Peter Elst

With just a few days left in 2009, I wanted to post some moments this year that stuck with me:

• Discussion about Fx prefix versus namespaces in Flex 4
• Flex Builder to get renamed to Flash Builder
• Fantastic first edition of Flash at the Lake in Zurich, Switzerland
• Carlos Ulloa speaks at TEDGlobal
• Summer of Flash podcast (now RIA Radio) gets started
• Joa Ebert’s jaw dropping presentation at Flash on the Beach
• Ralph Hauwert leaves the Papervision3D team
• Liz Frederik joins Adobe as part of the community program team
• Adobe acquires Omniture for $1.8 billion USD
• Omniture CEO boasting about getting Adobe to pay “a whole lot of money” at the MAX keynote
• AIR 2, Flash Builder 4, Flash Catalyst public beta releases
• Adobe announces native iPhone application export from Flash CS5
• Flash CS5 public beta canceled

 
The annual tradition of complaining about Adobe MAX not paying speaker expenses of non-Adobe employees can now be put to rest, flight and hotel accommodation were covered and it turned out to be a fantastic event. Looking forward to heading to Los Angeles again next year for more Adobe goodness (and no doubt another trip to Universal Studios Hollywood).

Its been a difficult year for many, another 600 layoffs at Adobe this November – we’ve sadly lost the wonderful Stacy Sison of the community programs, evangelist extraordinaire Rufus Deuchler and several others.

For me personally I spent half a year teaching first year Devine students at the Technical University College of West-Flanders, was invited to speak at 5 conferences, presented 3 Flex/ActionScript workshops, did technical review on 2 books, attended a TED conference and have set up Project Cocoon Multimedia in Pondicherry, India with two good friends and fellow freelancers.

This next year I’m planning to spend both in India and back home in Belgium. I’ll be focusing on training and consultancy and building out our activities with Project Cocoon. You’ll no doubt still see me around at various conferences but plan on cutting down on my speaking engagements.

 
Wishing you all a fantastic 2010!

 

Its that time of year again and decided to contribute in my own little way to the “Music for Life” campaign and help in the battle against malaria in Africa.

I’ve put up an eBay auction where you can bid to win the chance to determine what t-shirt I’ll be wearing at my next speaking engagement which will be the fantastic “Flash and the City” in New York. Whether it is your company logo, blog URL, twitter name or anything else you want to share — I’ll be showing it off and will give you a plug in my presentation.

This is your opportunity to get your message seen by several hundred geeks and gain some good karma points!

Please bid generously ;)

Its an impossible task to adequately summarize all the ideas and inspiration of this last week at TEDIndia in Mysore. Here are ten quotes – in no particular order – from various talks (attributed where I remember who said it) that stuck in my mind and are worth sharing.

 
“Getting more, from less, for more” – R.A. Mashelkar

“Being a girl is so powerful that we’ve had to train everyone not to be that.” – Eve Ensler

“Write your obituary. If you don’t like the way it reads, change your life, now.”

“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” – Lakshmi Pratury

“It’s not charity. It is ourselves we are helping. It’s ourselves we are healing.” – Thulasiraj Ravilla

“We develop grand concepts of happiness, but there are little symbols of happiness in the breath we take.” – His Holiness the Karmapa

“To understand different viewpoints, we have to understand the myths and stories that shape them.” – Devdutt Pattanaik

“‘I do not know’ is the engine that powers the longing to know.” – Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

“Minds on the margin are not marginal minds.” – Anil Gupta

“We don’t enter the future, we create it. And we create what we imagine.” – Ramachandra Budihal

 
I’m sure there are several great quotes I’ve missed here, so feel free to leave them in the comments.

Earlier this week I visited the 13th century Keshava temple in Somnathpur, about an 1.5 hour drive from Mysore. One of only a few remaining temples of this era, it really has some exquisite architecture. If you’re every in the area, its well worth a visit. The site is now being maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India.

Today was day 1 of the main TEDIndia event. I’ve been at the wonderful Infosys Mysore campus since Monday and have met some truly extraordinary people.

I couldn’t help but write a quick summary of todays sessions and what inspired me most.

Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson

Usha Uthup, legendary Indian pop singer, opened with a beautiful rendition of “Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram” — generally believed to have been Mahatma Gandhi’s favorite song, there were quite a few other direct and indirect references to the “Father of the Nation” later in the day.

Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson

The first speaker was the incomparable Hans Rosling, showing some very interesting graphs on Asia’s past and future in terms of life expectancy and per capita income. He showed this against a historical context and predicted that it is possible for India – providing certain conditions are met – to reach the same average income as the United Kingdom by the year 2048 (July 27th, in the late afternoon to be precise).

First standing ovation of the day.

Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson

Next up was Devdutt Pattanaik, talking about mythology and cultural perceptions. He started with the story of the race around the world between Ganesha and Karttikeya — abstracting this down to subjective truth and personal context. He went on to discuss Alexander the Great and the gymnosophist, linear versus cyclical belief systems. I was most interested how he would be able to tie these ideas into the business world and he did manage to make some compelling arguments there.

Another well deserved standing ovation.

To round off the first session Usha Uthup again came on again to sing a medley from all around the world and got the crowd to stand up, clap, sing dance along. I don’t think anyone expected that to spontaneously happen and is – as I am told – generally referred to as a “TED moment”.

Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson

Jumping forward a bit the next speaker I would like to highlight is Dr. R.A. Mashelkar. Coming from an underprivileged background as a child, he grew up to become an eminent scientist. The mantra throughout his talk was: “Getting more, from less, for more” and the idea of “Gandhian Engineering”. He makes a good point that when targeting people that can barely get by, its not enough to think about cost cutting, it needs to be about ultra-low cost solutions. He showed various examples, including a very impressive prosthetic leg that could very easily be fitted, allowed to run, jump, climb tries and cost well under 100 USD what would otherwise be 20.000 USD.

This talk to me reinforced the idea that “constraints are the best breeding ground for innovation”.

Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson

Moving on to the last session of the day, one person you’ll no doubt here a lot more from in the future is Pranav Mistry. The work he did on Sixth Sense technology, essentially bringing together the physical and digital world, was also featured at a previous TED by Patty Maes (a Belgian native) but he showed a number of interesting new applications. It was great to hear about some of his earlier experiments and more of the vision behind the project.

What I am most excited about here is that, in talking to Chris Anderson, after his talk he said he would like to open source the software and encourage different people to make their own implementations. While I could still see some teething problems with the technology I have no doubt a lot of us will be using this in some form or another within the next 3-5 years.

Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson

Another fantastic talk that really resonated with me was one by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, an India mystic like no other. He shared his life story and explained what he called the “field of perception” which we put up in our mind, something that can be expanded to encompass the wider world around us. As such he says that the idea of empathy is built into our very systems. Sadhguru certainly is a profound and profoundly entertaining speaker including references to stolen sandals at temples, “divine versus dosa” and the hilarious punch line “hey woman, its your dream”. Turns out he is a pretty good singer as well. Be sure to watch for that when the recording goes up on TED.com.

The last session of the day got closed by an impressive musical duo, Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan bringing a unique mixture of classical piano and carnatic singing. Its hard to imagine that combination of East and West would work well together but it makes for a unique sound. I’ve certainly become a big fan of their music.

 
I hope some of you have been able to follow along on the free livestream, they’ll be doing the same for the last session of the conference on Saturday at 11am Indian Standard Time.

This has certainly been a memorable first day and can’t wait for the rest of the conference!

The last two months have been hectic to say the least attending and speaking at conferences in Singapore, Brighton and Los Angeles and most recently giving some workshops in London.

I’m looking forward to settling down in India to start a new chapter and get Project Cocoon off the ground. Before that though, one more conference, and one I’ve always wanted to attend: TED.

TED is coming to India this November and I am extremely excited. This should be an opportunity to meet some inspiring people and get renewed energy to work on a couple of personal projects I’ve been postponing for far too long. I thought it would be fun to share some of the people I’m most looking forward to hearing speak and perform.

Usha Uthup
Devdutt Pattanaik
Hans Rosling
Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan
Shekhar Kapur
Shashi Tharoor
His Holiness the 17th Karmapa

I’ll be heading out to India end of the month and will be back for a few weeks over the holidays end of December. After TEDIndia I have a few days off in Bangalore, if anyone would like to meet up feel free to get in touch — following that I’ll be flying to Chennai and on to Pondicherry to meet up with the rest of the team.

I just wrapped up a fascinating 6 months as a lecturer to first year “Digital Design and Media” students at the Technical University College of West-Flanders.

If there’s something I’ve recognized from my time there is that passion and commitment are determining factors for being successful in what you do. There certainly was no lack of that in my former colleagues and several students you’ll no doubt soon hear about as up and coming talent. I wish them all the best and am always available to support them moving forward!

 
Over the last few years I’ve had numerous opportunities come my way, largely thanks to my involvement in the Flash community. This has allowed me to travel all over the world, author books and generally make a good living doing what I love.

Those of you that know me well, will no doubt know about my other passion, India.

After the upcoming conference season I’ll be taking a step back and work on what we’ve tentatively called “Project Cocoon”. For this I’ll be joining forces with good friends and talented designers/developers/artists Nathalie Wormser and Ramakrishna Minnard in Pondicherry, South India where we’ll be setting up shop.

Within this collaborative project we each have our own focus but a common goal, creating engaging user experiences through pushing beyond both our own limitations as the limits of the technology we use. As part of the project we plan to support and actively participate in various social and charitable initiatives.

Project Cocoon will be in its incubation period for a couple of months after which it will likely become my regular workplace in India for a good deal of the year.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any projects you’d like us to get involved with.

 
I’m equally excited about attending TEDIndia in Mysore, November 4-7th where I’ll be representing the team. This will be a unique opportunity to network, get a perspective on the future of India from a wide variety of angles and most importantly — get inspired.

To quote Lakshmi Pratury, co-host of TEDIndia, in a recent column —

“At TEDIndia this November, we want to explore this world to come. India—the largest democracy in the world with a population that includes three quarters of a billion people under the age of 35, speaking either one of 16 official languages or one of its hundreds of dialects, worshipping a million gods—provides the perfect setting for an exploration of the future. And TED, the legendary conference of great minds, is the perfect vehicle for bringing us together [...]

TEDIndia represents the confluence of cultures within me—and the recognition by the TED community of the importance of India and the Asian continent. Seven of the 10 most populous countries in the world are part of Asia; and India, with all its obstacles and opportunities, is a microcosm of that Asian future.”

 

 
Its going to be an interesting journey and I’ll be sure to keep you posted!