Well, I think it’s kind of silly, but it looks like we’ve entered the age of Flash Festival Wars.
Flash Forward 2005 is scheduled for April 6-8 in San Fransisco. Flash in the Can is on for April 8-10, making it virtually impossible to attend both. I guess for many people, there is a choice to make when even when conferences are within a month or two of each other. I would love to attend them all, but having a wife and a kid and a job, two or three a year is probably going to be my limit. Still, a lot of people would attend both as long as they had time to go home, open their mail, wash their clothes and pat the dog on the head before heading out to the next one. Intentionally overlapping them is playing real hardball.
OK, so I’ve been invited to submit a proposal for FITC, and I have been previously invited for FF and could probably get on the schedule. So which do I choose? In the past, I’ve always heard how much better FITC was, but more recently I’ve heard a lot of people going the other way on it. I guess ultimately it will depend on who is going where. After all, that’s ultimately why we go to these things – for the parties after all that talking, right? 🙂
Discuss.
Unfortunately, I think Flash Forward has been SERIOUSLY lacking in the past couple years. The sponsors get smaller and smaller, and the exhibitors have just become a bunch of User Groups.
I have never been to Flash in the Can, but from what I hear, it is a GREAT learning experience. I have yet to hear a bad word about FiTC. I hope to go this year 🙂
Well, since Flash Forward is in my backyard, and I’m already on the speaker list I’m committed to that one. I was also planning to have a NMUM-inspired event either a day before or after Flash Forward–focused on educational and experimental applications of Flash. Keith, you and Sam are on my wish-list of participants, by the way.
I’ve also heard wonderful things about FiTC, and was hoping to attend this year.
Scheduling them in such a way is rather anoying, if you ask me. Even one day for travel would have been appreciated.
Oops, I meant NMUG–not NMUM.
I’ll be doing a session at FlashForward this year, was hoping to submit a proposal for FlashintheCan or at least attend but it is very difficult to combine the two.
See you at FiTC 🙂
I figured this would be a good place for an ‘official’ response…
There has been some question as to why FITC is overlapping Flash Forward (FF) this coming year, and I’d like to address this.
-For the last two years, we have held FITC in April, while FF has done their event in March. For some reason, FF has chosen to do their 2005 event in April. We have had the dates April 8-10 2005 reserved at the Westin Harbour Castle since April 2004, and they do not currently have any other dates available. As well, they are one of the few venues that can accommodate us in Toronto due to the number of attendees and the number of rooms. In other words, we don’t really have any other location or dates we can do our event at. unfortunately FF posted their dates before we posted ours, so we look like were intentionally overlapping them.
-I only know of a few speakers who would be interested in speaking at both events. FF is on a wed, thurs, fri. FITC is on a fri,sat,sun. If anyone wants to speak at both, please let me know and I’ll make sure to schedule you on the sat or sun, so you can do both events.
-I will in no way be upset or hold it against anyone in any way who chooses to go to FF and not to our event be it speaker or attendee. Given the choice of a trip, I’d rather go to San fran that Toronto 😉
-I want to make it clear that this was not planned or is it intentional. I have no bad feelings towards FF, and don’t really think that having our events overlapping by a day will really affect either event.
sincerely,
Shawn Pucknell
Executive Director, FITC
Thanks Shawn. That does clarify things. It definitely looked like you were throwing down the gauntlet there. Unfortunate that it happened like that. Still not sure which one I’ll be going to yet. 🙁
It gets worse (at least for me). Since I’m in NYC, Toronto is nearer to me than SF, and as Josh says above, I’ve been hearing/reading great things about FiTC while FF has been lacking lately. However, I’m down for another conference that will be held in Detroit between April 9-10 2005 (http://poweredbydetroit.org/) where I will be speaking. So, I’m left with no chance to go to Toronto next year 🙁
Are there too many Flash conferences?
Keith.
understandable. whatever you decide is cool of course. i’d love to have you in Toronto. if you can swing both, cool.
Oscar.
dam, there are a lot of things going on. i’ve never heard of that one. im trying to get some more info, but a few of the pages are down. might want to let the organizers know.
I’d love to go to both, but I think I’m going to have to choose one or the other. Still not sure which way I’ll go yet.