After some thorough Microsoft lovin’, I figured I would talk a bit about Flash On The Beach, and the love we feel for them. Let me just start off by saying that this was my first time at Flash On The Beach, and I’m very happy to be a part of the family!
Here’s some of my favorites:
Keith Peters
How to finish coding a game without despising it
If you’re any kind of Flash developer, it’s likely that you’ve heard about Keith Peters (@bit101 – http://www.bit-101.com). I hadn’t seen any of his sessions live before, so I was really excited about this one, especially once I learned that it was about game development. Because lets face it, I’m a geek and I like games. The reason I liked his session a lot however, was not so much because of the gaming aspect. He talked a lot about how to do certain things, like use a LoadManager class for your assets, or SoundManagers to handle your sounds. Things that are also useful when working on web related projects. Things that I already used, but had no idea that other people were using them too. The reason I liked Keith’s session, was that I finally got some confirmation about the methods I work with and because he made a clear, concise list of methods and best practices that can really help you with any type of project, be it a game or a web app.
Chuck Freedman & Jared Ficklin
Sound Gurus-r-us
I used to listen to music and stare at the visualizations that came with Winamp for hours on end when I was ten. I’m most definitely no music expert, but I’ve always liked sound (not music per sé… sound) and especially the idea of visualizing said sounds. And I guess that’s why I absolutely enjoyed these sessions by Chuck Freedman (@chuckstar – http://www.getmicrophone.com) and Jared Ficklin (@jaredrawk). Not only that, but they’ve inspired me to do some experiments of my own. (more on that in another post 
) Chuck talked about the woes with the getMicrophone method in Actionscript, which allows you to do some really cool stuff even now, but is still lacking when it comes to using the input from the microphone for your creative purposes. Thankfully, he and a lot of other people from around the world have provided us with some temporary solutions to this problem until the good people at Adobe decide to listen up and resolve the issue. For more on these solutions and some fine examples of what -is- actually possible with a sprinkle of creativity and a shred of sound, head on over to http://www.getmicrophone.com or support the cause over at the Adobe Bug System.
Jared Ficklin (whose radiant presentation style was one of the most amazing I saw at Flash On The Beach – or anywhere else for that matter 
) talked mostly about homebrew-style audio visualizations and the what and how of sound in general, which I particularly liked as well.
Grant Skinner
Quick as a Flash
This man needs no introduction. Grant Skinner (@gskinner – http://www.gskinner.com/blog) is one of those people that you just have to see once in your life and I had the privilege of seeing him twice (count ‘em. Two times!). Once at his ‘Quick as a Flash’ session, where he gave an in-depth overview of some really great optimization techniques and then again at the 10-minute JAM Throwdown session later that day, where he showed some kick-ass sound visualizations. You can check out the slides that go with his talk at: http://gskinner.com/talks/quick/.
Joa Ebert
Leaving The Sandbox
The man coded a 3D Sound Visualizer in under ten minutes on a blank keyboard! ‘Nuff said. Check it on Vimeo (and yes, that’s me, commenting at the bottom of the page. Check out the cool custom avatar :p)
These guys, and others, like Mario Klingemann (@quasimondo), Colin Moock and Joel Gethin Lewis (@jgl) made this into one conference I won’t easily forget. I’m already looking forward to next year’s edition! See you then Flashers!
