Community

2010 Year in review

12/28/2010 in Community View Comments

This past year has been a whirlwind of change for me professionally. I really got into blogging, Twitter and got more involved with the community. I met some fantastic, talented and genuine people that love what they do, and also got to know some old friends again. Attending some of the great conferences that were held this year really kept me in tune with my profession, and somewhat ignited my passion for an industry that I had lost over the last few years.

RIA Unleashed: I sadly wasn’t able to attend this in 2010, but closing out 2009 with this conference is what really got me excited about 2010. I had only been to Adobe MAX conferences in the past (2 Macromedia DevCons, MAX New Orleans, & MAX San Francisco) and had no clue that the smaller, more focused conferences were what I get the most out of. Props to Brian Rinaldi.

360Flex 2010 San Jose: Yet another great smaller conference, at least in comparison to a MAX, 360Flex was a great chance to meet new friends and learn about new processes and tools. I wasn’t able to make it to 360Flex DC, sadly, but am definitely planning on being at 360Flex Denver in 2011. Big ups to John Wilker and Tom Ortega.

Flash and the City: I love NYC, and mixing a Flash conference with NYC was a no brainer for me. I was able to take my wife along on this trip and turned it into a mini-vacation. The conference was a hit and I really enjoyed spending time meeting new friends and enjoying the city with my wife. Thanks Elad Elrom.

Adobe MAX LA: The most recent conference was MAX in LA, which was special to me in several ways. This was my first conference as a Litl employee, and also my first speaking gig (FATC Unconference). Litl won a MAX Award for Multiscreen, which rocked of course, and I got to hang out with some new friends and all around great people. Thanks Adobe, Motorola, Google, and of course Martha Stewart.

2010 also brought on some new challenges for me professionally, coming from a design centric past. I dug deeper into OOP, design patterns and just really how to program correctly. I read many books, mostly technical, and honed my skill as a developer. Clean Code, Growing Object-Oriented Software-Guided by Tests, Test Driven Development: By Example, and ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns were extremely valuable and books that I plan to re-read again in 2011. I dug deeper into tools such as Git, Vim, Ant, TDD (FlexUnit 4), RobotLegs, and IDE’s such as FDT3.5/4 & IntelliJ IDEA 9/10. I also experimented with Java, Scala, C++, and Objective-C. I feel almost like I drank from the programming fire hose. Big shout outs to Bruno Fonzi & PowerFlasher, you guys rock.

Professionally I made some major changes, and leaving King Pharmaceuticals for Litl was the biggie. Litl is great, has unbelievably talented people and I really enjoy working there. King was a great place to work, and I honestly miss working there. It was an extremely hard decision to leave, but something I had to do to grow in my field. King was a great experience in a large corporation, mining and reporting on massive amounts of data, automation, and structure…but not necessarily something I ever want to do again ;) . Sadly, just after I left, Pfizer announced a buy out of King, so my fingers are crossed for the future of my fellow employees in the Business Applications department.

Enough about 2010, 2011 is what I am looking forward too. I founded a new Adobe Flash UG (Blue Ridge FUG) and, along with Tim McLeod, am excited to kick off 2011 with some great meet ups. I also have a lot of plans up my sleeve which includes jump starting a new creative resource, family relocation, and a few new additions to my tool belt. I plan on attending several conferences, and have even applied to speak at a few…so we’ll see how that pans out. I am excited about new conferences such as GeekyByNature, which goes hand in hand with some changes I want to make professionally. Here’s to the new year, there will be great things to come.

-connatser

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360Flex: Stoked to get a break and hear great devs.

02/23/2010 in Community, RIA View Comments

360Flex is just over one week away and I am getting super stoked to not only get a break from the craziness, but to also hear and learn from some of the best devs in the business. I have to thank my employer for sending me, or else I wouldn’t be making the trek to San Jose…that and the fact that there is no limit to alcohol on my expense report. Yeah, what were they thinking ;) . So I decided to sit down and get a tentative schedule ready.

First off I will say that I wish I could duplicate myself and attend all of the classes available, but nonetheless I have to choose one from each available time slot. My first run through the session were chosen based on what’s relative to my current job, after all they are footing the bill. My second run through was what I would personally want to see, and honestly they were really close in comparison…

There are a few of speakers that I would choose no matter what…namely Deepa Subramaniam, Jesse Warden and Jeff Tapper. I have seen them all speak before and really enjoy their sessions. So, below is the list of topics I am currently choosing to attend, excluding the key notes and group sessions that I will of course attend:

Day 1:
  • 1:00pm – 5:00pm: Joel Hooks – Hands-on Development with the RobotLegs AS3 Framework

    • *I wouldn’t miss this session for anything. I am slowly digging into RobotLegs as I can outside of the office. I know the basics but am definitely looking forward to learning from Joel in a hands-on environment.

