.  Very few people have the skillset to hatch an idea and make it a reality.  Even fewer have the knowledge and abilities to make it a reality in a matter of days.  Doug is one of those people.  We’re looking forward to hearing how he leverages other people’s work to accomplish new and amazing things in a short amount of time.  He’ll also give input on where RIA should go to enable him to do even greater things.

Ryan Stewart was once THE RIA blogger.  Before Adobe wisely swept him up, Ryan was crisscrossing the country to find all the coolest players in the RIA Space.  If you wanted to know about what was the latest and greatest was in the RIA Space, you just had to hit up Ryan’s blog and you’d be in the know.  We’re offering Ryan a chance to return to his roots.  Adobe has narrowed his focus, but we know that the entire RIA space still runs through his veins.  Once Ryan puts his finger back on that RIA pulse, it’ll be interesting to see what he finds and where he thinks things are heading.

Stay tuned to the speakers page to find out the latest about our speakers.  If you have an idea for a speaker, don’t hesitate to contact us to let us know.

This time we’ve got a little bit of room to maneuver. We’ve got two passes we can give to 360|MAX speakers. These are NOT full conference passes, and we can’t cover hotel or anything. But for those in the SoCal area that can’t afford to attend MAX this might be a nice option!

We’re taking sponsorships as well this year, so prospective sponsors should email us so we can set something up. Sponsorship is limited to 4 sponsors.

We’ve also got some cool things we’ll be raffling off, like a Flex Builder license

The call for papers is open!

go to the 360|MAX topic submission site and submit your topic! Don’t worry, if you submit a topic and it only has three votes. Voting is only part of the equation, Tom and I still control the content, so gaming the system so you have 8,675.309 votes, won’t do any good on it’s own.

The voting site is simply to help Tom and I keep a pulse on the community we serve and see what ya’ll are interested in.

Tom and I have partnered with Josh Cyr (organizer of the last RIAdventure cruise) to bring RIAdventure360!

We’re going to be spending 7 days in early December cruising around the Western Caribbean  talking about RIAs and the future of the internet.

We’re getting a few speakers together to sort of help guide discussions. Since this is a cruise and all that, we don’t want it to be all structured and formal like a conference. What we’re going for is a more barcamp style event. The plan is we’ll get together during the 2 ‘at sea’ days, we’ve got a room with A/V and all that, there’ll be grub too of course and we’ll pick some topics and talk.

Our hope is the discussion ranges from the future of RIAs, mobile, server side technologies, whether Flash will ever be on the iPhone, etc :D

Stay tuned for more, but we’re locking some awesome folks down as our “speakers”

It’s a pretty sweet deal too, I might add, the price roughly works out to what you’d spend to attend most other conferences, and this is a cruise! Check out the ship and the cruise plan, then Register!

RSVP at http://360webinar.eventbrite.com

Friday, June 19th from 3:00-5:00 eastern time

Phone Conference: 1-877-220-5439 Meeting ID: 7194976 Password: 13792580

Connect Meeting: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/mboles

Description:
“Learn how to create custom event objects to dispatch data types of your choice. You will learn how to define the event using metadata, create a custom event class, then dispatch and handle that custom event.”

Sorry for the late notice on the blog, but if you attended his 101 course in Indy, you should’ve received an email earlier this week!

This morning, we got an email from Slideshare letting us know that Speaker Chadd Udell’s slide deck “Developers are from Mars, Designers are from Venus” was being features in the design section of Slideshare.

We just wanted to share this with everyone, since we think it’s kinda cool, and extend a congratulations to Chad. It’s supposed to be in the spotlight for “the next 16-20 hours” Check it out!

If there’s one you want and it’s not there, pester the speaker publicly, that usually helps :D If they pass it on, we’ll add it to the slideshare.

They’re all tagged ‘360flexindy’ for easy searching, here’s the Link to that Tag.

We didn’t do a super great job making sure everyone knew that the survey tool , which is our bad for sure, we’ll do better about that, sorry.

For those who did take the time to fill out surveys, we appreciate it, the speakers appreciate it, and we’re glad to be able to try to make it worth your while.

During lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday we did a raffle of survey results submitted so far. Their were 10 copies of Flex Builder which went to;

Dave Matchack, Mark Doberenz, Bryce Barrand, Sam Singer, Sherry Parisi, Joel Spriggs, Jay Hagenow, Arnold K. Young, Kris Arnold, and JD Schrock

Congrats to you guys, you should be hearing from Adobe very soon. The awesome gal that handles this was putting on FlashCamp last week, so it’ll probably be this week.

We also announced that one lucky attendee would win a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection. The lucky winner of that bad boy of software was David Ortinau. Congrats David! We’re getting the media and figuring out how to deliver it (it’s not a small download!)

We also had a copy of Fusion Reactor to give away and that went to Thomas Wilson

We also had a license of Flextras to give out, and two copies of Snagit and Camtasia.

Into Mobile? Looking at other RIA technologies? Check out InsideMobile and InsideRIA!

