Skaggs’ Lecture Hall Seating

One of the first tasks that Vox Pop Design was tasked with was creating a unique identity for the event. In addition to the requisite tech-event t-shirts the lecture halls in the University of Utah’s Skaggs Building would also need signage. (Despite being a wonderfully self-contained area the twin tracks of the event format would still require explanation.)

WordPress, unlike many places, already has a very well defined and public set of style guidelines. With those in mind I began with random sketching. This brainstorming allows me to play with shapes and characters before sinking scads of time into digital assets. After the concepts I had previously done for the Utah Social Media Awards, I knew that I wanted to avoid state silhouette and word bubble clichés.

Brainstorming in front of the TV

While I would eventually return to a campfire motif hinted at in the initial sketches I still was searching for different treatments. To that end I opened up my digital editors and began applying screen-printing type effects to recognizable Utah landmarks.

“Dinner Plate” Logo Concepts, with Event Hashtag

While Mt. Olympus and the Delicate Arch were striking and clearly were reminiscent of Utah they didn’t do much else; they didn’t imply anything regarding WordPress, the detail meant they would have problems scaling, there was about one or two colors more than I wanted to have to pay for with a tee print, etc. For straight up event logo they wouldn’t work. However, I can see the arch and mountain being a strong backing element on the signage.

With the geographical symbolism having turned into a dead end I returned to the campfire idea. It is compelling: to begin with, the event is called a camp and a campfires represent something for people to gather around, a source of enlightenment, and a place of warmth.

After my print round-up I had been playing with quick and dirty ways of approximating the mod style. With that technique and the campfire goal in mind I had a workable concept. With refinement in Inkscape I now had a before and after comparison:

Campfire Comparison, Initial and Final

For the final t-shirt design the three color design (white, black, and WordPress orange) needed to be further simplified to two colors for cost purposes. Like any good, iconic, piece of work the piece needs to work in grayscale. Rather than a high contrast black and white I chose, instead, to maintain the WordPress orange for the khaki/olive shirts. It gives the logo/type an eye-catching burst.

The final work, with the conference name using the Public Goth Square font from A2591.com:

What is your take? What would you have done differently?

Logo Colors Separated and Prepped for Screen Printing

Once again the NFL football season is upon us. So, too, is it almost time for arm chair quarterbacks, stat jockeys, and weekend web warriors to again join together in the most noble of fake sports, fantasy football. In the 2010 Fantasy Football Digital Creatives League teams are divided into two conferences of equal formidableness. The first is the Developer Conference. Their opposition is the Designer Conference.

This year’s teams feature both IDP (individual defensive player) and PPR (points per reception) scoring. Every week players will fill rosters of 14 players (7 offense and 7 defense). A total of 9 bench slots will be granted for a total team size of 23. Player drafts are tentatively set for the last Monday evening in August.

This year the Developer Conference fields a wild and crafty set of team managers. Not content with the usual statistical analysis certain players are believed to have been illegally goosing their lineups with the help of custom AI. If such rumors prove to be true it would be the biggest scandal since Kevin “Motormouth” Mitnick attempted to avoid a route during the 1995 season. His denial of service attack on the the fantasy football server is what actually landed him five years in prison.

The Teams of the Developer Conference

• Vox Pop Cabal – Managed by Matthew Reinbold, team Vox Pop (previously the Corybantic Cabal) returns to defend its championship title from last year. Do they have the roster savvy to prove that last years stellar second-half run to the trophy wasn’t just a fluke?
• The Sacks – ColdFusion developer and SLCFUG leader David McGuigan joins the Digital Creatives League for the first time after tiring at so easily winning with lesser competition. His focus is so accute he has never seen a single Star Wars film. Will his hot streak, and contempt for George Lucas, continue?
• RealEyes BSDs – Hailing from the calm, cold rarefied air of Denver comes Joshua Lucero, a Flash Media Server specialist. He is playing for the honor of RealEyes Media. How exactly RealEyes was slighted in days of yore is uncertain but winning the coveted championship would go a long way toward making people forget the unremembered thing… with the guy… that time.
• StupidShiz – Michael Armstrong is a pillar of development at Salt Lake City’s MasterControl and the roguish friend you wished you’d always had. Which is to say that if you get on his bad side he’ll cut you with his mind. You’ve been warned.
• Fantasy Decrypters – Deep within the Washington, DC recesses so dark and Masonic that only Nick Cage dares dream of them lies the tome of Fantasy Football secrets. George Stafford, not to be confused with the mild mannered ColdFusion programmer of the same name and area, has found this ancient relic. He enters this year’s league ready and willing to unleash its brilliance upon the game.

