Dynamic Flash

<head> over heels

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

So, <head> 2008 is over, and it was nothing short of amazing. Sure, there were a few technical issues, but that’s inevitable when you’re bringing together 70+ speakers and over 2000 attendees from all over the world into one virtual online space for 3 days of fun and learning.

I was fortunate enough to take part in two sessions at the conference. The first was a “State of Flash” conversation live on stage at the London Hub with Carlos Ulloa and Seb Lee-Delisle, and with Aral Balkan guest-starring as moderator. This was my first time on stage at a proper conference, and I think the conversation format and sharing the stage with 3 Flash luminaries, not to mention the large Yahoo contingent in the audience, really helped to ease whatever pre-session nerves I had.

We covered a whole bunch of Flash related topics, from what excites us in the Flash world to discussion of Johnathan Harris’s controversial statements made during the closing keynote at Flash on the Beach ‘08. Based on the questions and feedback afterwards, it seems this session went down pretty well.

Steve Webser, Carlos Ulloa and Seb Lee-Delisle in conversation on stage at head (Photo: bru76)

Steve Webser, Carlos Ulloa and Seb Lee-Delisle at <head> (via bru76)

The second session, entitled Beg, Borrow or Steal: The Art of Flashing Without Flashing, was presented virtually from the comfort of my own living room on Sunday evening. The basic idea was to show that you can steal advanced features from the Flash Player in your standards-based sites and applications that you would otherwise have to wait until HTML5 is fully supported to use. Every time I practiced this before the day the session came in at around the 25 minute mark. Somehow, on the day, I managed to tak up 40 of my allotted 45 minutes with the slides and examples, which only left 5 minutes for Q&A. Oops.

Anyway, the slides and example files from the second session are available to download from the My Talks section of this site. Eventually there will be videos of both sessions available through the <head> website, though for the first 6 months they are exclusive to attendees of the conference. I’ll post a follow-up once the videos are generally available.

A massive thank-you goes out to Aral and the rest of the <head> team for putting together such an awesome and groundbreaking conference. Friday’s sessions and the general geek gathering at the London hub were, in my opinion, worth the admission price alone, and being able to watch the remainder of the conference in my pajamas was quite an experience. One thing’s for sure: <head> ‘09 has a lot to live up to.