What went right

• Bug quash: They didn’t have the turn out they had hoped for, but I know some bugs got quashed, so that’s a plus.
• Pre-Conference training: It’s always a pleasure to have Matt Boles with us, this time he took his own time and travel to come and deliver an awesome Flex 101 hands on. What was cool is that while it was “Flex 101″ Matt upped the Anti with some Blaze DS action, so it was a good class for even experienced developers.
• Welcome Reception and Speaker Sponsor reception: The Rock Bottom Brewery was an awesome location. I really liked it. The food was tasty, the beer yummy, the people nice. The parties are fun and challenging. Tom and I want to make sure they don’t suck but also want to make sure to meet as many people as we can and thank them for coming. That meant being “Gatekeepers” of the drink tickets, keeping the Rock Band action going, making sure if we ran out of food, that more was ordered, etc. AND walking around saying hi to people.
• Monday’s Keynote: Matt Chotin is awesome. He’s a great speaker and makes the keynotes funny and informative.  It’s always a pleasure to have him at 360|Flex!
• Charity Code Jam: It almost didn’t happen. Like literally the week before 360|Flex Indy, we were helping Ali and Shannon lock down the details, etc. While we wish we could actually support it fully, we can’t, so we’re really glad someone (webapper) stepped up to help out! The Charity Code jam is just one of those things that feels good. After so many hours of coding non stop, missing sessions, missing the sun, etc. to stand in front of the entire conference to show off what you’ve accomplished, is just awesome. Hats off to everyone who participated, and Ali for organizing it. I really truly hope a company (Adobe! Are you listening! This is HUGE) hires Ali to organize jams at every confernce.
• Monday night party: We did all our evening events at Rock Bottom, which made it easier for folks to know where to be and when. Same awesome time as Sunday, Rock Band going nuts, folks grabbing a booth to chat, and meet.
• Wednesday keynote: I love the Wednesday keynote. Sunday and Monday Tom and I work the reg booth, so we meet everyone that comes in, but it’s only for a few seconds usually. We see everyone at lunch, and the parties too, but inevitably there’s people we just never get to connect with. I see the Wednesday keynote as the time to connect with everyone (everyone that is awake that is, LOL). We talk about numbers (something I frankly challenge all other conferences to do), we talk about the code jam, we let community members present their projects, it’s just a great time for Tom and I too look ou at the crowd and see our customers/friends/drinking buddies and really appreciate why we do it. Without sounding corny, the Wednesday keynote really helps refocus Tom and I on why we’re in this business.
• Our Sponsors! They’re awesome and each one deserves your business. Check them out, see what they have to offer. Without Sponsors 360|Flex would be impossible to offer.
• Our Speakers! 40+ of the biggest names in the Flex development community. People who are launching open source projects, offering consulting services, and just sharing what they know and what they’ve learned to help everyone else. Our speakers are awesome!

What went less than right

• Pre-Conference training: We only had one offering this time. I wish more companies would get involved in this. It’s a great way to educate a huge group of possible users of your tool, and get your name out there in front of a ton of people who might not otherwise investigate your offering.
• Monday Keynote: One of these days I hope to have the check in process so under control that we’re either done by the time the keynote is supposed to start, or able to leave the desk for a bit. My wife Nicole rocks for helping, she’s invaluable, but I wouldn’t leave alone with you monsters :) I think the only keynote I’ve done on a Monday might have been Seattle maybe? Or San Jose ‘07? I want to do more of those.
• Monday Keynote content: We forgot to address “House keeping” items, like the OPEN slots being filled, the session survey being ready by Monday afternoon, etc.
• Tuesday night party: Officially it was the “Adobe Party” but that was name only. I don’t know if it’s a curse or what, but when it’s an “Adobe Party” it’s kinda weak. Usually it’s our fault, not Adobes. This time was no exception, I selected the food I thought would be a nice fit, and would last. Unfortunately it didn’t last, and unlike previous nights, there was no food to be ordered since the restaurant was packed because of a concert, there was not extra food to be had. Party Fail :(
• Session Surveys: the app rocks, but it wasn’t ready in time, and we had a hard time conveying it’s importance and how to use it.

Overall 360|Flex Indy was a huge success! Tom and I are very proud of the event, and extremely happy to have had everyone with us, we appreciate that there’s several options out there for technical conferences, and appreciate the faith, and hope we delivered, and we’ll see you next time. Please make sure if you haven’t already, tell us what we did wrong, and right, and spread the word. Word of mouth is more valuable to us, than anything else.

If you’re in the Mobile space, check out our InsideMobile event. If you’re looking at the RIA space (uh yeah, Flex developers, hello) check out our InsideRIA event. Both events are partnerships with O’Reilly, and we’re really excited about them!

The survey tool on your USB drives or downloadable here, not only enters you into the drawing for CS4 Master Collection, but also helps speakers to improve and provides valuable feedback for them and us.

If you went to a session and didn’t do a survey, come on dig deep and take 1.28 minutes (tops) to fill out the survey.

“Think of the children.”

FlashCamps are an awesome low cost way to get a ton of content form some heavy hitters in the field in your local area. Didn’t make it to 360|Flex Indy? Well for you Floridians, this will be a good way to learn some stuff in your local area. Tom and I know Andy and the team organizing the event, very stand up guys, so you won’t be dissappointed.

Don’t miss out, Adobe is making a big announcement! There’s a copy of CS4 Master Collection ($1,000,000 value) up for grabs as well. Go register, you won’t regret it.