It would be a mistake to assume that the Design Conference is filled with Photoshop dilettantes and pony-tailed pontificating. Just as the Yankees’ pinstripes were weapons of mass seduction each designer listed here can effortlessly create a soul crushing blast of color with aplomb. As before, our Stephen Few ban remains in effect. It’s not that he doesn’t play Fantasy Football; it’s that none would be able to withstand the organizational roster brilliance if he did.

The Teams of the Designer Conference

• Fuzzy Knuckles – Jake Spurlock is a frequent WordPress speaker and template designer. I once heard he shot a man in Reno just to watch him bleed. I later found out that was complete hogwash, which is good because he is too swell a guy to play prison peek-a-boo.
• Boston Patriots – With the community prowess of a pride of pumas at his disposal, Adobe’s Ed Sullivan has a posse. With his penance for Pats and a Boston accent that will curl your chest hairs Ed is here to claim a trophy for the Adobe campus in Waltham, MA.
• Super Top Secret – We’re not really sure what strategy the team from Super Top Secret are going to employ. We’re not sure what their particular draft preference is. In fact, we can’t even be certain that they are more than a remnant of a fevered dream brought about by expired curry. That curry’s name might be Jared Strain.
• BuffleDuffs II – William Reinbold, a game tester on such Activision titles as DJ Hero 2, re-enlists for another season of numerical frenzy. After studying all Matthew’s moves his first time out is 2010 the year the younger brother bests his longest held opponent?
• MonksIDPweek – Michael Monk doesn’t just design websites at EyeSharpen. True to his name, he has taken a religious pilgrimage to the land of pigskin and now blogs his defensive revelations at Monk’s IDP Week. Beware those who would mistake him for a theological third stringer; Mike is more pugilistic paladin than funny Friar Tuck.

More team roster updates as I get them. I am still waiting on responses for a few people and there may be space available. If you are interested in play drop a comment below and mention which conference you think you should be in and we’ll see if we can make it work. Thanks for everyone’s interest; we’re full up. Also worth checking out this season is the ColdFusion Geeks league.

With a recent viewing of “Exit Through the Gift Shop” (a docutainment piece on street art by the enigmatic Banksy) echoing in my head I visited the alley with my teenage niece. Despite being in the same town as my Alma Mater it was started well after I had left; I probably wouldn’t have even known it was there without her help. While there were cool individual pieces I was more taken with the collected fusion of intent.

Some of the contributions are profound, some silly, and others just juvenile. As we snapped pics my niece pointed out spots where previous work had been painted over. It was as though we weren’t viewing static art but a living thing, mostly likely as different tomorrow as it was from yesterday.

Comparison of alley between 5/27/2008 and now

Afterwards we went to the newly opened area Zumiez. My niece knew that they were one of the few places that carried Shepard Fairey’s “Obey” apparel line.

On one side, I was overjoyed to find an Obey tee and parting with $20 wasn’t a question (the “Obey Peace” shirt). On the flip side, however, it felt weird buying something “underground” that was mass produced from a chain store. Was I promoting the work or was I just another in a long line of aging wanna-be hipster rebels? Someone only too willing to purchase their edge not through time or toil but a swipe of the credit card? Who, exactly, is the bigger tool of the system – Shepard for taking something pure and mass marketing it or me for buying it? After seeing the contributions to the alley – done not for recognition, or profit, or even permanence I am left with a number of questions and few answers.

Oh well. At least it all makes for good cinema:

Update: Fellow Utahan Scott Jensen has recently posted about Visual Metaphors and how Bansky uses them to great effect.

The Creative Freelancer Conference (CFConf)

The main reason for the trip was to attend the Creative Freelancers Conference. Even though the weekend event was business, not developer, centric it was exactly the kind of thing I needed to attend. Whether you’re a independent developer or designer you can become incredibly caught up in the creative, problem-solving process; after all, being able to revel in those tasks is probably why you went into business for yourself to begin with. However, that same love for what we do can also cause us to neglect the things we don’t – the book-keeping, the networking, etc. These tasks are no less important to running a successful business and yet, as digital creatives, we push them to the periphery. The Creative Freelancers Conference was all about restoring that balance.