Day 2:
  • 10:00am – 11:20am: Richard Lord – Designer Last Application Architect.
  • 1:00pm – 2:20pm: Daivd Hassoun – Going Deep w/OSMF – OMG
  • 2:30pm – 3:50pm: Jesse Warden – RobotLegs on Top of GAIA Framework
  • 4:00pm – 5:20pm: Huyen Tue Dao – Greenthreading in Flex

Day 3:
  • 10:00am – 11:20am: Deepa Subramaniam – What’s New in Flex 4 that’s NOT Spark!
  • 1:00pm – 2:20pm: Gary Rogers – Automated Build and Deployment Processes.
  • 2:30pm – 3:50pm: Elad Elrom – Building Applications using Test Driven Development (TDD)

Day 4:
  • 10:00am – 11:20am: Jeff Tapper – Ouch, it hurts when I do that.
  • 1:00pm – 2:20pm: Caleb Adam Haye – Better Builds: Continuous Integration for RIAs
  • 2:30pm – 3:50pm: Eric Fickes – Adobe is from Mars, Microsoft is from Uranus: A View from the Server.

Community: RIABeardoff, For the Kids

12/02/2009 in Community View Comments

Inspired by Elad Elrom, and all the great Flash designers and developers already contributing, I have decided to give some incentive to donate to the RIABeardOff. The RIABeardOff, started by Chuck Freedman, is a very generous charity event that lets the members of the RIA community grow beards to raise funds for the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. I myself am somewhat of the unknown in the group of unbelievable contributors, most of which I have looked up to for a number of years and have learned a lot from all of them. Some of the contributors are:

  • Jose Antonio Marquez Russo (@joseeight)
  • Art W
  • Val Head
  • Tom Green
  • Rachel Luxemburg
  • LordAlex Leon
  • Stacey Mulcahy ( BitchWhoCodes)
  • Bernie & Erikka Perkins
  • Mims H. Wright
  • Scott Janousek
  • Chris Allen
  • Curt Staubach (@curtStaubach)
  • Paul Gregoire (@mondain)
  • @BenStucki
  • Todd Anderson (@bustardcelly)
  • Robert Hall (@rhall)
  • Joseph Labrecque (@JosephLabrecque)
  • Jesse Freeman (@theflashbum)
  • Kevin Suttle (@kevinSuttle)
  • Brian Connatser (@connatser) <- me :)
  • Elad Elrom (@EladElrom)
  • Chuck Freedman (@chuckstar)

So, I will donate not only my “attempt” at growing a beard but 1 (one) full year of web hosting on my Cloud Account at The Rackspace Cloud, from 1-1-10 until 12-31-10. One lucky winner will be chosen at random on the close of the beard off and I will hand the keys to a full year of hosting over to them at that time. The account would consist of 1GB of storage, 2GB of transfer, 15 email accounts, 5 MySQL databases, and I will even throw in the 24 hour awesome support account from The Rackspace Cloud team at my cost. The winner can use this account however they please, as long as it falls within the rules of Rackspace…sorry no porn! All you need to do to enter is donate in my name (@connatser). Karma has been good to me this year and it’s time to give back, please do the same and make a needy child’s holiday one to remember.

Donate to the RIABeardOff here.

Hosting: Rackspace referral program

11/02/2009 in Community View Comments

rackspaceA few weeks ago I was talking to Jonnie Hallman of DestroyToday.com and DestroyTwitter.com about hosting space. I mentioned that I had a bunch of unused space and would be happy to host his site on my cloud instance. While talking with Jonnie I contacted Rackspace about a referral program, which actually was in works but not yet available. Annnnyway, they have set up a referral program early for me in case anyone is looking to start hosting on the cloud at Rackspace. I would like to think that my awesome blogging skills lead to the early referral program, but for some reason I think it was the connection with Jonnie ;) .

When creating a cloud account on Rackspace just use REF-Connatser as the code. This will save you $25 off of your first months cost. I know it isn’t a great savings, but every lit bit helps.

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