nwebb

Last night I arrived back from 360|Flex Europe in Milan, a hugely enjoyable conference.

I admit to having some initial reservations; 360|Flex Europe came hot on the heels of 360|Flex Atlanta. It wasn’t as well publicised as its Atlanta counterpart and clashed with Adobe’s European leg of the On-Air tour, BUT (and this is such a big ‘but’ that it has smaller buts orbiting it), it did not blight the conference in the slightest. I attended some fantastic sessions by some really great speakers. Even better, this was the friendliest event I’ve attended and I had a blast.

It’s a joy to attend a conference where the majority of sessions are not dumbed-down for flex beginners (Doug McCune said something similar about Atlanta). I guess 360 events are the “Were-Here” of conferences, while all others I’ve attended are more akin to “Flashkit” – i.e. they may have a couple of really advanced sessions but the bulk are usually aimed squarely at those starting out (nothing wrong with that of course, but it’s great to finally see the balance addressed – thanks Tom, thanks John!)

There were some speaker names that instantly jumped out at me: resident Italian and thoroughly nice bloke Marco Casario, Michael ‘The Last Starfighter‘ Labriola from Digital Primates, Sam Rivello, Koen ’1 litre for 7 Euros – yes please’ De Weggheleire and Christophe Jolif (ILOG components – if you haven’t already, check out ILOG Elixir – there are some seriously good components there!)

There were also some speakers I hadn’t heard of, and that’s because some of them were speaking for the first time, but take note: UNKNOWN != UNTALENTED … conference organisers John and Tom did a great job of getting the mix exactly right. 360|Flex in part served as a platform for launching future speaking careers by letting new people talk about established passions. I enjoyed the lack of fan-boy hero-worship at 360|Flex, and if any of the familiar names did have egos, they certainly left them at the door.

I made a list of names that I will personally watch out for in the future. I’m sure you’ll here of them again (maybe as speakers at future Flex conferences … maybe on CrimeWatch … sometimes it’s difficult to tell ;-) ). Anyway, from the sessions I attended: Sakri ‘resolution’ Rosenstrom (“Invalidation Routines Pounded InTo Your Cranium Once And For All!”), Piergiogio Niero (“3D Render Engines in the Flash Platform”) , Luca Mezzalira (“Flex Bitmap Effects”) and Zohar Babin (“Kaltura Platform: Open-source Online Video Editor Built in Flex 2″).

Also, thanks to Dan, Robin, Jens, Cyril, Tomislav, Sumi and anyone else whose business card I have probably already mislaid.
Hopefully you will keep in contact and I hope to see some of you at Scotch On The Rocks!