Some of the most memorable presentations for me included:

• Tuning One’s Pitch from Dyana Valentine – Dyana employs a really neat, madlib-style worksheet for focusing intent. After working through the workshop exercise I arrived at:

  Vox Pop’s favorite clients are innovative world changers who struggle with wrangling their data. I get excited about this because I get to use my code to conquer chaos. If I had a magic wand, I would have everyone be more successful with less marketing.

  It needs work. However, its fascinating how effective her process is for turning the terror of a blank tagline into a step-wise, principled process. The goal, ultimately, is to achieve the perfection of Dyana’s own line, “helping self-starters self-finish”. It is concise, unique, descriptive, and excellent.

• Managing Client Expectations by Luke Mysse – There were numerous take-aways from Crossgrain’s founder. However, the biggest was changing my work-week to include an administrative day (which, because there simply isn’t enough German on my site, I’m calling Werktag, or “business day”). By taking all those energy sapping, contextual-switching business tasks and dedicating a specific day to do them I free the rest of the week to the work I love. Rocket science? No. Profound impact on the way I do things? Hella yes. And that was tossed out almost as an afterthought in an entire preso of wonderful productivity techniques.
• Money Management with Galia Gichon – Hearing finance advice specifically directed toward independent, creative professionals was wonderful. So much money writing strikes me either painfully oversimplified Suze Orman infomercials or to be read with a monocle and top hat. But this was neither; it was an extremely timely and pertinent call-to-action. Now if I could just get ING to connect to Vox Pop’s original bank (I can haz Bank Simple now, pleaz?). I later asked her opinion of eschewing traditional retirement investing in bonds/money markets/stocks for a peer-to-peer lending portfolio (like Prosper.com). Her advice was dead on: it doesn’t matter as long as you start something. For way too many creatives living hand to mouth is considered being successful.
• Project Pricing presented by Shel Perkins – Again with Shel’s presentation there wasn’t anything here that would be mistaken for a closely guarded secret of the business universe. However, getting the complete picture of how pricing should be approached was an invaluable reminder on a dozen little things I should be doing that add up to something big. Prior to the talk Shel and I got into a conversation about impact of cut-rate services on our respective businesses. For designers, there is much concern over what he called “crowdsourcing” (I don’t think this is quite the correct usage, but I’ll run with it here). These are services like HP’s Logoworks.com. There someone can get a selection of logo designs with unlimited revisions for as little as $399 – a price that traditional designers can’t compete with. For software developers there are not only sites like vWorker (formerly RentACoder) and Elance but offshore development lurking just over the horizon (literally and figuratively). We eventually arrived at the conclusion that for very specific things – a logo or a small, narrowly scoped and highly defined project – these services are perfectly reasonable. However, a logo is not a brand management campaign. A one-off widget is not a mission-critical piece of business intelligence. For those cases an ongoing, deep client relationship drastically trumps any kind of cost savings that could be had.

There were plenty more great talks delivered in a safe, supportive networking environment. I would gladly recommend it to anyone either freelancing or considering it to give the Creative Freelancer Conference a try next year (in Chicago!).

ColdFusion and Mobile Preso to the Denver ColdFusion User’s Group

Speaking on Mobile Development – Picture by Chris Diller

Next on the agenda was presenting my “ColdFusion and Mobile Development Overview” presentation to the Denver ColdFusion User’s Group. This is the third revision of the talk and, given with how quickly the mobile space is changing, I had a slew of updates and revised code samples to include. I was a bit nervous when I discovered Cricket has a huge ColdFusion shop in Denver and a number of them were in attendance. They were either uber polite or what I was saying was true as shenanigans were never called. It was a great evening and a big thanks go out to my hosts, John Blayter and Chris Diller.

Afterwards, I found myself with plenty of leftover pizza, a hungry stomach, and a hotel room full of things just waiting to be MacGyver’ed. So I made a pizza hut for my papa johns (because, after all, didn’t we leave the days of foraging for cold pizza behind in college?). It was a satiating ending to a busy, code filled day.

Real-Eyes Media and RMAUG

During my final day in Denver I dropped in on Jun Heider and his coworkers at Real Eyes Media. Real Eyes is a digital agency specializing in Flash, Flex, and AIR based applications. I knew Jun from when I flew him out to speak at the RIA Dev Shed. I always love the opportunity to see how different companies organize their talent. In the case of Real Eyes the labyrinth of adjoining offices that had slowly merged throughout the small office building still weren’t sufficient; their success was threatening to burst their cozy confines.

