Peter Elst

Great news if you’re in or around Dublin, Ireland on April 11th!

There’s a fantastic tag team consisting of Ryan Stewart, Kev McCabe and Ted Patrick coming to entertain you with talks on Flex, ColdFusion and AIR at a free half day event called Scotch on AIR.

Agenda

12:00 - Lunch
13:00 - Flex - Ted Patrick
14:00 - Break
14:10 - ColdFusion - Kev McCabe
15:10 - Break
15:20 - AIR - Ryan Stewart
16:20 - Break
16:30 - RIA Open Debate (One & All)
17:30 - Raffle, Close & Thank You

Location

The Westmoreland Bar
27 Westmoreland Street
Dublin 2

Read more here and be sure to register!

Great news for the 360|Flex Europe conference in Milan, Italy that is just round the corner — thanks to their sponsors they’ve been able to make day 1 of the conference completely free of charge and open to the general public.

The new price of the conference is 240 Euro and refunds will be given to those that already registered at the original price. Its not too late to attend, you can register online or at the event to attend days two and three which will then give you the USB stick with all session notes from the presenters and a chance to win some great giveaways.
 
http://www.360flex.com/360Flex_Europe/2008/03/360flex-day-one-free.html

The MAX 2008 conference dates have been announced and it seems like an Indian edition is again overlooked. It all looked very promising when Ted Patrick blogged Bangalore as a possible location for next year but turns out those plans were abandoned for whatever reason.

I think this is a mistake on Adobe’s part and am happy Vivek Kumar opened it up for debate on his blog. India and its developer community are a huge potential market for Adobe. Just look at the growth of the Flex community and what this trend indicates.

http://raghuonflex.wordpress.com/2007/09/03/flex-india-is-going-great-guns/

Why do I care? I’ve just returned from my 8th trip to India, have visited some of the most rural parts of South India and been to modern IT hubs like Gurgaon, Haryana. What I noticed is two things: Microsoft has a huge footprint throughout the country and to computer science graduates its looked at as the de facto direction to take for success as an IT professional. Those working with Adobe technology are often stuck in dead-end jobs in large corporations, mostly doing outsourced work for the US market, where creativity is seen as an obstacle rather than an asset.

Its not just about a conference like MAX, in many ways India is not taken seriously and what bugs me most is that a lot of developers seem to have become pragmatic and defeatist about this fact. It takes a company to dare take the initiative and invest in change. Adobe has an opportunity and needs to step up to the plate, failing that it takes little for Microsoft to start actively pushing out their technology to developers and tip the balance of the current ‘outsourcing ecosystem’.

I want Indian developers, not just the lucky few who can afford to freelance, to have the same opportunities I got when I got started — get inspired, get involved and build up a strong community. Adobe can help make this happen.

A population of over one billion, a potential IT market of some hundred thousands, don’t miss out and act now.

 
Read the discussion here

 

I just got back from two fantastic weeks in South India, caught up with my emails and have started looking at my agenda for the coming months.

Really excited to see so many events lined up. I’ll be starting to teach the “Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0″ course, joining the Adobe evangelists for two stops on the first leg of the European on AIR tour and *heaven forbid* will even be attending a Microsoft event to hear about Silverlight 2.0 and see Steve Ballmer deliver his keynote.

- March 31-1st — “Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0″ course - Lokeren, Belgium
- April 4th — on AIR tour Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- April 7th — on AIR tour Brussels, Belgium
- April 7-9th — 360Flex - Milan, Italy
- April 17-18th - “Core Object Oriented ActionScript 3.0 in Practice” - London, UK
- April 24th — MIX Essentials - Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
- May 8th — Flashconference.de - Stuttgart, Germany
- May 12-18th — Adobe Community Summit - San Jose, CA - USA
- May 23th — 2M08 - Kortrijk, Belgium
- May 26-27th – “Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0″ course - Lokeren, Belgium
- June 4-6th — Scotch on the Rocks - Edinburgh, UK

As you can see I unfortunately will not be making it to 360Flex after all (apologies for those of you who wanted to see me present there), I’m sure Tom and John will be making the first European edition a great success and hope to speak at the next one.

If you’re attending one of the events, leave a comment and be sure to come by and say hello!

I’m very happy to see the Technical University of West-Flanders, PIH department is adding a new track to their Multimedia and Communication Technology (MCT) offering starting in September, namely Digital Media and Design.

The focus for “Devine” as its affectionately called includes storyboarding, motion graphics, web design, video editing using industry standard tools like Flash, Flex, AIR, Photoshop, After Effects, 3D Studio MAX etc. The scripting languages covered include PHP, ActionScript, XML, HTML, CSS, Javascript.

I’ve been thoroughly impressed with the level of education they offer. This new track is without a doubt going to result in some of the best creative web professionals coming out into the work arena in the next few years!

Having met with many of the MCT students and lecturers at conferences and user group events over the last few years its clear how passionate they are about multimedia — the annual Multi-Mania event is just one example.

Adobe should really take note of initiatives like this and support them any way they can, just think — how many bachelor degrees will be out there covering AIR just months after its release?

The first information session was held yesterday, read more about it on Ronny Welter’s blog: http://nocreativity.com/blog/devine-digital-media-and-design (in Dutch)

 
www.digitaldesignandmedia.be