FiTC Days 1, 2, and 3.

Well, I’d planned on blogging a bit more during the conference, but, as is usually the case, the Internet there was really pretty useless. The wireless in the conference areas didn’t do anything, and even the Ethernet wired connection in the room was so slow that I could only get one or two emails before giving up in utter frustration. Pretty much every presentation I saw that needed to do something on-line (including the keynote address) was sabotaged. I’m not sure why this seems to happen pretty routinely at conferences. It’s really frustrating.

But, that gripe aside (I’ve learned to embrace those times where I’m not glued to my email and browser), the conference was really awesome.

I started out with the John Grden / Chris Allen Rock Extravaganza. As usual, this is best left to be experienced for oneself, with the videos that I assume will be making it on line soon.

Took a little break and then went into a panel discussion with Mike Downey, Aral Balkan, Grant Skinner, Chris Allen, and myself. The subject was “AS3, Flex and Apollo, What They Mean for You”. We all gave some opinions and answered some questions, and it seemed to go over pretty well.

Then, I headed upstairs to a makeshift video studio where I sat and had a one-hour conversation with John Grden. We covered a wide range of topics, from Flash, Star Wars, life in general, the Millennium Falcon, our families, X-Wing Fighters, and American Idol. I learned that John has been making Star Wars games for much longer than I thought. This will get edited down and put on the FiTC site at some point.

After that I took a walk around downtown Toronto and found some food, then came back for the keynote. That evening we did something new at FiTC, called the Panic Room. Basically, get a bunch of the FiTC speakers in a room, sitting down at tables, and have attendees come in. Each participating attendee gets to see three speakers and spend 10 minutes with each one, asking questions, showing code, getting advice, whatever. I think I fixed one bug, helped a couple people with ideas of how to do some stuff on their projects, and was blown away by a project one guy was working on.

After that, about 30 of us went out for a dinner of Korean barbecue, hosted by Craig Swann. All I can say is, Craig, YOU ROCK!!!

After that we went to the “official” party of the night, left there and had various other adventures til the wee hours of the morning. That was day one.

Monday, I started off with Jim Armstrong’s talk on skeletal animation. There’s one smart dude. He’s actually going to help do some of the IK and bones type of stuff for Papervision 3D.

Then I saw Arse and Stinky (Anthony Eden and Scotty Weeks) do “Flashing in Public” (creating touchscreen kiosk applications). I’ve known these guys on line for years, so great to meet them in person.

I then went to Chris Allen’s Red5 presentation and Glynn Scott’s AS3 3D presentation, though to be honest, at that point, I was half involved with polishing up a few things on my own presentation.

Mike Downey then asked if I’d do a video interview with him. We did that, and it should be going up on http://video.onflex.org/ soon.

When that was done, I caught John Maeda’s session, which was both thought-provoking and entertaining. I have to say that meeting him in the speakers lounge a bit earlier and having the chance to have a short one on one conversation was one of the highlights of the week for me.

From there, it was off to the speakers dinner, and the party afterwards. I took it easy Monday night and went back to the hotel relatively early, as I had to speak at 9 a.m. Tuesday morning.

OK… still with me here? Tuesday I did my presentation on Apollo Outside of the Box. That went over pretty well I think. Decent number of people there, and I got some good feedback.

After that, I took it easy the rest of the day. The only presentation I caught after that was the Papervision 3D one with Carlos Ulloa and Ralph Hauwert, but WOW. That was worth a full day of excitement anyway. Again, I’m sure you’ll eventually see some video of this one hit the net, and definitely worth checking out.

After that, we hit the Drake hotel, which has this great open patio restaurant. Bunch of us got some sushi and hung out for most of the rest of the night. Some headed back for the awards ceremony, but it was just way too comfortable to leave. Eventually, many of us wound up back at the hotel in a room with beer and whiskey and poker. I partook in the first two, but decided to keep what money I had and just watched a few rounds of cards.

Eventually got back in time to get a few hours sleep and make it to the airport on time, and here I am back home. Will be posting some flickr pics and my presentation notes soon.