Later we made our way to a nearby club where Jun’s band, The Compilers, were performing that night. It was part of the Rocky Mountain Adobe User’s Group (RMAUG). Not content to just muck about with traditional instruments, The Compilers use a number of Flash based tools to augment the output. There were a few technical glitches. But given some of the stuff attempted – incorporating text-to-speech of twitter comments during a song, sms voting on a song’s resolution, and more – it was a fantastic experience.

The next day dawned and it was time to go home. Denver is a great city with a number of thriving creative communities willing to sit down and have a chat. As usual, I returned wiser than when I left which, I’d think, is the most anyone could ask for. Thanks Denver! Let’s do this again soon!

I love being able to revisit these topics. When I create one of these presentations its usually because I have a great interest in the subject manner. As I begin sharing, however, the questions and comments from the audience inform the work. With subsequent re-tellings the subject matter goes from being internally driven to externally aware; its all the much better because of it.

The basic premise is the same as before: ColdFusion is a fantastic bridge for summoning forth scads of information across numerous business platforms. But how do you organize it? How can it be summarized? And, most importantly, how do you present your data in a way that leads to new, potentially powerful insights supporting your business?

We’ll start with the basics of color and layout theory, touch on the do’s and don’ts of charting, cover collections of charts (also known as a dashboard), and have code samples from a number of freely available services and/or code libraries. From why pie charts are the spacial equivalent of Kim Kardashian to easily programmable tree maps, this presentation will have the answers.

Of course, I know there’s a lot of things I’m probably missing. What aspects of presenting information would you want to see? Have you had problems concisely representing business processes with your data?

In addition to t-shirts there also have been a number of amazing prints bubbling up these last several weeks. Without further ado, lets take a quick tour of propaganda prints from around the web.

• 

  Brian Moore‘s Remix of a classic WWII poster during 2009′s Iranian Election Protests

  100 Years of Propaganda: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Let’s start with Smashing Magazine’s excellent recap of propaganda’s use during the 20th century. Propaganda, at its core, is about inciting an emotion or persuading a desired course of action. Sometimes truths are displayed in a seductive manner. Other times the intent to shock. In either case its a communication means ill suited for subtlety. Brian’s WWII work, pictured here, can be purchased for $25.

• 

  BBC’s Doctor Who WWII Poster Homage

  In this latest season of Doctor Who the BBC had everyone’s favorite time traveler visit WWII era Great Britain. During the course of the show this excellent poster was used as a prop in the background. It both reinforced the era and tied it into the series storyline. Thankfully, the BBC posted the artwork online for anyone to download and print out at their local Kinkos. Brilliant!

• 

  David Klein’s Classic “Times Square” Poster

  Of course, war isn’t the only subject that lends itself to overt imagery. Throughout the 1950′s American illustrator David Klein worked with Howard Hughes and his TWA on a series of travel posters. Each are iconic representation’s of the period’s mod style. However, David’s “Time Square” was chosen in 1957 to become part of MOMA’s permanent collection. Reprints of this and other’s by David Klein go for around $19.99 at places like AllPosters.com.

• 

  Josh Rogan’s “Gambit” Mod Poster

  When creating a piece of propaganda, especially one culling cultural ephemera, it is essential to nail styles that were in vogue at the time. Josh Rogan and his Mod Hero series takes the same mod art approach as David Klein but juxtaposes it with modern superheroes. The effect is a poster that is at once classic as it is playful. Unfortunately, Josh’s Etsy store was so successful that he’s temporarily stopped taking orders. However, you can browse the contents on his site.

• 

  Vegas Vic Letterpress Poster from Doc Martin Studios

  Another Etsy store of note is Doc Martin Studios. While most of the work is self-described “mediagraffiti” there are classic elements of pop-culture and propaganda zeitgeist here. A 13×19 letterpress print will usually cost $50 as in the case of Vegas Vic.

• 

  Arches – See America Travel Poster

  The Works Progress Administration, the depression era program also known as the WPA, commissioned a number of posters in order to employ artists and illustrators. Unfortunately, credit for many of these pieces has been lost. It’s unfortunate as most were obviously created by talented individuals. These posters are available for $40 from Ranger Doug’s shop.

• 

  Shepard’s Glass Houses

  Of course, not all propaganda prints produced set out to lionize the past. Some artists, like Shepard Fairey, have taken the classic tropes of propaganda design and combined it with street art sensibilities. In the process they’ve created something new and profound. Shepard’s prints are very affordable if you are quick. Sadly (for me), his limited runs (a few hundred prints at a time) seem to sell out faster than I can type my credit card in. For now I must be content with his discussion on his latest work, “Glass Houses”.

My Dad taught me what it was to be self-reliant. He showed me how to create my own destiny. He demonstrated how to forge a livelihood (both literally and figuratively). Finally, he taught me that where words might do, action is better. I can remember only a handful of times when he’d lecture my siblings or me on life. Instead, he’d simply be who he was. Our implied challenge was to do the same. By saying so little he, ironically, told us exactly what we needed to know.

Thanks Dad. Happy Father’s Day.

Having dog-eared and highlighted to endless degree, I can safely say this is the book Rework wished it could have been. Where Rework stops with anecdotes Bo starts with research. Where Rework has pithy generalizations Small Giants has insightful detail. Where Rework goes out of its way to be decisive Burlingham goes to great lengths to discover the commonalities of his small business success stories. For those looking to create intimate client relationships and a unique workplace both books are rousing energizers. But only Small Giants transcends the sugar rush of first contact.

These are topics that are increasingly at the forefront of my mind. In numerous conversations I been asked variations of “how many employees are you going to grow to?” and “would you ever sell to Google?” (perhaps to my wife’s chagrin, the answers are ‘none if I can avoid it’ and ‘flattering, but never’). It’s these same answers that Rework’s David Heinemeier Hansson so passionately defends but so poorly articulates. It’s an opportunity missed. People have been spoon-fed a narrative where all software developers aspire to be the next Microsoft, or Apple, or – if the subject really is an ass – the next Oracle. Without well explained counter-examples those of us creating un-hierarchal, non-international, and personal businesses will continue to be looked upon as capitalist heretics.

Hopefully, more people will learn of Bo Burlingham’s book and the fourteen wonderful companies within. They aren’t lifestyle businesses. They aren’t boutique shops. They are examples of people who are passionate at creating wonderful experiences that are better for a bottom line than any outsourced workforce or cubical farm with foosball table.

And now, onto the links!

• Gaming (Production) Goes Global – Software is an industry that is uniquely suiting toward distributed development. When faced with time and budget constraints large game studios are increasingly taking advantage of a globalized labor pool, despite potentially bad domestic pr.
  

  It really only takes a producer’s click of approval to instantly send full builds anywhere in the world (nobody trusts cloudsourcing quite yet), and that makes outsourcing production ridiculously easy. The first BioShock ping-ponged between Irrational Games’ Boston and Australian offices almost non-stop, allowing a true 24-hour work cycle.”

  The challenge as programmers in the United States is not rallying whatever political finger wagging we can muster; the cat leapt out of the bag when the train left the station. The opportunity is properly harnessing the newfound advantages to maximize the business value to clients, regardless of where the talent is sourced.

• IBM Replacing 75% of its Workforce with Contractors – IBM, which currently employs nearly 400,000 people worldwide, is hoping to reduce that number to less than 100,000 by 2017. It’s not that there isn’t work to be done. It’s just more cost effective to hire back those same people as contractors. In a world of publicly traded companies and fiduciary duty, this is a trend we’ll see more of (and not just for large, multi-national behemoths). If you haven’t taken steps to separate principal needs like retirement savings and medical insurance from your current employer, at least recognize them for what they are: dependencies subject to macro-economic forces. It’s bad enough loosing a job. Its worse also having crucial underpinnings for one’s well-being suddenly disappear.
• 

  sinkit logo by smashLAB

  Excellent Collection of Logos Employing Negative Space – Ok, that was a pretty negative start. Time to turn the negative into a positive; wonderful use of negative space in these logos.

• Text-to-Speech with Javascript – First off, it should be pointed out that this isn’t a pure Javascript/HTML5 solution yet – a Flash widget is still required for accessing the microphone. Still, this is an exciting step forward toward freeing data from its form, thus realizing its full function. I could see blogs, like this one, having meta tags at the top allowing for smart phone applications to slurp up the audio generated version, rather than returning the text. It would allow commuters, people out for a jog, and others for whom audio is ideal a way of digesting their favorite blogs as easily as feed readers aggregate rss syndicated information now.
• Bugatti Veyron Effortless Outpaces Two Modified Godzillas – For five years the Bugatti Veyron has remained the pinnacle of automotive achievement – even when challenged by two tweaked, 750 horsepower Nissan GT-Rs:

  Yes, I do love watching supercars. I realize that $1.7 million for any car, even one as without equal like the Veyron, is ridiculous. But even the most gasoline hating, car-loathing activist has to appreciate the breathtaking ease in which a machine of this caliber is untouchable by even its supposed peers. To build such performance must bring an incredible sense of satisfaction. Everyday we each face thousands of tiny opportunities where we choose to either just get through or to be excellent. I don’t just want to be able to use software like that; I want to make that.

• The Betterness Manifesto – To those ends we’ll end with Umair Haque’s Betterness Manifesto. How do we get better? How do we develop post-industrial business? Umair lays out 8 steps:
  1. Invest – That is, not into mysterious financial blackholes that if you had invested $10 in 1999 would net you a return of $10 today. Instead, take control of your investments through sites like Prosper.com and Kickstarter. Fund real people creating real innovation.
  2. Allocate – The banks that were too big to fail before are now even bigger now. So why do we reward them by leaving our money there? Local banks and credit unions are possibilities. I’m also keeping my eye on BankSimple; why can’t the disruptive economies of scale present with the Internet also be applied to banking?
  3. Cut – Consumption is not the way to a fitter, happier life…
  4. Work – …but producing things of beauty and meaning is. Stop lending your talents to companies creating toxic junk. From fast food to fast wealth we’re deafened by people rationalizing their negative effect on the wider world; “I just work here” doesn’t cut it.
  5. Live – If you hate were you live, change it. Either move or build the life you want. Richard Florida foresaw a creative age in which we all take part in thriving, tightly connected communities. Build your tribe.
  6. Civilize – the suburbs are filled with thin houses. As Umair says, “The basis of civilization is not naked self-interest, it’s shared interest”. In other words if you want a better society put down the Ayn Rand book and volunteer at a non-profit.
  7. Support – “Every choice you make with your money, time, and effort reflects your true support for betterment.”
  8. Reflect – The same technology that we so often celebrate is the same that can over-stimulate our every waking moment. Take a moment, unplug, and consider the influence that you carry. You don’t have to be a reactionary vessel; a mere leaf upon the winds of change. You can be thoughtful, decisive, and forward-thinking. But that only comes with taking the time to explore and refine the answers to questions bigger than a soundbyte and longer than a commercial break.

It is at this point where I hear creaking from the soap box that I better quit. How about you? What links have been kicking around in your browser? What has been inspiring you?

It has been a while since I folded up the trusty deck and hit the road. That little quibble will be taken care of the weekend of June 5th-June 7th as Vox Pop descends upon that city on the other side of the Rockies, Denver. That Saturday and Sunday I’ll be attending the 2010 Creative Freelancer Conference. Billed as a “business conference for people who view accounting as a tedious, but necessary, distraction” (my words, not theirs) it should be a great opportunity for networking.

Then, that Monday, June 7th, I’ll be presenting version 3.0 of my “Mobile Development with ColdFusion” talk to the Denver ColdFusion User’s Group. Although its only been a year since the content was warmly received at the SLCFUG and NUCFUG its incredible how much needs to be revised: the mobile space moves just that fast. In addition the massive industry changes (Palm being bought by HP, Android devices rivaling iPhone numbers, the Adobe vs Apple spat) we’ll also be going over code samples from entirely new 3rd party SMS providers, drop down into the Java layer for our own QR code generation, and possibly preview AIR in android (time willing).

If you are in the Denver area and would like to attend I should have venue details shortly and I’ll post them here we’re at APEX Systems Offices, 3900 East Mexico Avenue Suite 508, Denver, CO. Otherwise, watch the Denver ColdFusion User Group Page for more details. Or, if you’re going to be at the Creative Freelancer Conference let me know – either through the contact page or via twitter; let’s chat.

Update 6/2
Looks like I’ll be staying through June 8th. Now on the agenda is dropping in on Jun Heider and the other AIR/Flex experts at Real Eyes Media, coworking at the Hive Cooperative (a Denver based co-working facility), and attending the Rocky Mountain Adobe User’s Group Tuesday evening. From the meeting description:

Come experience The Compilers (Eric Fickes, Jun Heider, and Scott Sheridan) demonstrate the use of Flash Platform technology during live performance and technical discussion. Not only will you get your groove on with live music, but you’ll learn about whats under the hood to drive this one of a kind musical experience.

The Compilers will be playing tunes for you and be talking about how to build applications utilizing cutting edge technologies that are based on the Flash Platform. Make sure to bring your cell phones and Internet connected devices!

Can’t wait!